Author Topic: Resurrecting the Movies thread...  (Read 1025738 times)

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1520 on: January 02, 2010, 02:26:35 pm »
Vera Farmiga's haircut and make up were very irritating. 

How so?


Offline oilgun

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1521 on: January 02, 2010, 11:48:11 pm »
Red-hot American actor: Jeremy Renner


Red-hot French actor, Jérémie Renier

Coincidence?  ;)

Offline oilgun

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1522 on: January 03, 2010, 08:07:35 pm »
Just watched (500) DAYS OF SUMMER and really enjoyed it!  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is wonderful in it.  I also loved that it feels like an old-fashioned rom-com but isn't and it features parts of L.A. that are seldom seen in movies. Here's one of my favourite scenes:

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2seAJsrtIbQ[/youtube]

Offline southendmd

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1523 on: January 03, 2010, 08:29:20 pm »
I'm glad you liked 500 Days, Gil.  JGL is very talented in this quirky film.  (Gotta love the bluebird.)

BTW, JGL, who was "Elder Ryder" in Latter Days, had apparently read for the part of Aaron, but the filmmakers thought he had too much of an edge to convincingly play a Mormon!

I keep hoping he'll play in the Heath Ledger Story.  Someone please write a script, quick!!

Offline oilgun

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1524 on: January 04, 2010, 04:09:43 pm »
I'm glad you liked 500 Days, Gil.  JGL is very talented in this quirky film.  (Gotta love the bluebird.)

BTW, JGL, who was "Elder Ryder" in Latter Days, had apparently read for the part of Aaron, but the filmmakers thought he had too much of an edge to convincingly play a Mormon!

I keep hoping he'll play in the Heath Ledger Story.  Someone please write a script, quick!!

But his character was still a Mormon  ???  Anyway, that edge is why we love him so much anyway, isn't it.
While listening to 500 days commentary he mentions that he had starred with Zoey Deschanel once before in the movie Manic.  I had forgotten that she was in that.  He said that he had a few Manic-flashbacks in the big fight scene.

Offline southendmd

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1525 on: January 04, 2010, 04:14:15 pm »
But his character was still a Mormon  ???  Anyway, that edge is why we love him so much anyway, isn't it.

OOps, well, Aaron was the "sweet" Mormon, and Ryder was the "edgy" Mormon. LOL

Offline Kerry

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1526 on: January 06, 2010, 12:59:06 am »
Saw Sherlock Holmes  yesterday.

Absolutely fabulous!   :D

Don't miss it.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1527 on: January 10, 2010, 05:26:04 pm »


RUN, do not walk, to see AVATAR!

I don't say that very often, but I was completely enthralled by this spectacle of a movie.  I gasped, I laughed and I even shed a tear or two.  Of course, this being Cameron, the script is a bit weak  but I didn't even care. 

Yes, Blue is the new Sexy (and the new Green)

(I can't even imagine conservatives hating it, but they probably will.   ;) )


Yup.

The New York Times's (senior) conservative columnist is harrumphing rather than hating because, officially, the NYT is never  supposed to hate, only harrumph. But as much as I love Avatar (I've now seen it twice), David Brooks clearly does not--

Figures.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/opinion/08brooks.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1263157307-8K12D5NE7ilul9beX+wl8w




Op-Ed Columnist
The Messiah Complex


By DAVID BROOKS
Published: January 7, 2010


Readers intending to watch the movie “Avatar” should know that major events in the plot are revealed.

Every age produces its own sort of fables, and our age seems to have produced The White Messiah fable.

This is the oft-repeated story about a manly young adventurer who goes into the wilderness in search of thrills and profit. But, once there, he meets the native people and finds that they are noble and spiritual and pure. And so he emerges as their Messiah, leading them on a righteous crusade against his own rotten civilization.

Avid moviegoers will remember “A Man Called Horse,” which began to establish the pattern, and “At Play in the Fields of the Lord.” More people will have seen “Dances With Wolves” or “The Last Samurai.”

Kids have been given their own pure versions of the fable, like “Pocahontas” and “FernGully.”

It’s a pretty serviceable formula. Once a director selects the White Messiah fable, he or she doesn’t have to waste time explaining the plot because everybody knows roughly what’s going to happen.

The formula also gives movies a little socially conscious allure. Audiences like it because it is so environmentally sensitive. Academy Award voters like it because it is so multiculturally aware. Critics like it because the formula inevitably involves the loincloth-clad good guys sticking it to the military-industrial complex.

Yet of all the directors who have used versions of the White Messiah formula over the years, no one has done so with as much exuberance as James Cameron in “Avatar.”

“Avatar” is a racial fantasy par excellence. The hero is a white former Marine who is adrift in his civilization. He ends up working with a giant corporation and flies through space to help plunder the environment of a pristine planet and displace its peace-loving natives.

The peace-loving natives — compiled from a mélange of Native American, African, Vietnamese, Iraqi and other cultural fragments — are like the peace-loving natives you’ve seen in a hundred other movies. They’re tall, muscular and admirably slender. They walk around nearly naked. They are phenomenal athletes and pretty good singers and dancers.

The white guy notices that the peace-loving natives are much cooler than the greedy corporate tools and the bloodthirsty U.S. military types he came over with. He goes to live with the natives, and, in short order, he’s the most awesome member of their tribe. He has sex with their hottest babe. He learns to jump through the jungle and ride horses. It turns out that he’s even got more guts and athletic prowess than they do. He flies the big red bird that no one in generations has been able to master.

Along the way, he has his consciousness raised. The peace-loving natives are at one with nature, and even have a fiber-optic cable sticking out of their bodies that they can plug into horses and trees, which is like Horse Whispering without the wireless technology. Because they are not corrupted by things like literacy, cellphones and blockbuster movies, they have deep and tranquil souls.

The natives help the white guy discover that he, too, has a deep and tranquil soul.

The natives have hot bodies and perfect ecological sensibilities, but they are natural creatures, not history-making ones. When the military-industrial complex comes in to strip mine their homes, they need a White Messiah to lead and inspire the defense.

Our hero leaps in, with the help of a pack of dinosaurs summoned by Mother Earth. As he and his fellow freedom fighters kill wave after wave of Marines or former Marines or whatever they are, he achieves the ultimate prize: He is accepted by the natives and can spend the rest of his life in their excellent culture.

Cameron’s handling of the White Messiah fable is not the reason “Avatar” is such a huge global hit. As John Podhoretz wrote in The Weekly Standard,  “Cameron has simply used these familiar bromides as shorthand to give his special-effects spectacular some resonance.” The plotline gives global audiences a chance to see American troops get killed. It offers useful hooks on which McDonald’s and other corporations can hang their tie-in campaigns.

Still, would it be totally annoying to point out that the whole White Messiah fable, especially as Cameron applies it, is kind of offensive?

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

It’s just escapism, obviously, but benevolent romanticism can be just as condescending as the malevolent kind — even when you surround it with pop-up ferns and floating mountains.
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


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Offline Sophia

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1528 on: January 10, 2010, 07:05:59 pm »
thanks john for the report, you really have inspire me to watch it now.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #1529 on: January 10, 2010, 07:13:09 pm »
...
Yes, Blue is the new Sexy (and the new Green)


Just reading in my Celtic history about the early Celts who painted themselves blue with woad (whatever that is), bleached their hair with lime and went naked and dreadlocked into battle, scaring the Romans into retreat!!

Haven't seen Avatar yet but want to so much. Can't get ennione to go with me, so I'll go by myself.
"chewing gum and duct tape"