What are you watching?

Watched this last night... Gotta love De Niro. :)

The_Family_2013%2C_Poster.jpg
 
Winds in the East
There’s a mist coming in
Like something brewing and about to begin
Can’t put my finger on what lies in store,
But I feel what’s to happen, all happened before.


I saw “Saving Mr. Banks” a wonderful, enjoyable movie starring Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins. Tom Hanks plays Walt Disney, and he is sort of demoted to a supporting player due to the great performance of Ms. Thompson.

Even if you don’t like musicals, this movie holds your attention as Disney tries to convinced travers, a difficult, unfriendly and someone arrogant person, to sign her rights away to Mary Poppins. We do see how important the character is to her creator and how it relates to her life. Paul Giamatti is also great as her chauffer and only friend and Colin Farrell is really great as her father in flashbacks.

As a movie it fine and is a general bio of the character. However two things bothered me, while several other points bothered others.

First, is we see the movie, in production, cast was hired, script was written, songs were produced, before she signs her rights away. And that is the thrust of the movie, getting her to sign. However, in real life NO ONE would send all that money on production without having the rights. And that’s the second point, Disney was a tough businessman and HE DID HAVE THE RIGHTS, her publisher and agent had signed them over to Disney years earlier. But Disney here looks a bit naive and soft.

Several historians are disappointed because this wasn’t a full bio, they didn’t mention her children or that she was bi-sexual and stuff like that. Also, there were two added scenes with Disney that explained the plot but didn’t happen in real life. Actually those points didn’t bother me. Historians always want to show that they might know something the screenwriter didn’t, not understanding that the movie is only 2 hours. And this wasn’t a bio, but a moment in time.

The two scenes are used to advance and explain the story so I accept them in a movie. This movie is worth seeing.
 
Lefisc said:
When you talk about submarine movies and their formulas, you should also talk about Star trek II. it is really a submarine movie.

For some reason a lot of things these past few weeks have brought me into the 1960s.

There was a great documentary on Ray Harryhausen which not only showed scenes from some of the great movies I enjoyed, but had comments by current filmmakers on how he influnce them.

Then they should a movie I saw maybe 50 years ago, “First Men on the Moon.” While the movie may have been fun then, it sinks in its own formula now. Back then sci-fi movies, this one included often took 45-60 minutes to get started. Star Wars and James Bond broke that. So I am basically bored for 60 minutes until they get to the moon. Of course they travel in business suits and ties and their space suit allows them to be bare handed on the moon. This was all fantasy, no logic at all…so it stopped being fun. Also, sadly, it is told in flashback so there is no suspense as to what happens to the characters. RH did better in his other kinds of movies, such as the 7[SUP]th[/SUP] Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonaunts.
Click to expand...

Lefisc said:
Sorry Bob, my mistake. I thought you were referring to the post I did on First Men on The Moon, when I mentioned Star Wars.
YOU MUST respond to my posts in the order that I post them!!!!!! :) I am a fan of Trek, not of Wars and 2001 is my favorite movie! I thought Alien and Aliens were terrific. I even liked Terminator I and II.

Tonight I am watching Blade and maybe Blade II if we have time. I saw "Saving Mr. Banks" and really enjoyed it. More on that later.
Click to expand...

Yep. :)
 
NorthStar said:
Doug, did you enjoy that flick, do you recommend a viewing?
...Is this a comedy, a crime drama, a thriller, an action flick, a true story, a fiction?

* Directed by one of my favorite movie directors; Luc Besson
Click to expand...

Bob, it had a few different twists that were nicer than the usual "mob family gets relocated to a rural setting somewhere and tries to fit in." I had hoped that a couple of the different angles would have been explored more than they were, but all in all it was entertaining.

It's part comedy, part action flick, and all fiction.
 
dlb2 said:
Bob, it had a few different twists that were nicer than the usual "mob family gets relocated to a rural setting somewhere and tries to fit in." I had hoped that a couple of the different angles would have been explored more than they were, but all in all it was entertaining.

It's part comedy, part action flick, and all fiction.
Click to expand...

Thanks Doug. I don't want to relate at all from online reviews and all that jazz, but coming from a friend like you, that yes. :)
Most people know zip about movies, the art of filmmaking, and all the mixed emotions (joy, sadness, laughing, crying, etc.) a director can sometimes inflict to his viewers (audience), within a 2 hours time frame, more or less.
Luc Besson is a great guy, a true artist, loves great music, loves great cinema, and many people simply know nothing of his art; but I do. :)

I will watch this film. ...Sometimes probably next year, next month, January 2014. ...And on Blu-ray.
 
Bladebw.jpgMany people are surprised to discover that the character “Blade” was from a Marvel comic of the 1970s, “Tomb of Dracula” created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. Blade was not seen a supporting character but a reoccurring one, he appeared in about 20 of Dracula’s almost 90 issues. Since 1955 the comic industry had be “ruled’ or “plagued” by The Comics Code, a self-imposed, but government forced censorship board. Vampires were not allowed until 1971 when the Code eased its censorship and Dracula came to the comics. (Zombies were still banned). So Blade made his debut, as a Dracula stalker in issue #10, July 1973.

There was no blood or guts or excessive violence in the comics, there couldn’t be. So I was NOT prepared to see the huge amount shown in Blade I and II, which seems to be common in these sorts of movies. And I really didn’t t like them, these are not movies for me.

Blade’s origin is mostly kept intact here, his pregnant mother was bitten by a vampire, Deacon Frost, and Blade was born a vampire. Blade then tries to kill all vampires.

But I must digress a bit. He is called “Blade, The Vampire Slayer,” yet all vampires are already dead. Or Undead, so how do you kill something that is already dead? There is no consistency to death, minions seem to perish but the lead villains and heroes seem to live on no matter what. And Blade, in both movies, had his blood drained and should have died at the end but manages to come back. So nothing was logical here and even the characters were not consistent. Even Blade, in the comics, seemed a decade younger than Wesley Snipes in the movies. Kris Kristofferson, a Blade ally in both movies, takes a licking and keeps on ticking, although he is not a vampire. Death means nothing here. There is no acting, just overacting.

I won’t get into the plot details because both movies are too gory for me to want to talk about them. I see the general critics were not fond of this trilogy (there is one more) but Vampire geeks seem to like them.

The visuals and sound are passable in the first movie and are better in the second. Both have DTS-HD.

Blade.jpg
 
1. Love the world more than your sword, or pet.
2. Sleep under a tree for at least once in your life.
3. Don't spill your soup while relaxing in your hammock.
4. Celebrate each day just like if it was yesterday.
5. Don't worry about tomorrow - read a good book.
 
Part 2 of 'The Ten Commandments' was quite violent! ...Ramses's son was killed by a green cloudy substance (by the force of God), Ramses's army was washed out (annihilated) from the sea (by the power of God), and people (young men, young gorgeous women, children, older men and women too) dancing, drinking, partying, and worshiping a gold animal (man made) as their new golden God, were thrown out in the open precipices (abyss) of the trembling earth on fire and killed with rage (by the will of God).

But that's not all; a sea of blood replaced the Nile's river for a full seven days, a dark shadow descended upon the sky with no sun in view in the city of Egypt, hail and fire felt from the sky, a cobra snake (formed from a wooden staff - most likely Gandalf's staff) killed two of his snake cobra brothers, and all by the power of God!

I guess God was really pissed off by all the slavery (bondage), and all the children's killing that was all the rage back then.
I wouldn't mess with God in those places and ages! ;)

- Those two tablets in which God wrote them ten commandments were made of stone. And it wasn't written in English (or French), but in some kind of Egyptian/Hebrews hieroglyphs. ...Very tough to read and decipher for most common mortals living in North America and Europe and Russia and China and UK and Japan and Alaska.

Anyway, I didn't realize that God was pretty pissed off before, and that he retorted to revenge with violence.

______________

Charlton Heston (Moses), later on in real life became one of the most prominent spokesperson for the NRA of America.

_________

It's a good thing that today we have music and movies* that we can download to entertain us.
Someone has to make a living...

* It was from a Special Edition (Gift Set) Blu-ray that I purchased a while back.
- The video quality was pretty good for an older 1956 flick. And the special effects were quite unconvincing.
- The sound quality was pretty bad; you could tell that the microphones in 1956 were missing some in the extreme low and high frequencies of the human audio spectrum. ...There was more distortion (jitter) back then than now.
- The music score was grandiose, and totally boring.
- The acting was fabulous; just like being live at the theater, at a play. Some girls were very good looking.
- The costumes were all man made from the nicest fabrics and linoleum of that period. ...The colors were flamboyant.
And the decors were made from fake pyramids and cardboard and gold plastic.
 
They don't make TVs with that aspect ratio. ...Only some with full width and very thick black bars covering roughly 50% of your total screen's surface! ...Without any picture visible on them (black stripes)! ...Only between them; a little tiny narrow strip of moving pictures. ...What a total waste of space resolution! ...Reminds me of compressed (restricted) music!

Whoever created TVs didn't have a single clue about cinema art!

___________

And now they want you to buy a 4K one when our bandwidth doesn't even allow to download 1080p (2K) correctly and without artifacts!

_______

Happy New Year Barry! :)
 
Last night I revisited this flick ::

--

* If you've never seen it yet, and if you like comic sci-fi flicks, you should give it a go. :)
It's the same guy, Neill Blomkamp, who also directed 'Elysium'.
And the main actor in 'District 9', Sharlto Copley, is also one of the main actors in 'Elysium'. ...Larger role than Jodie Foster.
...And almost equal to Matt Damon's role.

And other actors are in both films.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top