The Lego movie : Loved it !

I'm actually no fan of T. Hanks, but his performance in the doctor's role was well above convincing - I couldn't wait for something... unpleasant to happen to him ;-P
H. Berry is either very underused or very selective as she doesn't do many films - or at least, that's my impression.


I was talking with a friend recently about Django Unchained and Tarantino. I find the guy utterly obnoxious, but, boy, does he know his craft as a film-maker and story-teller!! The only film of his I didn't like was Death Proof - that non-stop rambling by the chicks made me wish I could stuff a sock in their mouths.

Django Unchained has some of the best performances to support a very fresh story, you forgot to mention the unrecognisable Don Johnson.

Christoph Waltz is an amazing character actor - I just loved Col. Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds, he's that good. So, my crash on him dates back to that film.
If you haven't already, watch Carnage and Water for Elephants for a couple more brilliant performances.


Recently watched Seeking a Friend for the End of the World - another film that confirmed my belief that Steve Carell is a very good dramatic actor and should be playing more of these roles.

Seen it 3 times in theaters. I don't think I've ever gone to the same movie that many times before. It is easily the best kid's movie I've ever seen. Puts Disney and Pixar to shame, IMO (although I'm not a very big fan of either, so I'm a little biased).
I thought Cloud Atlas was pretty good, if you looked at the big picture and ignored how dull the individual plots were.

Seen a couple of odd films here and there lately, and the latest in mainstream release was Under the Skin. Which I loved. I saw a sneak preview of it at BAM (the Brooklyn Academy of Music), a couple of weeks before release, after which I wrote this about that:

"Under The Skin" is a stubborn, high-toned sci-fi art movie which, because it features Scarlett Johansson in and out of her clothes, is destined to be pushed to a wide commercial audience that will surely hate it. It's a small film, delicately and finely drawn and relentless in its refusal to step down and make friends. If you can make the trip to where it is - it is almost completely without dialogue, and while it's complex and detailed, the plot is rudimentary - you'll find it beautiful. At heart it is a spin on the story of "The Man Who Fell to Earth," if Bowie's stranger in that film were hungrier, and never got himself caught. Scarlett Johansson is terrific, and carries the film with assurance and heart.

----- end -----

I keep waiting for the backlash; this really is a weird, kind of clammy film, wonderfully observed but completely and hermeneutically limited to its own weird world and internal logic.

Jonathan Glazer, the director, takes as his ground the old sci-fi sexploitation premise that there's a hot alien cruising around picking up lonely men so she can take them back to her house and erotically eat them. But instead of making a roisting erotic silly adventure out of it, he takes the premise for real, and explores what that would actually be like. Who would she be? How would she do it, for reals? When would the men figure it out? How would they react? Mechanically, what would be involved - how would she manage to look like us, what would she think about us, what would her life be like?

There's almost no dialogue, and a lot of what is there is in unprocessed Scotts, unintelligible to much of the rest of the English-speaking world (a lot of the street stuff was shot guerilla-style, with Scarlett driving around Scotland at night looking for solitary men; the rest of the crew was in the back of the van in case of trouble, and so they could jump out at the end of the driving bit and get the guys to sign releases to appear in the movie). The plot is full of details but light on story. It's just very strange and quiet.

And I loved it.

After seeing Inglorious Bastards I can't stand Tarentino any longer as the entire movie was nothing but glorification of violence and dehumanization of germans, if it had some sort of message to tell I might have digged it, as it is it was nothing but a teenage boys wetdream, and a pretty dumb one at that, even needing to rip off from other movies, especially Sergio Leone's.
And then you get Django unchained, I haven't seen the original so I can't comment on that, but it was half the same as Inglorious Bastard but now the nazi's were replaced by southerners, again dehumanized in every way, and the other half was an excuse me movie by all of a sudden make germans look like good samaritans because they were the bad guys in the previous one to make up for the offence. And the entire movie you have to watch all the gratatiuos violence and I'm supposed to like it.
Watching it actually made me so angry I'm planning to make my own teenage wetdream movie where Tarentino gets all sort of sadistic puzzles like in Saw (another movie I can't stand) and where in the end he gets wooshed by a flamethrower and while he's dancing with his hands in the air Syndicate style with this song playing on the background.

I aggree in every point.
BTW: The dehumanization and slaughter of Germans is exactly the reason why the movie is so popular here in Germany, we grew up with this self hatred because of the stuff some generations ago. I wonder if it's the same with the southern Americans and Django, maybe not.

I only find myself disagreeing with the moral of the story

Lego movie spoiler alert!

I'm totally on the dad's side :P I mean, that entire city was the product of the dad's imagination and then his kid shows up and breaks it apart. I would be furious! If I spent a whole week building a deathstar or something then I would be foaming at the mouth if somebody decided to have cowboys wage a war on it. Even more so because the kid had his own massive box of legos to play with however he saw fit (5 times larger than my box when i was a kid mind you).
But luckily the kid probably does learn his lesson in the end though when his own 'selfless' argument allows his sister's creations into the world.

Even though my said indignation is completely justified, it still leaves me feeling like a bit of a bastard....hehe...

Right on! The man has no soul. The only memorable movie he's made is Jackie Brown..and that was based on a book by Elmore Leonard. It's a pity he's so shallow as he does have skill.

Finally got around to watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition last night. The movie just wasn't long enough to begin with!
It is okay, not horrible, but sluggishly paced and after watching it you get the impression that nothing much of import has happened. Some very nice (though ridiculous) action scenes, quite a few nice moments and some damn fine acting by Martin Freeman as Bilbo.

Yeah, I tend to feel that way about him as well, especially about Inglorious Bastards, which I found quite disturbing for its seeming lack of human emotion behind the script and the directing. It's really bizarre to me to watch someone who's that good of a writer, and that good of a director, spending his time and effort creating homages to garbage cinema.

I think the Kill Bill movies were pretty good, though. They seemed to get the tone just right. Everything was cartoony enough to keep from being taken too seriously, without being too silly. Pulp Fiction too, I suppose, although something about it struck me the wrong way. I don't feel the need to ever see Reservoir Dogs again. Jackie Brown was good, and felt nothing like a Tarantino movie. I haven't seen Django Unchained, and there are a lot of other movies ahead of it on my watch list.

I don't have a lot of problems with his movies before that apart from that they aren't my favorites but Inglorious Bastards and Django I clearly do not belong to the targeted audience.

Actually I saw a documentary once about why no one in Germany (and the rest of the world) knows about Frederik The Great as after the war anything positive about German histrory was to be wiped out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07rjr1Ei11I

Soon... (NSFW at all)

Zulu (2013)

No not the battle of Rorke's Drift but a rather harsh and gritty movie about South African detectives trying to solve a high profile murdercase, very good roles for Forrest Whitaker and surprisingly Orlando Bloom.