Oh It'll be a great Christmas..
I'm so pumped for Gangs of New York. Can't wait to see some Day-Lewis butt-kickin'.
My favorites this year:
1. 8 Women (I hope this gets nominated for best foreign)
2. Frida (no comment)
3. Ararat
4. Bowling For Columbine
5. Igby Goes Down
6. Heaven
7. Punch Drunk Love
8. Auto Focus
9. 8 Mile (Yep, I thought this was pretty damn good)
10. Goldmember (just for the mini-me thrashing scene)
Oh yeah, and "Jackass" was a quality film. Laughed my hole off...Where else are you gonna get Buck Owens and Public Enemy on the same soundtrack?
You never get a second chance..
Seeing these films on the big screen is what prompts me to find the time.
I only own DVD & VHS mats because I'm catching up on the history of film thru home video. There's no excuse why people shouldn't see films as they were originally intended.
NOTE: this message was for single people with no known commitments: children, mortgage, meaningful relationships, cats, dogs or other domestic pets (see section 5 re: large snakes & arachnids) and spend 8 hours a day immersed in film lore.
"Confessions" Way Up There
I saw "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" over the weekend as well as "Adaptations" earlier this month and I'm really, really impressed. Both movies are among my favorites during the past year. Both have really unique plots, twists, great characters, substantive and meaningful.
Learning to love Charlie is a gradual thing
I think you really have to know where Charlie Kaufmans coming from to appreciate his screenplays. When I saw Being John Malkovitch I was prejudiced against it due to all the hype about how hip it was but more and more Im catching on that Charlie is all about a meta-fiction kind of thing something I know about from books. The twists are new and fresh, though, and it's cool that the best people are hot to work with him.
Only good can come out of this.
Shyamalan aims high but falls short
I agree with tabuno
"Signs" doesn't quite work for the reasons you mentioned.
But I also agree with Mark Dujsik
Shyamalan is a gifted filmmaker who uses the great cinematic conventions powerfully and knows how to construct a movie according to the classic mold.
In retrospect, while "Signs" has all the earmarks of mainstream perfection, it wasn't his best effort after all.
Maybe what's holding him back from achieving the promise of greatness is this:
There's something hokey -- and occasionally defective -- about his screenplays. Maybe he just ought to have a little more help in writing them.
Re: Shyamalan aims high but falls short
Quote:
Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Shyamalan is a gifted filmmaker who uses the great cinematic conventions powerfully and knows how to construct a movie according to the classic mold.
In retrospect, while "Signs" has all the earmarks of mainstream perfection, it wasn't his best effort after all.
Maybe what's holding him back from achieving the promise of greatness is this:
There's something hokey -- and occasionally defective -- about his screenplays. Maybe he just ought to have a little more help in writing them.
Well the material he's covered in his past three films is inherently hokey, but what he's done with all three of them is to take that material and make it about one specific person coming to grips with it.
Just curious, what do you think is his best effort so far? If we don't count Signs, I'd say Unbreakable.
Signs Still Has Raises More Questions
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Dujsik
What local law enforcement? It's a small town, they're probably with their own families or at least useless against the aliens. In all seriousness, though, did you really wonder, "Where are the cops?" while you watching the film near the end? The brother is hardly extraneous. He's there for support for the family, and he serves as the antithesis to Gibson's character in regards to faith. If you had said (or mean) that his role as comic relief was extraneous, I would have disagreed with you, but I would have seen where you were coming from. I haven't read War of the Worlds (never got to it), but the ending to me just completely works. As for the aliens, we only see one, and when it comes down to it, that scene is not about an alien, just as the film is not really about alien invasion. And it's Night's first try at CGI, so we should cut him some slack. :)
(1) The local law enforcement, Officer Paski who was so prominent in the first half of the movie suddenly drops off the face of the earth in the movie, someone who seems to sincerely care about the people in her small town. It is just because it is a small town, how they all look out for each other, that her absence is strangely missed. It would be expected that she would have made one last call, to check on the Hess family and let them know what she knew.
(2) What made "The Others" with Nicole Kidman so successful was the intimate focus on her as a mother and her two little children. I found the brother in "Signs" distracting, an added excessive baggage that really wasn't needed. It would have been much more scarier having Mel Gibson having to face the unknown all by himself with his children. With the brother there it seemed to deflate the potential horror-thriller element that the movie could have been.
(3) The single alien - the ending is just too pat nowadays. The sophistication by which the alien population dominated the earth is so staggering that the concept of water which is obvious that the earth is composed most of and the cloud covering and weather patterns, again so obvious make the ending all too unbelievable. Again the alien doesn't seem to reflect at all what happened to the rest of the world outside. It's almost as if we're seeing two different movies, one not related to the other. The whole assumption that the aliens were bad appeared reversed as it seems that Mel Gibson was more of the aggressor from the get go. No wonder the alien was mad and hostile. For me, Signs was about the answer to the crop sitings, without the Aliens, their explanation, there is no movie. No serious Aliens, no serious movie.
Re: Signs Still Has Raises More Questions
Quote:
Originally posted by tabuno
(1) The local law enforcement, Officer Paski who was so prominent in the first half of the movie suddenly drops off the face of the earth in the movie, someone who seems to sincerely care about the people in her small town. It is just because it is a small town, how they all look out for each other, that her absence is strangely missed. It would be expected that she would have made one last call, to check on the Hess family and let them know what she knew.
Fair enough. I'll pay attention when I watch it again, but I've seen it three times now, and it never bothered me.
Quote:
(2) What made "The Others" with Nicole Kidman so successful was the intimate focus on her as a mother and her two little children. I found the brother in "Signs" distracting, an added excessive baggage that really wasn't needed. It would have been much more scarier having Mel Gibson having to face the unknown all by himself with his children. With the brother there it seemed to deflate the potential horror-thriller element that the movie could have been.
Not sure what you mean. Do you mean that there was a sense of security with him around? Perhaps, though, he is just as scared as everyone else around him. And I thought the family dynamics were especially developed and were at the heart of the film.
Quote:
(3) The single alien - the ending is just too pat nowadays. The sophistication by which the alien population dominated the earth is so staggering that the concept of water which is obvious that the earth is composed most of and the cloud covering and weather patterns, again so obvious make the ending all too unbelievable. Again the alien doesn't seem to reflect at all what happened to the rest of the world outside. It's almost as if we're seeing two different movies, one not related to the other. The whole assumption that the aliens were bad appeared reversed as it seems that Mel Gibson was more of the aggressor from the get go. No wonder the alien was mad and hostile. For me, Signs was about the answer to the crop sitings, without the Aliens, their explanation, there is no movie. No serious Aliens, no serious movie.
Has anyone thought that perhaps the reason the aliens came to Earth was to take specimens to discover why we are immune to water, since our planet and its atmosphere is composed primarily of it? The alien is cut off from the rest of what's going on in the world outside. They left behind their wounded. Well, the aliens are bad because they killed people, although, it'd be ironic if Gibson's poor intergalactic social skills helped incite a full-blown invasion.
And if the movie was about crop signs and aliens for you, well then, you're right, there is no movie.
Comments about Best lists
The last two lists posted (ArpHagenbach and Mark Dujsik) represent film buffs at opposing poles. Arp's list contains a single english language film (the lovely Far from Heaven) and Mark D ignores there are films being made outside of Hollywood, California. Chris Knipp has a list for U.S.-made films and one for foreign-made (not foreign language like the Academy). Pmw's list is nicely balanced. I hope I like "The Son" as much as he does ( I loved Promesse and Rosetta). At least two call "The Hours" overrated; I'll wait 'til it wins the Oscar to do so. As usual, I'll wait a coupla weeks to post my list while I watch my faves again (to make sure). And, I have decided to listen to Mr. Dujsik and give "Signs" a chance, even though I didn't even like 6th Sense much. His choice of "Bowling" for #1 and inclusion of the underrated "Minority Report" are appreciated.
