I'm about to watch... - Page 94

I was just trying to think of something post-apoc and short to give you a quality ending to your meh-riffic double-feature.

THE ROAD is a fascinating example of a movie that stays true to its material but fails anyway. As far as book to film adaptations go, it's pretty faithful, but what worked on the page just doesn't work on the screen here. Most of what made the book great was HOW it was told, not what was happening. The film needed to add its own cinematic language to reach such heights. Just didn't have it in it.

I enjoyed (though I don't know if that's the right word to use) both films well enough, though neither one is what I would call great. They were both just decent enough to hold my attention. As for Book of Eli specifically, it's not great, and some of the thematic elements didn't quite sit right with me, but I appreciated the post-apocalyptic Spaghetti Western vibe the Hughes Brothers managed to create with the film. It is buoyed by some great action sequences (the shoot out at the old couples house in particular), and some of the imagery throughout the film is positively striking. Denzel is appropriately badass as a stoic "Man With No Name" archetype, and the rest of the cast turn in fine performances for the most part. Overall, this is a solid action flick, but I found the religious overtones to be more than a bit obnoxious.

I seem to be in the minority, but I found THE ROAD to be a powerful, brilliant film. Viggo Mortensen's performance pulled me in, to the point that I'd go so far as to say that the emotional impact of the story affected me more than in the novel. The dreariness of the tone turns most off, but like with CHILDREN OF MEN, in the end, there's a feeling of hopefulness.

Up next: Mystery Team

THE ROAD is one of those rare films where even if the filmmaker had asked me how I thought he could improve it, I wouldn't know what to say. It looked great. The acting was great. The mood seemed correct. Others felt the expanded wife stuff was bad news, but I had no issue. For me something was simply missing emotionally. For this reason I do not find it surprising that it worked for others.

Duuuude. MYSTERY TEAM. Feast.

Tonite:

How Can You Tell Them To Be Good When Their Girl Friends Like Them Better When They're Bad!

Don Siegel's Crime In The Streets

(Mystery Team was indeed a silly treat)

Hal Ashby's Coming Home.

Bertrand Blier's Les valseuses(Going Places) with Gerard Depardieu.

I'm sure i've seen this before at a ridiculous hour during my teens. It was when Channel Four had a penchant for showing controversial foreign (sometimes porn) films.

Just fired up Collapse. We'll see if I survive, or even want to.

Paul Mooney: It's the End of the World!

Also, Cronenberg's The Dead Zone

Winter's Bone tomorrow. It finally came to Tucson at the Loft2 cinema. I'm very excited!

In a little Stephen King marathon. About 42 minutes into "Stand By Me". The wildly underrated "The Mist" is coming up next.

Oh shit, that came out already? Been looking forward to it. Hope it stays until next Friday.

Tonight: The Apartment (if I can get my finicky DVD player to play it) and/or finally see Walk the Line.

I love Walk the Line. I mean, it's one of those movies that just gets to me every time. Of course, I'm a redneck and probably the biggest Johnny Cash fan you'll ever meet, so. . .

I love it too, although I wouldn't called myself a redneck, I would say I'm a country boy. I love country music too, so I'm sure that helps.

Ok guys, despite your love, I'm going to bump Walk the Line to tomorrow. The Apartment is in my opinion a 100% perfect movie. I kind of want to end the night on a high note.

Giving The Lost Continent (1968) another go. It's more interesting than good, but it's got a pretty great atmosphere.

Right on, that's an amazing movie. <3 Shirley McLaine.

Antonio Margheriti's Commando Leopard

I am about to watch 24HPP (24 Hour Party People) and then cook my dinner.

OK, so, I ended up not watching 24HPP last night. It was too late, I was too tired, and since other Chewers said it was a good movie I didn't want to waste it when I was feeling less than capable of giving it my full attention.

Same thing for tonight. Just not in the mood to see it. Truthfully THE RUNAWAYS kind of put me off punk rock movies, for at least a little while. I think I'm going to return it and get it out some other time

Instead, I'm going to pop in CRIMSON TIDE which seems fun but also kind of mindless, so I won't feel guilty about only giving it half my attention while I cook up my dinner

Like that one, DR. Not as much as Scorsese probably, but I do like it.

(In A Lonely Place is still my fave Nic Ray)

I've been revisting The Wire: Season One. Steat the real deal Holyfield.

Now: Torso

You sure do love abbreviating things.

That being said (ha ha), it is an enjoyable film. I don't think it is as great as some other Chewers have made it out to be, though.

I do!
Ah, well cool. I'm going to watch it at some point, but I think right now is just not the right time for it. If I return it by tomorrow I can get new stuff for the weekend

I liked it a lot, too, but it's a weird mix. On one hand you've got the dark storyline and blatant McCarthyism subtext, but at the same time, some of the writing and especially delivery makes the film veer dangerously close towards camp. There's also a couple of lynch mob members in there that really can't handle even the one or two lines they've been given, which is a pretty huge anomaly in classic Hollywood flicks.

I agree In A Lonely Place is pretty much a masterpiece.

James Cagney in Shake Hands with the Devil.

I just finished up the Clash of the Titans remake. Meh. It's not completley terrible, but it could have been so much better. It's a bit frustrating, because there's just so much squandered potential in every frame of the film. Characters come and go without leaving any sort of impression, and their motivations are often unclear or just outright dumb. It might help if we knew any of their names, but even then, I don't think the film would be very involving beyond anything more than a surface level. The story never quite comes together, and it feels exactly like what it is; a series of action set pieces combined by the thinnest of plots. I like Sam Worthington for the most part, but he is a complete charisma vacuum in this film, especially when going up against the likes of Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Mads Mikkelson. Also, Gemma Arterton is absolutely breathtaking, but even she couldn't do anything with her role, which is criminally underwritten. Overall, the production design is pretty great, it's just a shame it wasn't in service of a better film.

At any rate, at least I FINALLY have Inception to look forward to this weekend. Cannot friggin' wait.

Either MEET JOE BLACK or INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE ... or maybe just internet and videogames. I'm not sure, I'm not in the mood to watch either one of those right now despite NETFLIX being kind enough to deliver them to my place of residence

I picked up Red Dawn from my local library. I don't really know anything about it, other than the basic plot. What say you folks about Red Dawn?

Actually went to the cinema twice in the past two days, to catch Inception (amazing) and Toy Story 3 (good fun). Now I'm back to my regular DVD groove with the John Carpenter/Richard Schickel commentary for Rio Bravo.

I'm trying to decide if I'm going to haul my TV, my XBOX, ETC all down stairs and try to hook it up with the CAT5 cable to the router (and then sit in a very uncomfortable chair in an awkward spot) all so I can watch CENTAURIAN On Demand... we'll see. I'm hella tired, I might just sleep

I haven't listened to that commentary track yet. Pretty good?

Now: Don't Look Up

Gah! So jealous. I can't wait to catch Centurion, as I'm a huge Neil Marshall nerd, and the trailer for that one was flat out fantastic. I just got back from Inception. Holy shit...so very awesome.

I just finished The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended), which I haven't seen since 2003. I love, love, loved it.
And ok yeah I cried a bit at the end.
Up next: A double feature of Blue Velvet and La Dolce Vita.

It's good, but they have kinda similiar voices, and have been recorded separatley, so much of my attention went to keeping track of who's speaking. They should've just made it two commentaries - Shickel is a good scholar (from what I can see), but the fanboy in me is far too interested in hearing how Rio Bravo influenced Carpenter to focus on the other guy.

Also, Carpenter messes up at one point when he tells the listeners that Rio Bravo was "Howard Hawk's answer to 5:10 To Yuma". At first I was intrigued by this, thinking the dude had a pet theory, but no, turns out he really just got High Noon's title wrong.

Haha. That is weird he would mess that one up.

Up next: Buster & Billie

Jeff Bridges in Hearts Of The West

For the first time ever, I'm going to watch The Howling. Excited!

I was going to watch CENTAURIAN last night.. and then it got pushed back till today. Now it looks like I won't be seeing it till tomorrow.

I am sort of mildly PO'd. It's way too expensive on ZUNE, first of all (MORE than the price of a movie ticket? Huh? It's not like I'll own it when it's downloaded, it's a 24 hour suicide file), but I bought it anyway. I was all set to watch it last night when I discovered it takes a million years to download, and by the time it would have finished new species would have evolved and stars would have gone nova. I had to leave my xbox on all night last night downloading, and then I slept in today till 2 30 PM. When I woke up, I was excited. I'd be able to watch CENTAURIAN! I run downstairs to check my download... and even though it's been downloading since 10PM the previous evening, it's 66% done. WTF?

I now won't be able to watch it till tomorrow. I can't have my xbox and computer hooked up to the web simultaneously, and I can't wait till 11 pm or however long it would take to finish it with no entertainment of any sort.

XBOX movie downloader, you've failed me. I am now officially against "On Demand" download services (at least if they're all that slow). I am actually quite angry that studios now have decided to mistreat their customers (yet again) by making some movies "On Demand only" for months and months, rather than put them in REDBOX or NETFLIX (like REPO MEN, which I want to see but it's being withheld from all but the richest consumers).

Anyway, once I finally can view this I will post up my thoughts in the CENTAURIAN post release thread

PS I know that I can't really blame XBOX 100%.. it's also the fault of America's telecom companies that have ensured that America has slower internet than just about every other first world nation on the face of the earth. Arg

This weekend, watched: Dirty Harry, The Outlaw Josie Wales, and Once Upon A Time in the West.

I'm currently watching the orginal Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

OK, *Now* I'm going to watch CENTAURIAN

Wish me luck!

How'd you like it, Pat?

A top three Dante, for sure. And on some days, my preferred werewolf movie of choice. Yes, even over American Werewolf.

Balls to the charge it's dated!

Tonight: All The Colors of The Dark

Tonight, because of Phil, there is a certain movie that will no longer be unseen by me.


Regardless of its weight next to AWIL (why must I choose?), I think its most definitely the best werewolf film to mess with the classic wolfman structure.

I am going to cook up some salmon and then watch CENTAURIAN again. I love this movie!

Clearly over here Centurion is nowhere to beseen on X Box' Live's on demand thing. Stupid, shitty Italy.

Since I'm in dire need of a nice dose of badassery and technology is failing me, I'm about to launch a nice Walter Hill double feature: 48 Hours followed by Johnny Handsome.

Okay, I hope you know how much harder you're making the wait for this. CURSE YOU! I guess I'll just have to console myself with a viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen this weekend. BOOYAH!

I don't know how your Amazon system works, but the U.S. Amazon has "Centurion" in their video on demand section. Haven't had a chance to check it out myself, but I'm hoping to before the weekend.

I did not mean to make anyones wait worse for CENTURIAN. If you've read this thread, you'll know that I had horrible CENTURIAN related wait issues myself. I left my XBOX on with the movie paused when I went to work, so hopefully the file won't have expired till I actually stop watching it. If I never turn off my xbox, perhaps it will just be on there forever?


Anyway, tonight I'm going to watch KICK ASS