ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Caught a couple of early screenings of upcoming movies over the last week. Saw The Wind That Shakes the Barley on Wednesday and just got back from a special midnight screening of The Host. Both come highly recommended for different reasons.

Barley is about the IRA in the 1920s, and is really moving and quite unsettling. A very powerful film where you never really get to like any character, but you still care about many of them. Fantastic experience.

The Host on the other hand, is a balls-out crazy Korean monster movie that takes its pedigree from the finest that Toho has given us over the years. So damned fun. Lotsa laughter, a couple of good shocker moments, and just enough drama to keep you engaged. Bring a load of mates with you if you can. I'd aranged to get a group of friends in with me and we filled up two full rows of the theater. Great time. The monster is beautifully animated as well. Just watching it cross a bridge is worth going.

So yeah, those are my two most recent viewings. I'm pretty sure The Host has had very little exposure outside South Korea up to this point, but I don't know how long it's taken The Wind That Shakes the Barley to make it to Calgary, so that one could be old news for a lot of you. Either way, both great. Hoping to see Fido over the next few days too. It's a good week for movies.

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Oh, that reminds me. I got a free ticket to see Inland Empire last weekend, David Lynchs latest release - but really a pet movie that he's been working on for years.

Erm... it's absolutely bat-fuck insane, as you might expect. It takes a real effort on the part of the viewer to tie the threads together - you feel like you are clutching at straws the whole way through.

I really didn't like the fact it was shot on handheld camcorder with no post-proc. It made it very difficult to believe you weren't watching some student movie. It also made it a very ugly movie - the format is less than flattering, especially to the lead, Laura Dern. She over-acts a bit for my liking in regular movies, so in this one she looked positively rubber-faced.

There were some great moments through, and it is genuinely unsettling.

In conclusion, see it only if you are a big Lynch fan and/or you want your brain melted.

What the fuck is with those rabbits!?!?!?!?!?!?

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I'm off to a free local screening of 300 tomorrow night - can't wait, plus it should be the perfect "Monday" antidote. :tup:

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(All that stuff about Inland Empire)

I was talking to the programming coordinator at my theater yesterday afternoon and he said we should be getting it at the end of the month. Two things:

1. I'm really psyched for it now.

2. Thanks for helping me look knowledgable in front of our programming coordinator!

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I'm off to a free local screening of 300 tomorrow night - can't wait, plus it should be the perfect "Monday" antidote. :tup:

...aaand it's arse. :(

Great fight scenes and CG work, truly. But fuck me are the cast universally "shit" or worse!? :tdown:

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I just saw the fountain. Incredibly great movie on letting go of your loved ones. Superb acting and incredible camerawork. It's a must see in my book!:tup: :tup: :tup:

It's the perfect antidote after watching 300. What a load of homoerotic nonsense that movie was:tmeh: Great visual effects tho:tup:

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By great visual, you mean the lighting and the colors, right ? Because the directing part with all the slow mo -fast mo, the rest of the aesthetic felt just like complete shit to me.

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I watched The Taste of Tea last night.

It's a gorgeous film with a lot of surreal and funny bits in. What I liked most is that the film tends to spend time showing you what kind of people characters are before you learn anything about who they are, what they do, or how they relate to everything else.

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So once again exploiting the perks of my job, I just got back from an early screening of Grindhouse.

Holy. Fuck.

Amazingly fun. My only complaint is that they put the two movies in the wrong order. Death Proof really should have come before Planet Terror. It's arguably the better movie, but a lot less crazy and fun. If Death Proof had come first, it would have started a bit slow, built up with it's amazing ending, and then shot straight into the balls-out bat-shit insane zombie fest. As is, the start of Death Proof just feels weird as you're adjusting to the whole "wait, this one actually has dialogue?" thing.

Still, most fun I've had at the movies in a long time (yeah, The Host was great, but this kicks the shit out of it) and I'm rounding up a different group of friends to go again on Monday. Just that awesome. Everybody better head to it on Friday if you've got the chance.

PS:

ROCKET JUMPS!

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Woohoo, Hot Fuzz is out in the Netherlands today. Now to find a gap in my agenda to watch it, and 300.

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Woohoo, Hot Fuzz is out in the Netherlands today.

A word of warning: don't expect it to be too similar to Shaun Of The Dead. The humour's a lot broader.

It's definitely worth watching, but I personally prefered Shaun.

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Off to a local UK premiere of Alpha Dog tonight, which looks promising. I know it's been out in the US for aaages, so - without giving anything away - what's the general consensus?

Also I finally rewatched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night and this time I think I watched "The Right Way" - because it was superb.

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Well, screw what you lot do or don't think:

See this film!

Alpha Dog is brilliant and I'll be surprised if I see better this year. It's a thunderous emotional ride of a film, enjoyable throughout, and loaded with tension which bubbles just below the surface of the purveying feel good vibe.

The acting is nothing less than excellent, with Justin Timberlake turning out to be extremely capable, rather annoyingly (is there anything this guy isn't genuinely brilliant at???). He's used to great effect giving life to his likeable, "wrong place / right time" character Frankie Ballenbacher. The rest of the cast are equally enthralling, and special credit should go to Ben Foster who plays unhinged - and often comic - addict sociopath Jake Mazursky with chilling brilliance. However, somewhat unsurprisingly, both Bruce Willis' and Sharon Stone's casting is completely forgetable and entirely spurious to the central cast.

Seriously, please go and see this film. I'm worried it'll fly straight under most people's radar here in the UK, as, not only is the film's central theme based around a story most UK people won't have heard about, it's released after the crucial Easter holiday fortnight (on 20th April to be exact).

But please, please, please go see Alpha Dog!

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Alpha Dog is brilliant and I'll be surprised if I see better this year.

But please, please, please go see Alpha Dog!

Is this the movie where they play the XBox in 1998?

alphadog.jpg

THEY TRAVEL INTO THE FUTURE TO GET ONE. :shifty:

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uuurrrrgh, grindhouse better come out NOW! how are the shorts in it? in ireland transformers is out the same day as the simpsons. which has nothing to do with anything but there you go.

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This weekend I saw 300 and Hot Fuzz. Both were made of awesome. Hot Fuzz is a worthy successor of Shaun of the Dead, and 300 of Sin City.

The Romeo + Juliet bit in Hot Fuzz was so completely hilarious and out of the blue that I was dumbstruck and completely unable at the moment to express my supreme amusement save for a pathetic whimpering cry.

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The nearest theatre that is going to have Hot Fuzz for me is 5 hours away in Minneapolis. My current college situation prohibits me from making that particular drive.

I am very upset.

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I really, really, didn't like 300 : for a movie that pretends to be pure muscle there is an awful lot of crappy exposition scenes (let's say a big half of the movie is dedicated to set a stupid background) and the abuse of slow mo as well as the uninspired editing are killing all the fighting scenes.

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I enjoyed 300. It was pretty much exactly what I expected. Maybe a tad more philosophical about the violence (only a tad, mind).

I only wish we had been shown the elephant fight properly. I mean, it's in the game (not that it's any good in the game, but it's there).

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I mostly agree with vimes. 300 wasn't what I expected; I wanted to see an unending onslaught of stylized action, but I got was occasional cool action scenes and a buttload of completely useless dialogue and an equally useless narrator that wouldn't shut up.

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From what I have heard of 300 for the past month or so I have no intention of ever seeing it. Sounds totally lame.

Going to see Hot Fuzz tonight though.

Also: I thought for some reason that The Wedding Crashers was a chick flick. I guess things didn't click in my mind even though I knew it had Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in it. Yeah wtf. Enjoyable film (at least for a film that doesn't actually have to be good).

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I just saw Idiocracy by Mike Judge last night. Office Space is one of my favourite comedies, so I was excited to see this at first. However, I didn't hear too much positive comments about it and it looks like it was turned to a straight-to-DVD release for some reason. I was hesitant to see it. In the end, I ended up laughing all the way through. :tup:

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I just saw Idiocracy by Mike Judge last night. Office Space is one of my favourite comedies, so I was excited to see this at first. However, I didn't hear too much positive comments about it and it looks like it was turned to a straight-to-DVD release for some reason. I was hesitant to see it. In the end, I ended up laughing all the way through. :tup:

Heard about this a few weeks back on TWiT, and I've been keen to see it ever since.

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