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JANUARY 2015 MOVIE DISCUSSION


RIPPA

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'Elizabethtown' is a better movie.

 

I've never gotten the hype for 'Almost Famous'.  Patrick Fugit is good, the bands are fine, the music's okay, Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, the Frances McDormand stuff is cringe-inducingly bad like just awful.  Dialogue is often goofy.  I'd maybe go as high as 6/10 myself.  Susan Sarandon's performance alone, in 'Elizabethtown' is probably better than any single performance in 'Almost Famous'.

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I would ask which cut of the film you watched.

I havent watched it in years, but i would certainly put it in a list of top films of the decade.

I watched it on Netflix so probably the theatrical cut.

There's a lot to like in the movie - Patrick Fugit was good, Jason Lee was really good, the music was good, etc, but the sum is less than its parts. It ends just being kinda "there".

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Yeah...5/10 for Almost Famous is one of the stranger opinions I've seen. I'm almost afraid to ask if Tabe likes Elizabethtown more...

Until this post had never heard of Elizabethtown.

You've all heard why I thought it was "eh", how about saying why you liked it?

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I would ask which cut of the film you watched.

I havent watched it in years, but i would certainly put it in a list of top films of the decade.

I watched it on Netflix so probably the theatrical cut.

There's a lot to like in the movie - Patrick Fugit was good, Jason Lee was really good, the music was good, etc, but the sum is less than its parts. It ends just being kinda "there".

Not surprisingly, the director's cut is a better movie, i think.

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Hey Tabe, since I'm watching it on BET right now and you just watched Selma, have you ever seen Malcolm X and what did you think?

I have not. I've somehow missed it.
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Fun weekend for movies with an interesting bookend of titles:

Selma - I don't like it when movies are called "important". It's such a pretentious description and feels like an attempt to add greater "weight" to a medium where it just really doesn't apply. Not to imply art can't "mean something", I just think it's a reach to call movies "important". This one? It's important. I grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood/school. At various times, my best friend was Japanese, Hispanic, black and white. My wife and nephew, who saw Selma with me, did not. They are both from lily-white backgrounds and I think that has distanced them a little bit from the importance of the civil rights movement. I don't mean that I've got some great insight or anything, just that I'm a little more familiar with it than they are. Anyway, this was a movie I felt they needed to see. Selma tells the story of the march from Selma to Mongtomery in early 1965 in protest of laws that prevented blacks from voting. And it tells that story extremely well. The cast is impeccable - David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr is an absolute riveting, magnetic revelation. The pacing is generally terrific, though it could have been tightened up just a bit. While there are a couple gripes with its accuracy - LBJ is (as the producers have admitted) portrayed more negatively than the reality - the overall result is one of authenticity. We are given a full picture of the various groups at the time. MLK is portrayed as less than perfect (his extramarital affairs are mentioned) and there is conflict and infighting. But we still see the grand vision and passion of King and his incredible charisma. This is a knockout movie - really, really good. And you just might learn something from it, as my wife & nephew did. 9/10.

 

 

Yeah, but think of how much money it would have made if they'd cast Christian Bale as MLK-- The producers of Exodus, probably.

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IMO, the most obvious "movie reboot with a sympathetic villain" is Jaws.

 

-The shark wasn't doing anything wrong. It's supposed to be in the frigging water.

-Humans kill like 100 million sharks per year. Sharks kill a handful of humans.

 

Reboot the movie with a (non-annoying) animal rights activist going along on the expedition with the trio to point this all out and you have a Hollywood movie remake that actually does have a different spin on things.

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IMO, the most obvious "movie reboot with a sympathetic villain" is Jaws.

 

-The shark wasn't doing anything wrong. It's supposed to be in the frigging water.

-Humans kill like 100 million sharks per year. Sharks kill a handful of humans.

 

Reboot the movie with a (non-annoying) animal rights activist going along on the expedition with the trio to point this all out and you have a Hollywood movie remake that actually does have a different spin on things.

When i read the first line,i thought you meant the Bond villain.

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IMO, the most obvious "movie reboot with a sympathetic villain" is Jaws.

-The shark wasn't doing anything wrong. It's supposed to be in the frigging water.

-Humans kill like 100 million sharks per year. Sharks kill a handful of humans.

Reboot the movie with a (non-annoying) animal rights activist going along on the expedition with the trio to point this all out and you have a Hollywood movie remake that actually does have a different spin on things.

I want to hear the shark giving the Indianapolois speech to two other sharks from a sharks perspective.
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IMO, the most obvious "movie reboot with a sympathetic villain" is Jaws.

-The shark wasn't doing anything wrong. It's supposed to be in the frigging water.

-Humans kill like 100 million sharks per year. Sharks kill a handful of humans.

Reboot the movie with a (non-annoying) animal rights activist going along on the expedition with the trio to point this all out and you have a Hollywood movie remake that actually does have a different spin on things.

I want to hear the shark giving the Indianapolois speech to two other sharks from a sharks perspective.

 

 

"We have our space...the water. They have their space...the land. Then one night...the humans came cruisin'. So we formed into groups. You know the thing about humans...they've got lifeless eyes, dead eyes, doll's eyes..."

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Yeah, I've seen reviews talking about hoe Foxcatcher is a fantastic study in the physical expression of maleness through non-verbal communication, and I've also seen reviews where they said it was boring, snail-paced and featured lots of long scenes in which nothing happens and nobody says anything for ages. So I might wait for telly on that one.

 

Plus everyone's playing the don't google it, you'll spoil the ending thing, but I thought everyone knew what happened in real life anyway. It's in Kurt Angle's autobiography and stuff.

 

Shit, I remember when it happened.

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Yeah, I've seen reviews talking about hoe Foxcatcher is a fantastic study in the physical expression of maleness through non-verbal communication, and I've also seen reviews where they said it was boring, snail-paced and featured lots of long scenes in which nothing happens and nobody says anything for ages. So I might wait for telly on that one.

 

Plus everyone's playing the don't google it, you'll spoil the ending thing, but I thought everyone knew what happened in real life anyway. It's in Kurt Angle's autobiography and stuff.

 

Shit, I remember when it happened.

 

I do, too.  And apparently I was the only one, when discussing it with either my father or mother, neither of them remembered

that Du Pont actually killed someone

I can remember watching a thing on the news about it, but apparently I was the only one it made an impact on.

 

By the way, the most fascinating thing about John Du Pont might be this little anecdote from Wikipedia

Du Pont was also a philatelist. In a 1980 auction, while bidding anonymously, he paid $935,000 for one of the rarest stamps in the world, the British Guiana 1856 1c black on magenta.[13] After his death, that stamp was sold at auction for $9.5 million (inclusive of buyer's premium) at Sotheby's June 17, 2014. For the fourth time that stamp broke the record for a single stamp's sale.[14] The one-of-a-kind stamp was part of the estate of du Pont. According to du Pont's will – unsuccessfully challenged by several parties – 80 percent of the sale proceeds go to the family of Bulgarian wrestler Valentin Jordanov Dimitrov and 20 percent goes to the Eurasian Pacific Wildlife Foundation, based in Paoli, Pennsylvania, a group du Pont founded to support Pacific wildlife.

 

Imagine being that wrestler's family! 

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Nobody picked up the "why is Almost Famous good" gauntlet that Tabe dropped. K.

 

 

It's well performed, well directed, well scored, has a great sense of atmosphere, and is a story I enjoy. Jason Lee is a magnificent weasely heel. Patrick Fugit is a fantastic face.  I will say it's not funny, particularly, and Kate Hudson was merely not horrible as opposed to good, but that alone is rare for her.

 

 

I think it's top ten all time for me, but that's an ever-changing list. Certainly a comfort movie I can watch time and time again.

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Kate Hudson is also one of the earliest versions of the Manic-Pixie Dream Girl which became a big thing throughout the aughts.

 

A girl I had a crush on for years shares a lot of Penny Lane's characteristics. 

 

I was exposed to that film 8-9 years ago. I was the right age for it, and I saw it as my music and film taste was still evolving.  That soundtrack alone had me grinning from ear to ear the entire film.

 

I am not sure that I have ever seen the theatrical cut of that movie, but the Director's cut is wonderful.

 

Also, the "Tiny Dancer" scene is one of my favorite "sing-along scenes" in film. It's right up there with "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Wayne's World for me, and Almost Famous is an infinitely better film than Wayne's World.

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Malcolm X fucking rules.  Denzel and Spike should've won Oscars and the movie single handedly dispelled all of the misconceptions about Malcolm's life without being pretentious.

 

Selma is also a very good and very important film.  I think it is essential to point out that King did not make that journey alone and I think we have deified MLK to the point where we forget about the nameless and faceless people that marched for freedom along with him. 

 

I think one of the most significant elements of Selma is the focus on Rosetta and Martin's marriage.  I don't think that we fully realize or appreciate the sacrifices black women made during the movement.  There are streets and bridges named after MLK, but you don't see too many Fanny Lou Hamer Boulevards or Claudette Colvin Avenues. 

 

The fact that Black women have contributed their talents and given their lives to the struggle makes Ava DuVernay's Oscar snub all the more painful for me.  Given the new flash of racial tension in the US, I wonder what would King say if he were alive today.

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I forgot about Tabe's gauntlet. Yeah, I am not a big Cameron Crowe fan at all. I don't like Jerry McGuire and I really don't like Elizabethtow (shitty knock off of Garden State), but Almost Famous just brings about so many good feels. It definitely was well directed and the music is awesome. There are some "coming of age" movies that I quite like, but Almost Famous may be the best of those. That kid/Cameron Crowe goes on such an incredible journey and the movie really captures how absurd it was. Like, none of that should have been happening. Also, Jason Lee was great and the Tiny Dancer scene is great too.

 

Oh, and the fake out with the plane got me good in the theater.

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