Resurrecting the Movies thread...

[southendmd]

I was wishing you had posted a picture, but I saw her in the video and see what you mean! Though does the sister have brown eyes? Vera's are so strikingly light blue.

Good pick up, K, on the eyes, I mean.  I found a photo of them.  The sister's name is Taissa (ta-EE-sa):

[southendmd]

Paul, I swear, you are a neverending bounty of trivial knowledge of all topics.  What would we ever do without you?

 

[Front-Ranger]

Just came from seeing Midnight in Paris. It was fun in a wistful sort of way. Since Owen Wilson is a blonde, I thought how much better Heath would have been in the role. Heath and Woody Allen...that would have been quite a combination. The parts with the '20s celebrities were enticing and quite a tease. I wish those characters had been developed more. Luis Bunuel as a dunce, getting his inspiration from surfer dude Owen? It was great to see Carla Bruni in a role as a working woman in Paris...she was great!!

[serious crayons]

I wish those characters had been developed more.

I thought so, too.

But I really liked Owen Wilson. Well, I always like him. He seems surfer-dudish, but he's really smart. He co-wrote The Royal Tenenbaums, one of my favorite movies, and once wrote an eloquent and funny letter to the New Yorker  taking down movie critic David Denby, who had said some out-of-line things (he's right -- I'd read Denby's review, and it was harsh) about Ben Stiller:

http://gawker.com/032504/gossip/owen-wilson/owen-wilson-comes-to-buddy-ben-stillers-defense

I read David Denby's piece on Ben Stiller with great interest (The Current Cinema, January 24th & 31st). Not because it was good or fair toward my friend but exactly because it wasn't. I've acted in two hundred and thirty-seven buddy movies and, with that experience, I've developed an almost preternatural feel for the beats that any good buddy movie must have. And maybe the most crucial audience-rewarding beat is where one buddy comes to the aid of the other guy to help defeat a villain. Or bully. Or jerk. Someone the audience can really root against. And in Denby I realized excitedly that I had hit the trifecta. How could an audience not be dying for a real "Billy Jack" moment of reckoning for Denby after he dismisses or diminishes or just plain insults practically everything Stiller had ever worked on? And not letting it rest there, in true bully fashion Denby moves on to take some shots at the way Ben looks and even his Jewishness, describing him as the "latest, and crudest, version of the urban Jewish male on the make." The audience is practically howling for blood! I really wish I could deliver for them—but that's Jackie Chan's role.

Owen Wilson
Dallas, Texas

[oilgun]

Tonight, at the Montreal Fantasia film fest, I saw

A lonely Place to Die -  A white-knuckle tense mountain climbing thriller from Scotland.  I was on the edge of my seat from start to finsih.  I highly recommend it.  Melissa George leads the excellent cast which includes Ed (Eragon) Speleers:

Review:
http://twitchfilm.com/reviews/2011/07/fantasia-2011-a-lonely-place-to-die-review.php

Then I saw Another Earth which was a completely different experience. A low budget, intimate, philosophical, melancholic & gripping sci-fi drama.  Well worth seeing!  The performances by the two leads, it's basically a two-hander, are excellent.  An intelligent and quietly affecting film.  It's being released on Aug 5th

Review:
http://twitchfilm.com/reviews/2011/07/fantasia-2011-another-earth-review.php
Trailer:

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8hEwMMDtFY[/youtube]

[Meryl]

I just saw a preview of "Another Earth" tonight, Gil.  Love the effect of seeing the earth and moon in the daytime sky. 

I saw "The Tree of Life" tonight and have to agree with Paul's assessment: exquisitely beautiful images and tons of great music paired with a kind of stream-of-consciousness, inscrutable look at a young family in Texas.  I was very moved at the end and love the feeling Malick creates of how we are both part of and overwhelmingly dwarfed by the Creation.  That said, however, it was a bit like watching grass grow.

I saw "The Tree of Life" tonight, and I'm not really sure what I think about it. 

For its first week, it showed exclusively at an art house theatre, but was shown at the multiplexes starting tonight.  Sparsely attended, several people walked out early on. 

It is certainly visually stunning, yet perplexing.  Light on dialogue and even lighter on plot, I suppose it's very personal to filmmaker Terrence Malick, in that it seems to be his own brand of spirituality.   Some of the images will stay with me.  Especially one sequence showing a huge flock of birds from a great distance as they swoop and swerve, almost as a single unit following some mathematical formula.  (I once witnessed this exact same phenomenon on a much smaller scale, in a tidal pool of tiny minnows, and was completely mesmerized by it.)

I thought Brad Pitt was very good (he produced the film as well), and had a hard time imagining Heath in the role.  In fact, I thought Heath might have been better in Sean Penn's role.  Lots of wordless closeups. 

Creation and loss and grace.  I'm still not sure what it's all about, but I'm glad I saw it.

[Jeff Wrangler]

This will probably surprise a lot of people--it sort of surprises even me--but I actually went to a movie this evening. I went with a friend to see Captain America. I think I saw lots of echoes of early Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark in it, but I liked it. It's my kind of movie.

I probably wouldn't have bothered without Chris Evans, so cute and buff, in the title role, but I'm glad I saw it.

[Meryl]

This will probably surprise a lot of people--it sort of surprises even me--but I actually went to a movie this evening. I went with a friend to see Captain America. I think I saw lots of echoes of early Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark in it, but I liked it. It's my kind of movie.

I probably wouldn't have bothered without Chris Evans, so cute and buff, in the title role, but I'm glad I saw it.

I hear CA is one of the better super hero movies to come along for awhile.  Might duck in to see it if the heat keeps up. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

I hear CA is one of the better super hero movies to come along for awhile.  Might duck in to see it if the heat keeps up. 

I think Chris Evans is well cast. I don't know the Captain America comic book franchise, but in this movie, anyway, the character is supposed to be both the stereotypical 98-pound-weakling (although a 98-pound-weakling who never backs down or gives up) and something of an average Joe. Chris Evans is cute, but I think he has a boy-next-door quality to his cuteness that makes him right for this role. If I were a beer drinker, I could see myself comfortably having a beer with Chris Evans.

Incidentally, I noticed someone in a supporting role as one of CA's "team" who looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. I watched the credits at the end, then double-checked at IMDb. Turned out the familiar face was Neal McDonough; I didn't quite recognize him because in CA he's got side whiskers and a big mustache. 

And of course there's good ol' reliable Tommy Lee Jones as a gruff army officer. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

OK, I confess, I don't care how cheesey the concept sounds, I wanna see Cowboys and Aliens. 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409847/

Actually, I guess I wanna see it because it does sound cheesey. 

With Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, and Olivia Wilde (House), it can't be entirely unredeemably awful.

Can it?