Author Topic: Resurrecting the Movies thread...  (Read 1025555 times)

Offline Ellemeno

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1440 on: April 26, 2009, 01:57:01 pm »
The personable marketing professional of Hancock. This time he's an unpersonable marketing professional.






Ah.  Thanks for the clarification.  :)  You did make the movie sound good.  Now the two top movies on my wish list are I Love You, Man and State of Play, both 'cause a you.



Offline serious crayons

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1441 on: April 26, 2009, 10:06:30 pm »
Well, today a friend asked me to see 17 Again with her and her 8-year-old son, and I am SO glad I went.

Now I am not only feeling cheerful and upbeat, I also am drawing "Mrs. Serious Crayons Efron" on all of my notebooks, with a big heart dotting the "i."


Offline Ellemeno

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1442 on: April 30, 2009, 03:02:47 am »
I saw State of Play tonight.  I mostly thought it was very good.  Russell Crowe and Jason Bateman were very good.  Helen Mirren could have been better, if they hadn't made her character such a One Note Johnny.  Jeff Daniels looked like Tom Brokaw.  Robin Wright Penn is aging gorgeously.  The last few minutes were a disappointment.  I was watching for a while when I suddenly realized that the person on the screen I'd been watching was David Harbour.  He doesn't seem to make much of an impression on me.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1443 on: May 04, 2009, 07:43:32 am »
X-Men Wolverine

7 out of 10

Very entertaining movie, not at least for all the Hugh Jackman contractually obligatory shirtless scenes (and almost naked scenes!).  ;D   Lot of story told in less than 2 hours.

Points take off for normal comic-book movie plot holes, cliches and unexplained talents of mutants (like how almost everyone can jump around like frogs - except when it's part of the script that they can't).

Otherwise, recommended!!

P.S.  Stick around for credits and end of credits for extra scenes.  They're showing alternate ones in different theaters.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1444 on: May 16, 2009, 03:07:27 pm »
Angels and Demons

7 out of 10

Very good.  Not excellent, but overall, a well done movie.  Enough suspense to keep everyone in the sold-out show dead silent and unmoving - no one left for the bathroom or popcorn - and a friend of mine who had already read the book and knew what was going to happen, biting her nails and riveted the entire 2.5 hours of the movie.  The production quality was amazing, you couldn't tell you weren't actually in the Vatican.  It stuck fairly close to the book - some of the bad parts of the book were thankfully left out.  (see below for some of them)

Acting was well done by professional international cast, some of the actors however, didn't have much to work with, their parts however pivotal, were smaller than expected.  The weakest character was the woman.  Not that she wasn't convincing, but that there wasn't much to her.  The whole movie/book could have been done without her.  This is Landon's chase.



SPOILER!!!  SPOILER!!!  SPOILER!!













In the book, the characters were driven by fanaticism of all kinds.  In the movie, this fanaticism was toned down, one character was money-driven, another driven by political power, religion seemingly a lesser concern for them when in the book, it was the main impetus for their actions.

The movie does not delve into motivations as deeply as it should have.  The book's characters were driven by deep feelings which made you empathize with them, both the good and bad characters, but the movie made their motivations more 'secular' you could say and less emotional which I feel is a great loss.  Another character does not have the public death that was so important to the whole point of the book.

They did leave out some lame parts of the book - the whole woman-running-around-the-Vatican-in-tight-t-shirt-and- bicycle-shorts thing, the soap-opera-y immaculate conception thing (though they could have done more with the father/son thing than they did), the helicopter fall and the romance.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1445 on: May 31, 2009, 11:53:23 am »
I saw "Up" last nite with the Denver Brokies...a very fine time! I recommend it!
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline oilgun

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1446 on: June 16, 2009, 07:43:58 pm »
So Just How Gay is James Franco's Student Film?
Written by S.T. VanAirsdale | 15 Jun 2009, 12:00 PM

James Franco has been dabbling in directing for a while now at New York University’s film school, where he has acknowledged the influence of poetry on his early short work. Not just any poetry, though — we’re talking about Anthony Hecht’s blisteringly homoerotic piece The Feast of Stephen, Franco’s adaptation of which screened here at CineVegas. And when it comes to nailing the tone, vitality and flopping penises of his source material, the fledgling filmmaker is unquestionably in a league of his own. Let’s break down the festival’s gayest film (with spoilers!) after the jump.

Also paying homage to the trailblazing work of Kenneth Anger, the silent, black-and-white Stephen opens with its meek, bespectacled title character (Remy Germinario, in his screen debut) watching a pick-up basketball game in New York City. But the only score Stephen is keeping is the number of shirtless hunks dribbling, sweating and writhing on the court. One mop-topped stud in particular has all the moves, nudging Stephen’s daydream into the more erotic realm of naked boys playing hoops — in slow-motion, natch, and suddenly transported to a wooded glen where society’s referees won’t blow a whistle on their hard fouls.

That sylvan utopia quickly turns into a leafy city park, where the boys haul Stephen off for a prolonged beating. This doesn’t quite reflect the eloquence of Hecht’s “kilowatts of noon” or the “bully’s thin superiority”; Franco opts instead for the more squirming, sustained brutality of fists, elbows, knees and blood. But one sporting fantasia calls for another, apparently, and by now Stephen daydreams of himself as the object of the naked boys’ violent game. Franco pulls this together stylishly if graphically, with chests, thighs and asses pressed tight in various permutations, infusing the violence with the poem’s more visceral sense of ecstasy.

No single punch or kick or bout of dry-humping, however, wields quite the diminishing power of feces smeared on one’s face, which Stephen endures in Franco’s grand finale. But really, endurance has less to do with his ordeal than does experience. The “feast” of the title is Stephen’s big gay rite of passage, however demeaning and/or gang-rapey it might be; the literally shit-eating grin he shares with the audience at the end suggests that even the most horrendous intimacy is better than none at all.

As student films go, it’s a tight, competent, attractive exercise. As James Franco projects go, it cements the young hyphenate’s place in the canon of the gayest stories ever told. Howl won’t stand a chance.

from: http://www.movieline.com/2009/06/so-just-how-gay-is-james-francos-student-film.php

I'm really starting to like James Franco, a lot!

Offline oilgun

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The 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time
« Reply #1447 on: July 16, 2009, 08:11:02 pm »
The 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time

They should be called leaders.

We know them as trailers, but they don't trail anything; they play before the movie, not after it. The name dates to their earliest incarnation, when they actually did follow the feature. The documentary "Coming Attractions" dates the very first trailer to a 1912 Edison serial entitled "What Happened to Mary?" After each installment, a black card with white text would appear to inform audiences "The next incident in the series of 'What Happened to Mary' will be shown a week from now." Not exactly "In a world..." but it did the trick back in 1912.

What happened to Mary wasn't nearly as important as what happened to trailers, which have grown into one of the most popular forms of advertising in the world. Some think they spoil the movies -- Gene Siskel famously hated them so much he wouldn't enter a theater while they were playing -- but for the rest of us, they're a treasured part of the moviegoing ritual, a delicious cinematic appetizer to prepare us for the main course.
[...]


Continues, and you can watch all 50 trailers: http://www.ifc.com/news/2009/06/50-greatest-trailers.php

Offline delalluvia

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Re: The 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time
« Reply #1448 on: July 16, 2009, 08:33:31 pm »
The 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time

They should be called leaders.

We know them as trailers, but they don't trail anything; they play before the movie, not after it. The name dates to their earliest incarnation, when they actually did follow the feature. The documentary "Coming Attractions" dates the very first trailer to a 1912 Edison serial entitled "What Happened to Mary?" After each installment, a black card with white text would appear to inform audiences "The next incident in the series of 'What Happened to Mary' will be shown a week from now." Not exactly "In a world..." but it did the trick back in 1912.

What happened to Mary wasn't nearly as important as what happened to trailers, which have grown into one of the most popular forms of advertising in the world. Some think they spoil the movies -- Gene Siskel famously hated them so much he wouldn't enter a theater while they were playing -- but for the rest of us, they're a treasured part of the moviegoing ritual, a delicious cinematic appetizer to prepare us for the main course.
[...]


Continues, and you can watch all 50 trailers: http://www.ifc.com/news/2009/06/50-greatest-trailers.php

Soooooooooo disagree with so many of their choices.  Heck, my favorite trailers weren't even on the list!

Offline oilgun

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Shock to the System
« Reply #1449 on: July 21, 2009, 01:30:56 pm »
Trailer:
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n7zGVwi4AA[/youtube]

The Second Installment in the Donald Strachey Mystery Series: Even Better than the First!

Richard Stevenson's gay mystery novels based on his creation of Donald Strachey, Private Investigator have found the perfect crew to transform these very interesting and entertaining stories to film. SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM is the second in the series and as adapted for the screen by Ron McGee, directed with panache by Ron Oliver, and starring the very fine actor Chad Allen as the sleuth with couth and style and charisma the results are a polished little gem of a film. But aside from the fact that the film is so well put together, it presents gay people in roles that are so far away from the usual stereotypical types that their sexual proclivity is in many ways simply incidental: you have to look long and hard to find a solid healthy gay relationship as well portrayed as that between Strachey and his life partner Tim (the very fine Sebastian Spence).

The story this time around involves Strachey's being asked to help one Paul Hale (Jared Keeso), the supposed poster boy for the Phoenix Foundation, a 'turn gay people straight' institute run by Dr. Trevor Cornell (Michael Woods) and his wife Lynn (Anne Marie Loder). Paul is soon found dead and the implications are suicide. But Strachey suspects foul play (we later discover Hale was his first love in the Army!) and aided by Hale's mother Phyllis (Morgan Fairchild looking terrific and acting well) who encouraged her son's joining the Phoenix Foundation, he begins his own style of investigation.

Strachey wisely 'becomes a patient' with Dr. Cornell and in group therapy makes discoveries and friends with those who eventually help to solve the case: a strong group of actors including Rikki Gagne, Stephen Huszar, Ryan Kennedy, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Shawn Roberts, Dany Papineau, and Gerry Morton. The clues are laid out, the deaths follow and the truths finally surface. And all the while Strachey is supported by Tim, by a very fine comic actor Nelson Wong as his 'office manager', and by his 'boss' Detective Bailey (Daryl Shuttleworth).

The dialogue is crisp, relevant, intense when it needs to be and funny when it relaxes, the cinematography takes a beautiful bow to the old Hollywood film noir techniques, and the cast is excellent, filled with not only a lot of eye candy but also with some very well realized characterizations. In the end the film belongs to the very hunky and versatile Chad Allen, only making wait for the next installment in this very successful series! Highly recommended for all audiences.


From gradyharp from United States at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780606/usercomments

That movie was on TV recently and i caught the second half.  I love the series, they are above average TV movies and rather earnest in tone but I find them wonderfully entertaining guilty pleasures, reminiscent of QaF.
The gay "Nick & Nora"  had their own 'Shasta'  in the previous film, Third Man Out, which I thought was a nice touch but for some reason the little terrier was absent in this one.

Anyway, what really brings me here is the speech by the Doctor at the 'ex-gay Phoenix foundation.    The anti-gay sentiments expressed match almost verbatim what I've been hearing from the androphiles on this site.    And I'm not saying this to start an argument or to shit on the andros, it was just so uncanny that I had to bring it up.  I'll check Youtube to see if that scene is available.  If you have the chance to see it, please let me know what you think.