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What DVD / Video did you watch last night? (pt3)

Virgin Suicides - it made me hate Sofia Coppola a little bit. She turned a great book into a nothingness with a pretty soundtrack and nice furnishings
I can't stand her stuff. It smacks of inflated ego. Lost in translation was good because of murray and a great camera crew just getting on with it. They still managed to screw up the editing and ruin what could have been a great film in the end.

Her and that there Spike Jonez.

Just look at the way he spells his name.
 
When I read about her other film set in a hotel about cocooned rich people, i let out an audible sigh.

You mean Somewhere ? It's really only about one rich person, a film-star and his relationship with his daughter and it is rather slight. But there is no "woe me" quality to the character's ennui. The film just observes without without any particular agenda.

I don't think she's a bad film-maker, there is an airy quality and lightness to her style which I like. She comes in for a lot of flack for making films about privileged characters, but that's who she is and she makes films about what she knows. It's better than other privileged film-makers who try to earn browny points by riding their careers on the back of worthy causes and then not doing their subject matter justice.
 
Avengers Assemble

Not the best comic book film ever but good fun. Captain America wasn't the tawt I was expecting.Plenty of fights and manhattan got trashed.


I've been hoodwinked into Love Film so I have an also ran called 'the cold light of day' for tonight. looks shit tbf, i'll give it a go tho
 
'That's my boy' - Adam Sandler is barely coherent throughout most of the film, the storyline is unfathomable, and the jokes aren’t funny. I watched this as a form of self-punishment for not paying attention to what I’m downloading from the internet.
 
Sniper reloaded (2011) Not as good as the original but still worth a watch, probly find it in yer local poundshop any day soon....
 
Rampart was clearly meant to be some sort of mouldbreaking neo-realist down-and-dirty way of dramatising a bit of one of the USA's most infamous policing scandals and Woody Harrelson, in main role, is impressively horrible (racist, grandstanding, lying liar with livid red face and sweats of a serial drunk and bully). But it's just not a very good film ... no real suspense, no real social investigation, just lots of moody arthouse mooning around and cracking up in seedy motel rooms. Was v disappointed in this one, i was expecting it to be lots better.

Carancho (means 'vulture') - another "life is really bloody depressing" crime movie, but from Argentina ... delving into the subculture of fraudulent car-accident claims and the risks people run to set up / claim from fake or orchestrated crashes. Ricardo DArin (of Nine Queens etc) is really good in it; lead actress isn't bad either but I think her and the director (Trapero) are sort of making the same Argy crime caper over and over again. Although it's a good one. would recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind reading subtitles ....despite yet another blatant rip from AMORES PERROS at the end.

The Housemaid (from South Korea) - absolutely bonkers and the best of the three by miles - a lurid, overdone, melodramatic, vicious, biting, blazing class-war satire about a young woman pulled into the machinations and agendas of a hyper-rich (and possibly criminal) S Korean family. The sexual politics might be dubious (did she set out to seduce the 'young master' or did he more-or-less rape her? Not at all clear from the mise en scene...) but the class politics are blatant and inescapable. It looks amazing and there are some terrific character-actor performances as well. Apparently this is an inferior remake of a 60s cult classic ... but given that I don't know where to get hold of the original I'll never know. Anyone who knows it - can you tell me more about the original film? Anyone who doesn't - rent the 2011 version - it's top.
 
When I read about her other film set in a hotel about cocooned rich people, i let out an audible sigh.

One of the cable TV channels recently showed "Marie Antoinette" and the longer I watched, the more my mouth hung open in amazement, and not in a good way. Unless Sofia Coppola's technique is loads better or more witty than my feeble mind can grasp, this film is immune to parody. Not so much for the style (18th century France visuals + punk rock on the soundtrack! deliberate anachronisms! rad!) but for its utterly mindless approach to the subject. So M-A got nastily gossipped about, felt inferior to the grand courtesans of her day and was too gauche to rule the court. So there are obvious parallels between M-A's career and those of 'stars' or 'celebs' of our own day. Does this really mean that whole films can/should still be devoted to entirely her and her feely feelings? From this film you'd barely suspect the existence of the smallest hungry - or even peckish - peasant alive in France at the time. Unless the whole thing is meant to be a gigantic pisstake of its lead character, it's lost me.
 
I thought Marie Antoinette was actually pretty funny and yes, it was supposed to be so. It's a comedy. It is full of satirical barbs and absurdist comedy arising from the idiocy of the French court. Why was it mindless ? Just because it didn't illustrate the scenarios we are all too familiar to in the most obvious way ? Antoinette as the exploiter of the poor or as the victim of the revolution ? The film takes it for granted that we are familiar with all that and then takes different route.

She was shown to be more a victim of the French court than of the revolution. She was so thoroughly cosseted from the life outside, that she has no concept of proletarian existence. Would you really have preferred something so trite as shots of the poor holding out their begging bowls in contrast to the decadence of the French court ? It was all there without having to be that obvious. She is a director who is far more interested in details rather than obvious dramatic situations (hence no court scenes or execution, the part of her life most suited to sensationalism). And as always Coppola is more interested in observing her characters rather than judging them, which is refreshing when it comes to one of the most judged characters of history. And we don't get another fucking redemption story either, as with so many biopics.
 
Island of Death, a young British couple go on a sex & murder rampage on Mykonos in the mid 70s. ms starfish recorded it from the horror channel. I really do worry about her sometimes. It literally had everything in it.

I need to get round to seeing this film, one of the original video nasties. :D
 
Twentieth Century. One of the first screwball comedies, the first of Carole Lombards great films, and the last of John Barrymores. Except neither of them are particularly great, and it's at least half an hour before they think to include anything funny. Becomes okay after that, but no better.
 
A Story of the Strategy/of the massacre/ Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy - new film from Marco Tullio Giordana covering early emerging aspects of the strategy of tension, generally the train bombs in 1969 and specifically the bombing of the Agricultural Bank in Milan the same year. Extremely well made and very very thorough - students of this period will see just about every relevant name group or person examined in some detail (this is a drama btw not a docu) - Pinelli, Merlino, Valpreda, Stefano Della Chaie, Prince Borghese, aginter press, new order, national front, the 10th Flotilla, march 22nd movement, feltrinelli, calabresi, moro. The film hinges on the relationship between Pinelli and Calabresi (the latter portrayed as an honourable man in cricumstances not of his making, as is the monster moro, which confirms to me an impression i had from earlier films by Giordana, that he sympathises with the left but isn't from within it).

General thrust was that the police and fascists had infiltrated the march 22nd movement (through Ippolito and sansetto) - the latter group to provoke violence and bombings in order to place the blame for the real big bombs they were planning onto the anarchists and the former because they has their strings pulled by the real string pullers of the state to believe that the anarchists were responsible. However, the fascists themselves had been infiltrated by the same state and security services and bigger fascists in order to use them in a similar way as they had planned with the anarchists. Only thing was missing was an end-word on the trial of those later convicted of the Murder of Calabresi. Highly recommended if you're at all interested in italian history, might be a bit baffling if you're not.
 
That in itself is enough! But i was thinking more of his introduction of the Legge Reale that allowed police to simply shoot protesters (in a time of mass protest) if they felt threatened - a move which left many more dead than the Piazza Fontana bombing (we're talking in the hundreds here - i will get the proper figures when i get home later today, off out now).
 
That in itself is enough! But i was thinking more of his introduction of the Legge Reale that allowed police to simply shoot protesters (in a time of mass protest) if they felt threatened - a move which left many more dead than the Piazza Fontana bombing (we're talking in the hundreds here - i will get the proper figures when i get home later today, off out now).

Ah, right, I hadn't heard that bit of the story. You should really be publishing this stuff to a wider audience - it's wasted tucked away on a wee thread in Urban.
 
Army of Darkness

Bruce Campbell is the bestest

I watched Platoon for the first time in years too, not as good as I remember it to be but still quite good. I wish they still made Vietnam movies.
 
Currently doing research of what to show at my annual Halloween screening.

I tried to watch Osombie but (surprisingly !:D ) it's not very good. It does replay the first scene from Jaws with an underwater zombie bin Laden though.

Halfway in I gave up and switched to the Aussie "sharks in a supermarket" schlockfest Bait 3D (in 2D), which despite some ropey CGI and a vapid cast was watchable enough and did what it says on the tin.
 
Bad Guy - This movie got quite a few good reviews on asia torrents forum, Personally I couldn't agree less, Absolutely nothing happened after about the first 45 minutes, After that I was practically screaming at the TV " Fuck sake hurry up and finish"
 
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