Schoolio's Movie Corner

[mountmccabe]

Would you pay $105 to see a movie? In this situation i would. Unfortunately i don't live in the SF/Oakland area and have to werk this weekend:

The Many Lives of Able Gance's "Napoleon"

I have some friends that flew in from the East Coast to see it. I have not yet heard what they thought, though.



Also I enjoyed The Hunger Games enough. I haven't read any books and was under the mistaken impression that the actual games were spread out across the trilogy, thus I kept expecting things to end, on a cliffhanger of some sort. I was also told Katniss didn't win and thus was also expecting her to die at any time. Maybe this contributed but I thought the film had a lot of tension. It also kept me thinking of times she could have died. I mean more than I otherwise would have, cause, really, it would've been better (for me) if, say, they had eaten the berries.

[PotVsKtl]

Anyway, I think it's easier to get away with cheesy lines in books because its not being acted out on a screen in front of you, so its not as obvious. I realized I had the same reaction to this movie as when I saw Nickelodeon's adaptation of Animorphs.

What in the fuck.

[PotVsKtl]

Quick tip everyone: calling something "youth lit" doesn't change the fact that you're an adult reading children's books. By choice.

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

And also masturbating to them.

[Alchemy]

I'm way less tolerant about cheesy lines in books than in movies. It totally throws off my masturbation.

[ivankay]

I have some friends that flew in from the East Coast to see it. I have not yet heard what they thought, though.

i'm sure they had a fantastic experience. Once i was exposed to this film, i immediately loved it. Being able to see it this way would be a lifetime treat. i know a few people who were lucky enough to see it at the Shrine when Coppola brought out the restoration he was a part of (with his father conducting the orchestra) and their faces light up when they talk about it. Napoleon is an amazing achievement. If you are not blown the fuck away by the editing alone, you are being an asshole. This guy's blog says the reviews from last week were glorious.

Hopefully they release the film on blu-ray. The only way to see it in your house now is VHS and Laser Disc.

[xanman86]

Never thought I would but I just saw Salo again. Looks surprisingly beautiful on Criterion Blu Ray o.O

[bobert]

Quick tip everyone: calling something "youth lit" doesn't change the fact that you're an adult reading children's books. By choice.

Lolz.

[TomServo]

Wait, you read the book and you thought the movie had cheesy lines? That was one of the most painfully unimaginatively written youth lit I've ever read.

It read very much like a lot of the older generation sci-fi I've read - I'm a big fan of Bradury, and of course Orwell and Huxley... and I didn't feel like The Hunger Games was insulting to my intelligence.

This was notable to me because since law school I get bored really fast reading a lot of books I used to love. I expected to find THG dull and instead turned the pages at a fairly brisk pace. But then again - I don't really read any "youth lit".

[schoolofruckus]

Werckmeister Harmonies at Cinefamily on April 8th-9th. Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master drops on October 12th. Be happy about all of this.

[Down Rodeo]

Werckmeister Harmonies at Cinefamily on April 8th-9th. Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master drops on October 12th. Be happy about all of this.

Sometimes I really hate you people in LA =)

[schoolofruckus]

So I guess it would be in poor taste to whinge about their screening of Family Nest - one of the early Tarrs that I haven't seen - taking place during Coachella 1?

At least it wasn't Satantango. I'm really anxious to see when they schedule that one.

[Alchemy]

I made the switch to DVDs on Netflix and they're sending me Tarkovsky's Solaris, as part of furthering my Russian education. I decided to go with that one since I have read the book.

[schoolofruckus]

Fine choice. I'll be interested to hear a reaction from someone who has read the book (which the novel supposedly differs from quite a bit).

[Alchemy]

I'll report back. I actually did a report on the book and how the adaptations humanize Solaris, the planet, even further, which proves the point of the book, which is that humans can never understand the alien. But I didn't actually watch the films or write about the films, because I was being lazy. I just talked about how my copy of Solaris, the book, has George Clooney on the cover as a way of easing our understanding of Solaris, the planet.

[amyzzz]

It read very much like a lot of the older generation sci-fi I've read - I'm a big fan of Bradury, and of course Orwell and Huxley... and I didn't feel like The Hunger Games was insulting to my intelligence.

This was notable to me because since law school I get bored really fast reading a lot of books I used to love. I expected to find THG dull and instead turned the pages at a fairly brisk pace. But then again - I don't really read any "youth lit".

Agreed. I liked the book: it did have an old style scifi feel, like a dystopian fairy tale.

[lehorne]

tonight = blu ray Tinker Tailor, 42" plasma, surround sound, G&T w/lime.

[PotVsKtl]

BANRAPE

[PotVsKtl]

Also, what's wrong with that smiley face's semen?

[lehorne]

taste it

[PotVsKtl]

Fuck you cunt.

[lehorne]

stay in the closest then

[PotVsKtl]

I'm going to cut you in the dick.

[lehorne]

see, knew you'd come around

[PotVsKtl]

You have a folder on your computer called deadnigger.

[lehorne]

I can't answer that either way

[Alchemy]

Anyway...

I watched and loved Tarkovsky's Solaris. *Spoiler alert* if you, like me, were late to the party, or you don't want to know about the book (though it's not really the kind of thing that is ruined by spoilers)... It really isn't all that different from the book, except towards the end. All the beginning stuff, on Earth, is different; however, all the information you learn in those parts are also learned in the book (the helicopter pilot who sees a garden and a baby on the surface of Solaris), except that they take place around the middle of the story, and instead of interacting with people, the character learns things from reading the books in the library.

Once Kris reaches the station, is practically goes, play by play, the way it happens in the book. There are some minor differences - Dr. Gibarian's guest is a tall black woman in the book, and Kris doesn't get to see who or what Sartorius' guest is, although he does figure it to be something small and wild, like an unruly child. But there are many spot-on details captured from the book. My favorite one is how Hari's dress needs to be torn or cut for it to be removed, because Solaris made the dress wrong, even though it put strings on the back... I don't quite remember, but I think in the book that Sartorius never comes out of his lab - or at least not after the initial meeting. I think Kris always has to talk to him through the door, because he's trapped himself in the lab with his crazy guest.

There are two things that I missed from the book that didn't happen in the movie. One almost happened, and is really not a big deal, but when Kris is following Dr. Gibarian's guest (the girl with the bell sounds), in the book, she rests her head on Dr. Gibarian's body. I really liked that in the book, because it was interesting to see how the guest acts when it is left alone. It was also kind of the thing that showed us they had individual guests... The other thing is a huge event in the book, and is where the movie diverged the most: At the end of the movie, when Kris has a fever, sees his mom, and then sees his dad on Solaris, it seems to say that the story is ultimately about Kris. It's almost as though the whole thing was a test for Kris.

In the book, however, there is a beautiful scene where Kris travels down onto one of the islands which have formed upon the surface of Solaris. He goes to the edge of the island and he sticks his hand out to the liquid-jelly substance that makes up Solaris. The liquid is always rising and making shapes and things, but when Kris does this, the liquid wraps around his arm. However, while it wraps around his arm, it never actually touches him - there is always a space between the two of them. That neatly summarizes the point that the book is trying to make: Kris and Solaris can never connect with each other. When humans confront Solaris they see babies, people, and Earth gardens in its surface; their guests are anthropomorphized, etc... In other words, humans and aliens can never connect, because humans are not aliens and aliens are not humans. Humans will always try to understand things by anthropomorphizing them.

In a way, Tarkovsky was guilty of the same thing. He adapted Solaris and changed it into something more human. I haven't seen the more recent movie, but I'm sure it does the same (and probably even more-so). But I don't think it needs to be like the book. I know Stanislaw Lem was upset that it had changed so much, but it was really a perfect example of Solaristics. But anyway, I really recommend the book to anyone who hasn't read it. If there is one thing that the movie captured perfectly, it was the confusing (in a good way) and eerie feeling of the book. I love the whole concept of the guests hanging out on the station - and I love that we never really get to see Snaut's guest or Sartorius' guest. It's creepy.

[schoolofruckus]

I really appreciate the thoughts. I've been meaning to read Solaris and other Lem novels for a while...I'm going to have to get on that.

[wmgaretjax]

I don't think I would read that ending from the film at all. Our perspective of the planet does *seem* to be a personalization for Kris, but only because that is the reflection Solaris is generating at that moment. A disconnect exists that is similar to the book though, demonstrated strongest by Solaris's inability to make sense of kris's perceptions that it is drawing from. I think Tarkovsky definitely is trying to confront something different than Lem, but I don't think the goal was really to make Solaris itself more human... but rather the goal was to show something distinctly human that Solaris couldn't comprehend.

[RageAgainstTheAoki]

I'd love to know what some of this thread's regulars find funny. What are some of your favorite comedic films? And I mean laugh-out-loud funny, not simply films that makes you smile knowingly.