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DVDVR Best of 2013 Pimping/Discussion Thread


caley

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As mentioned before, when I saw it, the theater laughed their collective ass off at it, and it got easily the best reaction of any scene in the movie.

 

Like, I mean, the people in the theater when I saw it fucking LOVED that scene.

 

(For the record, so did I.)

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I am not sure if it will make my final list, and it's been a few months since I've seen it. I really enjoyed The Rock's Snitch. That was easily one of his better performances, and a perfectly acceptable genre film. 2013 seemed to be lacking in good genre films after a really strong 2012

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 I don't think anyone necessarily knew who The Mandarin was as a character but what happened was... after the reveal.. a "cool villain" was replaced with a much inferior villain who was all too similar to the villains we had seen in the previous movies.. 

 

That's a worthwhile point.  Why is every one of Stark's villains some kind of Anti-Tony, an eeeeevil arms dealer who wants to take Stark's inventions and rule the world with them?  I'm not much of a fan of superhero movies where the hero's primary accomplishment is belatedly cleaning up the mess which they directly caused.  

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So Dallas Buyers Club was pretty good.  I'm always suspicious of acting performances involving massive weight gain/loss because sometimes it's kinda like "Oh yeah, she lost a lot of weight...I guess she worked pretty hard".  This was not one of those cases as both McConaughey and Leto deliver terrific performances that would be just as good if they hadn't lost an obscene amount of weight.  Jennifer Garner and Griffin Dunne were good, too.  It's a good movie, albeit frustrating with the effort they have to get to just to get medication that works.  And there is one scene with McConaughey and some butterflies (or moths) that is just stunning visual poetry.  I enjoyed this a lot.

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BTW if you haven't seen it yet and are Canadian (I have not seen it, but I am Canadian), Netflix Canada has just added 'Before Midnight' to its rotation.  Critically acclaimed, much beloved flick.  I plan to watch it in the next few days.

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Despicable Me 2 was pretty much exactly what I was expecting: a lot of minions (tons of minions, more minions than before) and a really annoying character voiced by Kristen Wiig.  Plot was pretty much non-existent and it wasn't as funny or surprisingly lovable as the first one.  There's a couple funny parts, though, and the great Pharrell song, so it's not that bad.

 

The Canyons: I was actually looking forward to this, despite the reviews, as I had faith that Paul Schrader could put together a pretty fascinating film on a mostly Kickstarter budget (I love some of Schrader's stuff like 'Blue Collar', 'Mishima' and 'Affliction'), I liked the trailer a lot and I figured that Schrader could coax an interesting performance out of Lindsay Lohan.  I was wrong.  The movie's pretty dull, with negligible plot and Lohan is just dreadful.  When you're being out-acted by a porn star, it might be time to look into another line of work.  It's about awful vapid 20-somethings in LA screwing around, screwing each other over and just being genuinely shitty.  There's some neat cinematography and the score is actually pretty neat at times and I actually wonder if the film would have been a lot more effective if they'd just dubbed over all the dialogue and replaced it with mood music and left the plot, such as it is, up to the viewer's imagination.  Too bad.

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I actually wonder if the film would have been a lot more effective if they'd just dubbed over all the dialogue and replaced it with mood music and left the plot, such as it is, up to the viewer's imagination. 

 

...better write up that brilliant idea soon, or consider it Seahawk'd!  My god, if I ever get around to doing another student film, there's my next gimmick.  

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I actually wonder if the film would have been a lot more effective if they'd just dubbed over all the dialogue and replaced it with mood music and left the plot, such as it is, up to the viewer's imagination. 

 

...better write up that brilliant idea soon, or consider it Seahawk'd!  My god, if I ever get around to doing another student film, there's my next gimmick.  

 

It's all yours, Jingus!  The music and cinematography of the film actually did create a sense of dread, though the feeling more often eclipsed what was actually going on once they started speaking: "I really loved you...in my way" 

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I've watched Stranger By The Lake and Museum Hours, and I guess I burned myself out last year with that whole World Cup project because I really can't find the motivation to write anything about them.  Put it this way, they were both alright, and with Museum Hours I would really love to see someone who knows more about movies than me write a piece on it, but I don't think either one will be making my list.

 

Still planning to watch The Past, Short Term 12, Her, and possibly Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Club.

 

The Canyons: I was actually looking forward to this, despite the reviews, as I had faith that Paul Schrader could put together a pretty fascinating film on a mostly Kickstarter budget (I love some of Schrader's stuff like 'Blue Collar', 'Mishima' and 'Affliction'), I liked the trailer a lot and I figured that Schrader could coax an interesting performance out of Lindsay Lohan.  I was wrong.

 

FWIW I have a friend who said virtually this exact same thing.  He heard from a lot of people that it was terrible, thought that he might be the one person who could appreciate it, and nope, it really was terrible.

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Highly recommend you make time for 'Her', it's my working #1 unless something else comes along unexpectedly and blows me away (Still have about 21 on my realistic To-Watch list).  Also warmly recommend 'Dallas Buyers Club'.  I might make it out to 'Short Term 12'...probably not 'Wolf' at this point as it's not playing anywhere near me.

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So I'm really trying to buckle down and list everything I've already seen that has a release date of 2013 on Rotten Tomatoes, I think I've got just about all of them... and it's a list of fifty-three.  Good lord.

 

Also it looks like Stranger By The Lake is 2014 on RT, so it wouldn't be eligible anyway.

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 I'm embarrassed to list my number....126, but I'm a pretty big film nerd. Ill definitely be submitting a top 25. There are a few big holes in my 2013 viewing still. Inside Llewyn Davis and Stoker, I should get to this weekend.

 

A few films sure to show up on my list that either have gotten talked about in her or need more love:

 

The Past: Another masterpiece from Farhadi. If you saw A Seperation you know what you're getting, an intense, compelling family drama.

 

The Hunger Games Catching Fire: I know, I know, but these movies are so damn compelling. Jennifer Lawrence is a powerhouse and she surrounded by other great performances. The themes can be a little on the nose, but the work brilliantly.

 

Rush: I know absolutely nothing about Formula One and I was glued to my seat the entire time. A story about two assholes, but you're rooting for both of them.

 

The Spectacular Now: Its straight forward, but doesn't fall into coming of age teen movie cliches. Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller and outstanding, two of the best performances of 2013.

 

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Weekend Watching

 

All is Bright: Offbeat little Christmas movie with Paul Giamatti as Dennis, a recently paroled thief, who tries to go back to his family, only to learn his wife has told his daughter he died and that she's in love with his ex-partner Rene (Paul Rudd).  Dennis strongarms Rene into taking him along on a trip to the US where the two of them will sell Christmas trees in NYC, with Rene frequently passing himself off as French Canadian to make sales.  Dennis befriends a Russian housekeeper (Sally Hawkins) who offers him some kindness, something the curmudgeonly Dennis seems to be unfamiliar with.  Not a lot happens, but Rudd and Giamatti are just perfect in their roles (Is there a more naturally likable working actor than Rudd?!) and it's got a really good, solid bittersweet but slightly warm little ending.  What first drew me to the film, actually, was the fact that it's only the 2nd film since since his debut in 2005 (One of my favourite films of that decade: 'Junebug') of director Phil Morrison.

 

Prince Avalanche: I might be in the minority here (55% rating amongst the audience on RT) but I loved this movie.  Paul Rudd (Again!) plays a road crew guy charged with painting lines and putting in markers way out in the sticks in Texas.  Accompanied just by Lance (Emile Hirsch) his girlfriend's brother, they respectively, revel and bemoan the isolation.  If not a lot happens in 'All is Bright', well pretty much absolutely nothing happens in 'Prince Avalanche', but somehow it's completely engrossing.  The two work, fight, argue, meet another random road worker (Lance LeGault), pick through the rubble of burnt-out homes, and then go home for the weekend.  But it's got some great cinematography by Tim Orr that'll make you want to go camping right away (And I don't even LIKE camping) and a terrific score by David Wingo and Explosions in the Sky and Rudd and Hirsch hit all the right notes and LeGault steals every scene he's in just several months before the actor's real-life death.  It's much closer to director David Gordon Green's early fare (Think 'George Washington') than his recent fare ('The Sitter' & 'Your Highness).  I really loved this a lot.

 

12 Years A Slave: Pretty staggering film that leaves you emotionally exhausted by the end.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is just amazing in this and as much as I loved McConaughey in DBC, I might have to give the edge to Ejiofor.  Great supporting cast: Michael Fassbender is just a tornado of rage and abuse, Paul Dano shines in a small but impossibly cruel role, Benedict Cumberbatch and Brad Pitt provide brief respite of being non-assholes in asshole-prevalant film, and Lupita Nyong'o is devastating, not to mention small powerful turns by Paul Giamatti, Scoot McNairy, Sarah Paulsen, and Michael K. Williams (Whom I didn't even recognize!).  But, it's not just one of those films that's an acting clinic and the director sits back and lets them go, director Steve McQueen has some astonishing camera work and long takes, and the sound editing is just incredible.  A really great film, but it's hard to say "Boy, I loved it!" because it's so damn dark and depressing.

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Some things I've seen recently that haven't been mentioned yet:

 

Leviathan: This made a bunch of critics' top ten year-end lists, and there's at least one list that has it at #1.  It's a documentary about commercial fishing, mostly shot on fishing boats - but there is virtually no dialogue, other than the occasional few words from people working on the ships, so all you're going to learn from this is what you see.  It can be breathtaking, mainly because of the camera being willing to go right into everything.  There are shots that bounce in and out of the water, following the boat, as hundreds of seagulls move along with it; shots that get right into piles of fish, with the reds turned way up and glowing like in a horror movie so that you're very aware that you're surrounded by dead creatures; and underwater shots that show nets being pulled up, disturbing all kinds of shellfish and starfish, floating around like they're in a snow globe.  Amusingly, scientific names of fish are listed in the credits, right in along with the names of all the ship workers.  This has a shot at making the low end of my list.

 

100 Bloody Acres: Gory Australian comedy where a couple of hillbilly brothers who run a bone meal fertilizer business have found that their product becomes a lot better with ground-up humans.  They'd been using already-dead car crash victims, but when one of them picks up three hitchhikers, they have to decide if they're willing to kill living people.  And one of the brothers is much more eager to kill them than the other.  It's a good movie, and there are some definite laugh-out-loud moments, one when the brothers hear their radio commercial for the first time at the worst possible moment, and another that reminds you never to throw a knife to someone.  Don't think it'll show up on my list, though.

 

The Act of Killing: This Best Documentary nominee has a very good chance of being my #1.  I actually saw it quite a while ago, and I feel like I've been pimping it a whole lot on the board, but it hasn't been mentioned at all in this thread.  So - in Indonesia in the 1960s, there was a government coup that led to a large number of communists being killed, around half a million.  Of course, when you're killing someone for an ideology, you can pretty much kill anyone you want.  Some of the people that committed these murders are still in positions of power in Indonesia today.  The director gets in with a bunch of them, including one man who's said to have killed over 1000 people, and offers them the chance to write and star in their own scripted movie about the killings (but he wasn't being entirely truthful, as the only movie that came out of this is this documentary).  This is about those people and the making of that movie.  It's almost too much to handle in a lot of places, as the subjects are very proud of their past, eager to talk about the killings, and treated with reverence by a lot of Indonesians.  Jaw-dropping, and very tough to wrap your mind around.  The last scene, and for that matter the closing credits, are just amazing.

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I know it says the 17th in the first post, but the due date is the 22nd, right?

 

I'm setting February 22nd as the date

 

 

I wasn't aware I'd put a date in the first post...Whoops-a-Daisy!

 

So, yeah, the 22nd is the date, but it's probably gonna end up being more like the 24th.  I have three ballots already, but those folks are all welcome to continue watching, adding movies to and/or re-ordering their ballots up to Friday (And likely Monday!) as I haven't really tallied anything (Or even figured out a proper scoring system yet).  I'll try to make an announcement when it's coming up on a 'hard ending'.

 

So, for all intents and purposes, the real end date is the 24th, but the beginning of the end is the 22nd.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have 9 ballots, so far.  Deadline is midnight tomorrow.  PM me if you can't make it and we'll work something out.

 

I have ballots from

Myself

Ray

The Natural

Theonlyrice

Niners Fan in CT

Cameron Swift

Fat Spanish Waiter

The Damn Yeti

Suicide King of Spades

 

If you're name's not listed but you're sure you sent a ballot, post in this thread and we'll figure out where I went wrong.  If you think of someone who would like to vote, PM me or them and get the word out.  The more ballots the better!

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I guess we're in the vote-recount stage.  Might be my fault that it's dragging, I only finally sent Caley a ballot yestetday after he kept knocking down all my excuses for not submitting one.  

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I emailed mine to Caley, so I hope he saw it. I really hate that I didn't have time to see so much else. Although, I really like the ballot I submitted, so if it's a partial one... it's a good one.

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I guess we're in the vote-recount stage.  Might be my fault that it's dragging, I only finally sent Caley a ballot yestetday after he kept knocking down all my excuses for not submitting one.  

I just had 4 films I'd been meaning to see fall into my lap this week, so there's a good chance I won't really start putting this together until the weekend.  So feel free to use the extra time for whatever and if you're planning on seeing some more movies and want to re-order your list, I'll accept them right up until Friday...and if you want to send in a ballot and haven't done so yet, I'll also give you to Friday.  My apologies for the delay, but it's also the NHL Trade Deadline this week and my attention is kinda diverted onto that, too.

 

Thus far, I have ballots from

 

Myself
Ray
The Natural
Theonlyrice
Niners Fan in CT
Cameron Swift
Fat Spanish Waiter
The Damn Yeti
Suicide King of Spades
RonL21
jingus
Chaos
 
And one more incoming from throughsilver.
 
If you see anyone who probably should have voted and didn't, shoot them a PM for me, or let me know and I will shoot them one myself.
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Dammit, I should really do this.

 

But I always feel bad about the highly regarded indie films that never play within 90 miles of me that I don't see and thus can't vote for and then I'm also lazy and just got the WWE Network and I still have to catch last night's True Detective and...

 

I should do a ballot.

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