I have not noticed anything new in the Director’s Cut of Alien, but it still has been worthwile to watch it. It has been the first time that I have seen this classic movie in a theater and I have to emphasize that this is the proper way to watch it. Check out these featured clips at apple.com.
Archive for the ‘movie’ Category
Sigourney and the slime.
Sunday, November 9th, 2003Marc says: the music is good.
Sunday, November 2nd, 2003There won’t be much debate about the soundtrack of Kill Bill. Even though it is unlikely that it will have as big an impact on party dance music as Pulp Fiction had, the soundtrack is very nice too (and in style similar to Pulp Fiction). Then, there is Uma Thurman, who is a good actor and, of course, extremely good-looking. The rest is more controversial: the amount of spilling of blood and cutting off of limbs in this movie is huge, and I am not sure that this actually pleases me. Some of the fighting scenes are somewhat close to Hero in the way they use color – but in my opinion Hero‘s aesthetics beat those of Tarantino’s movies by several leagues. What remains is a typical Tarantino product with some extra blood and a stylish Lucy Liu. Ah, almost forgot: you will find yourself reminded of Hable con ella in the beginning of the movie. Never knew that Tarantino is an Almodovar fan…
Entertainment and french cooking.
Thursday, October 23rd, 2003Yesterday Kerstin and I went to see Jet Lag (original title: Décalage horaire) starring Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno. One thing is remarkable about this movie: Jean Reno probably has the tiredest look I have ever seen in cinema yet. And it is nice to see how he and Juliette Binoche’s character’s looks change over the course of the movie. Both actors are, of course, grand. The story is nice enough and explicitly Hollywood-style, so one knows what to expect. These hopes won’t be disappointed – if you are looking for a nice french/american movie with good actors and some well-done (heh) cooking and eating scenes, this is to be recommended. (Check out the Trailer.)
Fussball und Familie.
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2003Am vergangenen Donnerstag waren wir im Wunder von Bern – der Film schien dem ungewöhnlich gemischten Publikum in der Kulturbrauerei gut gefallen zu haben (mehr Familien und ältere/echt erwachsene Menschen als sonst in der 20:15 Uhr Vorstellung). Die Schauspieler machen ihre Sache gut bis sehr gut, die Mischung aus Sport- und Kriegsheimkehrergeschichte funktioniert auch, Kulisse und Ausstattung sind nett, es wird in angemessenem Maße auf die Tränendrüse gedrückt und sportliche Spannung gibt es auch. Insgesamt ein Film, den man nicht gesehen haben muss, der aber auch ohne weitere Bedenken von nicht-Fussballfans und nicht-Männern angeschaut werden kann.
Dieser Beitrag ist wieder mal unterwegs verfasst, deswegen keine Links…
Do not watch it.
Saturday, October 11th, 2003This tuesday I have been watching The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen together with Chr and Andi. I don’t know if it is cheesy or tacky – it’s been one of the worst movies that I have been seen in months. Dialogues are not bad enough to be funny, the characters are too plain, and even the special effects are cheap. Probably the only thing that was interesting about the movie was that it was the first movie in which I perceived direct borrowings from The Lord of the Rings both in attempting to produce a culture specific design (here for Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, his equipment and the clothes of the crew) and in the way some of the shots were done. Bad thing is: nothing done in this movie does even come close to LotR… The only thing I liked were the characters of Dorian Gray and Mina – and that is probably because of my Buffy-phily (for Mina the vampire they copied another special effect, that of Konrad from X-Men 2).
Apologies for not including any links into this post – I am currently sitting in the train and don’t have the network resources to search for appropriate links and reviews.
French remake of a french movie.
Thursday, October 2nd, 2003Yesterday we went to watch Swimming Pool in our local cinema. The film, directed by François Ozon who also did 8 Women is a nice example of a movie centered on very few people, a movie where not to many things happen, and not a lot of different places are used to stage the plot. It is centered around a swimming pool, an old and a young woman and a few men. The acting of everybody involved is very good, and the camera makes many shots that are quite close to people – without being too artistic or too Dogma-like. If you are looking for a well-done quiet movie with some funny and embarrassing moments, and some sublime suspense building up in the course of the movie this is well worth the money and time.
By the way, as hinted in the heading, this is the remake of a classic movie with Alain Delon and Romy Schneider: La Piscine. I haven’t seen this one yet, so if you know it, tell me how it is…
Ah, I almost forgot: the main male actor has a nice role-matching name: Jean-Marie Lamour. What’s even more: he’s wearing a moustache!
Could it be better?
Friday, September 5th, 2003It took me a while but now I have seen 8 Mile, directed by Curtis Hanson (who also directed Wonder Boys and L.A. Confidential) and featuring Eminem. I was positively surprised by the funny and witty dialogues. Luckily, there are no special effects and stuff like that – instead it’s a good story with good characters and, of course, lots of good music. Even if you’re not into HipHop or Eminem you could like the soundtrack. There is room for passion and some sex (‘we’ have Kim Basinger and a really gorgeous Taryn Manning in this movie). Fans of sports movies can breathe the same exhilaration they experience before and in Rocky’s final fights when Eminem enters the stage for rap battles against the bad guys. The ending is quite open and un-Hollywoodesque. I definitely recommend this movie, even if the user rating on IMDb is only 6.9 of 10. Check out the trailer.
Could have been sooo much better.
Thursday, September 4th, 2003Yesterday we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (deutsch: Fluch der Karibik) with a party of seven people. It has a great, gorgeous, wonderful introductory scene for Johnny Depp – if your character is introduced with such a good scence once in your career as an actor, you can be very proud. All in all, Johnny Depp’s character, Captain Jack Sparrow, is what makes this movie live. Without him, there’s not much ado. I sorely missed drama, romance, fear and anger. The movie remains pretty shallow 95% of the time: If dramatic situations arise, Walt Disneyesque solutions are presented. By this I mean that a potential crisis is usually resolved by resorting to bland comedy, using flat jokes and effects. It’s a pity. I am sorry to report that the ending is not very convincing – I did really identify with many of the characters, I would have been ready for great romance, a cliff hanger, anything. *sigh* Nonetheless: I liked many of the gorgeous pictures and ideas in this movie and if you like the genre, if you like Johnny Depp or Legolas a.k.a Orlando Bloom then: watch it and enjoy. Check out the trailer.
T3 preview.
Thursday, July 31st, 2003Hmpf.
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003Gestern waren wir in Bruce Allmächtig. Der Film hat berechtigterweise nur eine Bewertung von 6,5 von 10 möglichen Punkten in der IMDb, ich würde ihn sogar noch schlechter Bewerten. Warum? Weil ich eh kein besonders großer Fan von Jim Carey bin und weil der Film eine so unangenehme individualistische Ideologie verbreitet. Bruce wird mit göttlicher Macht ausgestattet. Was tut er damit? Nur Dinge, die sich und sein privates Umfeld betreffen (und dabei noch die gesamte Umwelt in Mitleidenschaft ziehen und nahezu anarchistische Verhältnisse herbeiführen). Nachdem er damit konfrontiert wird, sieht er sich völlig außerstande, diese allgemeinen Probleme zu lösen. Natürlich geht alles gut aus, doch auf dem Weg zum Happy End in Zweierbeziehung und Angestelltenverhältnis verlangt Gott von Bruce noch ein Gebet zur Anerkennung seiner Macht. Erst betet Bruce für den Frieden auf Erden; dieses Gebet lehnt Gott jedoch mit den Worten ab, das sei ja allenfalls ein gutes Gebet für eine Misswahl. Derart zurechtgewiesen betet Bruce dann schließlich nur für sich beziehungsweise für seine Exfreundin. Ergo, sei nicht am Gemeinwohl interessiert, da kann man als einfacher Mensch eh nichts machen. Lebe Dein privates Interesse und es wird schon alles Gut werden. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Nichts desto trotz gibt es einige lustige Szenen in dem Film, die sollte man in Form von Trailern und Clips konsumieren und sich Zeit und Geld für einen anderen Film sparen.
Haunted by the past.
Sunday, July 6th, 2003It was predictable. After severeal years of watching people wear plateau boots it was becoming clearer and clearer: sooner or later even the eighties will be making their way back into fashion. I am ambivalent about this whole thing. On one hand, there is a certain resignative, shaking-my-head sense of disbelief about why people would do this; on the other hand, there definitely is some potential for amusement in this. Even if it borders on sarcasm.
Today, however, I am in a state of shock. Checking out Apple’s Movie Trailers web page I saw a link to … Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights!! Trailer, official website. Please, let it be a flop!
Another movie highlight from Scandinavia.
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003Yesterday we saw Fucking Åmal. With a by now typical camera, we’re introduced into the adolescent life in a small Swedish town. It’s a high school movie. It’s a nice movie. I repeatedly found myself surprised by the way the story turned (or did not turn). The two main characters, Agnes and Elin, are portraied and played really well, and they create an enchanting story. No cheerleading though and (almost) no basketball… Mac geeks will be rewarded too.
Check out a fan page with links to different trailers, wallpapers etc. here.>
Colors. An overwhelming amount of colors. And landscape. Lots of Landscape.
Wednesday, June 25th, 2003This Monday I went to see Hero. It was gorgeous. I have only seen very, very few movies with such great aesthetics. If you like movies that create a sense of wonder about what the world could look like, this is a movie for you. It also has some martials arts fighting scences, but, please!, don’t let them keep you from watching this movie – it is a great work of art. If you were enchanted by the fighting scenes in the bamboo woods in Hidden Tiger, Crouching Dragon by Ang Lee, then you will really like this movie. The movie is slow, not your general action laden eastern, and it has a story with pathos (and some interesting turns). I think it is one of the most aesthetically pleasing movies I ever saw. You might want to check out the trailer. Enjoy!
Cambridge, my balcony, and Sunnydale.
Friday, June 20th, 2003This is a selection of the spaces over which yesterday evening’s most relevant events were distributed. After finishing the asparagus season with a fine meal, shared between Florian, Chr, Sofie and myself, Florian left to catch his plane back to Cambridge. I hope that there’ll soon be some time and money for a trip to Cambridge. Haven’t punted through the Cam yet. After Florian left, the rest of the crowd gathered on the balcony, enjoying the vegetation and the mild air. More interesting stories relating to intestinal activities were told ;-) and some more white wine was consumed. As time passed and the sun went down Chr got himself involved in old-school telecommunication while Sofie and I started to visit Sunnydale as it was presented in the last two Buffy episodes (7×07 and 7×08 – to say it again, 7×07 was really scary and definitely one of the best episodes I’ve seen yet. Then finally Kerstin and Olli trickled in too and we saw this week’s episode: 7×09 – Never Leave Me. It’s still not clear what will happen to Giles, and, quite a surprise, it looks like some old fiends from the first season come back into play. So the circle closes itself. It fits just perfectly that Olli bought the First Season DVD – thanks Olli!
Now, what about the space issue? Analysis of this peculiar socio-ficitonal-space is up to you. Any spaces more relevant than others? Why? Fun being back to school, isn’t it?
Monday in Japan.
Sunday, June 15th, 2003Sabu. Know the name? I didn’t know it but I will try to remember it from now on (his real name is Hiroyuki Tanaka, probably too complicated to remember for my measly mind). Thursday at eight p.m. I went to the Audimax of the TU Darmstadt where the university’s filmclub shows movies every Tuesday and Thursday for only € 2. The screen is big and the quality of sound and picture nice enough. The movie itself was very good. Slow shots but a lot of crazy content that develeops it’s own speed. I’m not too much into the content summary business. As I myself prefer to not know much about a movie before I watch I won’t say too much about the story and events in this movie. (Trailer)
There are a lot of tragic and funny ideas in this movie and the way tragedy and humor are handled reminded me of a good article I read in the May issue of Le Monde diplomatique (in Deutsch, in English). In this article, Milan Kundera (I didn’t like The Unbearable Lightness of Being, sorry) writes about what tragedy and humor in a novel could (or should?) be like – what he describes is similar to what I enjoyed most about the movie. Why the change of mind about Kundera’s writing, you might ask… he likes and cites Cervantes’ Don Quixote. This ensures my sympathy for his text. It’s quite easy to satisfy my intellectual expectations ;-)
The First Season! On DVD!
Thursday, June 12th, 2003Great news from Buffyland – our favourite guest and co-Buffy-watcher made a present to the WG yesterday: The first season of Buffy. Episodes 1-12 on DVD with audio commentary and an interview. So exciting. After watching yesterday’s episode from the final season (7×08 – we’re now getting to the scary basics of this season’s evil) we immediately watched the first two episodes. Very good dialogues. Thanks to DVD technology we could watch the episodes OmU style and therefore enjoy the subtleties of the witty exchanges. Alyson Hannigan is as cute as one could wish, everybody has weird hair and we had a lot of fun. Butter, I mean better, than I expected.
Rabbit-Proof Fence (Deutscher Titel: A Long Way Home)
Thursday, June 12th, 2003Good Movie. Go watch it yourself.
Pleasantly modest in its implementation of aesthetic features like special light, music and mystic effects. It’s the story of the three girls and a, somewhat tragic, grand civilizator. It’s a good story.
Tomorrow is another Buffy Day!
Wednesday, June 11th, 2003Yesterday, Kerstin, Olli, Christian and I watched last week’s Buffy episode Conversations With Dead People (season 7, episode 7). Spooky and very funny. It was mostly story telling in preparation for the following episodes I guess, and we got to see some super baddies from the previous season – who didn’t fare very well, I guess. It was a relief to know that we don’t have to wait long until we can watch the next episode. Perhaps our franco-canadian friend will be able to join us tomorrow. I’ll report this too, of course…
One of my all time favorites: Delicatessen.
Wednesday, June 4th, 2003After a long day in the Kraftwerk Christian and I rode back to Griesheim just in time to not get soaked by one of the gazillions of rain and thunder storms that these days frequently empty themselves over this area. After a quick, student style pasta dish, we wanted to watch Bulletproof Monk. We decided not to. After a few minutes of Chinese only dialogues we (kind of) agreed that we have to look for an alternative. Which was found in the form of Delicatessen, by Jeunet et Caro. Marvellous! Great! Inspiring!
It has been several years since I’ve seen Delicatessen for the last time. Now I know for sure again why I did attach that Delicatessen poster to the kitchen wall. Christian fell asleep, but that does not keep a real Jeunet et Caro aficionado from watching the movie to the end and be highly amused and inspired (as I said ;-) ).
If you haven’t seen Delicatessen yet, do it as soon as possible. The world will be different…
Gruseliger Style.
Monday, June 2nd, 2003Gestern nach abgeschlossenem Spaziergang auf der wirklich wunderbaren Mathildenhöhe (viel schöner Jugendstil, viele Boule Spieler, es gab gerade ein Open Air Klassik Konzert) und nach anschließendem Aufenthalt im Biergarten zurück nach Griesheim geradelt. Da “zum Einschlafen” noch gemeinsam mit Christian The Others mit Nicole Kidman geschaut. Eigentlich bin ich ja nicht son Gruselfan, aber das war schon ein echter Knüller. Mit coolen Wendungen in der Handlung, düsteren Kameraschwenks und der richtigen Portion Wahnsinn.