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The "I'm watching/just watched *movie title* thread....

Started by PhantasticSanShiSan, September 26, 2008, 04:58:26 PM

Sardondi

Quote from: UFO Fill on October 30, 2012, 01:18:40 PM
Try Vertigo.  Kim Novak, while short of porcelain perfection, is very interesting.  Plus, it has a score by Bernard Hermann.

For some reason I'm not as big a fan of Vertigo and prefer RW, although I'd rank it ahead of Stewart's other Hitch films, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Rope.

ItsOver

Speaking of Hitch, I also enjoyed "North by Northwest" and "The Man Who Knew too Much." I've just seen them too many times since they've both been done to death on the tube.  Amazing how good movies could be then without today's CGI fall back.

I look at "The Wizard of Oz" and just marvel at what they pulled-off with the technology of the day.  The Wiz's tornado alone is still hard to top for a special effect.

Eddie Coyle

 
         Maybe it's my fascination with the UK in the post Swingin' London era, but my favorite Hitchcock film is Frenzy, which I think is great. Funniest rape scene ever, "Lovely" and laced with brilliant dark humor. Watch it every time it's on.

Pragmier

Up next to the CoastGab banner is "Its a well oiled, well mustachioed site."

Which conjured memories of this dialogue:

"My father, was a very big man.. and all his life, he wore a black mustache. When it was no longer black, he used a small brush, -- such as ladies use for their eyes. Mascara -- to keep it black. You could not speak, at the dinner table unless first spoken to by my father."

From a film that for some reason reminds me of Jerzy Kosinski (never read McEwan's novel). I remember his appearances on David Letterman, not quite sure what to make of him.

just some mussings ...

On emotional overload today.  Started off with Wuthering Heights(the original with Merle Oberon & Laurence Olivier), followed by The Descendants, and finished up with Big Fish.

I think I'm going to go lie down now.  Good thing I work tomorrow or I'd be hitting that Beam Black I have in the pantry.

**Sigh**

HAL 9000

Here's the deal - I'm crap when it comes to pop culture, but I know many CoastGabbers are excellent, so here is my request:

Some years ago  perhaps 5-15 years ago, I watched an excellent movie - as best I recall, it was set in the Andes mountains and involved monks/monastery and conquistadors. There may have been an inside-job murder twist, but am not sure. I recall being impressed with the realism of the characters - bad teeth, those stereotypical bowl-haircuts the monks had, dirty/grimey conditions. The plot may have involved the copying of texts/murder.

I'm just at a loss as to the name of this movie - I don't know any actors names, and barely remember anything about it - I may have only been partially awake. I do know I was impressed, and now I'd like to download it and watch again, this time in hi-def.

Anyone with ideas as to the title of this movie? I know it's not much to go on, but there are so many people here who are great with this sort of thing...

:o

note: it was not a documentary - it was <I think> a murder mystery

HAL 9000

Quote from: HAL 9000 on November 09, 2012, 11:25:05 PMAnyone with ideas as to the title of this movie? I know it's not much to go on, but there are so many people here who are great with this sort of thing...

I may have found it:

The Name of the Rose

I'll try and find it - the name does sound familiar...

Eddie Coyle

Quote from: HAL 9000 on November 09, 2012, 11:53:22 PM
I may have found it:

The Name of the Rose

I'll try and find it - the name does sound familiar...
That's what I thought of...it came out in '86, but I figured it couldn't be it because you didn't mention Sean Connery.

Quote from: Eddie Coyle on November 10, 2012, 12:12:58 AM
  That's what I thought of...it came out in '86, but I figured it couldn't be it because you didn't mention Sean Connery.

same here. trailer below. full movie avail upon search.

" the name of the rose " - official trailer - 1986.

HAL 9000

Quote from: Evil Twin Of Zen on November 10, 2012, 02:11:38 AM
same here. trailer below. full movie avail upon search.

Righteo... 37% done via torrent - 9GB, 1080p version, will be done by sunrise. Should make for a nice evening for tomorrow  ;D

ziznak

I remember seeing this one a few times... lots of familiar actors.  Ron Perlmans character is my most memorable.

Sardondi

Quote from: HAL 9000 on November 09, 2012, 11:53:22 PM
I may have found it:

The Name of the Rose

I'll try and find it - the name does sound familiar...

What a glorious movie! This is one of the handful of films that demonstrates how "unlucky" Sean Connery was to have been played James Bond: before Dr. No Connery was an actor with classical training and aspirations for work in legitimate theater; but afterwards was an action/adventure movie star who was offered those kind of roles. It made him a multi-millionaire, but left him with just a handful of roles of which he was proud.*

But not only is Connery wonderful and absolutely credible as William of Baskerville, an intellectually vain, curmudgeonly and stiff-necked Franciscan monk, he is also surrounded by a powerful and excellent supporting cast such as F. Murray Abraham and Ron Perlman, although some, such as William Lonsdale, Elya Baskin and William Hickey are recognizable by face if not by name. But Connery, the cast and the story is so good that not even the inclusion of Christian Slater (also known as "Keanu Reeves + 10 IQ points") can hurt the film. In fact Reeves is actually pretty good as Adso, a young novice training under Connery. Oh, the movie is also great because Adso experiences his sexual initiation by a young Jennifer Connelly look-alike, which is always a good thing in my book.

Rose is from a book by Italian author and intellectual Umberto Eco, who is also the author of the fascinating Foucault's Pendulum. Pendulum is what The Da Vinci Code wishes it could be. Dan Brown's hackery is little more than a high-school essay beside Eco's marvelous and truly literary work, which is multi-layered, complex and very intelligent. It is a tour de' force, with several fascinating sub-plots which seem unimportant at first but nonetheless are vital and reappear at critical stages of the plot. The story is right up the alley of C2C listeners interested in Knights Templars, the Kabbalah, the occult and international conspiracies which span the centuries. It's also a gentle parody of credulous conspiracy theorists, but at the same time stands on its own as a jaw-clinchingly suspenseful tale of alt-history and -spirituality as well as murder and greed along the lines of The Maltese Falcon.

It involves three colleagues who are researchers and editors in a Milan publishing house, one arm of which specializes in PSI and occult subjects, particularly self-published titles. These "vanity" books are generally not good enough or aren't expected to have enough readers to be published under the usual terms where the publisher pays the author: Instead the author pays the publisher, usually for a small run of a few hundred volumes of varying quality and expense, which the author foots. The three colleagues, Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon, the book's narrator, were formerly radical intellectuals in their student days in the 60's and 70's. By the mid-80's they are embarrassed, not only because they have lost their revolutionary fervor, but because they have sold out so cheaply. Their publishing house is more or less mainstream but definitely down-market.

The owner tasks them with creating some occult-oriented works which was in the days of the mid-1980's thought to be very small and highly specialized. The three editors mock their assignment and while playfully tossing ideas for some books around, come up with a scheme to create their own conspiracy out of whole cloth, which the three see as a testament to the credulity of those who sought out such books and their ravening hunger for anything written on the subject. Remember that in the days before the internet, books and periodicals were just about the only source of text on a subject. It could be quite expensive to be interested in the Knights Templar in those days, because after the local public or university library were scoured, a devotee of the subject had to pay for more knowledge. 

In their long preparation of their satire, the three intellectuals begin their own voyage of discovery in the shimmering world of arcana and alternative spirituality. In their search for the knowledge necessary to prepare their conspiracy, they come across a series of individuals who are by turns laughable, fascinating, weird, intriguing, upsetting and menacing. They research the history of the Templars and how they connect to Jerusalem, treasure, the Illuminati, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Communists, the Czarist secret service, and so on. The Rennes le Chateau legend and ley lines come into play; and there is a central character who seems very like the ageless Comte Saint-Germain.

Eco wrote Pendulum in the mid-80's, and while computer use is central to the story, he attributes some astonishing powers to the personal computer the three use in their research. They engage in some data mining that seems to involve a surprising degree of AI, which I believe is not historically accurate. I'm unsure if Eco does this intentionally as a part of his satire, or if he didn't really understand what computers could and could not do back in those days before the damned boxes were ubiquitous in the business world and everyone knew what they could and couldn't do. I wouldn't be surprised if Eco wrote Pendulum on a typewriter, or even by longhand, and wasn't at the time really adept at computer use, hence his attribution of almost magical properties to the computer. But he does name the computer "Abulafia", after a 14th-century Hispano-Jewish kabbalist and mystic, so it could be Eco's joke on all of us.

Foucault's Pendulum is a little tough to slog through at first, although it opens as Casaubon waits in the Musée des Arts et Métiers museum of technology in Paris, hiding from several persons who may just want to kill him. But once the book addresses the actual research the three colleagues undertake, it is fascinating. I can only hope if a movie is ever planned that an appropriately intelligent director, screenwriter and actors are chosen. The action is secondary to the cerebral aspects of the plot, although I can guess what will become of that in a film. I can see a Javier Bardem and Ian McKellen (although his participation in the execrable Da Vinci Code is most unfortunate); perhaps a Roman Polanski as the charming and then unsettling character who may or may not be the Comte Sainte Germain.

Anyone else familiar with this? Your thoughts on casting?   



* Connery, a man with a robust ego, claims he turned down the role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and was offered 15% of box-office receipts. 15%?! Of the GROSS?! He indeed possesses a massive ego, but if Sean Connery said that, he is also a goddamned liar. Now, he may have been offered a (much smaller) percentage of profits (the net receipts, determined after all expenses of producing and marketing the movie are recouped by the studio); but I'm betting there are only a handful of deals in the history of movies which have called for an actor to receive a percentage of the gross as opposed to the net. Otherwise the studios have no way to cheat, rob and steal; and the studios simply do not make a movie in which they cannot cheat, rob and steal. It's a good bet that the studios claimed Titanic, Avatar and the Batman and Sherlock Holmes series lost money.

Blinko

Below is a documentary about Cannibalistic Warlords of Liberia...

For Fucks sake.

This was pretty crazy.  Hard to imagine people living in this world shown here.

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia (Full Length Documentary)

coaster

Quote from: Blinko on November 12, 2012, 08:39:44 PM
Below is a documentary about Cannibalistic Warlords of Liberia...

For Fucks sake.

This was pretty crazy.  Hard to imagine people living in this world shown here.


Well that was depressing.

Eddie Coyle

Quote from: Blinko on November 12, 2012, 08:39:44 PM
Below is a documentary about Cannibalistic Warlords of Liberia...

For Fucks sake.

This was pretty crazy.  Hard to imagine people living in this world shown here.

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia (Full Length Documentary)
He found it by accident.

     He Googled "Black men eating each other". THIS wasn't what he had in mind.

Blinko

Quote from: Eddie Coyle on November 12, 2012, 10:02:34 PM
  He found it by accident.

     He Googled "Black men eating each other". THIS wasn't what he had in mind.



b_dubb

the World War Z trailer.  i have a feeling the director just wanted to see how many people they could shoot in a two hour movie. 

i hate zombie movies / shows.  with the exception of 28 Days Later

coaster

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm excited to watch the new Lincoln movie.

HorrorRetro

I watched "Shut Up, Little Man!" two days ago. It was entertaining, sad, funny.  A good look at audio vérité. 

http://www.shutuplittlemanfilm.com/

HAL 9000

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/

Is now available for download - check your "local listings"  ;D  or torrents.

Sardondi

It's odd, but for some reason I can't dissociate this movie form the shooting. I have no interest in seeing it, although ordinarily I would have. Not now.

Eddie Coyle

Quote from: Sardondi on November 15, 2012, 06:27:23 AM
It's odd, but for some reason I can't dissociate this movie form the shooting.

      Absolutely, and considering the mass shooting scenarios that have occurred in recent times, this one is in the rare position of not being forgotten. That movie is tarred for the rest of this generation and largely because of the whacked out ass clown making himself "part" of the movie. If he sprays them with gunfire wearing say...fatigues. That's one thing...but this fucker was a character from the goddamn movie.

              They were a couple of mass murders in a night club(5) and in bowling alley(4) in Boston, in 1978 and '80 respectively. Both establishments were doomed from that point on, because you couldn't think "Blackfriars" or "Sammy White's Brighton Bowl" without the mass murders being your first thought.

Five Minarets In New York
Act of Vengeance
The Terrorist

all those titles are the same movie depending on where it was released. i had heard a lot about it. i've now given it a view. sorry i waited. it's a VERY GOOD movie.

White Noise 2: The Light.

Nathan Fillion stars in this film and i almost snorted a food item thru my nose when the dialog hit with a Firefly reference.

also viewed the Firefly 10th Anniversary: Browncoats Unite, filmed at this years July Comic-Con.

and last and very least i viewed Total Recall 2012. . . . snore......  8)

coaster

Saw the first part of Ken Burn's documentary "The Dust Bowl" I've been looking forward to it for the last few weeks, and it did not disappoint. cant wait to catch the second half.
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/

HorrorRetro

Quote from: coaster on November 19, 2012, 02:05:00 AM
Saw the first part of Ken Burn's documentary "The Dust Bowl" I've been looking forward to it for the last few weeks, and it did not disappoint. cant wait to catch the second half.
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/

I recorded that on my Tivo.  I'll probably start watching it today.  I own a house down in Oklahoma and live there off and on at the will of my husband's job.  The history of the Dust Bowl and the people of Oklahoma and the Plains who lived through it are very interesting.  I've watched other documentaries on the subject and think this one will be great.

Jasmine

Quote from: ItsOver on October 30, 2012, 08:17:27 PM
Speaking of Hitch, I also enjoyed "North by Northwest" and "The Man Who Knew too Much." I've just seen them too many times since they've both been done to death on the tube.  Amazing how good movies could be then without today's CGI fall back.

I look at "The Wizard of Oz" and just marvel at what they pulled-off with the technology of the day.  The Wiz's tornado alone is still hard to top for a special effect.

"The Wizard of Oz" is indeed a marvel, from a technical standpoint, and its casting was perfection. Hard to believe MGM wanted Shirley Temple in the role of Dorothy, but, as she was top box office in 1939, I could see their point from a business perspective. I concur with the cyclone sequence. I read the book on the making of the film, and it includes how the MGM special effects department created that scene. The book was sublime. Also, the actors positively boiled alive under the many  bright and hot overhead lighting situated on the MGM sound stage - this extra lighting was required for the technicolor filmed sequences, as color film was still relatively new on the scene...pardon the pun. Poor Bert Lahr suffered so much in his cowardly lion's costume.

Margaret Hamilton's hands were badly burned when the crew was filming her riding her broomstick. The thick black smoke emitting from the back of her broomstick (a pipe hooked up by the special effects unit and hidden by the whiskers of the broom) backfired, then exploded, literally throwing Margaret off her mount and hurling her to the sound stage floor. It was soon discovered both her hands suffered second degree burns. Her agent insisted she sue MGM; Margaret declined to do this, as she would then be blackballed in the industry for "making trouble".

The "Munchkins" were circus performers and "little people" recruited from all across the country. There were rumors floating around Hollywood that the men and women who comprised the Munchkins were drunken, wild, and highly sexed. However, that rumor was shot down by cast and crew, who maintained they were all a delight to work with, and very polite.

Judy Garland was pretty much drugged up by MGM during the filming; she was supplied with uppers in the morning, downers at the end of the shooting day, and diet pills to keep her figure in check during the shoot.

I just watched two films that I've seen before yet could watch again and again. "84, Charing Cross Road" with the late and lovely Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. This is a film for true bibliophiles. I also watched the heartbreaking "The Trip to Bountiful" with the late and great Geraldine Page. The scene where she finally arrives at her old family home still reduces me to tears. Page gave an outstanding performance.

As far as Hitch goes, one of my all-time favourites is the unforgettable "Rebecca" (1940). Joan Fontaine shines in her role. This film is a guilty pleasure of mine. Can you believe that Vivien Leigh auditioned for and wanted the lead role? Suffice to say that Hitch made a wise decision is bypassing the much too beautiful Leigh, and went instead with Joan Fontaine.

Sardondi

I've so far passed on watching the restored (is that what it is? Digitized? HD'd? Something new about it) Wizard, which I think was on just yesterday on Turner Broadcasting. Now I want to.

I know I've had my say about the glorious Hitchcock library. I did order the restored and newly BluRay'd Rear Window, and watched it the other night with Mrs. Sardondi. So wonderful. That movie transports me to a time and place like few others. The set reminds me of this Norman Rockwell cover from The Saturday Evening Post from 1945, which depicts a soldier returning from the war to the old neighborhood.





Not so much the precise neighborhood, because the movie is somewhat more upscale than that of the cover. But the cartoon colors of the cover remind me of the movie, particularly the feel of it having been painted/drawn, not filmed.

Also the movie set is like that of a stage, and makes me feel boxed in on both sides and from the back. For some reason Hitch IMO didn't try too hard to make the backdrops look realistic. Almost as if he wanted to increase the feel of a painted theater backdrop. Maybe he was looking for a claustrophobic, trapped feeling from the viewer. Whatever, that movie from some reason makes me feel warm all over. Maybe it's the goddess-like creamy, golden perfection of Grace Kelly. Or voyeurism. Or murder. Whatever, it's wonderful.
_______________________________

Don't know why it make me think of this - maybe it was nothing more than talking about legends of film - but I've just had a vision of the long single-camera shot opening scene of A Touch Of Evil by Orson Welles. Not the opening scene which studio bosses stuck onto the movie for decades. This is the scene Welles intended and only recently was restored. It's a marvel. One camera which flies and swoops and follows a car and a walking couple for something like 3½ minutes without blinking.

Touch of Evil Opening Shot

Astounding. Welles must have been a real pain to deal with, but there's no doubt he was a true artist.

Juan

John "B" Welles great uncle, grandfather, whatever - drives me crazy.  Just as I suspend disbelief, he sticks in a camera angle that seems intended to show what a great artist he is, not to help the story.  I have the restored original A Touch of Evil, and that opening scene is wonderful.  That shot shows his true genius - not the skewed shots later in the film.

Sardondi

Quote from: UFO Fill on November 19, 2012, 03:10:28 PM
John "B" Welles great uncle, grandfather, whatever - drives me crazy.  Just as I suspend disbelief, he sticks in a camera angle that seems intended to show what a great artist he is, not to help the story.  I have the restored original A Touch of Evil, and that opening scene is wonderful.  That shot shows his true genius - not the skewed shots later in the film.

I've often wondered how the hell he got that shot. IIRC there's no way it's a simple tracking shot from a boom, because the shot continues over several blocks, doesn't it? And there's no jerkiness - it's so smooth as it rises and falls, almost as if the camera is hovering under its own power. Just how did he do it?

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