Watched Zardoz recently.
I wanted to watch this movie for a long time even though warnings of campy silliness are all over it.
But I also watched Logan's Run and I found it pretty entertaining and I have to say Zardoz is easily better than that.
Recommended if you think Sci-Fi movies like Avatar and Prometheus are boring.

Jennifer Baichwal's "Payback"

It's a bit light, it's much too slow paced, at the expense of content. Feels a bit diluted. Not really fond of the structure, following these subjects in parallel, hopping from one to the other, and delaying the moment where they get fleshed out and become truly relevant to the central theme (and somewhat mutually relevant).

Still, it's comparativist anthropology as it should be made : putting in perspective various fields to highlight one notion they share, and explore a concept through various angles. My gripe has more to do with formal aspects than with the discourse itself. It's a film documentary, so it's bound to be a bit superficial (and to sacrifice to "aesthetism", a bit tediously here), but still, they could certainly have increased a bit the content density, and reduce a bit the gap between the film and Atwood's book, that I assume to be much more precise and thorough...

There's a trailer here, in case : http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/payback/

Zapped, oh a classic 80tys move, reminds me of the good old days watching USA up all night

The "wolfman" remake. Immensely boring.

Branded... if it's on screen just run.. run away

Marge and I watched Snow White and the Huntsman this weekend. I have always had a thing for Charlize Theron. I didn't exactly go in with great expectations and my skepticism was justified. It's not a bad looking movie. But that's really all that I have positive to say about it.

I saw Django Unchained today. I really liked it.

Definitely not for the squeamish in parts.

Right, let's sum up all the movies I watched while driving from Massachusetts to Seattle:
Paranorman: Great! Very mature for a "kid's movie", with gorgeous stop motion animation.
Safety Not Guaranteed: Cute indie dramedy about someone who places a personals ad looking for
someone to time travel with.
Jeff, Who Lives At Home: Cute indie dramedy about Jason Seigel and Ed Helms being brothers.
Parenthood: Billed as a Steve Martin movie, but really an ensemble dramedy about, er,
parenthood. I suspect the sitcom Modern Family was heavily inspired by this movie.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: Like all John Hughes movies, I find it a bit overrated, but
entertaining classic comedy.
I watched a lot of dramedies for some reason.

EDIT: And The Hobbit, duh! As someone who's not at all a Tolkein devotee, I enjoyed it. It had the usual P.J. pacing issues, and it was already a bit overlong so I dread to see the Director's Cut version, but overall it was good.

Les Miserables

I don't particularly like musicals. I don't have any particular problem with them, it's more the fact that I'm not really a fan of popcorn songwriting, overblown stage drama, or shallow explorations of basic emotions... and musicals are a combination of those three things. Now, I say that recognizing my own relative ignorance of the genre. Case in point, I wasn't actually acquainted with Les Miserables until tonight. So I don't have any pretensions of being able to judge whether it was a good musical-to-film adaptation or not. And really, I don't caret. Because I liked it, and if it's a horrible musical-to-film adaptation then consider me a supporter of horrible musical-to-film adaptations.

The singing was, admittedly, not great. Hugh Jackman had a weak, nasally tenor and most of Russell Crowe's intonation seemed to be of digital origin. But, on the other hand, the acting was phenomenal across the board, and was far more intimate and effecting than the usual elaborate pantomiming I associate with musicals. Could the cast of the 25th Anniversary production have done just as good or better? I have no idea. All I know is that I found myself feeling surprisingly emotionally effected by a genre that I usually look at with apathy, during song numbers that I would normally have dismissed as shallow and uninteresting. And Anne Hathaway... holy shit, Anne Hathaway. Her performance was utterly masterful, and "I Dreamed a Dream" was the clear highlight of the film for me.

I liked it a lot. I liked how it came together, I liked many individual moments, I liked the epic shots of Russell Crowe standing on tall things. I liked Anne Hathaway. I didn't like some other moments. I thought some other moments were stupid. I thought the fairy tale love story between Cosette and Marius was the stupidest of all.

But as a whole, I liked it a lot.

Actually, apparently all the singing was done live and unaltered, so I guess Russel Crowe just sounds like a robot. x]

I knew it was done live, but unaltered? If that's true, then I'm actually pretty impressed. After all, the singing was significantly better than what you'd find on pop radio... and if unaltered, pretty fantastic for people who aren't actually professional singers.

Oh, also, the fat prostitute with the enormous breasts? "Best Supporting Actress," no doubt in my mind. Or, maybe "Best Supported Actress." Heh heh. Erm... I need sleep.

Hm, I'm not sure actually. I'll have to research.

EDIT: Can't find anything about it either way, after a cursory search.

Ahhh, too many to list, but one that comes to mind now is "The Way Home" (Korean Movie). It´s just so good.

My friend, while this reply is 3-4 years late, I must say I grinned when I saw this! I watched it around 3 months ago. What a film. Alain Delon's such a pretty boy, too.

Excluding Le Samouraï, here are a few of my favorites:
* Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour
* Alain Resnais's (again) L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad)
* Joe Wright's Atonement
* Kon Satoshi's Paprika and Perfect Blue
* Stanley Kubrick's The Shining

The last one I saw: The Hobbit. It had its dragging moments, but I generally liked the pacing and most especially the acting (Martin Freeman!).

Recommendations:
* Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. Gene Hackman is such a good actor. Also, the young Harrison Ford looks like a complete douchebag in that film!
* Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi for that total audiovisual experience. Very very worth wasting an hour and a half for this.


It's a nice film, saw it 2 years ago. Loved Bill Murray in that one, while I just tried to ignore parts of Scarlett Johansson's acting. I really liked how the relationship was ambiguously treaded upon. Though what struck me the most was the soundtrack, and I still listen to it frequently to this day. It's like the perfect urban mixtape.