Last movie you watched......

Cool. The wife and I have it sitting on the entertainment center for our Friday night movie night this week. I binged on Raymond Carver a few years back for a couple months, so I'm sure I've read the short story. I'll have to go dig it out of a box somewhere between now and then.

 

My favorite from the Coen bros.

 

My favourite Coen Bros. movie is still "O Brother, Where Art Thou".

 

I really liked that one, too, and it has a great soundtrack.
I've liked all of their movies; some just not as much as others. 'The Ladykillers' and 'Intolerable Cruelty' were the weakest.

 

We are of like mind, my friend. As for the soundtrack, I think a large part of the reason the album took off like it did was how unprocessed it was. Unless you're into serious live jazz or classical music, you rarely hear unprocessed human voices.

 

I loved "Warrior", very good flick.

Not in love with how it ended...but I can overlook it since I didn't expect it to be so open-ended. But overall a good watch.

 

And here's Roger Ebert's review of "Drive" starring Ryan Gosling .Looks like a damn fine film.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20110914%2FREVIEWS%2F110919988

HC & I can't wait to see this. Adult action flicks are few and far between these days. Actually, practically non-existent.

I mentioned CGI earlier. "Drive" seems to have little of it. Most of the stunt driving looks real to me, with cars of weight and heft, rather than animated impossible fantasies. The entire film, in fact, seems much more real than the usual action-crime-chase concoctions we've grown tired of. Here is a movie with respect for writing, acting and craft. It has respect for knowledgable moviegoers.

 

Interesting to read that, JR, since I just watched "Death Proof" last night. It was an awful effort by Tarantino, but the car chases seemed to subscribe to exactly what Ebert talks about there, substituting, you know, real vehicles for animated ones.

In "Death Proof," they even mention the original "Gone in 60 Seconds," which has one of the best car chases ever filmed (a stuntman actually died during a wreck in the film and they left the scene in the final cut). The final car chase in "Death Proof" was exceedingly well done and I had the same reaction to it that Ebert had to "Drive."

Of course, the other 1:20 of the movie was borrrrrrrring. A lot of talking that added up to nothing and multiple useless characters. I understand that Tarantino was paying homage to the 70s grindhouse movies by having the dialogue skip, bad cuts, and a grainy quality to the film. I don't understand why he inexplicably bailed on all that style once the story switched to Tennessee. Suddenly, it just looked like a regular movie. It's like he got bored halfway through post-production and decided to just leave the rest of the film alone.

 

If you can't pretty much tell what happens next in their life, you weren't paying attention to the film. We don't need to be shown.

Open-ended films allow the viewer to decide the characters' fates, even when being led down a path toward a certain outcome. There's no wrong answer, just what you desire of the characters.

 

I guess the part that I didn't like was that Nick Nolte really had nothing to do with the fight and just sauntered off after it. Seemed real odd to me. That's the part of open-ended I meant.

 

I went to the opening night of the Atlantic Film Festival and some of the SJ Canuckistans may be familiar with the comedic group called Picnicface. That troupe made a movie called Roller Town. I was pleasantly surprised and laughed the whole way through this movie. The theme of this movie is "disco never died...it was murdered." The movie is as advertised:

"When a roller-skating-obsessed town is over-run by video game shilling gangsters, only one man has the funk deep enough to boogie them back to oblivion."

Here are some links to familiarize you with the group Picnicface:

http://youtu.be/hSYctD98EAk (telethon for the movie with the 2 writers of the movie)

http://youtu.be/Elb7m9lTheM (a clip from the troupe taking a break from filming the movie to give 5 easy steps for doing a dare to remember)

You cannot find any trailers online because they removed it for two reasons. A final director's cut had to be done for release so it didn't coincide with the trailers that came out and secondly, they wanted the final release to be a surprise.

The troupe has a new show on Comedy that starts next week...

http://picnicface.thecomedynetwork.ca/
http://www.picnicface.com/ (groups website).

Anyway, this was a great way to start the film festival here and the movie was entertaining. The theme may be a little dumb, but by the end of the movie it was worth watching. You can't even miss the end credits because they put their own comedic twist on this. I am really happy for this group because they are from my neck of the woods.

 

Excellent observation. Don't disagree with one word of it.