Happy Face 29 Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 New York, New York Scorsese's 'musical' flopped at the box office and is probably most famous for the song. I guess in a decade of gritty realism like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, when escapism came from the likes of Alien and Star Wars, harking back two decades to fake looking singalongs with little in terms of modern specatcle was never going to go down very well. It's by no means Scorsese and De Niro's best pairing, but I thought it nipped along nicely (even the extended version). There's an odd moment of excellence that really makes it worthwhile, like the moment De Niro fights being thrown out of a club through a corridor of bright bulbs being smashed as he goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Park Life 71 Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 New York, New York Scorsese's 'musical' flopped at the box office and is probably most famous for the song. I guess in a decade of gritty realism like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, when escapism came from the likes of Alien and Star Wars, harking back two decades to fake looking singalongs with little in terms of modern specatcle was never going to go down very well. It's by no means Scorsese and De Niro's best pairing, but I thought it nipped along nicely (even the extended version). There's an odd moment of excellence that really makes it worthwhile, like the moment De Niro fights being thrown out of a club through a corridor of bright bulbs being smashed as he goes. Chinatown ain't gritty realism sweetie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 New York, New York Scorsese's 'musical' flopped at the box office and is probably most famous for the song. I guess in a decade of gritty realism like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, when escapism came from the likes of Alien and Star Wars, harking back two decades to fake looking singalongs with little in terms of modern specatcle was never going to go down very well. It's by no means Scorsese and De Niro's best pairing, but I thought it nipped along nicely (even the extended version). There's an odd moment of excellence that really makes it worthwhile, like the moment De Niro fights being thrown out of a club through a corridor of bright bulbs being smashed as he goes. Chinatown ain't gritty realism sweetie. Well it ain't Singin In The Rain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Park Life 71 Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 New York, New York Scorsese's 'musical' flopped at the box office and is probably most famous for the song. I guess in a decade of gritty realism like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, when escapism came from the likes of Alien and Star Wars, harking back two decades to fake looking singalongs with little in terms of modern specatcle was never going to go down very well. It's by no means Scorsese and De Niro's best pairing, but I thought it nipped along nicely (even the extended version). There's an odd moment of excellence that really makes it worthwhile, like the moment De Niro fights being thrown out of a club through a corridor of bright bulbs being smashed as he goes. Chinatown ain't gritty realism sweetie. Well it ain't Singin In The Rain. It's more film noir updated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 New York, New York Scorsese's 'musical' flopped at the box office and is probably most famous for the song. I guess in a decade of gritty realism like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, when escapism came from the likes of Alien and Star Wars, harking back two decades to fake looking singalongs with little in terms of modern specatcle was never going to go down very well. It's by no means Scorsese and De Niro's best pairing, but I thought it nipped along nicely (even the extended version). There's an odd moment of excellence that really makes it worthwhile, like the moment De Niro fights being thrown out of a club through a corridor of bright bulbs being smashed as he goes. Chinatown ain't gritty realism sweetie. Well it ain't Singin In The Rain. It's more film noir updated. Yes, and what was it about the updating that made it fit in the 70's so well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Park Life 71 Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 (edited) New York, New York Scorsese's 'musical' flopped at the box office and is probably most famous for the song. I guess in a decade of gritty realism like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, when escapism came from the likes of Alien and Star Wars, harking back two decades to fake looking singalongs with little in terms of modern specatcle was never going to go down very well. It's by no means Scorsese and De Niro's best pairing, but I thought it nipped along nicely (even the extended version). There's an odd moment of excellence that really makes it worthwhile, like the moment De Niro fights being thrown out of a club through a corridor of bright bulbs being smashed as he goes. Chinatown ain't gritty realism sweetie. Well it ain't Singin In The Rain. It's more film noir updated. Yes, and what was it about the updating that made it fit in the 70's so well? Don't get your knickers in a twist now. "Chinatown’s dark theme is one of the elements that places it in the category of neo-noir, the second generation of the genre known as film noir. Though the precise history of film noir is difficult to define (the term was coined in the journal Cahiers du Cinéma by Nino Frank in 1946), this genre evolved through a combination of German expressionistic drama (such as F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu), American gangster film (Mervyn LeRoy’s 1931 Little Caesar), and popular British mystery novels (by Dorothy Sayers, H. C. Bailey, Agatha Christie, and the like). Several common features characterized film noir pictures, which were popular in the United States during the 1940s and early 1950s: the presence of a beautiful but dangerous woman (known as the femme fatale), gritty and generally urban settings, compositional tension (highly contrasting light and dark colors or oblique camera angles, for example), and themes of moral ambiguity and alienation. To prepare for the making of Chinatown, Polanski studied John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), which is accepted as the first full embodiment of film noir. (Huston himself plays Noah Cross, Chinatown’s most despicable villain). Polanski also read Raymond Chandler’s mystery novels, several of which had been made into film noir classics, such as Murder, My Sweet (1944; originally titled Farewell, My Lovely) and The Big Sleep (1946)." We're both kinda right. I generally see Chinatown primarily reinforcing the claustrophobic elements of noir and using reality altering (unbalancing) camerawork and high color as a distancing device. I would say 'gritty' is an element, but the city is kind of nightmarish and labyrinthian rather than realist. Edited March 22, 2008 by Park Life Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 New York, New York Scorsese's 'musical' flopped at the box office and is probably most famous for the song. I guess in a decade of gritty realism like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, when escapism came from the likes of Alien and Star Wars, harking back two decades to fake looking singalongs with little in terms of modern specatcle was never going to go down very well. It's by no means Scorsese and De Niro's best pairing, but I thought it nipped along nicely (even the extended version). There's an odd moment of excellence that really makes it worthwhile, like the moment De Niro fights being thrown out of a club through a corridor of bright bulbs being smashed as he goes. Chinatown ain't gritty realism sweetie. Well it ain't Singin In The Rain. It's more film noir updated. Yes, and what was it about the updating that made it fit in the 70's so well? Don't get your knickers in a twist now. I thought so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Park Life 71 Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 New York, New York Scorsese's 'musical' flopped at the box office and is probably most famous for the song. I guess in a decade of gritty realism like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, when escapism came from the likes of Alien and Star Wars, harking back two decades to fake looking singalongs with little in terms of modern specatcle was never going to go down very well. It's by no means Scorsese and De Niro's best pairing, but I thought it nipped along nicely (even the extended version). There's an odd moment of excellence that really makes it worthwhile, like the moment De Niro fights being thrown out of a club through a corridor of bright bulbs being smashed as he goes. Chinatown ain't gritty realism sweetie. Well it ain't Singin In The Rain. It's more film noir updated. Yes, and what was it about the updating that made it fit in the 70's so well? Don't get your knickers in a twist now. I thought so. ^^^^^ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney 0 Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 Ray - very good Mallrats - nice idea, garbage execution Runaway Jury - meh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ewerk 31209 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 American Gangster - I expected more from it, never really got going or built up any tension for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JawD 99 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 There will be Blood - Despite the Oscar and good effort from Lewis, I found it watchable but hardly gripping. Also an annoying background track now and again that suggested misplaced suspense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tooj 17 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 There will be Blood - Despite the Oscar and good effort from Lewis, I found it watchable but hardly gripping. Also an annoying background track now and again that suggested misplaced suspense. The score was terrible in it like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 There will be Blood - Despite the Oscar and good effort from Lewis, I found it watchable but hardly gripping. Also an annoying background track now and again that suggested misplaced suspense. The score was terrible in it like. Must.....calm.....self. Hyperventilation......not......good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tooj 17 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 There will be Blood - Despite the Oscar and good effort from Lewis, I found it watchable but hardly gripping. Also an annoying background track now and again that suggested misplaced suspense. The score was terrible in it like. Must.....calm.....self. Hyperventilation......not......good. I'm a huge fan of movie scores as you well know, at times they make or break films. Just thought for what my general opinion of the film actually was, the score was a huge let down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kid Dynamite 7173 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Vantage Point, good film but you do groan at the end of every 15mins ands it starts all over again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 (edited) Who's That Knocking At My Door Scorsese's first film. Mines a lot of the same material that Mean Streets did later, but is far more pretentious about basically ripping off any memorable (mainly French) techniques it can. It's no less enjoyable for it like. The love of cinema evident in the script and direction isn't a bad thing, it's something Tarantino still hasn't grown out of though, after this film Scorsese really found his own voice. Edited March 23, 2008 by Happy Face Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Belle De Jour That Luis Bunuel is a dirty rotter. Pure filth. A married woman too frigid to go in the same bed as her husband fantisises about masochistic sex acts before turning to prostituting herself to satisfy her urges. Gave me the raging horn anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus 0 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 El Orfanato (the Orphanage) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464141/ Pretty good. Not particularly scary or gory though there is one scene when an old women gets ran over and her face is, shall we say, 'a bit of a mess'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JawD 99 Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 (edited) Just watched that myself. Another decent offering from Del toro. Very watchable. Not scary as said, but still a decent flick and definately has that Del Toro feel to it. Edited March 24, 2008 by JawD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tooj 17 Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 The Running Man. "I live to see you eat that contract, but I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I'm going to ram it into your stomach and break your god-damn spine!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 Giant Not bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JawD 99 Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 Giant Not bad. Aye meant to be a big hit. Arf arf..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meenzer 15722 Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 Downfall Would I be missing the point if I complained that it suffered from having a few too many characters to be followed clearly? Still, everyone already knows the main players and events, and the whole thing is delivered with exactly the right sense of brutality, bleakness and futility - anchored by the highly (and quite rightly) praised central performance by Ganz. Complaints about the film "humanising" Hitler seemed to miss the salient point, at least as far as I'm concerned - namely that, at its base level, the Nazi machine was composed of humans, just like any other movement of evil throughout history, so there's great value in examining it from that human, personal perspective rather than rehashing the broad sweeps and overarching storylines of WW2 that we already know so well. That said, even with its curiously upbeat "unreal" ending, this made for such bleak Easter viewing that I was glad for the opportunity to recover with "Freaky Friday" on BBC1 afterwards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckyluke 2 Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 Downfall Would I be missing the point if I complained that it suffered from having a few too many characters to be followed clearly? Still, everyone already knows the main players and events, and the whole thing is delivered with exactly the right sense of brutality, bleakness and futility - anchored by the highly (and quite rightly) praised central performance by Ganz. Complaints about the film "humanising" Hitler seemed to miss the salient point, at least as far as I'm concerned - namely that, at its base level, the Nazi machine was composed of humans, just like any other movement of evil throughout history, so there's great value in examining it from that human, personal perspective rather than rehashing the broad sweeps and overarching storylines of WW2 that we already know so well. That said, even with its curiously upbeat "unreal" ending, this made for such bleak Easter viewing that I was glad for the opportunity to recover with "Freaky Friday" on BBC1 afterwards. I thought Goebbels was a bit too tall in it tbh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus 0 Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 Finally got round to watching Death Proof http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1028528/ Better than the other one but still not that great. Tarantino must have a hell of a foot fetish like Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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