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I watched Farewell to the Ark today. I thought I would understand it because I read the novel it was based on last year, One Hundred Years of Solitude. I was not prepared for this craziness. It's a good movie that but I feel pretty lost with what parts of it were going for, particularly with the ending. OTOH I'm glad it doesn't just try and put the book onscreen and that it does try and be its own entity. Has anyone here seen it? jivjov posted:I do have a big soft spot for heist movies; I may have to slot that one in in the bonus features list. I dunno if they're streaming anywhere but they're all solid watches.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:28
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Raxivace posted:If you end up digging that movie you'd probably enjoy all of the films from the Nikkatsu Noir boxset. They're all up on Hulu Plus. I swear the only downside to having 95% of the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus is that they often don't have the extra features that are so great. However, just a few weeks after watching Ugetsu I found the Criterion DVD at a garage sale of all places. I had to grab that and some Ozu movies since the opportunity presented itself. Let me run through the special features on this monster: commentary from a film critic, two extended crew interviews (one from 1992), a short documentary about the film and a nearly three hour documentary about the director from 1975, and a book of the short stories that the film was based on. The Criterion Collection really can be a film studies course in a box; I definitely learned more about films and filmmaking from them than my actual film studies class. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 12:39
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I feel like good Criterion discs will give you a lot of useful information on specific films and directors, but I don't think they're designed to give you a broad history of film and film theory, to teach you how to engage with film in multiple ways etc., which I think is what a good set of Film Studies courses (Or equivalent independent research) should do. To continue sort of playing devil's advocate, there are entire movements and eras Criterion doesn't really represent very well (Presumably for issues of release rights, budget, etc. I'm sure if they had their way they would have way more releases available than they do already). They have literally 0 films made before 1921. Nearly thirty years of film history they don't have represented. None of this is meant to disparage the absolutely amazing work they are able to do, of course. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 13:28
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Raxivace posted:To continue sort of playing devil's advocate, there are entire movements and eras Criterion doesn't really represent very well (Presumably for issues of release rights, budget, etc. I'm sure if they had their way they would have way more releases available than they do already). They have literally 0 films made before 1921. Nearly thirty years of film history they don't have represented. It doesn't hurt me that they definitely have an obsession with Japanese films of the 40's to the 60's since I happen to like them a lot. I assume that they've got some really good studio contacts in Japan that have let them build up their library.
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Jun 11, 2016 17:17
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Alrighty, I am officially setting a date to get this project back on track! While you all have made it very clear that I don't owe anyone explanations and that I should work at my own pace...I'm getting frustrated at my own lack of progress and the fact that I spent plenty of hours in which I could be watching movies mindlessly clicking through the forums. So; without further ado, here is the next few things I'll be doing film-wise, with attached dates! This Sunday, June 19th, I'll be taking my Dad to the Alamo Drafthouse for the Father's Day screening of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (I remembered to leave out the oxford comma this time!). While GBU is on my list of films to watch for the thread, this will be like my February trip to see Totoro and my April trip to see Ran. I'll comment on anything special the Alamo is doing for the occasion (supposedly they have a special whiskey menu for this particular screening), but leave the actual film review for the appropriate slot. Either Monday the 20th or Tuesday the 21st, I will be watching The Magnificent Seven for the thread Thursday the 23rd I'll be going back to the Alamo with my wife to see a double feature of Independence Day and Independence Day: Resurgence. Not at all related to the thread...but ID4 is one of my favorite movies and hopefully seeing it will be worth it even if the sequel is as bland as the trailers make it out to look!
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Jun 18, 2016 05:46
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I'm jealous so I'm going to watch The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly on blu ray to make myself feel better.
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Jun 18, 2016 16:55
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Well, spending an evening with my dad was pretty great. He liked the Alamo overall, so hopefully I can drag him back there for more stuff later! Sadly, they didn't do a whole lot super special for our screening. The pre-show stuff was a bunch of trailers for other westerns, all of which starred Lee Van Cleef, and a couple of behind the scenes things including a making-of bit about a western set during a snowy winter that I wish I could remember the name of! They also had a "cheap" whiskey menu (I don't drink out very often...I'm spoiled by being able to buy a decent whole bottle for $25-$30), and I did treat myself to a glass of really good bourbon.
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Jun 20, 2016 04:06
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There aren't a whole lot of snowy westerns...if you can remember any of the actors or the director, someone here can probably tell you what it is.
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Jun 20, 2016 04:09
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Raxivace posted:There aren't a whole lot of snowy westerns...if you can remember any of the actors or the director, someone here can probably tell you what it is. Lee Van Cleef was in it, that's literally all I remember! I was chatting with Dad about how to order food and stuff, and was barely paying attention.
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Jun 20, 2016 04:10
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I just learned of the Ni no Kuni series of video games that were produced in collaboration with Studio Ghibli...and now I am very sad that none of them are in English.
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Jun 20, 2016 18:03
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jivjov posted:I just learned of the Ni no Kuni series of video games that were produced in collaboration with Studio Ghibli...and now I am very sad that none of them are in English. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_no_Kuni:_Wrath_of_the_White_Witch
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Jun 20, 2016 18:59
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While I'm happy to be proven wrong on the "none are in English" thing, I'll have to skip that particular one...my PS3 was stolen out of my dorm room a few years ago and I never got around to replacing it 
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Jun 20, 2016 19:04
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 Magnificent things are happening on my television. Seven of them!
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Jun 21, 2016 23:04
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jivjov posted:
...you were counting how many times I got knocked off into pits in Skyward Sword?
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Jun 22, 2016 00:10
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Krysmphoenix posted:...you were counting how many times I got knocked off into pits in Skyward Sword? Well; that has been part of it. This movie is so aggressive of a remake that I am having difficulty giving it my full attention at times. Watching you fail miserably is a good side activity.
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Jun 22, 2016 00:11
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jivjov posted:Well; that has been part of it. This movie is so aggressive of a remake that I am having difficulty giving it my full attention at times. Watching you fail miserably is a good side activity. Yea, the beginning especially is scene for scene almost identical to Seven Samurai. It has some great characters, but Magnificent Seven is probably my least favorite of what people usually consider the all-time great Westerns. Its no Leone, that's for drat sure.
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Jun 22, 2016 00:14
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Basebf555 posted:Yea, the beginning especially is scene for scene almost identical to Seven Samurai. It has some great characters, but Magnificent Seven is probably my least favorite of what people usually consider the all-time great Westerns. Its no Leone, that's for drat sure. Yeah, this is by no means a bad movie...but my review is gonna be really short haha
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Jun 22, 2016 00:33
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There's a section in Joan Mellen's book on Seven Samurai about The Magnificent Seven. She basically calls it childish. I don't even hate the movie but I found that funny.
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Jun 22, 2016 01:41
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 The Magnificent Seven Released October 23rd 1960, Directed by John Sturges My most sincere apologies for the almost two-month delay between reviews! Hopefully we'll be back on track going forward! Ahhh, The Magnificent Seven...what a pale imitation of Seven Samurai you are. I don't have a whole lot bad to say about this movie...but I don't really have a whole lot good either. This will most likely be one of my shortest reviews in the entire project. For about the first two thirds of the film, Magnificent Seven is a slightly truncated scene-for-scene remake of Seven Samurai. The same basic archtypes of characters (villagers, elder, leader, other mercenaries) all interact in the same patterns in the same order. All the way down to a pointless duel to the death and a man chopping wood. The performances are all solid; Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen are always delights, and Eli Wallach manages to tease a decent bit of nuance out of what could have been a really rote bad guy. Honestly this movie's biggest failing is that it completely loses what made the action scenes of Seven Samurai great. While the set/location for the village is very well put together and looks great...there's really no sense of place to it during the fighting. In Seven Samurai everything that happened could be placed on a map (literally, in some scenes; with Mifune marking off attackers on his battle map), but in Magnificent Seven the action just seems to be happening for action's sake. Gotta hit that quota of Wild West shootout in a western film. Everything was competently shot and choreographed (I was a particular fan of a lot of the horse work), but I really found myself missing the clear sense of location and progression from Kurosawa's work. Overall, The Magnificent Seven is a fine film. If you want a shorter version of Seven Samurai that's in English, that's pretty much exactly what you're going to get. But I personally will be sticking to Kurosawa's original, rather than Sturges' competent, yet underwhelming, remake. Up Next: Pom Poko Released July 16th 1994, Directed by Isao Takahata
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Jun 22, 2016 02:28
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jivjov posted:Up Next: Pom Poko Released July 16th 1994, Directed by Isao Takahata
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Jun 22, 2016 08:30
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Celery Face posted:Have fun dying of boredom. I've watched it a few times, and I have to say I agree. I don't know how a film about animals making pirate ships out of their balls can be so forgettable, but somehow it manages.
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Jun 23, 2016 00:44
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edit ≠ quote
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Jun 23, 2016 00:45
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I like Pom Poko but yeah, out of all the Ghibli stuff I've tried to watch with other people or recommended to them this one has the highest "what is this poo poo?" return rate.
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Jun 24, 2016 12:47
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As a complete aside, if anyone makes it to an Alamo Drafthouse in the near future, try the Alien Autopsy Pasta on their specials menu. It's drat tasty.
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Jun 26, 2016 02:45
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I don't like constantly reviving this thread to bring up films you haven't gotten to yet, but here we are. I guess this is the default Japanese cinema thread? I recently watched The Hidden Fortress, and wow is it ever an entertaining film. It's varied, surprising, fun, and keeps ticking forward at a good pace. I loved seeing actors from Seven Samurai playing different characters, particularly the master swordsman from that film being a sniveling shitworm here. Going into the film, all I really knew about it (besides assuming Mifune would make an appearance) was that George Lucas found some sort of inspiration for Star Wars in it. I can't help but think the influence has been overstated throughout the years, and I've since read a few articles in which the authors really try too hard to tie together every tenuous connection between the films. I guess you could say that C3PO bears some similarity to the hapless thieves in Hidden Fortress, but even that seems like a stretch - where he's merely bumbling, the thieves are self-interested, grubby, pathetic, and mean. Anyway - either way, it's a really fun movie. One of my favourites of Kurosawa's so far.
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Jul 13, 2016 11:56
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ozza posted:I loved seeing actors from Seven Samurai playing different characters, particularly the master swordsman from that film being a sniveling shitworm here. He played a mobster in Ikiru. As for the Lucas connection, I think that Lucas was very clearly influenced by Kurosawa's style even if he couldn't get it down. Star Wars in particular draws on those films in broad ways. I will agree that too many people try to just map Star Wars one to one on The Hidden Fortress and that doesn't work.
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Jul 13, 2016 12:22
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ozza posted:I don't like constantly reviving this thread to bring up films you haven't gotten to yet, but here we are. I guess this is the default Japanese cinema thread? By all means, hijack the thread for other Japanese cinema stuff! I do appreciate the spoiler tags on things that are in my watch list though. And yeah, I did the thing where I neglected the thread for like 3 weeks again. I'm bad at this whole "scheduling" thing.
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Jul 13, 2016 16:16
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The actual plot of Hidden Fortress is not all that similar to Star Wars, aside from a rag-tag group of people thrown together by circumstance, smuggling a princess through enemy territory. Its definitely not a 1 to 1 comparison on a plot level though. What Lucas really took from it most, which he has spoken about often in interviews, is telling a big adventure story from the point of view of the lowest characters. The same story told a different way could have focused a lot more on the princess and Mifune in the first third of the film, and really we don't ever get much detail about how and why they are in the desperate situation they're in. Much in the same way we only get bits and pieces of info about the rise of the Empire and what came before it, the focus of the story is always on people who are typically on the periphery of these huge world changing events. That's why its really dumb when you hear people talk about the droids in Star Wars as if they operate under some sort of Asimov hard sci-fi rules. They play the role of the lowest peasants and slaves, and its a very human role that is basically the core of the entire story.
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Jul 13, 2016 16:35
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Random Stranger posted:As for the Lucas connection, I think that Lucas was very clearly influenced by Kurosawa's style even if he couldn't get it down. Star Wars in particular draws on those films in broad ways. Lucas' love for distinct scene transitions definitely echoes Kurosawa's. Also, IIRC, the spear duel in Hidden Fortress was a big inspiration for the lightsaber fight in A New Hope.
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Jul 13, 2016 19:43
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 Pom Poko Released July 16th 1994, Directed by Isao Takahata Well, this was certainly an interesting little film....trapped inside the body of a two hour long slog. As this film opened, I was watching with mostly-rapt bemusement at the antics of the cute little As to the overall message of the film I once again am appreciative of a Studio Ghibli movie not pulling punches or going for an implausibly happy ending. The tanuki are forced to adapt to their new living situations, either by blending in with the human world via transformation or simply moving on to a different rural area, and even the ones living in the middle of residential areas are congregating and celebrating in golf courses and pocket parks rather than wide tracts of forestland. I appreciated the sense of realism that came from the unstoppable encroachment of human development; even when the tanuki attempted to 'go public' and show themselves to all the humans, all they were able to accomplish was getting a little extra land set aside for parks, rather than a sudden cessation of the land development. I was also a bit shocked to see the early acts of 'eco-terrorism' perpetrated by Gonta's faction of tanuki actually resulted in human injury and death. I'm so used to children's movies pulling punches that I was expecting the construction equipment to be the only casualties of Gonta's raids. (As an aside, though, I'd be willing to bet that in the English dub, the newscaster probably says something to the effect of "thankfully nobody was injured in the freak accidents") At the end, I can really say that I appreciated the visual style and flair of Pom Poko, but wasn't really grabbed by the plot. I enjoyed all the tanuki transformation effects, the goblin parade and the senile old man sailing away on a treasure ship were particular highlights. The animation staff certainly earned their paychecks on this one, but part of me wishes the editors had been a bit more heavy handed. Up Next: Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto Released September 26th 1954, Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki jivjov fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Dec 1, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 19:46
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Looking forward to the next write-up. I watched them recently when I heard you'd be reviewing them. I'd never seen Mifune in anything non-Kurosawa but unsurprisingly he was excellent in this trilogy.
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Jul 13, 2016 20:11
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Basebf555 posted:Looking forward to the next write-up. I watched them recently when I heard you'd be reviewing them. I'd never seen Mifune in anything non-Kurosawa but unsurprisingly he was excellent in this trilogy. No promises, but I may do an unprecedented two movies in one day. Don't have a whole lot going on today, and I can't do yardwork due to the rain...so I may just watch films!! EDIT: Yeah, didn't happen. I got distracted by video games. Anyway, I'm going to see Nerve tomorrow and going an art museum Friday...so Saturday will be my next film watching opportunity jivjov fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 22:36
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jivjov posted:(As an aside, though, I'd be willing to bet that in the English dub, the newscaster probably says something to the effect of "thankfully nobody was injured in the freak accidents")
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Jul 14, 2016 08:54
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I'm with you on Pompoko. It's a movie that I want to like, and that I always enjoy the first twenty minutes or so of... and then it becomes a chore to watch. You've got a pretty good Ghibli run up for a few films now, until the disastrous Tales from Earthsea (in 2006). Probably the only film the studio's ever made that I'd call an outright dud. Pompoko at least I'd class as a noble failure, and it has some arresting visuals. Earthsea, though..... oof.
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Jul 14, 2016 11:31
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ozza posted:You've got a pretty good Ghibli run up for a few films now, until the disastrous Tales from Earthsea (in 2006). Probably the only film the studio's ever made that I'd call an outright dud. Pompoko at least I'd class as a noble failure, and it has some arresting visuals. Earthsea, though..... oof. What I want to know with Earthsea is who read Le Guin's absolutely godawful attempt to revive her glory days and said, "Yes, this is the perfect aspect of this fantasy world to turn into a film."
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Jul 14, 2016 12:11
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Interesting to me also was Le Guin's long response to the film: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/GedoSenkiResponse.html
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Jul 14, 2016 12:21
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ozza posted:I'm with you on Pompoko. It's a movie that I want to like, and that I always enjoy the first twenty minutes or so of... and then it becomes a chore to watch. Yeah...that opening bit with the territorial war and the shapeshifting into traditional samurai garb and whatnot was great and I was about ready to decry all the people that told me that I would be bored to death....and then the rest of the film happened.
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Jul 14, 2016 12:22
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The truly curious thing about the Earthsea animation was that Ghibli came up with their own original (so to speak) story, when the second book, The Tombs of Atuin, could have so easily been adapted to fit the Ghibi style. For those of you who haven't read it, The Tombs of Atuin is about a young girl who was taken from her family to be raised as the high priestess of an old religion. Between growing up isolated, learning to survive political intrigue, and handling religious functions, she slowly comes to suspect that the nameless gods that dwell in the Tombs are far more real than even her fellow priestesses believe. One day, a foreign wizard appears with the temerity to brave the lightless tombs and rob the gods, and she has to choose between fully adopting the identity of high priestess and sacrificing the intruder or risking her life to escape the society that has imprisoned her.
It basically is a Ghibli film already! Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 14, 2016 16:22
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Both of Goro's films aren't very good. Earthsea for some very obvious reasons that have already been stated. Bad choice of source material to adopt, no real sense of adventure given that there's only two settings, and the whole thing just feels lifeless. From Up On Poppy Hill cashes in on some sickeningly sweet 1950s Japanese nostalgia and almost flounders completely on a really dumb plotline. Both strain very hard to appear look and feel like a Ghibli film but fall flat on their face. It's not bad but any measure but it isn't very good. KaptainKrunk fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 14, 2016 21:36
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Poppy Hill at least had a bit of charm (though it didn't really feel like a Ghibli film). Earthsea on the other hand was just monotonous and dull. Schwarzwald (above) is right on the money when s/he says The Tombs of Atuin would have been a natural fit for the studio.
ozza fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jul 15, 2016 |
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Jul 15, 2016 02:24
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