Watching this helped me realize why Parasite is as good as it is.
(Warning: Heavy spoilers).
It's so weird seeing a Korean film connect in this way. Wonderful and weird. My infrequent movie-going friend even saw it in a theater last night. What a time to be alive.
ETA: people are out in the world making "ram-don" which is an Anglicization of jjapaguri, a mashup of two different kinds of instant noodles - Chapagetti (black bean sauce with ramen noodles) and Neoguri (a brand of seafood udon) - and then adding steak to it. Here's a recipe for it: Korean Bapsang.
Still so crazy. _________________ Under New Management
Last edited by Baron Von Humongous on Sun Feb 16, 2020 7:48 pm; edited 2 times in total
It's February 2020 and I just saw probably my favorite film of 2019: Portrait of a Lady on Fire. What a beautiful and moving film - subtle, nuanced performances; masterfully directed; precisely scripted; emotional but not sentimental; sensual without distraction. I'm pretty blown away. What a great year for cinema. Neon just killing it lately.
It's February 2020 and I just saw probably my favorite film of 2019: Portrait of a Lady on Fire. What a beautiful and moving film - subtle, nuanced performances; masterfully directed; precisely scripted; emotional but not sentimental; sensual without distraction. I'm pretty blown away. What a great year for cinema. Neon just killing it lately.
Going to catch it soon. Yes! This is a resounding yes! Go see movies. _________________ Under New Management
The Farewell by Lulu Wang is now streaming on Prime.
A career retrospective of Yuzo Kawashima's underrated post-war Japanese melodramas continue to stream on Mubi. His work is new to me, but I'm very much enjoying it so far - Suzuki's toughness with Naruse's sentiment.
The Criterion Channel has all of Jean-Pierre Melville's feature length features but several are leaving the service at the end of the month. Melville is one of the most accessible master filmmakers with titles like Army of Shadows , Le Circle Rouge, and Bob Le Flambeur as materworks available to stream before 3/1 on the Criterion Channel. _________________ Under New Management
“How bad were the Academy Awards this year?” he asked, prompting jeers from the crowd. “Did you see it?”
“The winner is… a movie from South Korea! What the hell was that all about?” he went on. “We got enough problems with South Korea with trade. On top of that, they give them best movie of the year? Was it good? I don’t know. Let’s get ‘Gone With the Wind.’ Can we get ‘Gone With the Wind’ back, please?”
“So many great movies…” he bemoaned before again mocking, “the winner is from South Korea!”
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 52696 Location: Making a safety stop at 15 feet.
Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2020 9:01 pm Post subject:
governator wrote:
“How bad were the Academy Awards this year?” he asked, prompting jeers from the crowd. “Did you see it?”
“The winner is… a movie from South Korea! What the hell was that all about?” he went on. “We got enough problems with South Korea with trade. On top of that, they give them best movie of the year? Was it good? I don’t know. Let’s get ‘Gone With the Wind.’ Can we get ‘Gone With the Wind’ back, please?”
“So many great movies…” he bemoaned before again mocking, “the winner is from South Korea!”
Neon, the American distributor, responded "Understandable, he can't read." _________________ You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames
“How bad were the Academy Awards this year?” he asked, prompting jeers from the crowd. “Did you see it?”
“The winner is… a movie from South Korea! What the hell was that all about?” he went on. “We got enough problems with South Korea with trade. On top of that, they give them best movie of the year? Was it good? I don’t know. Let’s get ‘Gone With the Wind.’ Can we get ‘Gone With the Wind’ back, please?”
“So many great movies…” he bemoaned before again mocking, “the winner is from South Korea!”
Shhh...no one tell him how many Oscars Mexican directors have won in the past decade. _________________ Under New Management
Joined: 25 Apr 2015 Posts: 32038 Location: Anaheim, CA
Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2020 11:59 pm Post subject:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
ChickenStu wrote:
Switching gears, I'm going to see the Impractical Jokers movie later tonight. I will report back if I feel it's Oscar-worthy.
Cinema!
I'm a fan of the guys and their show, and the movie was decent enough. Some really funny scenes, and some stuff that fell a little flat. I'd give it 2.5 stars out of 4, for a comedy.
Parasite is a perfect storm and its success can't be replicated, but I love how it pisses on Hollywood tokenism hostage taking in which representation is used to drive profits with the implicit threat that movies about [insert minority] won't get greenlit if audiences don't show up. And so we get pablum like a live-action Mulan cash grab that dares Asian-Americans not to come out in droves. That Parasite is an idiosyncratic, brilliant vision from South Korea is a testament to the potential of having representative popular entertainment also be bold, original, thoughtful, and ugly.
One of my favorite film nerd anecdotes came out of a High Life screening and Q&A last year in which a young woman in the audience asked Claire Denis about having more positive female role models in her films. Denis responded as politely as possible, "I'm not a (bleep) social worker." I want to see studios be willing to back non-white, non-cishet filmmakers who direct painful, ugly, uncompromising stories that aren't just all, say, toothless pop feminist bromides. Those idiosyncratic lived experiences are more representative and humanizing than all the girl power comedies and model minority mythmaking of black pain movies Hollywood has loved to churn out in recent years. And they don't have to be brutal rapefests in space like High Life: look at how Lulu Wang expertly balances tone in The Farewell; look at how Barry Jenkins frames the beautiful faces of two young black Americans in love in If Beale Street Could Talk; heck, look at the crapping and puking scene in Bridesmaids!
Anyway, Mulan can (bleep) off. _________________ Under New Management
The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer's companion piece to The Act of Killing is leaving Netflix on 2/26. It's as essential viewing as the earlier documentary about the Indonesian genocide of 1965-1967. It's focus is on a man, Adi, born immediately after the genocide ended, a young child for an older couple whose adult son, Ramli, was tortured, murdered, and mutilated by local kill squads who deemed him a "communist subversive," a brother Adi would never know. Astonishingly, Adi's parents are still alive as centenarians, his father mostly senile and his mother still carrying around the lifelong trauma of not being able to save her boy.
The structure is simple: Adi interviews the local architects of the mass slaughter, including one of his brother's killers and his own uncle who was a prison guard, unnervingly persistent and brave in confronting murderers who often went on to become local heroes who live well with the stolen lands and money of their many victims - they rhapsodize about their brutal murders, they obfuscate, deny, justify, and ultimately make thinly veiled threats while Adi looks on implacably judging and questioning. It's a harrowing, but essential picture about confronting our pasts to try to heal, the horrors we're capable of as human beings, especially when sanctioned by power, the lies we tell ourselves to keep going, and how trauma passes down through generations.
Go in prepared, but please do watch if you haven't seen it yet and before it leaves Netflix. _________________ Under New Management
Not quite 'cinema' but I've been rewatching all of the Daniel Craig Bond films in anticipation for the new one and Casino Royale is really good. It's wild how much happens, how many characters are established, and how many different tones are juggled in this film. And I didn't even mention the action which this movie probably has a few of the top 10 action scenes for the whole franchise.
Not quite 'cinema' but I've been rewatching all of the Daniel Craig Bond films in anticipation for the new one and Casino Royale is really good. It's wild how much happens, how many characters are established, and how many different tones are juggled in this film. And I didn't even mention the action which this movie probably has a few of the top 10 action scenes for the whole franchise.
Only Marvel movies aren't cinema
Have you seen all the older Bond movies? I grew up on Timothy Hutton and Pierce Brosnan although A View to a Kill (Roger Moore) has been my favorite because of Walken hamming it up.
I need to see more Connery era Bond flicks besides Dr. No and Goldfinger. Any all recs welcome. _________________ Under New Management
I think License to Kill is quite underrated, mostly for its darker tones that perhaps served as a precursor for the Craig era. It also happens to have my favorite theme song, performed by the great Gladys Knight.
There’s a cool story about the making of that song ...
I think License to Kill is quite underrated, mostly for its darker tones that perhaps served as a precursor for the Craig era. It also happens to have my favorite theme song, performed by the great Gladys Knight.
There’s a cool story about the making of that song ...
That's the one where Robert Davi's the bad guy and feeds a guy into an industrial grinder, right? I loved that flick growing up. _________________ Under New Management
Joined: 04 Oct 2001 Posts: 6351 Location: The Titanic that is the USA
Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 4:37 pm Post subject:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
loslakersss wrote:
Not quite 'cinema' but I've been rewatching all of the Daniel Craig Bond films in anticipation for the new one and Casino Royale is really good. It's wild how much happens, how many characters are established, and how many different tones are juggled in this film. And I didn't even mention the action which this movie probably has a few of the top 10 action scenes for the whole franchise.
Only Marvel movies aren't cinema
Have you seen all the older Bond movies? I grew up on Timothy Hutton and Pierce Brosnan although A View to a Kill (Roger Moore) has been my favorite because of Walken hamming it up.
I need to see more Connery era Bond flicks besides Dr. No and Goldfinger. Any all recs welcome.
Thunderball and From Russia With Love.
The woman/love interest in Thunderball is right up there as one of the hottest in all Bond movies.
The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer's companion piece to The Act of Killing is leaving Netflix on 2/26. It's as essential viewing as the earlier documentary about the Indonesian genocide of 1965-1967. It's focus is on a man, Adi, born immediately after the genocide ended, a young child for an older couple whose adult son, Ramli, was tortured, murdered, and mutilated by local kill squads who deemed him a "communist subversive," a brother Adi would never know. Astonishingly, Adi's parents are still alive as centenarians, his father mostly senile and his mother still carrying around the lifelong trauma of not being able to save her boy.
The structure is simple: Adi interviews the local architects of the mass slaughter, including one of his brother's killers and his own uncle who was a prison guard, unnervingly persistent and brave in confronting murderers who often went on to become local heroes who live well with the stolen lands and money of their many victims - they rhapsodize about their brutal murders, they obfuscate, deny, justify, and ultimately make thinly veiled threats while Adi looks on implacably judging and questioning. It's a harrowing, but essential picture about confronting our pasts to try to heal, the horrors we're capable of as human beings, especially when sanctioned by power, the lies we tell ourselves to keep going, and how trauma passes down through generations.
Go in prepared, but please do watch if you haven't seen it yet and before it leaves Netflix.
The Look of Silence, as well as The Act of Killing, is essential viewing for anyone who loves and appreciates the power of cinema. The Act of Klling was shocking and visceral. The Look of Silence, if anything, is even more personal and devastating in its evaluation of the human condition.
Both of these should be seen by those who are posting or lurking in this thread.
Joined: 25 Apr 2015 Posts: 32038 Location: Anaheim, CA
Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 11:21 pm Post subject:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
panamaniac wrote:
I think License to Kill is quite underrated, mostly for its darker tones that perhaps served as a precursor for the Craig era. It also happens to have my favorite theme song, performed by the great Gladys Knight.
There’s a cool story about the making of that song ...
That's the one where Robert Davi's the bad guy and feeds a guy into an industrial grinder, right? I loved that flick growing up.
I didn't think Dalton brought any charm to the role, and I think Bond needs that. He's a very good actor and he played it serious, and I personally didn't favor his approach. He got 2 movies and then they went in a different direction. I wonder if the Broccolis wish they had done what Robert Zemeckis did after watching footage of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly; Zemeckis wanted Marty to have some charm and Stoltz was playing it straight. This is one reason I loved Brosnan as Bond. Dude had the charm and was just suave and likeable. Of course, Connery had that in spades. I think Roger Moore was too much to the opposite of how Dalton played it, into campy territory, really.
As for Craig, I think he's been excellent as Bond. He's not the best-looking dude (like how Connery and Brosnan were/are regarded), but he has natural charm, sex appeal, and he brought a certain vulnerability and depth/realness to the role. As much as I loved his predecessor, Brosnan, I think it's undeniable that Craig has brought more to the role. My two cents, anyway.
Joined: 02 May 2005 Posts: 90310 Location: Formerly Known As 24
Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 11:59 pm Post subject:
I grew up on Moore (Connery was my parents bond). Yes there was camp but he just oozed that bond thing. Craig is like watching someone who’s never seen a bond movie play the role. It’s just mission impossible or diehard with spies. _________________ “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ― Elie Wiesel
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