97 posts tagged “movies”

I also finally watched Casino Royale, the 2006 version that introduced new Bond, Daniel Craig. It was a darker, more serious Bond film than I am used to, although I have to admit to having never seen any of the Pierce Brosnan ones, so I'm not sure if the trend had started earlier.

In this film, based on Ian Fleming's first Bond book, we see the origins of the "double oh" that James Bond would become. In fact, it begins with a black and white montage, showing us how Bond qualified for the 00 status. After this, we see him in Africa, trying to track down the source of terrorist money and he follows the money trail until he attempts to break the financier in a high stakes poker game. Much mayhem ensues and Bond gets his man.

I enjoyed this new Bond flick and thought Craig made an excellent Bond. I'm not, however, keen on torture scenes, even if we know revenge is in the offing, so it was a little unsettling. And I thought the movie in general was uneven; that the pacing was off. There were plenty of good action scenes, but the idea of hinging the whole plot on a poker game seemed just to trite these days. But I'm looking forward to his next installment.

I watched on BluRay extra, about the search for Craig. It's funny, the producers were talking about needing a new Bond, because this movie would go back to the beginning of his career, so they wanted someone younger. But they admitted that while it didn't make much chronological sense, they did stick with Judi Dench as "M". I have to also admit that I for some reason thought this was her first, but she actually goes all the way back to GoldenEye, Brosnan's first Bond flick.

The BluRay picture was very nice. I could really see the quality when I paused the movie - rock solid pause with a crisp, clear picture. I still like the HD DVD menus and extras better, but what can you say?

Netflix and the USPS really have been combining for a joyful experience. I dropped the movie in the mailbox Tuesday just before pickup (1pm). Wednesday at 7am I got notice that the movie had arrived in the processing house. And I had its replacement by Thursday. Very Nice!

I've been pretty quiet here at Trifle for a couple of reasons. First off, work has been pretty hectic, as we try to get a version together for a BIG customer. While my company is very very good at resisting long, involved changes for the sake of one customer, when a multi-billion dollar company really really wants something that is on your upcoming feature list, you tend to do your best to deliver it early, right?

I've also become something of Twitter-holic, especially since I added unlimited text messaging to our cellphone plan. As I've mentioned before, I have even received some timely help via my twitter "neighborhood", which is a feedback loop that is hard to resist. I've stopped using TwitterFox though. For one thing, Firefox itself is slightly too unstable, as it tends to crash about twice a day, so I figure I need to cut back on my Addons. Secondly, typing gets very very very slow. Not sure what that is, besides a general Firefox slowdown, but it makes it impossible to use.

So I've been beta (maybe even alpha!) testing phpitter, a PHP(!) app. It took some work to get it installed, but the SVN version is reasonably solid at this point. I suppose I should look at twitux. Or maybe write my own, eh?

But anyway, a couple of short takes on my time wasting efforts, besides Twitter:

• I read Debatable Space by Philip Palmer. A pretty long science fiction novel, it tells the story of some space pirates who kidnap a VIP and then proceed to try and topple the current galactic overlords. A little too much internal dialog by the VIP, and not quite enough action, but the book postulates an interesting future of limitless resources and "travel" by avatar, as the light speed speed limit is still obeyed. If you like "hard" sci-fi, I think you'll like this book. Just skip over all the interminable Lena reflections and you won't miss a thing.
  

• I watched Michael Clayton onDemand and was decidedly underwhelmed. Originally, I had no interest in the movie. Who cares about battle lawyers? But the previews I saw on cable made it look pretty intense, so I used my free coupon to "rent" it. The beginning was cool, with a very startling event punctuating a quiet time, but then it rewound time (which I generally like in a movie) and got dull. I just never understood why George Clooney's Michael Clayton suddenly got attacked by a case of the guilts. Some whacko lawyer friend of his decides that defending big business is right and he somehow infects Clayton, whose conscience bothers him after years and years of protecting the big guy. I never got connected with him and so the last 2/3rds of the film just didn't resonate. Oh well.
  

• Fever Pitch became available online at Fancast (a Comcast site), so I watched that yet again while "working" yesterday. Man, the 2004 ALCS still brings a tear to me eye. I wonder if any but heartfelt Red Sox fans can really "get it". It's not as painful as Game Six, as it has a much better ending, but still...
  

Narrator: Ben became one of God's most pathetic creatures - a Red Sox fan.
Uncle Carl: Careful kid. They'll break your heart.

We watched a couple of movies the other night. First up was The Bourne Identity. I had seen it before, although not in hi-def. When Best Buy was offering up a "buy one get one free" and it included the HD-DVD versions of the first two Bourne movies, I snatched them up. I really enjoyed The Bourne Supremacy, even despite the shaky camera work, so I was hoping that the HD-DVD version of the first one would be equally sparkling.

And it was an excellent audio/visual treat. Not quite as frantic as Supremacy, but still really good action movie. The car chases were solid, especially the one through Paris in the mini. It held up very well, and now I really want to go back and re-read the novel.

The second movie was a Netflix rental, something that had been sitting around for a while - the standard DVD movie Once, an indie sensation when it came out in 2006. And what a wonderful movie it really was - a nicely romantic, yet real life feeling movie. There are often no easy answers when it comes to matters of the heart and this movie didn't take the easy way out, leaving things messy.

The story is pretty straight forward - "Guy" is a busker on the streets of Dublin, living at home as a "Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy", whose girlfriend left him for London. Girl comes up to him and tells him encouraging things about his songs. But despite her own complications, she gets him to a weekend long recording session, where things work out well. And life goes on.

The main actors, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, are both pretty much first time actors and really nailed the parts. Director / writer John Carney caught lightning in a bottle with these two and the movie has a great feel about it. Glen and Markéta are obviously comfortable with themselves and, in one of the commentaries, Carney talked about having old band mate Hansard write some songs of a movie he only had partially sketched out in his head. But the more he thought about it the more it became obvious that Hansard was his actor too, and, serendipitously enough, Hansard had a good friend in Markéta who was both a Czech immigrant and a piano player, exactly what Carney was looking for. And she really nailed the part, being both vulnerable and strong at the same time.

My biggest complaint is that, for some reason, the movie has an R rating (in the US, R is for 18 and over only). I can't even begin to imagine why it would have generated an R. The "f-bomb" is dropped a few times, but that is the only thing that could possibly have done it. There's no sex, no violence, just a great, touching, honest story being told, often in song. I was thinking it would be a good movie for my girls to see, as it also does a great job of showcasing the creative process, as both the Guy and the Girl work on the songs. I think it would help get them more fired up on their piano play. I'm truly baffled as to its rating, other than to agree with the feeling in the ratings documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which said that indie films were graded on a much tougher scale than big budget titles.

But you should see Once. No, it isn't a "chick flick". Just a realistic portrayal of two people and how they can affect the lives of each other.

My last weekend viewing was very non-taxing. The HD-DVD (R.I.P.) version of 300 graced my now obsolete HD-DVD player and what spectacular video, audio and cheesiness it was too. The story was pure Hollywood hokum, albeit with a small grounding in history, as it retells the story of the three hundred Spartans who held off thousands of Persians invading Greece at the Battle of Thermopylae. herodotus is pretty much the only source for this battle, but what a wonderful read his Histories truly is!

Holding off the real and imagined Persian army, this version of the 300 was originally told in Frank Miller's graphic novel. Taking the skeletal knowledge of this battle, Miller adds some fanciful elements to the already impressive story to craft a real masculine epic of a small group of heroic combatants holding off a sea of enemies.

The film does a great job of adapting Miller's look to the big screen and does an admirable job of getting the dialogue right too. Of course, they were required by dramatic law to add the line that must be in all movies that have a Spartan in it - "Come home with your shield ... or on it". All in all, though, the dialog managed to avoid sinking into unintentional satire. I liked a line towards the end of the film:

Stelios: It is an honor to die at your side.
King Leonidas: It is an honor to have lived at yours.

The 300's stand at Thermopylae stalled Xerxes and the Persian army long enough for the rest of Greece to get their act together and the movie ends as the narrator describes the great victory of Greece over Persia at the Battle of Plataea, which followed the big Greek naval victory at Salamis.

300 was good, goofy fun. I'd be half tempted to pick up a copy as a reference disc, as the sound and video was truly top notch. Somehow, like I said, it managed to avoid sinking into true silliness and maintained a certain level of seriousness. The HD-DVD had some real nice extras, like a director's commentary which was accompanied by a small video inset showing the picture as taken against the blue screen, showing you where the graphics were later added. I also enjoyed the 300: Fact or Fiction short, which featured the hot Bettany Hughes , famous Spartan lecturer.

One thing that all this great graphical treatment still shows though - Hollywood still can't do snow wortha damn, even with all the graphical processing power they can bring to bear on the problem.

My movie for the weekend was Good Night, and Good Luck, a very well received move from 2005 which told the story of Edward R. Murrow's battle to expose Joseph McCarthy's "Commie Witch hunt" as nothing but Constitutionally challenged paranoia. This black and white film was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor, although it did not win any.

David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow and George Clooney as his producer Fred Friendly are excellent in showing their growing resolve to butt heads against the growing paranoia of Joe McCarthy (played quite ably by himself via newsclips). They get some flak from CBS President William Paley (Frank Langella) but are ultimately allowed to expose McCarthy's hypocrisy.

This very earnest movie tells a story well worth telling, especially in today's atmosphere of spineless "me-too" journalism, but it lacks drama. My father complained that Day of the Jackal lacked suspense, because everyone knew that DeGaulle wasn't going to be assassinated, and I felt the same way while watching Good Night. We all know that finally McCarthy will be knocked over. It does have some resonance today, because the spineless media coverage of current attacks on the US Constitution and habeas corpus have allowed too much to happen already.

But the movie itself, while well told and solidly acted, didn't really resonate. The sub-plot of the "hidden" romance between two CBS co-workers seemed to be merely filler. So I can't really recommend the movie, although the story is important.

My other visual media experience for the weekend was the MHD On Demand free showing of the Gorillaz concert at the Apollo Theater. A friend recently sent along a lyric he liked:

  There's a monkey in the jungle,
  Watchin' a vapour trail.
  Caught up in the conflict
  Between his Brain and his Tail.
   - Gorillaz, "19-2000"

So as I was puttering about downstairs cleaning up, I noticed there was a Gorillazconcert available, so I put it on. I honestly knew nothing about Gorillaz, so unlike my friend, I didn't find it odd that this "virtual" band was shown in concert! But I really enjoyed the show. It was a multimedia extravaganza and so I was distracted more than I wanted while I was supposed to be cleaning up. But it was some great music, with some excellent guest spots by people like Neneh Cherry and a reading by Dennis Hopper. The show at the Apollo Theater is of the Demon Days album, so that goes to the top of my want list now. I really liked how the band was shown mostly in silhouette, against a changing background of solid colors, at least until frontman Damon Albarn came forward for the last song, Hong Kong, accompanied by a beautiful woman playing the Chinese zither. Great stuff! Here's Happy Mondays/Black Graper Shaun Ryder singing DARE along with Martina Topley-Bird (I think) in a highlight for me:

Busy and expensive weekend for me. After having a couple of martinis on the back deck with my wife (hey, it was way up into the 30s!), I went in and watched The Assassination of Richard Nixon, found on the Free Movies section of Comcast HD on Demand. Starring Sean Penn as the loser Samuel Bicke (actually Byck), is is based on the real story of Byck's planned assassination of Richard Nixon. A movie of unrelenting pessimism and gloom, Sean Penn's portrayal of the crazed Bicke was simply remarkably, and really, I think, the only reason to watch the movie. Truly a depressing yet fascinating movie, in the old "watching a car crash" fashion.

Then my wife and I watched Knocked Up on HD and, frankly, I don't see what the fuss was all about. Nor did my wife, who had an even harder time understanding Alison's motivations at getting involved with this loser and then keeping him around. Knocked Up reminded me of director Judd Apatow's earlier film, The 40 Year Old Virgin in its uneveness. I found some spots to be hilarious but the movie seemed to drag and at nearly 2 1/4 hours, was about 30 minutes too long.

But Katherine Heigl is truly a stunning beauty, which made her connection with Seth Rogan's Ben Stone even harder to understand. I think my favorite character was Kristen Wiig's TV exec Jill. Her reactions, both to Alison's first promotion and then to her newly discovered pregnancy, were classic.

But Sunday I spent way too much money on a Playstation 3 and various accessories. It is, however, a very slick looking console, if a little big. And I was surprised to see that it plays Playstation one games (the new 40gb machine purposefully does not play PS2 games). even if they do look ugly. It doesn't come with an HDMI cable, so I had to buy one of those. And I forgot to buy an optical audio cable, so I need to get another one, although I borrowed the one from my Xbox for now. I also bought another controller, the DVD controller, a game (Oblivion because it was cheap), and a movie (Life Of Brian).

The game looks spectacular, even if it is "only" 720p. Life of Brian, while still uproariously funny, doesn't look quite as nice. I demand solid colors from my hi-def DVDs, and this had a little too much speckling. I supposed I shouldn't be surprised at that, give its age (nearly 30 years ago it was filmed!). I will enable BluRay on my Netflix account and will try some newer movies. I tried to get some James Bond movies, which I thought were all out on BluRay, but I guess only the latest one, Casino Royale is available.

But I probably shouldn't have indulged, even if I did get a windfall from the selling of a boardgame. The game catalog is sadly lacking. At the Best Buy where I picked it up, maybe a third of a row had PS3 games, while the other 2/3 was PS2 games. The XBox 360 had 1.5 rows. But there are a couple of co-op games available I might try, like Resistance: Fall of Man or the upcoming Army of Two.

Watched Dark City a couple of weeks ago, but just haven't been in the mood for posting on Trifle lately. One of those movies that made the jump to the top of my Netflix queue and I have no idea where it came from! No wonder I have over 150 titles in my queue; I just keep throwing them on there.

Anyway, Dark City was a pretty highly acclaimed sci-fi movie from 1998 with themes reminiscent of "playing with their reality" movies likeThe Truman Show with maybe a touch of Sin City. A little too over the top for me, and lacking the unique style of Sin City.

Dark City is a place used by "aliens" as a sort of playground to try and figure out the human race. Kiefer Sutherland (over)plays the part of a human co-conspirator, helping them out with their experiments (although I don't think it is explained why they need his help). William Hurt plays a police inspector, trying to track down a prostitute serial killer (now there's a new one, eh?), who he suspects is Rufus Sewell's John Murdoch.

Murdoch uncovers some strange things about the city (Why is it always dark? Why can't anyone tell him the way out?) and resolves to solve the problem using his newly discovered telekinetic powers. A huge and drawn out battle ensues, and some of the mysteries are cleared up, but not all of them. Isn't that deep?

I dunno if I was watching the same movie the IMDB commentators were, that's for sure. I didn't even think it was that particularly visually stunning, never mind the lazy storytelling and the ending which seemed to replace noise with resolution. It was okay, not entirely a waste, but I'm not even sure I'd go so far as the three out four stars the Leonard Maltin reviewer gave it.

Watched Pan's Labyrinth again last night, using my hot-off-the-presses HD DVD. And once again, I was totally blown away. Even more so this second time around, especially the beginning, as I now know what to expect. Emotionally wrenching, visually astounding and brutally honest, it is definitely a great film. My friend didn't seem quite so taken with it; I think the violence, while perfectly integrated, was too brutal and bloody for him.

The HD DVD is done really well. Not the best I've seen, but still pretty incredible and makes for a great home theater experience. And the sound is tremendous as well. When the fairy insect flies around, flitting from speaker to speaker, you swear it is going to land on your shoulder at any moment. There are a ton of good looking extras that I hope to get to soon, including something that sounds very much like the picture-in-picture commentary found on the Bourne Supremacy disc.

As a follow up to yesterday's post on our Saturday night viewing of Casablanca, I thought I would post this review I wrote on June 14, 2007. And no, I still haven't seen it in the theaters, although it is coming to the Brattle for its annual Valentine's Day visit, so I need to block the time out for it.

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Ahh, Casablanca...  What more can I add to all the paens that have been written, and all the odes of love that have yet to be written?  I can say it is one of my all time favorite movies, and is the one I've seen the most.  A conservative estimate would be that I've seen it 30 times, quite possibly up to twice that number.  And to all those people who wonder how someone can watch a movie that often, I refer you to Roger Ebert's wonderful review in his book The Great Movies, where he compares watching Casablanca with listening to your favorite music CD - just a nice evening with a comfortable friend.

The serpentine story of a disillusioned saloon owner Rick (Humphrey Bogart), who meets an old flame, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), who, it turns out, is the wife of a Resistance leader, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid).  After much twisting and turning, they all try to do the right thing, and it ends with one of the most famous lines in film history:

Rick: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.".

My favorite character, actually, and the one I would most like to play in the sequel, is Captain Renault, the Louis in the above quote, played most wonderfully by Claude Rains.  While something of a slimeball, he's a happy-go-lucky one, who knows what he likes and what he can do, and is happy with that.  He has some good lines ("I like to think you killed a man.  It's the romantic in me." and "I'm shocked, shocked to find out gambling is going on here!" ), and in general comes out smelling like roses, as you would expect to happen with someone like Captain Renault.

The DVD is simply spectacular.  We've watched all kinds of incarnations (although, sadly, I've yet to actually see it in the movie theaters), but the DVD is like watching a brand new movie.  The filmmakers went to great lengths to have all kinds of action happening in the background, and you can finally see it.  The "colors" are gorgeous shades of black and white, and the sharpness is eye-popping.  It also includes a nice little documentary, as well as trailers for Casablanca and many other Bogart and Bergman films, including the Casablanca'ssort-of sequel, Passage to Marseilles.

We spent some time last night dissecting Rick's motivations, and to see when he gets over being bitter and finally gives Ilsa credit for doing the right thing.  It takes a couple of incidents for him to figure it out, but while he is pissed, he's got some wonderfully poisonous lines, like "I saved my first drink for you." and "Did you leave me for Laszlo, or was there someone in between.... or aren't you the kind that tells?" .  But the nice sub-plot of the young Hungarian couple (notice they are in several crowd shots before that, and are also trying to get a visa while Ilsa and Victor are visiting Capt. Renault) resolves itself through the "honest" roulette wheel, reminding him that perhaps somebody did love him that much.  Ilsa then visits him and explains to him just how complicated life can be.  So much has been written about the happenings on the Casablanca set (too much, I think, robbing the movie of some of its magic), but the fact that Ingrid Bergman didn't know the ending (heck, no one knew who she would end up going with until the last takes), gives her confusion some real credence and adds a special poignancy to the visit in Rick's apartment.  It is a fun line of investigation and one that I'll certainly visit again with my friend who introduced me to the Casablanca drug.  We watch it together quite often, and I'm sure more mention of this all-time classic will happen in here.

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And, as a added bonus, here's a great "speed painting" of Rick and Ilsa, courtesy of el otro yo's Vox blog:

Saturday night was a big movie watching night. Three movies, covering a wide range of interests - a classic foreign film, a Hollywood blockbuster, and a black and white classic. They also covered a wide range of video quality, as the foreign film is really a TV adaptation, the Hollywood blockbuster was a gorgeous modern HiDef presentation, while the classic was a clean, B&W film. Somehow, it all worked out just fine.

First up was Part IV of Dekalog (The Decalogue), director Krzysztof Kieslowski's masterpiece for Polish television. Each episode is based on one of the Ten Commandments, and all are set in a dreary apartment building in Krakow. They are not preachy by any means, and of the four I've now seen, they sometimes only lightly touch on the themes of the appropriate Commandment. This was was based on "Honor thy father and thy Mother" and tells the story of a young woman who finds an envelope of her father's labeled "Open upon my death". She suspects it might have something to do with her long dead mother, but can she resist opening it? And what might it have to say and how might it affect her relationship with her father?

Another powerful entry in the series. These are some really great dramas, powerful and interesting, described once by Stanley Kubrick as the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime. All have been must watched cinema and I'm anxious to get into more of them. I put this one on because we had about an hour my wife was ready to start watching the next movie and it filled the time admirably.

We followed this up with the 2005' Best Movie, Brokeback Mountain in HD. It was kind of weird that I had this movie from Netflix, given Heath Ledger's recent tragic demise. This added twist made even my wife want to come down and watch the movie.

A long movie, clocking in at 134 minutes, filled with impressive visuals, which are director Ang Lee's forte, it failed to seriously impress me. In case you don't know, Brokeback Mountain follows the lives of two men who fall in love while spending a summer up in the mountains as sheep wranglers (you know, where men are men and sheep are nervous...). They fight their forbidden love once they come down out of the mountains and try to carry on in as "normal" a fashion as possible. Each gets married and has children, although Ennis (Heath Ledger's character) has a much harder time dealing with his feelings for Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) than Jack does.

They manage to get together a few times a year for "fishing trips" but Ennis finds it harder and harder to compartmentalize his feelings for Jack. Some ups and downs occur, tragedy ensues and Ennis must carry on as best he can.

My one word evaluation for this movie was "overwrought". Everything just seemed too much, right from the opening camera shot of a cowboy leaning against a wall, shot thought the wheels of a passing train. I'm pretty sure it wasn't so much the homosexual love story that put me off, just that the characters seemed to go on and on about it, and everything just dragged out. Both Heath and Jake did great jobs with their characters, as Heath's taciturn cowboy and Jake's kind of glitzy rodeo rider were played well. I also thought that Michelle Williams did a knock out job as Heath's first wife. But in the end, I felt it was just overly dramatic and overly long. My wife, on the other hand, thought it a great, sad, touching and romantic movie. Must be a 'chick flick', I guess!

We finished up the night with our first viewing in over a year of Casablanca. This was the HD version I got from Toshiba and it was the same clean, crisp version found in the Special Edition DVD. My friend and I have seen Casablanca dozens of times and it never fails to impress when watching this sharp reproduction just how much is going on in every frame. I was once again just blown away by how beautiful Ingrid Bergman was and how perfectly she inhabited her part. Still my all time favorite movie and watching it never gets old.