ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Decent entertainment, overabundance of action, several flaws, but none that break the movie.

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Just watched Shutter Island. I'm no film expert, and I don't know what's good or bad. I just know that there's no better way to get my attention than to have stuff take place in an old mental asylum where something isn't quite right. There's something about the setting that triggers something within me only a really good psychologist /-iatrist could find, a primal desire of some sort. Sanitarium (the game) is probably my favourite example, and there's Arkham Asylum, parts of Nova Prospekt, Session 9, maybe the list goes on.

The twist was pretty obvious

from the start, but it was still fun stuff. I've become more and more aware of my lack of knowledge of film, and I'm wondering if anyone know of any good forums that discuss particular films in more depth. I'd very much like to be able to see the various techniques of directors and be able to spot them, like one would be able to hear a composer's signature in a piece of music, or the artist's stroke in a painting, only without sounding like so much of a ponce. I try to be aware of stuff like tight shots and open shots (if that's what they're called, I never went to film school), use of panning and focus, but I sort of lose track and I still wouldn't be able to tell a Woody Allen film from a Uwe Boll.

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The only movie I watched this weekend was one that came from tv.

It was this one horror/suspense movie called 1408 from 2007.

I think it wasn't that good, but as my wife is a horror movie fan, we decided to watch it.

Shortly put, the movie is about a guy who goes in to a scary hotel room.

Even Samuel L. J. wasn't that good in this movie.

I have started to watch The Pacific, I have watched five episodes so far. It's a bit touchy subject as it's the Americans war against the Japanese so my wife doesn't like it. I've been watching it alone.

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Shortly put, the movie is about a guy who goes in to a scary hotel room.

Important detail: The guy is John Cusack. Doesn't make the movie any better, but I feel it should be said.

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Yeah, he was awesome in Being John Malkovich and really good in High Fidelity also.

Lately he has made some weird career choices like 2012 and 1408. maybe he likes movies with numbers. :hah:

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He's also in Hot Tub Time Machine which is about going back in time.. time=numbers.

My God, you're right!

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It was this one horror/suspense movie called 1408 from 2007.

I think it wasn't that good, but as my wife is a horror movie fan, we decided to watch it.

Which version did you watch? Because there are 3 different endings, the good one didn't end up in the cinema or most of the DVD releases.

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He burned the hotel room and woke up in a hospital after firemen safed him. Then he was at home with his wife and he played the tape recorder and their daughter's voice was there recorded on the tape from the hotel room.

That was the ending we saw.

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+1 for Four Lions. I found it both hilarious and confusing, in that

I'd laugh really hard at something, then one of them would blow theirself and a load of people up

Fessal was by far my favorite character, and again with the confusion

along with most of the other people in the cinema I found his death hilarious, then sad, and by the end was pleased it only involved blowing up a sheep rather than anything really malicious toward other humans

It's a headfuck which I applaud Morris for writing. It's a hilarious comedy about people doing something exceptionally malicious and brutal to, well, people just like you and those you know (n.b. I am not trying to emphasise ways in which people are diffrunt)

Brass Eye could be a bit obtuse, but this is a really direct bolt of confusion. A lot of people I've mentioned it to have reacted really badly to even the idea of a comedy about suicide bombers, and it's exactly one of the things that should exist to boot them out their complacent images of moustache twirling bogeymen.

I liked the police snipers too. No one was/is safe from Morris' withering eye/incompetence! :)

Yes :tup:

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Just watched Shutter Island. I'm no film expert, and I don't know what's good or bad.

Who says you have to be? When you enjoy a film, then you find it good, full stop. \o/

I've become more and more aware of my lack of knowledge of film, and I'm wondering if anyone know of any good forums that discuss particular films in more depth. I'd very much like to be able to see the various techniques of directors and be able to spot them, like one would be able to hear a composer's signature in a piece of music, or the artist's stroke in a painting, only without sounding like so much of a ponce. I try to be aware of stuff like tight shots and open shots (if that's what they're called, I never went to film school), use of panning and focus, but I sort of lose track and I still wouldn't be able to tell a Woody Allen film from a Uwe Boll.

Hmm, I don't know of any forums, the ones I've are either full of the common forum 'tard, or the pretentious douchebag, or a mix of both. <.<

However, I consider myself a film buff/enthusiast/pretentious douchebag, and I'm always up for discussing film! (currently taking a Bachelor in Film Studies) So since Thumbs is about the best community on the internet, maybe just create a thread here? <.<

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He burned the hotel room and woke up in a hospital after firemen safed him. Then he was at home with his wife and he played the tape recorder and their daughter's voice was there recorded on the tape from the hotel room.

That was the ending we saw.

Yeah, that's the crappy ending. The original, director's is the best.

In the best ending he doesn't leave the room alive.

The third ending is only slightly different from the theater ending and iirc most true to the original story.

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Who says you have to be? When you enjoy a film, then you find it good, full stop.

Yes, but as with anything else there are levels of understanding and appreciation that can be trained, like cooking, wine, painting, programming, music, cheese, dance, perfume, etc, and I would like to get to a slightly more advanced level of film appreciation than "I don't know anything about film, but I know what I like!" which is where I feel I am now.

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Yes, but as with anything else there are levels of understanding and appreciation that can be trained, like cooking, wine, painting, programming, music, cheese, dance, perfume, etc, and I would like to get to a slightly more advanced level of film appreciation than "I don't know anything about film, but I know what I like!" which is where I feel I am now.

I understand. ^^ Well, like I said, I think I know a bit about film, and I love discussing it. <.<

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Okay, so one thing I've always wondered is how much of a film's "look", by which I mean readily apparent visual things like camera movement, colors, types of shots, etc., can usually be attributed to the director, as opposed to some other person in the credits? And if the answer to that is "a lot", are there clear characteristics that lets a person who knows what to look for distinguish between the various directors? I guess some directors like Woody Allen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Tim Burton are more easily identifiable, but are there other, less obvious stuff as well? Maybe I'm thinking of directors too much like painters, in that there's a very definite style to their work. Maybe film directors tend to experiment more between each film.

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"lovely"? :-/

Well, there's the obvious roll call of fantastic 80s sci-fi movies: RoboCop, Terminator (and 2), Aliens, Predator (and 2). If you haven't seen these, you've definitely overlooked the classics. I guess there's also Universal Soldier. Hmmm. Not sure I'd recommend anything beyond that.

What did you think of Escape from LA? I haven't seen it myself, and I watched Escape from NY straight after Chinatown -- it seemed unbelievably bad after watching that. I'm sure if I'd watched it after watching Dark Star (which I love) it would have seemed like a masterpiece, though.

Escape from LA is like a juiced up remake of its predecessor. The premise is roughly the same. It has good set pieces and Steve Buscemi is funny in it. The way certain elements are injected into the plot from out of nowhere just becuase they're sort of hip or edgy is pretty amusing (for example, America being turned into a place where non-Christians are literally exiled. A Revolution being led by a latino man with a beret (wink). I'd say it's worth watching because it goes farther in being enjoyably over the top. I actually preferred it to New York, although I liked both. I can see how Escape from New York would look bad next to Chinatown, but I think if you're watching it in hopes that it will be good, you're doing it wrong. I'm pretty sure John Carpenter was well aware of how off-kilter and goofy it is. I believe it's just supposed to be amusing and fun...not actually "good", and it certainly doesn't take itself seriously. It certainly does some interesting and creative stuff with the setting (which is kind of like Fallout meets The Warriors). But I think of it as a B-movie which should be viewed as such. It's not just the movie itself that's engaging but the fact that someone actually made that movie and how they went about making it. I think certain entertainment works best on that sort of meta-level. Like Total Recall, it's dumb as dirt and everything's totally dated, but if you look at it as a study in how the early 90s saw sci-fi and how the early 90s saw itself, it's fantastic. I don't mean to seem vague and pretentious, but this concept is hard for me to explain, though I think you might know what I'm getting at.

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Okay, so one thing I've always wondered is how much of a film's "look", by which I mean readily apparent visual things like camera movement, colors, types of shots, etc., can usually be attributed to the director, as opposed to some other person in the credits? And if the answer to that is "a lot", are there clear characteristics that lets a person who knows what to look for distinguish between the various directors? I guess some directors like Woody Allen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Tim Burton are more easily identifiable, but are there other, less obvious stuff as well? Maybe I'm thinking of directors too much like painters, in that there's a very definite style to their work. Maybe film directors tend to experiment more between each film.

How familiar are you with David Lynch...because he immediately comes to mind for me. I saw a behind-the-scenes documentary where he was actually wearing goggles, sawing wood and welding and stuff...working physically and directly with the set designers to get what he wanted. And he has certain tropes that are common to almost all his films. Also, he seems to like dark vivid colors. I remember Mullholland Drive as a very blue movie.

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I'm wondering if anyone know of any good forums that discuss particular films in more depth.

movieforums.com is the idlethumbs forums of movie forums (if you can follow that). If you go there, reading through the posts by the resident guru whose username is "Holden Pike" would be a good start. Also, Roger Ebert's retrospective essays on great films of yesterday might make a nice accessible entry point. Oh and when you really like a movie, you've watched it on DVD or Bluray, listen to the director's commentary, that will help you understand what the director actually does and how they translate their vision to the screen.

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How familiar are you with David Lynch...because he immediately comes to mind for me. I saw a behind-the-scenes documentary where he was actually wearing goggles, sawing wood and welding and stuff...working physically and directly with the set designers to get what he wanted. And he has certain tropes that are common to almost all his films. Also, he seems to like dark vivid colors. I remember Mullholland Drive as a very blue movie.

Yeah, I've watched a couple of his... Lost Highway, Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story, in order of decreasing mindfuckery. I liked them all, but I'm not going to pretend to be smart enough to "get" the weirder stuff. The espresso-spitting scene in MD ranks as one of my all time favourite moments in film.

Thanks for thetip, Groucho, I'll check it out.

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