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I wombat - 2004-09-20 11:56:58
I was thinking of seeing that, partly because Laura Dern can be amazing, and because, sometimes, dysfuctional adult dramas can be fascinating, but they usually have to have Richard Burton, and Elizabeth Taylor in them.
I saw Cold Mountain, and although it was nice to look at, I think they used "Rogett's book of clich�s" from the beginning to the end, as well as "so you want to plot a movie".
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Paula - 2004-09-20 12:25:46
partly because Laura Dern can be amazing...
I agree, and one could argue that 3 out of 4 of the actors here (I'll let you guess who was just smirky and wooden) gave good performances, but in service of a tiresome script and unsympathetic characters who you just want to shake by the shoulders and say, "Wake up! Go read a self-help book or take a pottery class or somethin'."
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I wombat - 2004-09-20 12:42:22
Yeah, I draw the line when the plot would evaporate if everyone stopped being so stupid, but I say "why don't you just learn to play the sax".
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Paula - 2004-09-20 13:32:15
Well, I think there's already too much sax and violins in movies these days.
[crickets chirping]
OK, that would have been funny 20 years ago.
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E - 2004-09-20 13:52:29
i saw that in a ziggy cartoon.
yet it's still good for a giggle.
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Tom Ronca - 2004-09-20 23:13:06
Well go see "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence" instead. Yes, it's an anime, and we all know that 99% of anime is crap -- but fortunately this is the film that falls into that rare 1% category. It's visually stunning, but unlike the other eye candy film out at the moment ('Sky Craptin and the World of Hackneyed Scriptwriting'), this film has a plot; and a damned compelling, even thought-provoking one at that. Try to see the first one though, or this sequel won't make much sense.
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Paula - 2004-09-21 10:53:46
Thanks, Tom. This could turn into a thread....what are some genuinely uplifting films that people recommend? When I say genuinely, I mean not treacly or manipulative but truly life-affirming, even if in a small way. For example, this is certainly one of my fave existentialist feel-good movies.
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I wombat - 2004-09-21 11:20:50
That's a good one, it's surprising, it's starts off like any snarky comedy, and slowly gets very real, and subtle. It's always hard for me to come up with stuff off the top of my head, so I was just scanning a list, and not a whole movie but one moment came to mind, in "American splendor". Through most of the movie there's a sense of disgruntlement and compromise, and ambivalence, at best, but near the end he's walking with his adopted daughter, and John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" comes on the sound track, and suddenly, I felt, "this can really be all right" that although nothing was settled, and it might still be a muddle, maybe it really was, all right.
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Paula - 2004-09-21 11:41:51
Wombat--perfect, that's just the kind of film moment I love.
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Baby Party - 2004-09-21 12:12:30
Waking Life!
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Baby Party - 2004-09-21 12:14:30
"Super perfundo on the early eve of your day."
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Paula - 2004-09-21 12:21:04
BP, I'm a-queuing this'un up as we speak. Meanwhile here is a whole page of quotes fomr the film...
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Baby Party - 2004-09-21 12:57:04
I am afraid that someone who hasn't seen Waking Life might be put off by this page of quotes, which, out-of-context, seem a little pretentious. Trust me - it's all in the execution.
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2fs - 2004-09-21 14:34:54
Waking Life tends to be divisive...people either think it's a load of Philosophy 101 pretentious wank, or, uh, they like it. My experience was that for the first half of the film (at least), I was in the first camp. The second half redeemed it a bit for me...but not wholly.
Looks cool, though.
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Baby Party - 2004-09-21 17:55:04
I think one reason I liked Waking Life so much was that I was really tired the first time I saw it (at home alone, rented DVD) and I kept dozing off and then waking up all through it, and I felt like I was dreaming it. Which, if you've seen the movie, you'll know is pretty funny. I had to watch it again the next day to see what I'd missed. The DVD has an excellent feature describing the groundbreaking animation process used in the film.
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Bob - 2004-10-17 01:15:28
This doesn't really fit Paula's thread except as a coulda-shoulda, but a film that I really loved the first two thirds of but didn't really love because the last third dropped the ball was Being John Malkovich.
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