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NOV 2016 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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Labryinth 2 with anyone other than Bowie specifically being called the Goblin King doesn't work.

But give Ellen Page the lead role, make sure Jennifer Connelly is in it somewhere, and cast Tom Waits as the villain with songs in his heart, and I think you've got something.

 

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Anyone can be Goblin King. Kingship is temporary, and King Jareth probably lost a lot of power after Sarah escaped with Toby.

Come to think of it, Jennifer Connelly playing grown up Sarah as the Goblin Queen would totally work.

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George Miller thinks this looks better in B&W:

Also, today we watched The Dark Knight, and then Crank. Crank is clearly the better movie in every way. But anyway, it got me thinking: There are very few movie directors who I've seen everything they've directed, but purely by coincidence, Christopher Nolan and Neveldine/ Taylor (or at least the Taylor part, apparently Neveldine did a horror movie last year I've not seen) are on the list. Edgar Wright is on the list, if you don't count a Fistful of Fingers.

Love David Lynch, seen everything he's made except the Straight Story. Robert Rodriguez, not seen Shark Boy & Lavagirl or half of the Spy Kids movies. Tarantino, not seen Hateful 8 yet, or Four Rooms.

So, does anyone here go out of their way to see everything directors do? Or have you got odd gaps like me?

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I'd like to say I've seen all of John Carpenter's works. Guess I should go look at his wiki page to make sure now that I'm thinking of it.

I've seen all of Tarantino and George Lucas' films. Probably seen all that John Landis, Spielberg and Lynch have come up with, but there could be ones I've not yet gotten to.

I wish I could say I've seen all of Kurosawa's works, but I know there's numerous ones I've not had the chance to check out yet.

 

 

 

 

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Aw man, no love for Four Rooms? Tim Roth puking over the dead hooker and changing his accent in the last segment are worth the price of purchase alone. 

I've probably seen all of Tarantino because I've grown up with him and his list is short but most of my other favorite directors have blindspots, some good (The King of Comedy and After Hours come to mind), some bad (Zev, have fun watching Ghosts of Mars). 

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19 hours ago, HumanChessgame said:

You're going to get Lady Gaga as the Goblin Queen and one of Will Smith's kids in the Sarah role and you're going to like it.

Lady Gaga as the Goblin Queen wouldn't  be the worst decision for a remake.

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Quote

A record 27 features have been submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category for the 89th Academy Awards. The submitted animated features, listed in alphabetical order, are:

The Angry Birds Movie
April and the Extraordinary World
Bilal
Finding Dory
Ice Age: Collision Course
Kingsglaive Final Fantasy XV
Kubo and the Two Strings
Kung Fu Panda 3
The Little Prince
Long Way North
Miss Hokusai
Moana
Monkey King: Hero Is Back
Mune
Mustafa & the Magician
My Life as a Zucchini
Phantom Boy
The Red Turtle
Sausage Party
The Secret Life of Pets
Sing
Snowtime!
Storks
Trolls
25 April
Your Name.
Zootopia

Which one of the animated features do you think will win?

Several of the films have not yet had their required Los Angeles qualifying run. Submitted animated features must fulfill the theatrical release requirements and comply with all of the category’s other qualifying rules before they can advance in the voting process. Depending on the number of films that qualify, two to five nominees may be voted. Sixteen or more films must qualify for the maximum of five nominees to be voted.

 

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5 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Aw man, no love for Four Rooms? Tim Roth puking over the dead hooker and changing his accent in the last segment are worth the price of purchase alone. 

I've probably seen all of Tarantino because I've grown up with him and his list is short but most of my other favorite directors have blindspots, some good (The King of Comedy and After Hours come to mind), some bad (Zev, have fun watching Ghosts of Mars). 

I saw Ghosts of Mars in the theater during its opening week and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Ditto with Escape from L.A.

 

As for King of Comedy, every one should see that at least once. Bonus points if you spot the guys from The Clash.

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I watched STAR TREK BEYOND the other night, and it was just fine.

But, man, 2016 was a rough year for great actors being forced into ungodly amounts of makeup and prosthetics only to be wasted in lame roles.  First Oscar Isaac in X-Men, then Idris Elba here.

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6 hours ago, (BP) said:

The last of half of Four Rooms makes up for slogging through the first.

After Hours is wonderful. If that's anyone's Scorsese blind spot I encourage you to check it out. 

Oh, I would if I could (King of Comedy too) but since I don't have/can't afford Netflix and me (and Zeidler's) great emporium Rentertainment died a couple years ago, I'd have to buy 'em to watch 'em. Actually they might be a good Xmas gift idea, they get a Criterion release or anything? 

EDIT: Also reminds me, I've never seen The Last Temptation of Christ, Wolf of Wall Street, or The Aviator either. Gangs of New York happened to be on the other night and that is still incredibly entertaining.  

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That has to be the nicest thing ever said about Ghosts of Mars, btw. Still haven't seen it myself. Escape from LA was great when I watched it at a Florida theater as a kid but not so good later, it being a clear imitation of its predecessor. And then I caught Vampires at a bar in Springfield, IL and that was the shit. This also brings to mind, are Someone's Watching Me! and Elvis as good as they're supposed to be, and easily available on DVD?

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I haven't seen every David Fincher movie. There are three I haven't seen, two of which I already own on DVD/ Blu Ray, and both are still in their cellophane on a shelf five feet from where I'm sitting. Pretty embarrassing really.

Someone I'm sure we can all think of is bound to have watched every Michael Bay movie ever, but he can't post here anymore. So never mind.

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5 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

That has to be the nicest thing ever said about Ghosts of Mars, btw. Still haven't seen it myself. Escape from LA was great when I watched it at a Florida theater as a kid but not so good later, it being a clear imitation of its predecessor. And then I caught Vampires at a bar in Springfield, IL and that was the shit. This also brings to mind, are Someone's Watching Me! and Elvis as good as they're supposed to be, and easily available on DVD?

I don't know about DVD availability, but I did happen upon Someone's Watching Me! on the youtube after my previous post in this thread.

 

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Today was a "Stay in Bed with The Wife and Cuddle with The Dog While Watching Movies Day". We made it through The Peanuts Movie, The Brothers Grimmsby, The Monuments Men and 1/4 of the way through Hail Ceasar!

We LOVED LOVED LOVED The Peanuts Movie. Sure there were some issues with it (the biggest of course being that they actually showed The Little Red Headed Girl) but overall it was what I love about Peanuts and its characters. Hell it even had Shermy in it (though not 5 and since when is Patty a blonde?). I hope ther eis a sequel and pray we get an actual baseball game between chuck and Peppermint Patty's teams.

The Brothers Grimmsby was a pleasant surprise for us. I wasn't sure about it because I'm not the hugest Sascha Baron Cohen fan. But it had some genuinely funny moments and even some brilliant gross out humor in it. Really better than expected.

We both liked The Monuments Men a lot. I'm a sucker for good WW II movie that isn't necessarily about direct confrontation betwen the Allies and Germans and this movie was that type of movie. Its not Clooney's best directorial effort but is by no means bad. Its worth a watch.

(for the record, Hallie, The Wonder Dog liked The Peanuts Movie best)

James

 

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I just read the real facts behind the movie and Gibson actually left stuff out - stuff that actually happened - because he thought audiences wouldn't believe it. 

Basically, they were a little loose with the facts before the war stuff and pretty accurate with the war scenes. 

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On 11/11/2016 at 2:24 PM, S.K.o.S. said:

I hope lots of you are planning to see Arrival this weekend so I can finally start having a conversation about it!

It was fucking great!  So much crying in my theater...

In a time when dystopia and "gritty sci-fi" is all the rage, it was refreshing to see a modern day sci-fi film that reached all the way back to Golden Age Sci-Fi Movie classics like The Day The Earth Stood Still for inspiration.

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For whatever reason, Arrival makes me want to be all nitpicky about certain things.  I need to rewatch it to get a firm handle on the dialogue in a couple of scenes, but my main (very nitpicky) issue is:

In the movie's universe, there appears to be just one single possible timeline.  Therefore any character getting upset at Amy Adams' "decisions" regarding her child doesn't really understand what's going on.  A single future implies that all your decisions are preordained and there is no free will.

I could totally understand someone hearing that and reacting like "you're thinking too hard," but it just jumped out at me.  I probably need to read that Ted Chiang short story that it's based on too.

And yes it's great, probably top 5 for the year, and yes I was holding back tears for the last, I don't know, 20 minutes.

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As per your spoiler:

Spoiler

The story and the movie rely heavily on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (aka linguistic complexity is a true gauge of heightened intellect and that "superior languages" can actually be affected by temporal perception).

In the "universe of the story" there are multiple timestreams, but depending on your cognitive ability, you can only naturally perceive one time stream at a time.  As your cognitive ability expands, you might be able to perceive multiple time streams at the same time and the way you communicate with other beings will be a reflection of that. 

Your "natural" language will be a reflection of your enhanced ability to perceive time because you will be aware of the fact that you exist in multiple time streams simultaneously. 

If that is the case, then not only do you need a language that is capable of communicating of individuals in your "natural" time lane; you need a language capable of communicating with individuals that exist in adjacent time streams..

The reason the alien language is so difficult to translate is that we're only hearing part of the message.  Our cognitive ability does not allow us to perceive the parts of their communication that are occurring in different time streams. 

Classic "if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a noise?" conundrum.  We humans cannot "hear" the parts of the alien communication not taking place in the time line we perceive naturally.

The decisions that Louise Banks makes do indeed affect her child, but they only affect her child in the temporal plane that she can perceive.   The alien's language shows that they can perceive more concurrent time lanes than we can and when Louise learns to translate the language, she begins to understand that she actually does have the free will to affect actual change even if that change does not happen in the time lane that serves as her "reality."

That's why Louise loses her fear about her child dying at the end of the movie and decides to get pregnant.  She knows that regardless of how she is able to perceive time or if her baby dies in the temporal plane she can perceive, there will be an alternate lane where her baby could live a healthy life and her new linguistic ability will allow her to see her child grow up in the alternate time lane.

And yeah, if you are going to read Story Of Your Life by Ted Chiang, make sure you have plenty of Kleenex nearby.

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The weakness of the premise of the movie is that:

Spoiler

The more extreme version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (language determinism) is that it flies directly in the face of the Theory of Relativity and Fermat's Principle of Least Time.

Light and Time will take the path of least dilation or divergence even when encountering a medium which interrupts their respective paths.  Time never splits off into an alternate lane, but it can be rendered non-existent (ie. inside a black hole, there is no such thing as time or space.)

The more accepted form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is linguistic influence (ie. our language evolves as a the culture or means of communication changes). 

For example.  humans have always communicated through pictures as well as words, but rarely incorporated them into the spoken word. 

Now that we communicate through the medium of cell phones, picture communication like emoji's and the like are being used in conjunction with actual words. 

As use of portable tech becomes more commonplace in society, communication via picture may eventually supplant communication via word use.

 

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