Schoolio's Movie Corner

[schoolofruckus]

Yeah, I fucked up. My tickets are for the 15th.

[xanman86]

Saw Louie CK at Davies Symphony Hall back in 2010. Thanks for the heads up that he is coming back around!

[cutterbutter]

Criterion's website accidentally charged me shipping even though I spent over $50 and without me even asking they refunded the shipping cost and issued me a $10 gift certificate as an apology. I love this company.

[xanman86]

Criterion's website accidentally charged me shipping even though I spent over $50 and without me even asking they refunded the shipping cost and issued me a $10 gift certificate as an apology. I love this company.

Awesome! I didn't end up getting anything with the flash sale this time around.

[schoolofruckus]

Saw Louie CK at Davies Symphony Hall back in 2010. Thanks for the heads up that he is coming back around!

Unless you have tickets already, I think you might be out of luck on this one....they sold out almost instantly. That tends to happen when you have the best show on TV.

[xanman86]

Unless you have tickets already, I think you might be out of luck on this one....they sold out almost instantly. That tends to happen when you have the best show on TV.

Looks like your right, but if there's a will there's a way.

Got my free copy of The Avengers on Blu from Amazon today, woot!

[schoolofruckus]

Last day for 70mm screenings of The Master at the Arclight. Don't miss this.

[TallGuyCM]

Matt and I are in for Amour this coming Monday at LACMA. Cannot fucking wait.

[buddy]

Looper was pretty good, would recommend to others.

Also, agree with The Master opinions regarding animalistic nature. I think at the beginning of the film PSH's character talks about how men are not animals, and spends the rest of the film trying to control or do away with JP's animalistic nature. And, at the end finally acknowledges and even congratulates JP on not having to serve or feel the need to be controlled by a Master, which some people do, in some form or another. He even rides away from it, with the scene with the motorcycle. JP's manerisms and the way in which he walks are ape-like. At the beginning of the film he pleasures himself, and later in the film PSH does the same, but with the help of his wife. Both men are the same, and have to fulfill their animalistic natures. The beginning and the end reminded me of Stanley Kubrick's 2001. Obviously, there's much more going on, but that's what i enjoy about PTA films and great films in general, that you're thinking about it a week later, like i am now.

[wmgaretjax]

How do you want to feel?

[Miroir Noir]

Is Movie Culture Dead?

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

What a cynical asshole.

[Miroir Noir]

I like O'Hehir, and to a certain extent I agree with some of what he's trying to say here, but he makes some bad arguments.

Here are the last four best-picture winners at the Oscars: “The Artist,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Slumdog Millionaire.” How much time have you spent, cumulatively, talking about those movies with your friends?

Sure. That may be true. But he's making an obvious strawman argument here, because we've all had countless conversations over the last few years about several other, better films. I could talk about the double shot of The Tree of Life and Melancholia for as long as anyone would care to. Ditto films like Drive, or The White Ribbon, or Certified Copy.

I think the better argument to make is that the quality of writing in television shows and about television shows has improved so dramatically since the late '90s that there is a rough intellectual and artistic parity with the cinema that we haven't seen for a very long time.

[iv3rdawG]

Saw Spider Baby and Carnival of Souls in 35mm last night. It was amazing how good they looked.

[tyles]

I love Carnival Of Souls, but i'm also biased since it was shot mostly in my hometown. I wish Criterion would upgrade that one.

[JorgeC]

Saw Detention on netflix. i thought it would just be a cool b-movie teen slasher flick with a pre Hunger Games Josh Hutchinson, but turned out to be way funnier and includes timetravel. Definitely worth a rental.

[TallGuyCM]

Matt and I are in for Amour this coming Monday at LACMA. Cannot fucking wait.

Saw it tonight. I have pretty mixed feelings about it overall. Both of the lead actors were absolutely phenomenal, especially Emmanuelle Riva. She needs to win whatever awards she gets nominated for.

And I liked it just fine. It was beautifully shot. I'm just not over the moon about it.

[Neutral Milk Hotel]

I liked this film a great deal, and it continues to grow on me. For the first time, Haneke's coldly controlled mise-en-scene is countered with a sense of sensitivity and even warmth, and the results are extraordinarily moving. It's hard to to know what to say exactly, because this film is exactly what it seems to be on paper (for those who don't know, it's about an elderly couple who must face the indignities of old age and death when the wife suffers a debilitating stroke). What makes it so powerful is the deeply felt performances from Emanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Haneke's own refusal to sentimentalize. It's a brutal film, sparing on unsavory detail in its depiction of a slow, agonizing death. But that frankness makes for moments of deep feeling.

[xanman86]

Going through the Harry Potter series again. I am always surprised that the second one is 3 hours long in the extended cut. I wish David Yates made longer films for the last half of the series so it isn't so off balanced. I tend to think the 2nd is the weakest film in the series but rewatching it last night made me realize that it introduces a good chunk of information that Chris Columbus didn't have time to get into with the first film and isn't in the rest of the films (For example, Prof. Mcgonagall explaining about the 4 founders of Hogwarts). It may be the film in the series that best depicts the day to day life of the students at Hogwarts. Many of the other films just keep that in the background. You can tell that there are tons of scenes and even storylines that would have been cut out of the second film if it were up to Yates and since I enjoy his films more perhaps he is right to condense them. However, at this point I have seen them enough to just want as much of the books to come alive on screen as possible so I don't feel I have to reread them to get everything. I liked the second book more than the film so maybe the length isn't even the problem in the first place.

What do you guys think, should the first few films have been cut down a bit more or should the later ones be longer to include things like Hermione starting S.P.E.W. in the 4th book?

[MissingPerson]

My flatmate made me watch Taken tonight. Can't remember the last film I saw that made me want to punch it in the nuts so hard that wasn't in any way related to Frank Miller. Apologies to anybody who follows me on Twitter, but if it's any consolation I was ranting out loud too.

What a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic piece of shit. A racist, xenophobic, misogynistic piece of shit that made 200 million dollars and a sequel. I don't drink nearly enough.

[MissingPerson]

Also, where the fuck were the other girl's parents and has anybody told them their daughter's dead yet?

[schoolofruckus]

I enjoyed Looper somewhat, but it's the kind of movie that is more concerned with being clever than smart, and that has a way of burrowing inside me and pissing me off over time if I keep thinking about the movie in question. It's also not even clever in the right ways; the whole conceit about having one guy at two different stages of life sharing the same space could have been utilized in a variety of interesting ways, but it basically only factors in one major development. This should have driven the entire second half of the film, because the way it actually plays out is dramatically inert - waaay too much fucking around on the farm. The voiceover is also poorly employed; I know Rian Johnson loves his noir tropes, but the logic behind what Joe says, and how it relates to the onscreen events, is thoroughly suspect (if existent in the first place). That said, I like some of Johnson's compositions and set pieces, and I enjoyed JGL and Willis' performances; honestly, I think my favorite moment of the movie is Bruce Willis popping pain pills in the alley, a throwback to the perpetually hungover Last Boy Scout / Die Hard With a Vengeance character that I can't get enough of.

Now that I type it all out, I might have actually hated Looper.

[zircona1]

My flatmate made me watch Taken tonight. Can't remember the last film I saw that made me want to punch it in the nuts so hard that wasn't in any way related to Frank Miller. Apologies to anybody who follows me on Twitter, but if it's any consolation I was ranting out loud too.

What a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic piece of shit. A racist, xenophobic, misogynistic piece of shit that made 200 million dollars and a sequel. I don't drink nearly enough.

I didn't like it either. If I want to watch a movie about a guy going badass to get his kidnapped daughter back, I'll watch Commando.

I'm visiting friends next week in Cali, I hope they don't make me go see the sequel.

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

Fact: Everyone who lives in California LOVES Taken

[RotationSlimWang]

My flatmate made me watch Taken tonight. Can't remember the last film I saw that made me want to punch it in the nuts so hard that wasn't in any way related to Frank Miller. Apologies to anybody who follows me on Twitter, but if it's any consolation I was ranting out loud too.

What a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic piece of shit. A racist, xenophobic, misogynistic piece of shit that made 200 million dollars and a sequel. I don't drink nearly enough.

I haven't watched Taken yet as I've thoroughly tired of almost every movie about badasses going on killing sprees (because they're never as badass as I, myself, would be) but I'm curious about this comment as I've never heard that particular criticism. What's xenophobic and misogynistic about it?

[MissingPerson]

I haven't watched Taken yet as I've thoroughly tired of almost every movie about badasses going on killing sprees (because they're never as badass as I, myself, would be) but I'm curious about this comment as I've never heard that particular criticism. What's xenophobic and misogynistic about it?

Basically, the whole start of the movie is establishing that the women in Liam Neeson's life - his ex wife and daughter - have dared to try and have lives without him and go places without his permission, the silly bitches. The rest of the film is all about teaching them how dangerously foolish they were. And you can level that criticism at just about every film of that stripe to some extent, but Taken goes a whole other place with it. It's not just an underlying thing, it's pretty much central to the premise. Literally five minutes after they start making their own decisions, everybody starts getting raped and trafficked and shit and then he has to go undo it for them.

It's like the film is standing over you going "See? SEE?" and expecting you to agree that yes, things would be simpler if we just let the menfolk do all the thinking and homestead protecting for us, because gosh, we just don't understand the risks out there. It's fucking embarrassing to watch a movie treat Famke motherfucking Janssen as a naive housewife with foolish notions above her station. For God's sake, the bitch nearly killed Bond with her vagina, reducing her to the role of cheerleader for a sixty year old with a pot belly is just... undignified. And hell, aside from his wife, and his daughter and Miscellaneous Scenery Prostitutes, the only other woman I can recall in the film actually literally makes him dinner in the middle of his mission.

Right before he shoots her. And he doesn't even shoot her because she deserves it, but because her husband offends him. And then he apologises - to her husband, and she's never mentioned again. This film treats every single woman in it as property of an adjacent male character, in a way that's compounded a thousand times by the fact that it's ostensibly about the evils of human trafficking. Neeson never comes across as a dad desperate to get his kid back safe - he's just a guy pissed off that some other guy has foolishly dared to take one of his Girl Things from out under his nose.

There's something incredibly ugly about the whole thought process under the surface of Taken. It's like the 93 minute deranged fantasy a meth addled abusive ex-husband might have in between fits of screaming "YOU NEED ME!" through a letterbox.

Also, everybody who isn't white and American is a chortling cartoon here to buy your slutty yankee women and defile them with their foreign penises, those animals. There is more moustache laughing in this film than you can shake one of your mighty, god-fearing American sticks at. It's not quite up there with 300 on that score - at least all the not-white guys aren't physically deformed or gay too - but it's so laughable that when I asked a middle eastern guy I know if he found it offensive, he told me he'd assumed the whole thing was a parody.

[bmack86]

Yeah, that's pretty much everything I liked about Taken.

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

It was made by French people, what did you expect?

[amyzzz]

Hahaha, Bryan. Me too.

[MissingPerson]

WHAT TEENAGER ON PLANET EARTH WOULD FOLLOW U2 ON TOUR