Saw a whole bunch of movies over the weekend...
Red Line Starring Chad, son of Steve McQueen, this is a brainless action movie with a who's who list of B movie luminaries including Dom DeLuise and Michael Madsen. Lots of fast cars, hot women and total timepass.

Lee Marvin - A Personal Portrait by John Boorman Boorman directed Mzarvin in the superb Point Blank and the so so Hell on the Pacific and this documentary is a personal look at the actor with interviews with John Hurt, jim Jarmusch and a bunch of other people along with footage of Marvin talking about a variety of topics. Excellent documentary on a great actor.

Mario Bava - Operazione Paura Another excellent documentary about Mario Bava with Joe Dante hosting and a whole list of people from Tarantino to Argento and Ennio Moriccone waxing eloquent about the Italian director.

Dans Ma Peau A woman cuts herself on some metal railings and hurts herself. She's unable to feel any pain and soon becomes fascinated with her lack of pain and starts to cut herself before the ,movie ends in an orgy of self mutilation and self cannibalism. I'm sure there's some deep statement that this movie's trying to make but apart from a couple of completely cringe worthy scenes the message was totally lost on me.

Gummo So the soundtrack features Sleep, Burzum and a bunch of other bands and I figured it might be interesting. Turned out to be the weirdest film of the weekend and its basically about a bunch of people in this town hit by a hurricane. Filled with "disturbing" visuals and images and shot in some sort of half movie, half documentary fashion this was weird and also pretty fuck all. Turned out to have been made by the same dude who made Kids. The only high point was the inclusion of Dragonaut when the two kids are riding their bicycles.

The Spaghetti West Another excellent documentary about the Spaghetti West genre with major props given to the directors including Leone, Corbucci, Milian, Franco Nero, Eastwood and a bunch of other directors and producers. Well worth a watch even for those well versed in their westerns.

Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot Name checked in the above documentary as the most twisted western ever this was one movie I'd missed and dismissed as nothing more than another Django rip off but holy shit this was something else. Thomas Milian is the hero in a crazy town with vigilantes, a gang of homosexual cowboys, golden bullets and beautiful dames. Watch this if you haven't. Truly is twisted.

Pick Up Supposedly a lost and forgotten grindhouse classic, this movie's about a couple of hot hippie chicks who hitch a ride with a stranger on his bus. It throws genre conventions out the window and works as a drugged out hallucinogenic tale with weird camera angles and long shots of the forest. Quite creepy and worth tracking down and at just over an hour in length makes for a crisp viewing.

There are times when I feel I'm missing out on some 'canonical' or even popular films by being too much of an elitist snob. And then I watch films like the ones I watched this weekend and realise I'm snobbish for a very good reason: a lot of these movies are fucking awful.

Saving Private Ryan As soon as I heard Spielberg was making a war movie, I didn't want to see it. I guessed it would be full of schmaltz, cliched characters, old ladylike sentimentality and idiotic contrivances. And I was TOTALLY right. What I hadn't bargained for was a shitty 'epic' soundtrack which kept playing near continuously; even in non epic moments when the actors are just standing around scratching their balls. Even the much ballyhooed gory opening sequence was very 'meh' and I actually found some of the scenes very funny. It was like something out of Naked Gun. Except it wasn't, which made it funnier still. Like the part where the guy who gets a bullet in his helmet takes it off to examine it only to get shot in the head. I slept through most of the climactic battle.

Carriers A movie that's hard to talk about without getting into spoiler territory. It's about these four people who seem to be out on vacation. Except its revealed soon enough that the two guys - brothers - are going with girlfriend and random female companion back to a beach they spent their childhood at, waiting for an infection that has killed a large part of the world's population to blow over. The film is generally more about the decisions these people take and how they deal (and are dealt with) by the people they encounter than anything else and is very bleakly pessimistic for most part. Like someone suffering from depression decided to make Zombieland without the zombies. I liked this a good deal.

Up In The Air Stupidass drama about a yuppie with a midlife crisis. Suffers from the director who made Juno (which I haven't seen after several kind, well meaning people warned me off it. You all know who you are. Thanks!) beleiving that everyone is deep down inside really quirky and exciting. If he'd met as many people as I have, he'd know that deep down a LOT of people are superficial and boring. But because of this delusion, there's a long pointless scene where Clooney and Vera Farmiga talk about their frequent flier miles and loyalty cards. It's idiotic and forced - like he couldn't even be arsed to give to the Clooney character something real to be quirky and cute about. (If OTOH such people do exist, they must be killed immediately.)

Clooney flies across the length and breadth of America, firing people. He is supposed to be very good at his job, and imagines himself to be some sort of Angel of Death, letting people down gently. I'm not sure if the director fucked up here or if he genuinely intended this to be so, but Clooney, a totally limited bandwidth actor, is the aboslute last person to play such a role since he keeps grinning like a smug prick all the time. I daresay I've never seen Clooney do anything other than grin like a smug prick and this seriously gets in the way of the film later on where he's supposed to look sad, but manages to be so smug in his sadness, it's practically like its another flavour of joy. Scenes where he's supposed to be helping the people he's firing make peace with themselves come across as him mocking them relentlessly. Even the young whippersnapper he's supposed to be showing the ropes, generally looks more appropriate when she's 'doing it wrong' than Clooney does when he's doing it right. Anywhoo he runs into Vera Farmiga, they bond over frequent flier miles and become fuck buddies. Then Clooney undergoes a sudden, unconvincing transformation and decides he wants to settle down but its not to be blah blah blah.

It's essentially a romantic comedy with a nominally sad ending which is supposed to make it profound and poignant. Which kinda reminds me of the entire grunge/post grunge/nu metal scene of the 1990s, a lot of which was a reaction to the supposedly superficial "let's party and get laid!" vibe of most of 80s hard rock. My point is that just because you arrive at a 'tragic' conclusion does not automatically grant you profoundity. You can be as superficially miserable as you can be superficially cheerful. It's a lesson driven home by films like this one, bands like Bush, Candlebox, Linkin Park and Travis and most of the work of Chuck Palahniuk.

HathyaSaiBaba wrote:
I'm not sure if the director fucked up here or if he genuinely intended this to be so, but Clooney, a totally limited bandwidth actor, is the aboslute last person to play such a role since he keeps grinning like a smug prick all the time. I daresay I've never seen Clooney do anything other than grin like a smug prick and this seriously gets in the way of the film later on where he's supposed to look sad, but manages to be so smug in his sadness, it's practically like its another flavour of joy.
Wasn't all that smug in Burn After Reading and The Men Who Stare At Goats, actually. But I guess he's got no middle ground between antsy neurotic and smug prick.

Went through a Dreamworks spree recently - started off with How to Train your Dragon on the big screen in 3D. Completely formulaic, but a pretty pleasant viewing, if you don't mind vikings with Scottish accents. Wait, actually only the adult vikings sound like Scots, the kids all sound American. The titular dragon itself was pretty well done, sort of a flying cat-dog hybrid, without all the Nickelodeon bickering. It's like Dreamworks figured out they were never going to catch up with Pixar, and just settled for making an enjoyable all-round movie. The 3d usage was nowhere near as impressive as Avatar, but some scenes did come off pretty cool looking.

Monsters vs Aliens, in comparison, was way over the top. One of those 'we'll make a loose story thread and just stuff it with as many random gags as we can' schemes. Some of the gags are pretty funny, I'll admit, but overall the movie and the main character left me ambivalent. Too 'women power!'-ish for my liking.

Kung Fu Panda was the last up. Best looking movie of the lot, and if you're into martial arts movies in general, their attention to detail is a real treat, the fight scenes especially. It did feel a little rushed, though. So characters do stuff that doesn't make much sense at that point, only because a generic story arc requires that contrivance.
Examples:

So yeah, little things like that irritated me. Though I guess it's nice that it moved on breezily without bothering with too many pointless subplots. If they paid as much attention to the characters as they did to the aesthetics, it could've been quite an outstanding movie. Anyway, it's still pretty damn good.

Ricky Gervais' The Invention of Lying had an initial premise that could have been pretty amusing as a short skit, but stretching it into a feature-length was never going to work out. They pretty much beat one joke for the whole movie, only stopping to shoehorn some bleh sentimentality in. Supporting cast like Louis CK and Jonah Hill pretty much serve as (hur hur!) extras, doing nothing of importance whatsoever. There's one short flashback-ish scene with Stephen Merchant and Shaun Williamson that I thought was pretty funny. Ideally, that scene should have been the whole movie.

Watched Carriers after Ravi's recco and quite liked it. Bleak is the word alright - they don't waste too much time dwelling on the (many) tragic things that happen, and that just makes it all the more chilling. I don't know if it's horror in the traditional sense, as there aren't too many parts that are downright scary; it just paints a very grim picture.

Saw The Hit by Stephen Frears with John Hurt, Terence Stamp and a very young Tim Roth. Stamp plays a criminal who would have sold his gang to the cops and run away to Spain. Ten year after his move the boss sends his executioner Hurt along with assistant Roth to find Stamp and bring him to Paris. What follows is a captivating mind game with the three men stuck in a car along with a hot Spanish beauty for colour. Excellent performances from the three men and Stamp I thought was particularly terrific. Great movie all round.

Just started on a first re read of Steven Erikson's Dust of Dreams, book 9 of the Malazan series and first part of the epic 2 part conclusion. This series has been going on for almost ten years now and I've been reading it for just as long. With another 1000 pages to go before Erikson finally concludes the series things are as murky and tangled up as they've ever been. Not the best book of the series by any means but works well as a means to an end.

Rahul Chacko wrote:
Kung Fu Panda was the last up. Best looking movie of the lot, and if you're into martial arts movies in general, their attention to detail is a real treat, the fight scenes especially. It did feel a little rushed, though. So characters do stuff that doesn't make much sense at that point, only because a generic story arc requires that contrivance.

I liked this one a lot for its set pieces. Especially Tai Lung's escape when he's jumping upwards as the rocks are falling down which was totally awesome and that last fight was pretty great too.

The Killer Inside Me by Michael Winterbottom (Code 46) is a dark noir-ish character study of a deputy sheriff of a small town in Texas played by Casey Affleck. The movie is narrated from his point of view and begins with a directive from his boss to evacuate a prostitute (Jessica Alba) from the town. He ends up having a secret affair with her but his motivations are far more insidious than it first seems. It also stars Kate Hudson as the sheriff's lover. The movie has couple of brutal scenes that are unbearable to watch (apparently Jessica Alba walked out of the shooting while filming them) and is very effective in its character portrayal. Worth a watch.

General Knowledge wrote:
I liked this one a lot for its set pieces. Especially Tai Lung's escape when he's jumping upwards as the rocks are falling down which was totally awesome and that last fight was pretty great too.
For sure, those two (along with the chopstick fight for the momo) were my favourites. Plus, I've got to say...
Anyway, thought I'd include some vids for those who haven't seen it yet:

sabman wrote:
The Killer Inside Me by Michael Winterbottom (Code 46) is a dark noir-ish character study of a deputy sheriff of a small town in Texas played by Casey Affleck. The movie is narrated from his point of view and begins with a directive from his boss to evacuate a prostitute (Jessica Alba) from the town. He ends up having a secret affair with her but his motivations are far more insidious than it first seems. It also stars Kate Hudson as the sheriff's lover. The movie has couple of brutal scenes that are unbearable to watch (apparently Jessica Alba walked out of the shooting while filming them) and is very effective in its character portrayal. Worth a watch.

Oh good, been looking forward to this one. The first movie adaptation with Stacey Keach turned out to be quite fuckall after it took me a while to track it down and definitely one of Thompson's best books if not the best book he ever wrote.

Ah. Winterbottom is some serious hit or miss, just like most other highly prolific creative people I suppose. I did really like Code 46 and A Cock and Bull Story.

And yes, Kung Fu Panda is a great tribute to the Chinese martial arts movies. Easily the best Dreamworks outing yet, and it looks the best too. I read some comment/review about this that the Chinese themselves haven't been able to come up with a fitting tribute - and some big hollystudio has pulled off such a great job doing so. So true, and surprising. Like Chacko mentioned, it has its flaws, but it's not that much of a deterrent because as a martial arts movie, it's really solid.

Saw the 1940 version of Thief of Bagdad, which had some pretty good (technicolor) visual sense, and solid presence from a brooding Conrad Veidt and a winsome athletic Sabu. But I didn't enjoy it greatly - too stodgy and stilted in the dialog (Miles Malleson, of all people!), and has songs whoch are downright terrible. The rare relief came from the sassy interplay between Sabu and the genie (Rex Ingram). The spider attack sequence looked very stupid.

^ I begin to suspect you are arachnophoblic. You didn't like the spider in LOTR either, hm?

Saw Halloween II The director's unrated blah blah edition. Between this film and the the first Halloween you really have to wonder if House and The Devil's Rejects were flukes. This movie literally takes off where the other one left off and it shares the first movie's leaden joyless vibe. Michael Myers is back and his sister who survived the first movie and doesn't know she's his sister is very emo and whiny. So is Sherri Moon Zombie, as their mother, who keeps showing up at random, mumbling some inscrutable nonsense.

Absolutely nothing unexpected ever happens. If the camera lingers on any character for more than two minutes or so, you know they are going to die; and that in the same dull way the other characters die, being stabbed in a laborious fashion by Michael M. This film demands huge suspension of disbelief: that a 7 foot plus lug can move around and sneak up on several people absolutely unnoticed and that just about nobody - not even people with guns - ever gets the drop on him. R Zombie calls in a lot of favours to try to make this interesting - getting Weird Al Yankovic in for a cameo and trying to get the audience to like scenes by playing Diamond Head and MC5, but what's the fucking use, when the movie sucks so bad? Also the conclusion is TOTALLY phoned in from TDR - sherriff's possee surrounds killer? Check. Killer goes down in hail of bullets? Check. Sad sentimental songs plays around this sequence? Check. Seriously. Fuck you, Rob Zombie, you unimaginative cunt. I can't even say "go back to making music" cause you suck at that too.

Hausu I suspect the only reason this film is getting the gushing reviews it has got over most of the internet and a release on Criterion is because it is Japanese and there are enough Japanophiles out there who'd watch paint dry provided it was paint from a Japansese company. Anyway this is an idiotic horror spoof film which calls to mind the worst excesses of the Ramsays; right down to unfunny comic characters who would have been played with a lot more irritation inducing conviction by the likes of Jagdeep and Asrani. It's kinda like a vastly inferior version of the Indian sex-horror spoof 'Bhago! Bhoot Aaya.' Some Jap students idiotically named after their attributes; the karate expert - Kung Fu; the geek - Professor; the over-imaginative girl - Fantasy; the pianist - Melody; the fatso - Mac and two others who I can't be arsed to remember, show up at this old bungalow, the ancestral home of one of the girls. They meet her aunt who as it turns out is a witch. Lots of boring scenery is chewed up by the girls yelling each other's names randomly and shrieking KAWAIIII at pretty much everything they see.

Then they begin to be raped and murdered by various items of furniture - Melody gets done in by a piano, Kung Fu by a lampshade and someone else by a Futon. Lots of assholes on places like Something Awful are very thrilled with this movie because it is SUPPOSED to be silly and haha haha those wacky Japanese! I call bullshit. This is an awfully made movie that fails as horror, comedy and pretty much everything else. It's still got a couple of chuckle inducing scenes but nothing that really makes enduring the rest of it worthwhile. It looks quite decent in an oversaturatedly colorful Dario Argento way, though.

Saw this documentary called Heckler made by Jamie Kennedy, star of such films as Son of Mask and Malibu's Most Wanted makes a documentary about movie critics and hecklers in the audience and gets reactions from a whole bunch of stand ups, film makers and actors. Some terrific scenes of stand ups being heckled and totally losing it and basically I guess performers venting all of their frustration on the critics. Ends with Uwe Boll's infamous boxing match where he invited 5 of his critics to get in the ring and proceeded to annihilate them. Generally timepass watch with some very funny bits.

Oh dudes, you want to pick holes in KFP's plot, I'd say the biggest one is the scroll.

But the set-pieces were cool. It looked nice, although no one other than Pixar seems to understand the lighting (especially with sunlight) of animated films. Many scenes here look more fake because of the full brightness settings applied. I liked the style of the 2D opening dream sequence more than the main film.

The guy who played Po's dad had the most convincing old-skool kung fu movie accent. And Jackie Chan gets like half a line, if that? They might have saved on the expense.

Tai Lung was by far the best realized character in the movie in terms of writing. Damn good work there.