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Napolean Dynamite - subtle, easy, amusing. Definitely recommend it.

 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, at last release in the UK.
Great film!!

 

Magnificent film and based on true events.

 

Yep, one of my fav's. The book's one of the few I've read MOre than once, and the film is a worthy version IMO.

 

Watched "Timeline" and "Vertical Limit" at the weekend. "Why?" you might ask. (a) I read the Crichton book (OK), and (b) I like mountaineering films.

Avoid both like the plague, unless you really do need two new drink coasters.

 

"Deep Blue"

I picked this up at the cheap shop near Zürich station, largely because I saw "BBC Natural History Unit" on it, and as I'd seen its work in the various Attenborough series, I thought it might be worth a try. It was.

Unlike most natural history films, this one does not set out to teach you anything (unless the lesson is simply the beauty and fecundity of the oceans, at which it succeeds admirably). It reminds you that, although we live on a planet called Earth, the name should really be Water, because that's what covers most of the planet. There is more life in the sea than on land, and this film is a celebration of it. It makes the point that more men have landed on the moon than have ever ventured INTO the deepest depths of the ocean (in the latter case, I think the number is precisely two).

It is pure visual spectacle – and what a spectacle! The images are of stunning beauty, sometimes almost surreal in their impact. In addition to just drinking them in, I spent a large part of my time thinking, “How on earth did they take THAT?†Some of the footage is obviously computer-generated (the mid-ocean ridges and chasms, where it's pitch-black and you couldn't possibly see what you're shown), and I wondered about some of the deep sea angler fish shots, but most of it equally clearly isn't. Some of the illuminated deep sea creatures look like the spaceships FROM Spielberg's “Close Encountersâ€Â. If you were asked to imagine a deep-sea creature, you could never come up with anything as bizarre as the real things. And you would never, ever imagine the black smokers, 16 storeys high, belching water and hydrogen sulphide at the temperature of molten lead, and yet surrounded by masses of life that never sees sunlight and lives at a pressure measured in tons per square inch.

Personally, I would have liked more explanation of what I was seeing. The commentary is minimal; this admittedly does have the advantage of letting you dwell on the magnificent images with which you're presented. The most telling bit of commentary comes at the end, when it is said that there remain only a few thousand blue whales, the biggest creature that has ever lived on earth. We are plundering and polluting a world that we barely understand. If this film doesn't turn you INTO a conservationist, desiring to preserve forever the beauty of this watery world, you are dead.

 

Great write up Tones!

These sort of films are quite probably my fav thing to watch. I remember seeing this, and others and it's exactly how you describe. The real things are even MOre bizzare than we could dream up.
Films like this are real eye openers. We know so little about our planet. I'm not sure if it was this or another, but there was a sort of spin off that showed all the footage and evidence of the negative impact we've had on the deep seas. Examples of how we drag metal nets and such across the sea floors indiscriminately and destroy on a sickening scale.

 

Indeed, I'd never seen a blue whale on film before that. Quite simply incredible.

Attenborough is the last class act the BBC has. It will be a sad day......

 

I watched Cyrano De Bergerac last night. This really is a great film. Gerard Depardieu (sp?) plays the swordsman, poet and romantic afflicted with a huge nose. Brilliantly played and the script is just excellent, funny and well written. The opening scene has to be one of the best I've seen with Cyrano HAVING an amazing verbal and physical duel with a young fop!
Well worth watching.

 

Went to see Night Watch at the weekend. Certainly slightly different and the crazy visuals on screen do not make subtitles easy (your eyes will be tired). Did I like it? Well it was interesting to see a film based in Russia (I think I'd like to learn to speak it) without the usual hollywood baggage but I dont think I'd bother to catch the two following sequals at the cinema, maybe over a DVD and pizza. The girlfriend enjoyed it.
If you are curious, go see it, otherwise give it a miss.

 

So far this week it's been

Kingdom of Heaven which is a beautifully shot film but with a weak plot. Well worth seeing just for the visuals. Slightly marred by 21st century theology trying to masquerade as 13th. That apart it is an epic in the true Cecil B DeMille style. Cast of thousands, expansive shots and lots of blood.

and then there was

The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse. Funny, well shot and very true to the original but translating well to the big screen. Not just the tv series either. Kept me laughing. Helps if you're local

 

I was a little dissapointed with Apocalypse. Again it was another film that would have worked better possibly trimmed by 20 minutes and shown on TV as a 60minute special. There have been several films like that recently (Team America being one of them) where you have some really laugh out loud moments surrounded by 15 minute gaps of silence in the cinema.

I think the line that made me laugh the most was -

"They locked me up in a box..with me coat on!"

 

Yeah I didn't think it was that great either, I could see where they were going but it just didn't make me laugh like the TV series did.

 

Watched Bubba Ho-Tep tonight on DVD. If you havent heard its Elvis has been living in a retirement home and he teams up with 'JFK' (who has been turned black by the powers that be) and has to fight off a soul sucking mummy.

Whilst its not as funny as I thought it would be, I was surprised at how touching and sentimental it was with a sideline of redemption. A great film and the music score is really atmospheric too.
Great to see a film that impressed so much, made for just $500000.

 

We had a thread about this a while back...do a search...seemed to divide opinion.

 

Watched this at the weekend:

Unfortunately, available only in German (for the meantime anyway). It deserves a wider audience. It details the last days of Sophie Scholl, a member of the courageous anti-Nazi White Rose resistance GROUP in Munich in 1943. She and her brother Hans and a third member were caught distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in Munich university, tried in one morning and executed by guillotine that afternoon. The film is largely based on recently-discovered material on the interrogation and trial.

The actors are very good, the main parts being Sophie and her Gestapo interrogator, who while thoroughly disapproving of her anti-National Socialist ideals, has some sympathy and tries to help her by suggesting that she was under the influence of her brother, the group's leader. However, once Sophie can no longer pretend that she's innocent, she changes INTO full-blown defiance, which she maintains, even in front of the dreadful Nazi "hanging judge" Roland Freisler (captured famously live in the trial of the would-be Hitler assassins). Again this relatively minor part is well played, the actor looking and sounding like the ranting, demagogic Freisler (who was to die in his courtroom when it was hit by an American bomb). The only time when Sophie's resolve cracks is when she is told that she is to die that afternoon - she had banked on the traditional German 99-day period before a death sentence was carried out, and therefore the possibility of being freed by the war's ending. However, she gets it together again, and walks proudly across the courtyard to her execution, basking in the sunshine for the last time.

In short, an inspiring story of young people who stood against a monstrous evil, even at the cost of their own lives.

 

Great wrap-up Tones, of this deeply moving story.

Do not understand your language comment though, as the movie reveals German history, reproduced by German actors.
Without exception, each war movie looses on expressiveness if Germans are played by non-Germans who don't speak German.

 

Trouble is, Erik, not many people in the world speak German outside its heartland of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (although whether the Swiss speak German is debatable!). This makes an excellent film incomprehensible and frustrating to non-German speakers. I think it needs subtitles - I wouldn't dub it for the reasons you mention.

Looking forward to seeing "Der Untergang", the last days of Hitler. Hitler is played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, a good choice as Hitler never completely lost his Austrian accent, and a Swiss is better than a north German Hochdeutsch speaker. One accusation levelled against the film is that it makes Hitler too human - the man was a monster, so people expect a monster. I'll post some notes on it when it arrives in the DVD store.

The interesting thing is that Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary, who died relatively recently, was the same age as Sophie Scholl, and she was entering employment with Hitler as Sophie was headed for the guillotine. Different attitudes indeed, especially as the White Rose case shows that the truth was available to anyone who wanted to listen. One of the nice touches in the Scholl film is when Hans Scholl says at his trial that anyone who can read a map (and see the relative sizes of the UK, the USA and the USSR) knows that the war can have only one outcome, and all the high-ranking uniformed Nazis present shift uncomfortably in their seats, knowing it to be true.

 

I understand Tones. In Holland each foreign movie gets subtitles (only toons for small children get dubbed :MILD. Actually wasn't awere this wasn't the case in the UK. E.g. in Germany each foreign production gets dubbed. You'll feel sorry for Sylvester Stallone once you've heard the voices they apply to his characters.

Another firm recommendation indeed. Understood that Ganz had difficulties to accept the role as it might mark his career for the future too much but he does a very convincing job indeed. Won't disclose to much, but he;s pictured as unstoppably agressive unless he's to tired and/or sick to express himself. More absurd though than humanly appealing.

Traudl Junge shows up at the end of the film asking herself why she staid loyal to her boss. Not because of her age, she eplains, as Sophie was capable to see through the situation for which she paid with her life.
Downside is that Trudl's character doesn't get elaborated. She doesn't EXPLAIN what moves here or how she feels about the situation and the people surrounding her.

An expsosing summary of the facts of his and Berlin's last ten days of the war, it is.

 

Although this can work in reverse! For years, we watched "Die X-Akte" on Swiss television (on the German Pro7 channel), and we were used to the rich, pleasant (German) speaking voice of Dana Scully. Then we visited my mother in Belfast and were horrified when we heard Gillian Anderson's real voice for the first time! The same is true of another old favourite, "Star Trek: The Next Generation". Compared to the German dubbed voices, the only originals worth keeping were Patrick Stewart's mellifluous tones and (naturally) Colm Meany's Dublin brogue.