|
|
Post by Dwazee on Aug 22, 2008 0:58:55 GMT -5
ok, so i watched magnolia tonite (i officially have my own netflix queue!), and it was...ok. like, there were things to like about it. but it was waaaaay too long, and i like long movies. when the frogs started raining, i was like what the hell? at least phillip seymour hoffman and john c reilly were good in it, cuz yeah.
OMG i am soooo happy right now. i am really really excited that the fall is coming out sept 9th, finally. its at the top of my queue. but the score...the one that has haunted me forever...it's a variation on beethoven. so i got the specific movement and cant stop listening to it. utterly perfect.
i really wanted to watch vicky cristina barcelona, but i be poor. shame really.
|
|
JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
|
Post by JACkory on Aug 22, 2008 10:19:33 GMT -5
I love "Magnolia". It's one of the best movies I've ever seen and holds it's own with any classic film you could name. I didn't mine the length, as it takes a long time for the relationships between the characters to manifest. Which is the whole point of the movie, the interaction of people from diverse backgrounds all coming together at different times and under different circumstances. The serendipity and the synchronous. I liked how PT Anderson wrote the script based entirely around a couple of Aimee Mann's songs, and how the apex of the film is when all the characters, in their own space and in their own style, sing along with one of them ("Wise Up") on the radio. After spending a couple of hours with these people you kind of get an idea of how the song relates to their specific situations and why they find such catharsis in singing along. It brings them together, on another, perhaps spiritual level, even the ones who are strangers to each other.
It's about how surface appearances ALWAYS hide the dirty truth. The game show host, adored by millions of viewers, is a hopeless alcoholic who has kept a lifetime of infidelity a secret from his wife until he finds out he's going to die. And the quiz-kid champion of the same show is lauded for his prodigious knowledge, but what's to be envyed if such talent comes with excessively high expectations from a father who is more concerned with his boy's ability to win lots of money on a game show than in the kid's self-esteem. The game show itself is a production of a dying man whose own (estranged) son preaches a hardcore self-esteem seminar for wimpy men. When called to task by an interviewer, though, he reveals in insecurity within himself that rivals that of anyone in his audience of potential womanizers.
Which says nothing about why I love it so much. That was only an example, and a small one at that, of what's going on in this complex film. You have to watch it a couple of times just to get the characters placed. And there are cool little tidbits that are scattered about. For instance, during a taping of "What Do Kids Know", the game show, someone in the audience holds up a sign...you know, like the ones you see at professional wrestling matches---only this one is of a Biblical reference in the book of Exodus. Sure enough, it's the passage about the plague of frogs raining down on Egypt. Later, as the frogs start falling from the sky, the camera quickly pans around to capture a brief glimpse of a sign hanging on a post which reads "But it DID happen".
There are several OUTSTANDING performances here, not the least of which is from Tom Cruise, who covers the spectrum of a testosterone pumped public speaker with a reputation for chauvenism to an abandoned child finally re-united with his father, who is on his death bed. His struggle between the need to forgive a dying parent and the hatred he's nurtured for the man over the years has got to be one of Cruise's altogether best performances.
Jason Robard, William H. Macy, Jullianne Moore...too many to mention.
I hope you'll watch it again someday.
|
|
|
|
Post by Thorngrub on Aug 22, 2008 10:58:57 GMT -5
You've convinced me I should give it another chance, JAC.
|
|
|
|
Post by Dwazee on Aug 22, 2008 11:56:30 GMT -5
i dunno...ive seen other things that do characters connected, bad things happen to them, redemption thing better. i love anderson, dont get me wrong. but i just wasnt affected by magnolia at all. i was prepared to really enjoy it, since it's my kind of movie. but...it just fell flat. i caught the references that were there, too, so that wasnt something i missed and therefore didnt appreciate. i guess to each their own  |
|
|
|
Post by Matheus on Aug 22, 2008 13:19:58 GMT -5
I heart Magnolia. I've seen it many times. JAC said enough for me to shut my yap and not blabber about it.
There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, "Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it." Someone's so-and-so met someone else's so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."
|
|
|
|
Post by Ampage on Aug 22, 2008 21:59:31 GMT -5
Hated it!
|
|
|
|
Post by Dwazee on Aug 22, 2008 22:35:39 GMT -5
uh oh. shush ampage, you're gonna start a war here! |
|
|
|
Post by rocknroller on Aug 23, 2008 8:26:06 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by rocknroller on Aug 23, 2008 8:29:02 GMT -5
You hate everything except Ryan Gosling movies apparently. |
|
|
|
Post by rocknroller on Sept 3, 2008 5:24:03 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by skovrecky on Sept 3, 2008 9:02:48 GMT -5
"Doomsday" is seriously one of my favorite movies of the last couple of years. It's not the most engaging cinema in the world and it's a mish mash tribute to some of the greatest movies of the sci-fi/horror genre of the last 20 years. Which means that I would hardly call it the most original movie and really, it's pretty far from original. However, I love seeing a highly talented director making basically a love letter to his heroes in celluloid form. I have been following this director since his brilliant "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent" is one of the best pro-feminist diatribes ever captures, making me stand up and applaud the genre for doing the the thing it does best when done right: putting relevant social issues under a bloody awesome rotten cake icing.
"Doomsday" should have been titled "Escape From Scotland" in all reality.
I want to make Rhona Mitra my wife. Seriously. One of the hottest women I have ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on. So hot.
|
|
|
|
Post by Thorngrub on Sept 3, 2008 10:57:05 GMT -5
man you've convinced me - - I have got to watch that doomsday flick. I really dug The Descent - own it on DVD as a matter of fact.
I really, really need a Kindle.
|
|
|
|
Post by skovrecky on Sept 3, 2008 12:09:17 GMT -5
"Doomsday" is awesome, thorns. Seriously.
Don't buy a kindle just yet. They're kind of shit. Wait unitl they update the device next year.
|
|
|
|
Post by Thorngrub on Sept 3, 2008 12:22:24 GMT -5
You sound like my gf man.
When everybody got an iPod, did I? No.
When everybody got an iPhone, me? No.
I need this thing man, even if it isn't quite
up to snuff. . . if its ok w/Toni Morrison and
Neil Gaiman... its ok w/me. I won't last an-
other 48 hrs w/out ordering mine. Lucky
Friday=payday...
|
|
|
|
Post by Thorngrub on Sept 3, 2008 12:25:31 GMT -5
Besides... the new Stephen King short-story collection Just After Sunset is due out Nov 11, you know how much that thing weighs ? Hell, the one author Stephen King alone is worth getting a Kindle for, fer cryin out loud.
|
|
