Resurrecting the Movies thread...

[Front-Ranger]

Oh, too bad. I still want to see it, for the wardrobes, as well as to look at Jennifer Connelly. She has the most amazing eyes! I wonder if they fell in love on the set of A Brilliant Mind.

[delalluvia]

Oh, too bad. I still want to see it, for the wardrobes, as well as to look at Jennifer Connelly. She has the most amazing eyes! I wonder if they fell in love on the set of A Brilliant Mind.

I think they did.  They started dating shortly thereafter I think.

Well, anyway, it was good enough for a rental.  Those 3 most intriguing lines are said by Benedict. 

[Front-Ranger]

Those 3 most intriguing lines are said by Benedict. 

I can totally hear him saying them!!

[delalluvia]

I can totally hear him saying them!!

 

Oh, and yes Jennifer Connelly is very striking. Great eyes.  Terribly thin though.  Her arms - which is pretty much all you can see in Victorian period dress - are painfully thin, almost emaciated.

[delalluvia]

Rented the movie Amazing Grace which is the story of William Wilberforce a 18th-19th century English abolitionist who was instrumental on abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.

7/10

Excellent production values, super period piece.  A veritable Who's Who of modern British actors cast with their superb acting.  

Unfortunately, the writing isn't as great as I would like.  The film is choppy, the timeline confusing, the story jumps from the past to the current time of the story - back and forth - and sometimes you can only tell by the color of the actors' hair.  Strange little things are emphasized and it's less visceral than what you think it'd be.

Don't know about you, but the movie Amistad is the only movie that literally made me leave the theater I was so disturbed by what I saw.  

I was prepared for Amazing Grace to be similar but it isn't like that.  It's basically a hero's tale, so it stays pretty much in the quite lovely English garden backyards of the abolitionists.  And while I believe it is a good thing to bring the heroic actions of someone like Wilberforce to the attention of the modern world, I also like how it shows how the high-minded, principled and good moral character hero could not have succeeded in his task without the help of his less high-minded, not as principled and more flexible in moral character friends in places both high and low.  It keeps lofty religious sentiment out of it.  

[serious crayons]

Rented the movie Amazing Grace which is the story of William Wilberforce a 18th-19th century English abolitionist who was instrumental on abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.

I saw AG in the theater when it came out. As best I can remember, your review is pretty much the way I saw it, too.

[delalluvia]

The Chronicles of Narnia:  Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

6.5/10

Very much a good children's story.  All about growing up, accepting oneself and assuming responsibility.  Seamless special effects, the 3-D didn't really add to or detract from the story.  Solid acting.  The mouse is much less annoying this time around.  Very slow paced though.

[Meryl]

OMG!  What a wonderfully insane movie this is!  Imagine THE RED SHOES via Polanski's REPULSION and Cronenberg's THE FLY, then add a dash of SHOWGIRLS and you have the best Holiday movie of 2010.  Some people complain that the film is too over-the-top but I think it works beautifully.  I mean, I was humming Tchaikovsky for the rest of the day, lol!  Easily makes my top ten list.

Great description, Gil!  I saw this today and loved its craziness.  It's an instant camp classic.  To top it off, I was delighted to see a cameo by my alter ego John Epperson (Lypsinka) as the rehearsal pianist (a job he held for years at ABT).  The climax is great, with the Tchaikovsky music blaring and her crazy mom (Barbara Hershey in Joan Crawford mode) in the audience. 

An added fun thing:  the exterior shots of the theater are the Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, where I work.  I saw the film right across the street at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.  I'll never look at the fountain in the same way again. 

[oilgun]

Great description, Gil! I saw this today and loved its craziness.  It's an instant camp classic.  To top it off, I was delighted to see a cameo by my alter ego John Epperson (Lypsinka) as the rehearsal pianist (a job he held for years at ABT).  The climax is great, with the Tchaikovsky music blaring and her crazy mom (Barbara Hershey in Joan Crawford mode) in the audience.  

An added fun thing:  the exterior shots of the theater are the Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, where I work.  I saw the film right across the street at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.  I'll never look at the fountain in the same way again.  

Thanks!  That's the movie I'll be rooting for come Oscar time.  I know it won't win, the prize will go to the sentimental favourite of course, but at least it made the shortlist. A lot of people dislike it.

_______________________________________________
In other movie news:



For those who have seen the film, this is a really interesting analysis of non-verbal behaviour in THE SOCIAL NETWORK.
I wish David Bordwell had done something similar for BbM.


THE SOCIAL NETWORK: Faces behind facebook

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=12186

Excerpt:
Watching eyes is tremendously important in our social lives. We need to monitor other people’s glances to see if they are looking at us. We need to track what else they might be looking at. We need to watch for signals sent by the eyes, particularly attitudes toward the situation we’re in. For example, we seldom look directly into each others’ eyes, as characters in movies do constantly; in real life, “mutual gaze” is intermittent and brief. But if two people stare intently at each other, we’re likely to assume keen attraction or rising aggression.

In an essay from Poetics of Cinema available on this site, I talk about mutual gaze in cinema and how it can be exploited for dramatic purposes. The same essay takes up the issue of blinking; we blink frequently, but film characters seldom do, and the actors usually make the blinks emotionally expressive (of fear, uncertainty, weakness, etc.).

The problem is that eyes, by themselves, tell us very little about what the person behind them is thinking or feeling. We can show this with a little experiment.

Do the eyes have it?

[Meryl]

Thanks!  That's the movie I'll be rooting for come Oscar time.  I know it won't win, the prize will go to the sentimental favourite of course, but at least it made the shortlist. A lot of people dislike it.

Yes, it has engendered a lot of different reactions all right.

In other movie news:
For those who have seen the film, this is a really interesting analysis of non-verbal behaviour in THE SOCIAL NETWORK.
I wish David Bordwell had done something similar for BbM.

I certainly agree that the eyes say everything in BBM.  My favorite example of this is the scene by the brook where Ennis asks Jack whether he ever wonders if people on the street suspect him.  His eyes show fear, calculation, curiosity, a wish to seem nonchalant--all in a matter of a few lines.  Brilliant.