Author Topic: Resurrecting the Movies thread...  (Read 1022344 times)

Offline Lynne

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #320 on: October 28, 2007, 04:45:03 pm »
Whatever I pick, I'll report back here afterward. That is, unless I have become an obsessive devotee of the Michael Clayton or Dan in Real Life message boards  ;D (highly doubtful)!

 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Have fun!
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #321 on: October 29, 2007, 01:00:48 am »
I wound up going to Dan in Real Life, and I can report that it was cute, light, mildly funny, gently touching. It's what The Family Stone would have been if TFS hadn't sucked (the two have almost identical plots, only from different characters' POV).

Steve Carrel isn't my idea of a romantic lead, but he's very likable and, as called for in this role, very much a regular-guy type. And he has interesting ways of reading lines, some unexpected rhythms in his speech. The only problem is that from time to time I get a disconcerting flash of Michael Scott. Which I suppose is just an indication of how good he is in that role.

Juliet Binoche, for some reason, got on my nerves. Maybe because she was playing The Most Perfect Woman of All Time. Couldn't Dan have fallen for someone who was just pretty cool, instead of unbelievably amazingly fantastic? Dane Cook was actually fairly appealing.

OK, that's the latest from the critic's corner.


Offline MaineWriter

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #322 on: October 29, 2007, 07:03:29 am »
I hated The Family Stone. Did Dan in Real Life have the "horrible nasty mother who was dying from cancer and everyone thought she was wonderful character" (ie, Diane Keaton in TFS)? I hope not. How about the obligatory perfect gay couple with their adopted child?

What an awful movie that was. Ugh. It gives me creeps just thinking about it. And I wasted money to see this in a theater! Ack!

L
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #323 on: October 29, 2007, 09:59:54 am »
I hated The Family Stone. Did Dan in Real Life have the "horrible nasty mother who was dying from cancer and everyone thought she was wonderful character" (ie, Diane Keaton in TFS)? I hope not. How about the obligatory perfect gay couple with their adopted child?

Yes, TFS was really, really awful. I wouldn't feel so bad about having wasted money on it -- God knows I've wasted money on other bad movies -- but I dragged my SONS to it with me. They wouldn't even have liked Dan in Real Life, let alone TFS. Poor kids. We had just moved -- no wonder they hate it here! Plus, I wasted money on three tickets, and it wasn't even a matinee!

Whenever I think of how much I hated TFS, I remember the very worst scene in that terrible movie, the one where Sarah Jessica Parker asks Diane Keaton, "Don't you wish your son had been normal?" No high-powered Manhattan career gal, as she was supposed to be, would say something that stupid. Even if she thought it, she wouldn't say it, especially right in front of the son.

Anyway, no. DiRL didn't have an obnoxious, horrible, much-beloved, tragically dying Diane Keaton. Just a sweetly authoritative Diane Wiest. No gay couple at all, I'm afraid. And instead of screechy irritating SJP, there's beatific saintly Juliet Binoche. And instead of Dermot Mulroney there's Dane Cook who -- in this particular role, anyway -- is an improvement.

But if you imagine TFS told through the eyes of Luke Wilson, only instead of a stoned slacker he's a regular guy with three daughters, that's DiRL. Both feature a big, close-knit, rollicking, matriarch-headed, upper-middle-class family that plays games together and gets into each other's business. Both feature a new girlfriend brought to the party by one son who winds up with another. And so on.





Offline MaineWriter

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #324 on: October 29, 2007, 10:11:43 am »
I remember some critic--maybe Roger Ebert--said TFS is going to become "the next Christmas tradition, like 'A Wonderful Life'." Yeah, in which dysfunctional universe?

Speaking of the Wilson brothers, my husband and daughter saw "The Darjeeling Limited" yesterday (I had a prior commitment). They both gave it two thumbs up and my husband said, unlike other Wes Anderson movies, this one actually had an ending.

L
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #325 on: October 29, 2007, 10:47:34 am »
I remember some critic--maybe Roger Ebert--said TFS is going to become "the next Christmas tradition, like 'A Wonderful Life'." Yeah, in which dysfunctional universe?

Ooohh, I just remembered another thing I hated about that one scene in TFS. It was worse than what SJP said. Diane Keaton said she was always glad her son was gay because, something like, "then he'd always live with me."

How f'ed up is that? Especially because the son was IN a relationship (and didn't live with her, I don't think?).

And Diane Keaton was supposed to be the GOOD character.


Offline MaineWriter

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #326 on: October 29, 2007, 11:26:07 am »

And Diane Keaton was supposed to be the GOOD character.


Diane Keaton was a first class bitch. While I could understand the premise of the daughter not liking her brother's fiancee, to turn mom totally against her (the fiancee) before mom ever laid eyes on her...and they call this a wonderful mother? Ugh. She makes my stomach turn.

Supposedly Diane Keaton played another bitch mom in a movie that came out recently...can't remember the name but she spends the whole movie trying to fix up her younger daughter or something. I don't get it, Diane...what's up? Just because you are playing "older" women in movies now, you have to be a bitch?

Come to think of it, she wasn't all that pleasant a character in "Something's Gotta Give," either. Dumping the good looking doctor in the middle of dinner in Paris. But she got stuck with Jack Nicholson, a former philanderer, who I have NEVER found attractive. Never, ever, ever!

L
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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #327 on: October 29, 2007, 11:53:21 am »
Keaton may be taking the only roles that are being offered to her. It's well-known that an American movie actress's options become much more limited as she grows into middle age and beyond, and Keaton may simply be falling into this pattern.

Offline MaineWriter

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #328 on: October 29, 2007, 11:57:44 am »
Keaton may be taking the only roles that are being offered to her. It's well-known that an American movie actress's options become much more limited as she grows into middle age and beyond, and Keaton may simply be falling into this pattern.

Yes, this is true. And maybe being a bitch appeals to her, who knows?
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Offline notBastet

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Re: Resurrecting the Movies thread...
« Reply #329 on: October 30, 2007, 02:24:26 pm »
I saw The Aviator last night.  It was totally not what I was expecting, but I still thought it was pretty good.  One thing I didn't like was Kate Beckinsale (sp?) in her role as Ava Gardner.  I haven't yet been on wikipedia to try to verify how accurate the movie was.  One pseudo complaint about the movie I read was that it didn't necessarily give you an ending...  That was okay with me.
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