Has anyone seen "The Station Agent"? Sorry to break into your thoughts about "Narnia". I watched "The Station Agent" yesterday. It is a very unassuming film. I guess about friendship. One of the stars is Peter Dinklage. I felt it was very moving.
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Has anyone seen "The Station Agent"? Sorry to break into your thoughts about "Narnia". I watched "The Station Agent" yesterday. It is a very unassuming film. I guess about friendship. One of the stars is Peter Dinklage. I felt it was very moving.
deb, I saw it a couple of years ago, and I remember liking it a lot. I should rent it again. Thanks for reminding me. :)
Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog.
Anyone who knows Herzog's work (esp Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre), will know that he is an obsessive who is fascinated by the stories and lives of other obsessives. Grizzly Man is no different. Annually, Timothy Treadwell abandon's the real world for his specially crafted dream world of bears. Maybe he wants to be a bear himself. The film shows the evolution of his obsession, at times dropping into paranoia. All the way through, Treadwell gives the appearance of someone on the edge, at times falling on the wrong side. I would have to describe this documentary film as a tragicomedy. Treadwell relates the tragic deaths of animals in such an infantile and ridiculous way that the audience finds it hard not to laugh. His rantings against the National Park Authorities likewise cause an eruption of laughter and all in all, one is left feeling a kind of sadness or sorrow for his life of delusion, that so cruelly led to the death of his girlfriend (who was always afraid of bears) and Timothy himself. Having said that, some of his camera shots are unwittingly beautiful.
I would say it gets 7/10 for me. Herzog is a remarkable director who often brings out such remarkably acute realism in his work, that it appears to be quite surreal. Life, according to Herzog, is chaos appearing as order. Our attempts to domesticate chaos and cultivate order often result in further anarchy. Herzog's the man to show us that. Anyone who has ever desired to get back to Nature ought to watch this film.
Klaus Kinski, grizzly bear maulings... what next, fun with nuclear explosives? Looking forward to it. :thumbs_up :p
I just saw Grizzly Man myself on television about a week ago. I must say at the end my impressions of Treadwell were that he ranged from being semi-hysteric to infantile in his passions for bears, but I admired him for his conviction to live his life doing exactly what he wanted to do. (Though he was somewhat of a chameleon and led a pretty varied life before he became a lover of wildlife)
The scene where he was admonishing the fox who had grabbed his hat and took off for the fox den was very silly and I was beginning to think the man insanely anthropomorphising one too many times :p
His profane outbursts at the National Parks people didn't help his cause, but he had legitimate reasons to be angry about poaching and the abuses of "power" in the system of supposed "protection" of the animals.
I am not against the systemic hunting of grizzly bears on Kodiak Island (or anywhere else) to control their numbers, but there is a lot of evidence pointing to certain higher ups and hunting guides (for example) that turn blind eyes to people who are merely poaching the animals for their gall bladders, paws, tongues etc. perpetuating the illegal industry of certain animal parts.
Treadwell did not live in vain, his exemplary video footage and still images of the bears are at least educational for understanding the animals and artistic in their own merit.
Publishing dates for the Narnia books: -Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazel-Ra
This is the original order in which the books appear. The stories are however in a different internal chronological order. The events in "The Magician's Nephew" happening first, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by wikipedia
So everybody's right (and wrong). So feel free to feel smug or slighted as you wish.
Serenity by Joss Whedon
Serenity is easily the best sci-fi movie I have ever seen. After viewing it, the only thing that comes to mind is MOREEEEEEEEEEEE!
Rating: 10/10
Ditto.Quote:
Originally Posted by EAP
"Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some GRENADES, don'tchathink?"
:D Serenity rocked! There's a petition out asking HBO or Showtime to add it as a series with new episodes. If anyone's interested you can find it here: http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/revivefirefly
Quote:
Originally Posted by beer good
Ok, last movie I saw was Something New. It's a romance. I don't usually see many of those but this was very real and funny and sweet. It's about an interracial couple, a Black professional who gets involved with a White landscaper despite her efforts not too.
It had a mixed audience, men, women, older folks, teenagers, and all colors. It seemed as if everyone enjoyed it immensely. The leads were wonderful. Overall, great acting, good story, again very realistic and well worth seeing. I give this 4 out of 5. :thumbs_up
Well now, I did not know that... how interesting. I didn't even think to look! I guess you're right... everyone is both right and wrong, lolQuote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
“The merchant of Venice“ was the last movie I saw and I liked it a lot - the only thing I didn't like was that it was advertised to be a "romantic comedy". No comedy whatsoever. Though I may be overhasty to say that because there was one scene that made me smile a little - the "flight" of Jessica.
Back to the film - it was a great performance of the play. I'd rate it 10/10.
Saw Brokeback Mountain yesterday. Beautiful, though depressing, movie. Even if it does occasionally get a little too close to a Marlboro ad, it's Ang Lee back to the form he had in The Ice Storm - the outsider's view of America through some of its most obvious icons (the cowboys, the wilderness, the religion) and centered around a few people. (And of course, making text of the subtext in most cowboy movies.) Beautiful acting - I thought Michelle Williams was just another Dawson's Creek hangaround, but IMO she really should get that Oscar. As should Heath Ledger and the guy who wrote the script; to take a book and turn it into a movie where most of the plot is carried by images and facial expressions, never gets talky, never analyzes itself... Not perfect, but haunting. 4+ out of 5.
Yes, I agree with those disappointed in Big Fish. I'm also a long time fan of Tim Burton's who felt let down by Sleepy Hollow, although I quite liked Planet of the Apes, lol. I think Big Fish was about a son who seeks to know and be known by his abandoning, narcissist father.Quote:
Originally Posted by Isagel
The father, presumably attempting to be the "Big Fish" in a small pond, spins wacky tales of self-aggrandisement, which aren't remotely credible. The movie's point, it seems to me, is that the son is shown to be the stupid, crazy one in failing to take his father off the enormous pedestal. That 'moral' left me feeling disturbed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EAP
Wow, didn't know about Serenity, thanks for piquing my curiosity, am going to get the dvd and check it out.
Last night I saw The Constant Gardener and thought it was excellent. Learned a lot about corporate malice in East Africa with the pharmaceutical companies taking advantage of unsuspecting villagers, using them as unwitting guinea pigs, ugh. The relationship between the impassioned revolutionary wife and the phlegmatic Brit diplomat evolves into a political, social, emotional intrigue that is substantially interesting. The cinematography was a bit annoying for me, seemed to be filtered through a rust colored lens, perhaps mirroring the iron oxide red earth of sub-Saharan Aftrica? But that also gave the movie a strange documentary feel to it, like the eerie, somewhat garish color of the Cops reality series. Worth seeing and memorable.
The last movie I saw in the cinema was Good Night and Good Luck I didn't expect that a film about such dark subject matter could end up being so uplifting. In exposing the pathological bullying of the malignant Senator McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow's quiet heroism was shown to be brilliant and politically astute.