I finally saw the live Lilo and Stitch. It was good but I think the original animated one (and its sequels, and the animated series) was better. There was one addition I did like—
—David’s grandmother who lives nearby and who becomes very important to the plot—
—but I still think most changes detracted rather than added to the live-action version. Zach Galifinaikas (sp?) in a regular US accent voice is no David Ogden Stiers in a booming semi-Russian accent, and Jumba is not the same character in the end, sadly to me. There is no Gantu, etc. And there is no scene in which
Stitch reads a picture book about a lost duckling and relates to it and it’s just heart-rending to see how alone he feels
And that sort of thing. Again, it’s still a good movie, and I do like the additional character.
Oh, and alas we don’t get to see
Pleakley’s penchant for drag, though the director said he wanted to include it, and kept asking, but was told no, which is a shame.
I just watched L'assassinat du Père Noël (1941)(English title: "Who Killed Santa Claus?").
The movie was produced by "Continental Films" which has something of a bad reputation. It was a French film studio sponsored by German money in Occupied France to make films that the Nazis would allow. Its job was to make entertaining films to delight the French while they were occupied by Nazi forces. Those involved often get tagged with the "collaborator" label--which is a bit rich considering that one of the lead actors in this move was tortured to death by the Gestapo a few months after the film was made. Must be some definition of "collaborating" that I was not previously aware of.
Having said all that, please forget it. Watching the movie on its own merits, ignorant of the background, it truly is a delightful feature. Set in a remote French village, we have a kindly mapmaker (well, globe-maker, really) who always play the part of Father Christmas for the village. There is a Crazy Cat Lady looking for her cat, Mistou. She is mocked by children, but treated gently by the adults. There are the children of the village and their schoolteacher, and one bedridden child. And then there is the surprise return of "the Baron" after ten years--with rumors that he has some dread disease. Plague? Leprosy? And early on in the film, the local priest is assaulted, presumably to try to steal the valuable "ring of St. Nicholas" from the church.
The movie is funny, charming, mysterious ("Father Christmas" is killed two-thirds of the way through), suspenseful and ultimately endearing. Ignore its murky history and watch it for its own sake. It is worth it.
Thursday, I saw the live action version of How to Train Your Dragon. Even though I know the story well through seeing the original, it was very enjoyable! In my opinion, it was done well, and made for a nice outing to escape the rain.
Well; not a movie, but as there isn't a thread for opera, I'll mention here that we've just been to see 'Jesus Christ Superstar' - a gorgeous production of an opera I had never seen before. Terrific music and great characters wonderfully acted, and not, as I was warned long ago, the least hint of blasphemy or heresy. Interesting that the soldiers taking Jesus away were dressed like ICE thugs - that was well done.
Thursday, I saw the live action version of How to Train Your Dragon. Even though I know the story well through seeing the original, it was very enjoyable! In my opinion, it was done well, and made for a nice outing to escape the rain.
BTW, I just love Toothless!
I need to see this. I’ve not seen any of them yet…
I saw Jurassic World Rebirth and… I found it the weakest of all of them thus far.
I was really disappointed by the first few minutes saying that most of the dinosaurs were dying off except for the ones in the equator. So much potential thrown away. Ugh. And for the roller-coaster aspect, fewer “oh my God” moments, and all of them were spoiled by the trailers.
That said, I liked the characters, though I predicted who would die and who would live with almost perfect accuracy (a couple of them actually lived I thought would die) the moment we saw them show up. It was an enjoyable thing to see, but I hope that things change in future movies.
I strongly recommend Camp Cretaceous on Netflix much more—it’s set in the same world with a lot more character development, world-building, etc.
Oh! Things that bugged me in the movie, just a couple more:
I thought the blood with the DNA for all of these came from mosquitoes and such. How did they get a dunkleosteus? It’s a fish! And from longer ago! (Technically, how did they realistically get a mosasaur?)
Dinosaurs didn’t just thrive in tropical conditions. We know more stuff more about that. In fact one cool thing about the original book/movie is that it was based more on contemporary science, and this should have been too. (Another error, though from the original book in a speech that was put in this movie—oxygen levels now are indeed comparable to the dinosaur era. (The speech claims otherwise.) It’s not the pre-Cambrian, etc. In some other eras, oxygen levels were much higher, which was why there were huge bugs and things that couldn’t survive now—but not the dinosaur era.)
Honestly, the easiest fix for this “all dying off” nonsense would be that how to make dinosaurs is much more known, and all kinds of people (and governments with whatever agendas) could make them more robust.
Also this business about getting blood samples from the biggest dinos—er, except the pterosaur isn’t a dino, it’s a flying reptile, and why the pterosaur? It’s not the largest creature compared with lots of them. I get the nice “land, sea, and air” thing, but it doesn’t make sense with the “biggest because they have the biggest hearts” mandate. But then we see them getting stuff from… an egg. In a world where they can breed these things. Maybe the giant pharmaceutical company somehow couldn’t get their hands on the needed stuff, but… if eggs will do, then just use that dna tech and make some, no being eaten.
Also it’s the island of misfit toys, er, mutant dinos, but only two of them (discounting dead ones in the tubes in the lab) actually seem mutated. They could have gone wild with this. Why weren’t the other dinos visibly mutated in some way?
I think the “made a weird mutant dino because the public was bored with regular dinos” was done better before with the Indominus Rex.
(Not to mention that we’ve had zoos forever, and now animal parks, and people aren’t bored with those. I don’t think 30 years or less of dinosaurs would make people bored at all. Metaphor for the JP franchise or not…)
Just saw Superman and had the words of the Superman Grace stuck in my head everytime the Superman theme played....admittedly this is the fault of holiday club and not James Gunn.
Did you like it? I’m sure I’ll go see it before too long, but I can’t say the trailers and other promo things I’ve seen have gotten me particularly excited about it.
Did you like it? I’m sure I’ll go see it before too long, but I can’t say the trailers and other promo things I’ve seen have gotten me particularly excited about it.
I really enjoyed it! Definitely not perfect but (personally as a comics Superman fan and Snyderverse Hater) it was a real breath of fresh air in terms of the DCU at least. It was a lot of fun and the SFX for Krypto is particularly impressive - they used motion capture on a *human* and somehow mixed it with the real actor dog? It's really well done and you would never guess that it is mostly motion capture, much less a motion captured human.
The trailer shown beforehand for Nolan's The Odyssey has me intrigued - I'm not much of a Christopher Nolan fan because he sucks at writing women, but Lupita Nyong'o is playing Clytemnestra which I am very intrigued by. Lupita has a very delicate, almost ethereal kind of beauty which is not how I imagine Clytemnestra at all.
I just finished watching Old Guard 2 on Netflix. It's not, IMHO, as good as the first one, but good enough to keep my interest. It ends on a massive cliff hanger, so it's obvious there are plans for a third one.
I have mixed feelings about the Snyderverse. I liked some of his take on Superman, but just couldn’t deal with Ben Affleck as Batman, and I hated “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
Well; not a movie, but as there isn't a thread for opera, I'll mention here that we've just been to see 'Jesus Christ Superstar' - a gorgeous production of an opera I had never seen before. Terrific music and great characters wonderfully acted, and not, as I was warned long ago, the least hint of blasphemy or heresy. Interesting that the soldiers taking Jesus away were dressed like ICE thugs - that was well done.
I love JCS but it js definitely written from the POV of Judas and is not exactly a model of orthodoxy! I don’t have a problem with that though.
Strangely the people getting their knickers in a twist over Cynthia Erivo being cast as Jesus in a forthcoming production don’t seem to be aware their parents would have been protesting outside the theatres decades before.
(I think she will be great, as will Adam Lambert, Philippa Soo and Josh Gad. I just hope it gets filmed.)
I’m glad to hear you and @Pomona both liked it. I’ll admit the trailers I’ve seen have given me mixed feelings, with some aspects that made me think I’ll like it, and other aspects, not so much. But I can’t stay away from a Superman movie.
Not sure when I’ll get to it though. If my wife wants to go too, it may not be until August.
Am I the only one seeing posters and trailers for a new Naked Gun and thinking "How the fornication did anyone think that was a good idea?"
Apart from anything else, Leslie Nielsen was funny just by being there and I can't imagine Liam Neeson (random thought - maybe they thought people wouldn't notice given that they start and end with tbe same letter?) doing that.
A distributor called "Flicker Alley" has recently released a new set called Champagne & Caviar: Four Weimar Comedies (1931-1932). These are from the last days of the Weimar Republic (the Nazis would come to power in January of 1933). They also come from the days of the Great Depression. Nevertheless, these films seem to be light-hearted musical comedies.
So far I have only watched the first one: Die Privatsekretärin (The Private Secretary) (1931), starring Renate Müller as a young woman who uses her "feminine wiles" to get a job at a bank while she searches for a wealthy husband. She maintains that she knows what she wants out of life...but does she? Yes, it is the sort of plotline that the movies on the Hallmark Channel use and re-use and re-re-use constantly.
Müller's co-star is Hermann Thimig, but the real scene-stealer of the movie is supporting actor Felix Bressart. Bressart would flee Germany after the Nazis came to power and come to Hollywood where he appeared in a large number of movies, perhaps most notably The Shop Around The Corner (1940) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942), although I recognize him most from a Myrna Loy comedy: Third Finger, Left Hand (1940), where he plays a part very similar to the part he plays in The Private Secretary.
The story of Renate Müller is far more troubling. She suffered from epilepsy, was an alcoholic and a drug user. She continued to stay in Germany after the Nazis came to power but refused to break with her Jewish lover (as well, some say, as rejecting the advances of one Adolph Hitler). She died in 1937 as a result of plunging from a high window just shortly after Gestapo agents were seen entering the building. Whether she was murdered, committed suicide or fell by accident has never been established.
Am I the only one seeing posters and trailers for a new Naked Gun and thinking "How the fornication did anyone think that was a good idea?"
Apart from anything else, Leslie Nielsen was funny just by being there and I can't imagine Liam Neeson (random thought - maybe they thought people wouldn't notice given that they start and end with tbe same letter?) doing that.
I think the trailer suggests that it looks really funny and I’m interested in seeing it.
I have finished watching the second Weimar comedy (see my post above). Der brave Sünder (The Upright Sinner) (1931). My primary impression is that, if it were filmed in America, it could easily have been a vehicle for W.C. Fields. The main character of Chief Cashier Pichler is very much along the lines of the sort of characters Fields played.
Set in Austria, the film starts at Pichler's home, where he has a domineering wife (who ignores much of what he says) and two badly behaved children. Pichler refers to his daughter as his "tender plant"--just before she slugs her brother. He closes a window to block the noise of a street singer---only for his wife to come in and open the window again. Pichler tolerates all this with an air of long suffering and making distracted remarks to himself. He sees a headline that reads "Mad Man Kills Own Family" and for the rest of the scene Pichler repeatedly murmurs "Why 'mad'? That's all I want to know. Why 'mad'?" All of this is very similar to scenes from W.C. Fields' movies I have watched.
Finally, the scene shifts to the local bank where Pichler works and where he endures more things not quite working out. The Bank Director calls to state that he needs to take 40,000 schillings (Austrian) and Pichler assures him that they have that much in the vault "as long as nobody makes a big withdrawal." Sure enough, as soon as he hangs up, somebody comes and withdraws 8,000. This leaves Pichler 7,000 short for his boss. He goes to the branch bank to draw down the extra 7,000, but gets delayed such that the Director has left for Vienna.
In fact, the Director is embezzling the money from the bank, but Pichler does not know this. He decides that, as a reliable employee, he needs to follow to Vienna with the 7,000 to give to the Director. Comedic complications from there on as one might expect.
Two interesting scenes. Pichler goes to a nightclub in Vienna (where, due to misunderstanding, everybody thinks that HE is the Bank Director). The nightclub workers butter him up in hopes he will spend more money. One includes an African-American dancer, who ends up dancing with Pichler. Pichler gets completely plastered and, after a drunken dream sequence he wakes up in bed...next to the black woman. I think I am safe in saying that, in 1931, that scene would not have passed the censors in America!
A later scene has Pichler believing that he has lost most of the money and thinking that he will be accused of embezzlement. Fleeing, he passes a homeless vagabond sleeping in a field (1931--the Great Depression is well underway in Europe as well). Pichler puts 100 schillings into the man's cap. He figures he is going to be locked up for losing thousands, so he may as well help the vagabond out by giving him a pleasant surprise. But it backfires. A policeman comes across the vagabond and questions him how he got so much money. Of course, he can't explain it (he was asleep the whole time), so he gets carted off to jail. But Pichler then ends up at the jail too and explains what happened, so that the vagabond does get to go free. It struck me as a nice bit of social commentary for people struggling with the Depression.
Bottom line: a funny movie. Not a classic, but not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.
Currently watching 1968’s Night Fright. (Not the later Fright Night.) I saw a humorous review screenshot that said it was awful, and decided to watch it first and then watch the review. So far the acting is… very, very wooden, lol.
Currently watching 1968’s Night Fright. (Not the later Fright Night.) I saw a humorous review screenshot that said it was awful, and decided to watch it first and then watch the review. So far the acting is… very, very wooden, lol.
… and I couldn’t get through it. The supposed hero was so irritating (a domineering sheriff who I think is supposed to be wise and authoritative, but … ick… he just tells everyone what to do in aggressive ways that make me want to see him eaten by the monster), and none of the other characters appealed to me by halfway through, so I’m just going to watch the humorous movie critique.
As a distraction the other evening Mrs RR and I watched 'Millenium', a 1979 SF time travel film with Chris Christofferson and one of (I forget which, alas) Charlies Angels. It was was dreadful - illogical script, clunky dialogue and acting, laughable android. We enjoyed it immensely. Highly recommended!
We watched Horror Express on iplayer last night. We knew nothing about it but the fact it had Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in it. Totally bonkers but great fun.
My ticket to watch 28 Years Later was £4 - so not expensive at all. 🙂
Just watched that yesterday. I'm a huge fan of Boyle and Garland, and I noticed a few overlaps with some of their previous narratives, eg...
...as in The Beach, people leaving a supposedly safe environment in order to seek medical help in the more dangerous wider world. Though, of course, in The Beach, they refuse to leave, which is what causes their problems, whereas in 28 Years Later, they DO leave, which leads to the complications.
AND...
[SPOILERS AND EPIPHANIC OMISSIONS AHEAD]
...as in 28 Days Later, the climax involves the protagonists getting "rescued" by a group of people who turn out to be considerably less benevolent than advertised, ie. the soldiers in the 2002 movie, and the quasi-military cult in this one, whose malevolence is communicated via visual parallels with a real-world figure. Can't say much more about the nature of the group than that, beyond that I'm wondering how, or even if, they will be shown in the sequel.
My ticket to watch 28 Years Later was £4 - so not expensive at all. 🙂
Just watched that yesterday. I'm a huge fan of Boyle and Garland, and I noticed a few overlaps with some of their previous narratives, eg...
...as in The Beach, people leaving a supposedly safe environment in order to seek medical help in the more dangerous wider world. Though, of course, in The Beach, they refuse to leave, which is what causes their problems, whereas in 28 Years Later, they DO leave, which leads to the complications.
Plus...
As in The Beach, someone stands in front of a festive gathering and tells the story of some just-completed heroics, prompting conflict with an audience member. But the generational roles are reversed here, with the youthful braggart in The Beach transformed into the old braggart in 28YL, and vice versa for the skeptics.
And I can't help but notice the circa-1950s photo of Queen Elizabeth II hanging in the hall of the civilized islanders. Boyle, of course, being the guy who tried to get parachutes into the pop canon of royal imagery.
Dawn Of Man imagery possibly carried over from Sunshine, though sometimes a monolith is just a monolith.
I have finished watching the third Weimar comedy (see above).
Die Koffer des Herrn O.F. (The Trunks of Mr. O.F.) (1931). This one has a couple of stars who achieved international fame: Peter Lorre (fresh off his star turn in M (1931)) and Hedy Lamarr (although in these early pre-Ecstacy days she was billed as "Hedy Kiesler").
A very silly movie, saved by the fact that it does not pretend that it is anything but a silly movie. Right at the start the movie is given a subtitle that it is "A Fairytale for Grown-ups."
it is set in the small, backward village of Ostend. The town's motto is "Better two steps back than one step forward!" And then 13 pieces of luggage (trunks and suitcases) bearing the initials "O.F" appear at the local hotel. An accompanying letter from a tourist agency to the hotel owner informs that "the visitor" will arrive in a few days and will require 6 rooms.
The hotel only has five rooms.
The luggage bears labels from India, Egypt, Australia, etc., and there are 13 bags, so O.F. must be rich. The hotel owner immediately starts to renovate the hotel to add a sixth room. The local barber and local tailor both think it wise to renovate their places too, to attract the eye of O.F. Soon, a rumor circulates that O.F. is a billionaire who is coming to invest in the town. (The rumor is started by the local newspaper editor--who wants stories for the paper--and the local architect--who wants orders for new construction). Soon the town is expanding, adding a Jazz Bar and Cabaret to the hotel, a new City Hall, a new opera house, etc. all calculated to interest rich O.F. They send out for entertainers for the Jazz Bar and Cabaret. The female Cabaret singers arrive wearing slinky dresses and makeup--much to the interest of the men of Ostend. The women of Ostend decide they can dress like the Cabaret singers too. Result: the local drug store sees a boom in business for cosmetics ("I only sold 3 tubes of lipstick in the last 5 years" the owner exclaims as he orders truckloads of new supplies), as does the local clothing outlets.
And so on and so on and so on. The small sleepy town transforms into a metropolis, much to the puzzlement of the world economic authorities (after all, it IS the Depression). But where is O.F.?
The film gets self-referential near the end as we drop in at the new Ostend Movie Company, whose president explains that people do not want meaning in their movies--as he proudly gestures to a wall showing their hit movies: "I Love (A Musical Comedy)"; "You Love (A Musical Comedy)"; "He Loves (A Musical Comedy)"; "We Love (A Musical Comedy)" and "All Love (A Musical Comedy)."
All in all, a trifling bit of silly fluff. 80 minutes of genial but forgettable watching.
I finally finished my last assignment from law school last night (almost 20 years after graduating…) and watched My Cousin Vinnie. Our evidence prof assigned it to us as a sort of practical instruction in evidence law, but somehow I never got around to watching it.
It’s a well made movie, and very funny in places, though chock full of improbable coincidences.
That was an interesting segue piece into an American setting for Jonathan Lynn(*). I'd be interested to know what fans of Yes, Minister think about it(never watched the show myself).
(*) Clue from 1985 was apparently set in New England, but I'm assuming really took place in the anglo-evocative world of the board game. Trial And Error was a later legal-procedural by Lynn, with a plot set-up quite similar to My Cousin Vinnie.
Finally watched Strange World on Disney+ last night. A fun adventure yarn which drew on Journey to the Centre of the Earth among other things. The heady mix of environmental themes, inter-racial families and a gay main character will doubtless have put off a certain section of the audience - their loss, it’s a decent story. Not top tier but worth a watch.
I finally finished my last assignment from law school last night (almost 20 years after graduating…) and watched My Cousin Vinnie. Our evidence prof assigned it to us as a sort of practical instruction in evidence law, but somehow I never got around to watching it.
It’s a well made movie, and very funny in places, though chock full of improbable coincidences.
That was an interesting segue piece into an American setting for Jonathan Lynn(*). I'd be interested to know what fans of Yes, Minister think about it(never watched the show myself).
I’d completely forgotten about the directorial connection to YM/YPM. I’m a fan of the latter but without being reminded of that fact it wouldn’t have occurred to me that Lynn was connected to both of them. Not that there’s any reason to think he couldn’t have been but it doesn’t jump out at me.
I finally finished my last assignment from law school last night (almost 20 years after graduating…) and watched My Cousin Vinnie. Our evidence prof assigned it to us as a sort of practical instruction in evidence law, but somehow I never got around to watching it.
It’s a well made movie, and very funny in places, though chock full of improbable coincidences.
That was an interesting segue piece into an American setting for Jonathan Lynn(*). I'd be interested to know what fans of Yes, Minister think about it(never watched the show myself).
I’d completely forgotten about the directorial connection to YM/YPM. I’m a fan of the latter but without being reminded of that fact it wouldn’t have occurred to me that Lynn was connected to both of them. Not that there’s any reason to think he couldn’t have been but it doesn’t jump out at me.
Admittedly, I have an adolescence-rooted obsession with auteur theory, and so tend to situate any given film within the overall canon of the director(see my comments above on Boyle). That can lead to a bit of shoe-horning at times, though one thing that struck me as in line with typical British comedy was the scene where Vinny interrogates the cook about how long it takes to fry grits on his grill. Never saw YM/YPM, but that general type of exchange is something I associate with British procedural comedy. "Are we to assume, sir, that the laws of physics are somehow suspended in the vicinity of your grill?"
Something else I found interesting about My Cousin Vinny is that the animating culture-clash was between two "peripheral" American regional cultures, ie. big-city ethnic vs. southern hick, whereas the more usual schtick would be to pit one of those two against generic WASP Middle America, eg. The Beverly Hillbillies with the Clampetts vs. Mr. Drysdale.
I finally watched the last of the Weimar comedies set (see my July 21st post).
Ich bei Tag und du bei Nacht (I By Day, You By Night) (1932). A landlady has rented out the same room to two boarders--Grete (Käthe von Nagy) and Hans (Willy Fritsch)--one during the day (Hans) and the other at night (Grete). Hans & Grete never meet because the landlady is quite strict as to when they are allowed in the house. Grete gets it from 9 PM to 8 AM. Hans from 9AM to 8 PM (so each has a one-hour buffer to vacate the premises before the other arrives). Each grows to dislike the other lodger based on how they treat each other's possessions.
Of course, Hans & Grete meet by chance outside the house and begin a romance, not realizing that they quite literally share a bed. Being a romantic comedy, there are the standards misunderstandings: each thinks the other is wealthy (neither are) and once that gets straightened out, there is confusion where each thinks the other is involved with somebody else. Add in a banker, his daughter and her impecunious (and dimwitted) lover to complicate things some more.
All of this is standard romcom fare (albeit nicely and tightly plotted) and, if the plot of room sharing was not used before, it certainly has been used multiple times since. But for me what raises this film above average is another aspect. Hans has a friend who is a projectionist for a movie theater. The movie he is showing (from "Bombastic Pictures") is a romantic comedy with castles and mansions, and the leads having dozens of servants all singing and dancing. What is great, though, is that, as we keep cutting back to the film-within-a-film, we quickly realize that it acts as a Greek Chorus commenting on the events of the movie we are watching, with numerous humorous and/or sharp insights (in one song the film-in-film sings about how a new romance is like having champagne & caviar, "but after the movie is over, you need to go home to pork sausages...").
Final summary: I am glad that I bought the collection. While I don't think my life has been the lesser for not having scene these movies before, they are pleasant diversions. And it is interesting to see what lighthearted movies were being made in Germany just prior to the Nazis taking over.
Mrs RR and I tried to watch the new (2021?) West Side Story' yesterday evening.
We know the original film well, and have been to theatre productions. We couldn't get on with this version at all. Is it us oldies? I note it bombed in cinemas.
Mrs RR and I tried to watch the new (2021?) West Side Story' yesterday evening.
We know the original film well, and have been to theatre productions. We couldn't get on with this version at all. Is it us oldies? I note it bombed in cinemas.
I really liked the 2021 version, and while it didn’t do as well at the box office, it got mostly very good reviews. (Per Rotten Tomatoes, 91% of 393 critics’ reviews were positive, with an average rating of 8.2/10.)
My schedule and location are such now that I can get to Superman, so I’m trying to gear myself up for it. Definitely more of a feeling of I should see it than that I really want to see it.
Mrs RR and I tried to watch the new (2021?) West Side Story' yesterday evening.
We know the original film well, and have been to theatre productions. We couldn't get on with this version at all. Is it us oldies? I note it bombed in cinemas.
I think two reasons why it did not do well in cinema is that it came out just as the COVID pandemic was spreading world wide, and the high cost of the box office tickets. Another reason could have been the increase in streaming services. I note how many recent releases have limited runs in the cinema, but then go to streaming fairly soon. I think the age of big big screen productions has seen its time pass.
I rented 'Heartburn' from Youtube yesterday as the ship book club is reading the Nora Ephron book this month. Then today I wanted to watch something light and fluffy and watched 'Freakier Friday' at the cinema. I enjoyed both movies, despite always finding 2003 'Freaky Friday' a bit creepy. The new one is funnier and avoids relationship weirdness. The funny thing is both films have pivotal scenes involving the throwing of key lime pies. I never thought I would watch two films in two days where characters have key lime pies thrown at them. 😄
Mrs RR and I tried to watch the new (2021?) West Side Story' yesterday evening.
We know the original film well, and have been to theatre productions. We couldn't get on with this version at all. Is it us oldies? I note it bombed in cinemas.
I think two reasons why it did not do well in cinema is that it came out just as the COVID pandemic was spreading world wide, and the high cost of the box office tickets. Another reason could have been the increase in streaming services. I note how many recent releases have limited runs in the cinema, but then go to streaming fairly soon. I think the age of big big screen productions has seen its time pass.
Or, us oldies, knowing the old version well, didn't care for it, and younglings much prefer their own style of musical like 'The Greatest Showman' or whatever. I struggle with modern musicals. The last one I really enjoyed was 'Chess'. Mrs RR and I will sit down to 'South Pacific' this evening with a box of tissues handy.
I rented 'Heartburn' from Youtube yesterday as the ship book club is reading the Nora Ephron book this month. Then today I wanted to watch something light and fluffy and watched 'Freakier Friday' at the cinema. I enjoyed both movies, despite always finding 2003 'Freaky Friday' a bit creepy. The new one is funnier and avoids relationship weirdness. The funny thing is both films have pivotal scenes involving the throwing of key lime pies. I never thought I would watch two films in two days where characters have key lime pies thrown at them. 😄
Did you see the 1970s Freaky Friday?
(There’s also the original book, plus some sequels, by Mary Rodgers.)
And technically based, or inspired, I think, by the early 20th century book Vice Versa by Anstey, in which a father and son are each sure that the other’s life is easier.
I have seen at least some of the 1970s version. I remember the false eyelash scene, but not much else. The funny thing is it's the younger generation bringing false eyelashes back. In the new film Jamie Lee Curtis ends up with false eyelashes and more when she has body swapped with a younger character. I haven't read the books.
Mrs RR and I tried to watch the new (2021?) West Side Story' yesterday evening.
We know the original film well, and have been to theatre productions. We couldn't get on with this version at all. Is it us oldies? I note it bombed in cinemas.
I think two reasons why it did not do well in cinema is that it came out just as the COVID pandemic was spreading world wide, and the high cost of the box office tickets. Another reason could have been the increase in streaming services. I note how many recent releases have limited runs in the cinema, but then go to streaming fairly soon. I think the age of big big screen productions has seen its time pass.
I don't know that this is true, I would certainly call Barbie a big big screen production and that did phenomenally well. You could say the same for things like Wicked and the Mission:Impossible movies, and arguably Sinners.
Mrs RR and I tried to watch the new (2021?) West Side Story' yesterday evening.
We know the original film well, and have been to theatre productions. We couldn't get on with this version at all. Is it us oldies? I note it bombed in cinemas.
Why didn't you like it, Roger?
I absolutely loved it, and I'm a middle aged person who also loved the original film. Well, I didn't so much like the guy playing Tony in the new version, as he seemed a bit insipid and unconvincing, but the other actors were fantastic, particularly the ones playing Riff and Anita.
Actually, now I remember that the actor playing Tony was the reason a lot of young people weren't interested in watching it, because of certain allegations against him. So that will have influenced cinema success, as well as the fact that it was very soon after lockdown and cinemas were pretty empty anyway. Still are to some extent, but these days when there is a film like Barbie or Wicked, it becomes an event where young people dress up in costume, or a certain colour, and of course there is 3D and 4D cinema now too.
I found the 2021 West Side Story felt more real and raw than the original, really showing the anger, the danger, the racism, the emptiness of the lives of the Jets, as poor white kids who feel they have nothing to live for, while the Sharks are fighting for a place to live and their right to exist. And both know they are seen as trash by the authorities.
I liked that the Puerto Rican characters were all played by Latinx actors. I loved that Rita Moreno (Anita in the original film) was also in the film, given a new part. In the original film, she was the only Puerto Rican actor, and they actually darkened her skin (as well as darkening the skin of the other actors playing Puerto Rican characters), but in the 2021 film, they of course don't darken anyone's skin.
I thought the parts where the Puerto Rican characters spoke Spanish, with no translation for the audience, was effective in the way intended, to give audience who don't know Spanish the feeling the of being an outsider, and so that English doesn't have power over Spanish.
I liked the decision to make Anybody's a trans guy. I thought it worked well with the story and made the role more significant. I think the old tomboy trope is less relevant in today's society, and it makes more sense for Anybody's to be trans, and makes the role more poignant and poweful.
To me, a new version of an old film needs to be saying new things, showing new perspectives, otherwise there's no point in it. The old film was of its time. The new one gives minority characters more of a voice, and is more gritty, less jolly! (I really loved Riff in the original, but he was like a teddy bear - not the most convincing gang leader!)
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—but I still think most changes detracted rather than added to the live-action version. Zach Galifinaikas (sp?) in a regular US accent voice is no David Ogden Stiers in a booming semi-Russian accent, and Jumba is not the same character in the end, sadly to me. There is no Gantu, etc.
And that sort of thing. Again, it’s still a good movie, and I do like the additional character.
Oh, and alas we don’t get to see
The movie was produced by "Continental Films" which has something of a bad reputation. It was a French film studio sponsored by German money in Occupied France to make films that the Nazis would allow. Its job was to make entertaining films to delight the French while they were occupied by Nazi forces. Those involved often get tagged with the "collaborator" label--which is a bit rich considering that one of the lead actors in this move was tortured to death by the Gestapo a few months after the film was made. Must be some definition of "collaborating" that I was not previously aware of.
Having said all that, please forget it. Watching the movie on its own merits, ignorant of the background, it truly is a delightful feature. Set in a remote French village, we have a kindly mapmaker (well, globe-maker, really) who always play the part of Father Christmas for the village. There is a Crazy Cat Lady looking for her cat, Mistou. She is mocked by children, but treated gently by the adults. There are the children of the village and their schoolteacher, and one bedridden child. And then there is the surprise return of "the Baron" after ten years--with rumors that he has some dread disease. Plague? Leprosy? And early on in the film, the local priest is assaulted, presumably to try to steal the valuable "ring of St. Nicholas" from the church.
The movie is funny, charming, mysterious ("Father Christmas" is killed two-thirds of the way through), suspenseful and ultimately endearing. Ignore its murky history and watch it for its own sake. It is worth it.
BTW, I just love Toothless!
I need to see this. I’ve not seen any of them yet…
That said, I liked the characters, though I predicted who would die and who would live with almost perfect accuracy (a couple of them actually lived I thought would die) the moment we saw them show up. It was an enjoyable thing to see, but I hope that things change in future movies.
I strongly recommend Camp Cretaceous on Netflix much more—it’s set in the same world with a lot more character development, world-building, etc.
Oh! Things that bugged me in the movie, just a couple more:
Dinosaurs didn’t just thrive in tropical conditions. We know more stuff more about that. In fact one cool thing about the original book/movie is that it was based more on contemporary science, and this should have been too. (Another error, though from the original book in a speech that was put in this movie—oxygen levels now are indeed comparable to the dinosaur era. (The speech claims otherwise.) It’s not the pre-Cambrian, etc. In some other eras, oxygen levels were much higher, which was why there were huge bugs and things that couldn’t survive now—but not the dinosaur era.)
Honestly, the easiest fix for this “all dying off” nonsense would be that how to make dinosaurs is much more known, and all kinds of people (and governments with whatever agendas) could make them more robust.
Also this business about getting blood samples from the biggest dinos—er, except the pterosaur isn’t a dino, it’s a flying reptile, and why the pterosaur? It’s not the largest creature compared with lots of them. I get the nice “land, sea, and air” thing, but it doesn’t make sense with the “biggest because they have the biggest hearts” mandate. But then we see them getting stuff from… an egg. In a world where they can breed these things. Maybe the giant pharmaceutical company somehow couldn’t get their hands on the needed stuff, but… if eggs will do, then just use that dna tech and make some, no being eaten.
Also it’s the island of misfit toys, er, mutant dinos, but only two of them (discounting dead ones in the tubes in the lab) actually seem mutated. They could have gone wild with this. Why weren’t the other dinos visibly mutated in some way?
I think the “made a weird mutant dino because the public was bored with regular dinos” was done better before with the Indominus Rex.
(Not to mention that we’ve had zoos forever, and now animal parks, and people aren’t bored with those. I don’t think 30 years or less of dinosaurs would make people bored at all. Metaphor for the JP franchise or not…)
I’m still glad I saw it, don’t get me wrong…
I really enjoyed it! Definitely not perfect but (personally as a comics Superman fan and Snyderverse Hater) it was a real breath of fresh air in terms of the DCU at least. It was a lot of fun and the SFX for Krypto is particularly impressive - they used motion capture on a *human* and somehow mixed it with the real actor dog? It's really well done and you would never guess that it is mostly motion capture, much less a motion captured human.
The trailer shown beforehand for Nolan's The Odyssey has me intrigued - I'm not much of a Christopher Nolan fan because he sucks at writing women, but Lupita Nyong'o is playing Clytemnestra which I am very intrigued by. Lupita has a very delicate, almost ethereal kind of beauty which is not how I imagine Clytemnestra at all.
I have mixed feelings about the Snyderverse. I liked some of his take on Superman, but just couldn’t deal with Ben Affleck as Batman, and I hated “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
I love JCS but it js definitely written from the POV of Judas and is not exactly a model of orthodoxy! I don’t have a problem with that though.
Strangely the people getting their knickers in a twist over Cynthia Erivo being cast as Jesus in a forthcoming production don’t seem to be aware their parents would have been protesting outside the theatres decades before.
(I think she will be great, as will Adam Lambert, Philippa Soo and Josh Gad. I just hope it gets filmed.)
Not sure when I’ll get to it though. If my wife wants to go too, it may not be until August.
Apart from anything else, Leslie Nielsen was funny just by being there and I can't imagine Liam Neeson (random thought - maybe they thought people wouldn't notice given that they start and end with tbe same letter?) doing that.
So far I have only watched the first one: Die Privatsekretärin (The Private Secretary) (1931), starring Renate Müller as a young woman who uses her "feminine wiles" to get a job at a bank while she searches for a wealthy husband. She maintains that she knows what she wants out of life...but does she? Yes, it is the sort of plotline that the movies on the Hallmark Channel use and re-use and re-re-use constantly.
Müller's co-star is Hermann Thimig, but the real scene-stealer of the movie is supporting actor Felix Bressart. Bressart would flee Germany after the Nazis came to power and come to Hollywood where he appeared in a large number of movies, perhaps most notably The Shop Around The Corner (1940) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942), although I recognize him most from a Myrna Loy comedy: Third Finger, Left Hand (1940), where he plays a part very similar to the part he plays in The Private Secretary.
The story of Renate Müller is far more troubling. She suffered from epilepsy, was an alcoholic and a drug user. She continued to stay in Germany after the Nazis came to power but refused to break with her Jewish lover (as well, some say, as rejecting the advances of one Adolph Hitler). She died in 1937 as a result of plunging from a high window just shortly after Gestapo agents were seen entering the building. Whether she was murdered, committed suicide or fell by accident has never been established.
I think the trailer suggests that it looks really funny and I’m interested in seeing it.
I would want to see Tron Ares (because I love Greta Lee)....if Jared Leto wasn't in it 🤢
Set in Austria, the film starts at Pichler's home, where he has a domineering wife (who ignores much of what he says) and two badly behaved children. Pichler refers to his daughter as his "tender plant"--just before she slugs her brother. He closes a window to block the noise of a street singer---only for his wife to come in and open the window again. Pichler tolerates all this with an air of long suffering and making distracted remarks to himself. He sees a headline that reads "Mad Man Kills Own Family" and for the rest of the scene Pichler repeatedly murmurs "Why 'mad'? That's all I want to know. Why 'mad'?" All of this is very similar to scenes from W.C. Fields' movies I have watched.
Finally, the scene shifts to the local bank where Pichler works and where he endures more things not quite working out. The Bank Director calls to state that he needs to take 40,000 schillings (Austrian) and Pichler assures him that they have that much in the vault "as long as nobody makes a big withdrawal." Sure enough, as soon as he hangs up, somebody comes and withdraws 8,000. This leaves Pichler 7,000 short for his boss. He goes to the branch bank to draw down the extra 7,000, but gets delayed such that the Director has left for Vienna.
In fact, the Director is embezzling the money from the bank, but Pichler does not know this. He decides that, as a reliable employee, he needs to follow to Vienna with the 7,000 to give to the Director. Comedic complications from there on as one might expect.
Two interesting scenes. Pichler goes to a nightclub in Vienna (where, due to misunderstanding, everybody thinks that HE is the Bank Director). The nightclub workers butter him up in hopes he will spend more money. One includes an African-American dancer, who ends up dancing with Pichler. Pichler gets completely plastered and, after a drunken dream sequence he wakes up in bed...next to the black woman. I think I am safe in saying that, in 1931, that scene would not have passed the censors in America!
A later scene has Pichler believing that he has lost most of the money and thinking that he will be accused of embezzlement. Fleeing, he passes a homeless vagabond sleeping in a field (1931--the Great Depression is well underway in Europe as well). Pichler puts 100 schillings into the man's cap. He figures he is going to be locked up for losing thousands, so he may as well help the vagabond out by giving him a pleasant surprise. But it backfires. A policeman comes across the vagabond and questions him how he got so much money. Of course, he can't explain it (he was asleep the whole time), so he gets carted off to jail. But Pichler then ends up at the jail too and explains what happened, so that the vagabond does get to go free. It struck me as a nice bit of social commentary for people struggling with the Depression.
Bottom line: a funny movie. Not a classic, but not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.
… and I couldn’t get through it. The supposed hero was so irritating (a domineering sheriff who I think is supposed to be wise and authoritative, but … ick… he just tells everyone what to do in aggressive ways that make me want to see him eaten by the monster), and none of the other characters appealed to me by halfway through, so I’m just going to watch the humorous movie critique.
Just watched that yesterday. I'm a huge fan of Boyle and Garland, and I noticed a few overlaps with some of their previous narratives, eg...
...as in The Beach, people leaving a supposedly safe environment in order to seek medical help in the more dangerous wider world. Though, of course, in The Beach, they refuse to leave, which is what causes their problems, whereas in 28 Years Later, they DO leave, which leads to the complications.
AND...
[SPOILERS AND EPIPHANIC OMISSIONS AHEAD]
...as in 28 Days Later, the climax involves the protagonists getting "rescued" by a group of people who turn out to be considerably less benevolent than advertised, ie. the soldiers in the 2002 movie, and the quasi-military cult in this one, whose malevolence is communicated via visual parallels with a real-world figure. Can't say much more about the nature of the group than that, beyond that I'm wondering how, or even if, they will be shown in the sequel.
Plus...
As in The Beach, someone stands in front of a festive gathering and tells the story of some just-completed heroics, prompting conflict with an audience member. But the generational roles are reversed here, with the youthful braggart in The Beach transformed into the old braggart in 28YL, and vice versa for the skeptics.
And I can't help but notice the circa-1950s photo of Queen Elizabeth II hanging in the hall of the civilized islanders. Boyle, of course, being the guy who tried to get parachutes into the pop canon of royal imagery.
Dawn Of Man imagery possibly carried over from Sunshine, though sometimes a monolith is just a monolith.
Die Koffer des Herrn O.F. (The Trunks of Mr. O.F.) (1931). This one has a couple of stars who achieved international fame: Peter Lorre (fresh off his star turn in M (1931)) and Hedy Lamarr (although in these early pre-Ecstacy days she was billed as "Hedy Kiesler").
A very silly movie, saved by the fact that it does not pretend that it is anything but a silly movie. Right at the start the movie is given a subtitle that it is "A Fairytale for Grown-ups."
it is set in the small, backward village of Ostend. The town's motto is "Better two steps back than one step forward!" And then 13 pieces of luggage (trunks and suitcases) bearing the initials "O.F" appear at the local hotel. An accompanying letter from a tourist agency to the hotel owner informs that "the visitor" will arrive in a few days and will require 6 rooms.
The hotel only has five rooms.
The luggage bears labels from India, Egypt, Australia, etc., and there are 13 bags, so O.F. must be rich. The hotel owner immediately starts to renovate the hotel to add a sixth room. The local barber and local tailor both think it wise to renovate their places too, to attract the eye of O.F. Soon, a rumor circulates that O.F. is a billionaire who is coming to invest in the town. (The rumor is started by the local newspaper editor--who wants stories for the paper--and the local architect--who wants orders for new construction). Soon the town is expanding, adding a Jazz Bar and Cabaret to the hotel, a new City Hall, a new opera house, etc. all calculated to interest rich O.F. They send out for entertainers for the Jazz Bar and Cabaret. The female Cabaret singers arrive wearing slinky dresses and makeup--much to the interest of the men of Ostend. The women of Ostend decide they can dress like the Cabaret singers too. Result: the local drug store sees a boom in business for cosmetics ("I only sold 3 tubes of lipstick in the last 5 years" the owner exclaims as he orders truckloads of new supplies), as does the local clothing outlets.
And so on and so on and so on. The small sleepy town transforms into a metropolis, much to the puzzlement of the world economic authorities (after all, it IS the Depression). But where is O.F.?
The film gets self-referential near the end as we drop in at the new Ostend Movie Company, whose president explains that people do not want meaning in their movies--as he proudly gestures to a wall showing their hit movies: "I Love (A Musical Comedy)"; "You Love (A Musical Comedy)"; "He Loves (A Musical Comedy)"; "We Love (A Musical Comedy)" and "All Love (A Musical Comedy)."
All in all, a trifling bit of silly fluff. 80 minutes of genial but forgettable watching.
That was an interesting segue piece into an American setting for Jonathan Lynn(*). I'd be interested to know what fans of Yes, Minister think about it(never watched the show myself).
(*) Clue from 1985 was apparently set in New England, but I'm assuming really took place in the anglo-evocative world of the board game. Trial And Error was a later legal-procedural by Lynn, with a plot set-up quite similar to My Cousin Vinnie.
I’d completely forgotten about the directorial connection to YM/YPM. I’m a fan of the latter but without being reminded of that fact it wouldn’t have occurred to me that Lynn was connected to both of them. Not that there’s any reason to think he couldn’t have been but it doesn’t jump out at me.
Admittedly, I have an adolescence-rooted obsession with auteur theory, and so tend to situate any given film within the overall canon of the director(see my comments above on Boyle). That can lead to a bit of shoe-horning at times, though one thing that struck me as in line with typical British comedy was the scene where Vinny interrogates the cook about how long it takes to fry grits on his grill. Never saw YM/YPM, but that general type of exchange is something I associate with British procedural comedy. "Are we to assume, sir, that the laws of physics are somehow suspended in the vicinity of your grill?"
Something else I found interesting about My Cousin Vinny is that the animating culture-clash was between two "peripheral" American regional cultures, ie. big-city ethnic vs. southern hick, whereas the more usual schtick would be to pit one of those two against generic WASP Middle America, eg. The Beverly Hillbillies with the Clampetts vs. Mr. Drysdale.
Ich bei Tag und du bei Nacht (I By Day, You By Night) (1932). A landlady has rented out the same room to two boarders--Grete (Käthe von Nagy) and Hans (Willy Fritsch)--one during the day (Hans) and the other at night (Grete). Hans & Grete never meet because the landlady is quite strict as to when they are allowed in the house. Grete gets it from 9 PM to 8 AM. Hans from 9AM to 8 PM (so each has a one-hour buffer to vacate the premises before the other arrives). Each grows to dislike the other lodger based on how they treat each other's possessions.
Of course, Hans & Grete meet by chance outside the house and begin a romance, not realizing that they quite literally share a bed. Being a romantic comedy, there are the standards misunderstandings: each thinks the other is wealthy (neither are) and once that gets straightened out, there is confusion where each thinks the other is involved with somebody else. Add in a banker, his daughter and her impecunious (and dimwitted) lover to complicate things some more.
All of this is standard romcom fare (albeit nicely and tightly plotted) and, if the plot of room sharing was not used before, it certainly has been used multiple times since. But for me what raises this film above average is another aspect. Hans has a friend who is a projectionist for a movie theater. The movie he is showing (from "Bombastic Pictures") is a romantic comedy with castles and mansions, and the leads having dozens of servants all singing and dancing. What is great, though, is that, as we keep cutting back to the film-within-a-film, we quickly realize that it acts as a Greek Chorus commenting on the events of the movie we are watching, with numerous humorous and/or sharp insights (in one song the film-in-film sings about how a new romance is like having champagne & caviar, "but after the movie is over, you need to go home to pork sausages...").
Final summary: I am glad that I bought the collection. While I don't think my life has been the lesser for not having scene these movies before, they are pleasant diversions. And it is interesting to see what lighthearted movies were being made in Germany just prior to the Nazis taking over.
We know the original film well, and have been to theatre productions. We couldn't get on with this version at all. Is it us oldies? I note it bombed in cinemas.
My schedule and location are such now that I can get to Superman, so I’m trying to gear myself up for it. Definitely more of a feeling of I should see it than that I really want to see it.
I think two reasons why it did not do well in cinema is that it came out just as the COVID pandemic was spreading world wide, and the high cost of the box office tickets. Another reason could have been the increase in streaming services. I note how many recent releases have limited runs in the cinema, but then go to streaming fairly soon. I think the age of big big screen productions has seen its time pass.
Or, us oldies, knowing the old version well, didn't care for it, and younglings much prefer their own style of musical like 'The Greatest Showman' or whatever. I struggle with modern musicals. The last one I really enjoyed was 'Chess'. Mrs RR and I will sit down to 'South Pacific' this evening with a box of tissues handy.
Did you see the 1970s Freaky Friday?
(There’s also the original book, plus some sequels, by Mary Rodgers.)
I don't know that this is true, I would certainly call Barbie a big big screen production and that did phenomenally well. You could say the same for things like Wicked and the Mission:Impossible movies, and arguably Sinners.
Why didn't you like it, Roger?
I absolutely loved it, and I'm a middle aged person who also loved the original film. Well, I didn't so much like the guy playing Tony in the new version, as he seemed a bit insipid and unconvincing, but the other actors were fantastic, particularly the ones playing Riff and Anita.
Actually, now I remember that the actor playing Tony was the reason a lot of young people weren't interested in watching it, because of certain allegations against him. So that will have influenced cinema success, as well as the fact that it was very soon after lockdown and cinemas were pretty empty anyway. Still are to some extent, but these days when there is a film like Barbie or Wicked, it becomes an event where young people dress up in costume, or a certain colour, and of course there is 3D and 4D cinema now too.
I found the 2021 West Side Story felt more real and raw than the original, really showing the anger, the danger, the racism, the emptiness of the lives of the Jets, as poor white kids who feel they have nothing to live for, while the Sharks are fighting for a place to live and their right to exist. And both know they are seen as trash by the authorities.
I liked that the Puerto Rican characters were all played by Latinx actors. I loved that Rita Moreno (Anita in the original film) was also in the film, given a new part. In the original film, she was the only Puerto Rican actor, and they actually darkened her skin (as well as darkening the skin of the other actors playing Puerto Rican characters), but in the 2021 film, they of course don't darken anyone's skin.
I thought the parts where the Puerto Rican characters spoke Spanish, with no translation for the audience, was effective in the way intended, to give audience who don't know Spanish the feeling the of being an outsider, and so that English doesn't have power over Spanish.
I liked the decision to make Anybody's a trans guy. I thought it worked well with the story and made the role more significant. I think the old tomboy trope is less relevant in today's society, and it makes more sense for Anybody's to be trans, and makes the role more poignant and poweful.
To me, a new version of an old film needs to be saying new things, showing new perspectives, otherwise there's no point in it. The old film was of its time. The new one gives minority characters more of a voice, and is more gritty, less jolly! (I really loved Riff in the original, but he was like a teddy bear - not the most convincing gang leader!)