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Member (Idle past 836 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Movie Thread | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
kuresu Member (Idle past 2513 days) Posts: 2544 From: boulder, colorado Joined: |
check out post 22.
Angla beat you to the punch.
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anglagard Member (Idle past 836 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined: |
First, thanks to the tip on finding old threads provided by Moose under the goofy primary one, I was able to revive this old conversation. It appears the search function on EVC works much better now than when I last tried to use it several years ago.
A few things have happened since the last post here on 10/13/2007. First, I now consider Kristof Kieslowski among the best directors, if not the best. In addition to the three colors trilogy (Blue is slow as an Ozu film until the final payoff, White moves faster and shows more of Kieslowski's unexpected twists, Red is unique and the best of the three), there is the Dekalogue, which is technically not a movie but rather 10 episodes of a miniseries. It is the best. But don't take my word for it:
Skipping over English language movies, here is what has particularly impressed me from the rest of the world by nation since 2007. Argentina The Secret in their Eyes - At the end you will discover there are punishments worse than the death penalty. (IMDB #137) BRAZIL City of God - What lies in Rio dies in Rio. (#21) Elite Squad - And you thought police were corrupt here. Elite Squad, the Enemy Within - Indeed, see above. FRANCE The Intouchables - Quadriplegic rich French guy meets streetwiseblack guy, both learn from the other and eventually connect. (#39) Tall Blonde Man in One Black Shoe - Saw this a long time ago from San Francisco TV channel (damn liberals!) hilarious, sequel even funnier. Had to get DVD from Russia, Packaging and DVD instructions in Cyrillic - good luck with translation. INDIA Kahaani - Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone who has been hooked up with this movie either by myself or my daughter goes away very impressed. To even begin to explain would be spoiling. Like Stars on Earth - Goofy kid has trouble in school, everyone including parents pissed off makes kid miserable, understanding teacher (Aamir Khan) sets things right. An excellent movie IMHO. (#115) 3 Idiots - College graduates seek a reunion with their hijinks ringleader (Aamir Khan). Good but not great, still worth a peek. (#116) Rang De Basanti - Young woman from England researching her past ancestor travels to India and tries to make documentary about the UK colonial experience from their perspective. Young Indian actors don't take her seriously, give her shit, until ... (I like movies that abruptly change). Starring Aamir Khan. (Is there a theme going in here? #174) RUSSIA Stalker - This movie IMHO more than any other I have ever seen will haunt your dreams. The stalker, who knows his way around a forbidden area leads a scientist and journalist to the room which will grant any human their wish. Unique, incredible, and vastly underrated. (#198) 12 - Not just a simple remake of Twelve Angry Men featuring twelve angry Russians, this one detracts from the original toward the end for a different, yet plausible conclusion. More to come. Edited by anglagard, : Accident hitting wrong key and posting prematurely
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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I've seen some good movies from Finland:
The Man Without a Past and of course:
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Lapland Odyssey Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses
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ramoss Member (Idle past 612 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
When I was younger, I went to a talk by Howard Koch, one of the screen writers for Casablanca, and he talked about being on set (and he showed the movie).
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2578 From: massachusetts US Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
I'll toss in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" - not because it's good, but because I really like it.
Doesn't hurt to have a Leonard Cohen soundtrack either.- xongsmith, 5.7d |
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anglagard Member (Idle past 836 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined: |
Provided one is comfortable with subtitles, and for those few in the USA actually comfortable with the fact there are another 221 nations on this planet, I offer the latest gem -- Wild Tales
The movie consists of six vignettes, some as short as 15 minutes. My take is it is a combination of Kieslowski and The Twilight Zone. I also add a documentary to this post, The Look of Silence. It is about the genocide against suspected "Communists" (eg. labor organizers for example) back in 1965 Indonesia that had around a million victims. And I thought Grave of the Fireflies was depressing. Here we have an interviewer, who lost his brother to the genocide, bear witness to the executioners smiling, laughing, and bragging about how they tortured and killed their victims, many of which hold high office to this day including the vice presidency. The interviewers brother -- turns out he finally died despite enduring the worst torture because he bled to death after being castrated by sword. I think the Hague needs to step up its game. Banality of evil is not the same as rejoicing in evil, yet both share one overarching similarity, namely evil itself. Now for the pop stars: Mad Max: Fury Road - Entertaining due to outlandish effects and a refreshing somewhat feminist take. Star Wars: The Force Awakens - It is what it is, a rehash of the original. Still better than the prequels. Hateful Eight - Tarantino, nuff' said.. Room - Spent fist half waiting for cops to arrive, tedious yet somehow compelling. Truth - Dan Rathers' fall from grace - formulaic. The Revenant - Boring, and lies about Hugh Glass' story which is questionable to begin with - formulaic. Spotlight - Addresses child abuse scandal in Boston Catholic church, good movie yet still formulaic. Bridge of Spies - Just OK, sort of follows history except the part about U2 pilot Gary Powers being tortured by the Soviets. Semi-formulaic. Ex Machina - Interesting movie concerning the ethics if AI. Maybe the robot should be hired as a screenwriter - not formulaic. Obviously my taste in movies is not to everyone's liking, just as in music I prefer complexity, surprise, and originality -- others may differ in their opinions and all are subjective. My own daughter calls me a hipster -- well in the words of God and Popeye, I am what I am and believe "to thine ownself be true". Edited by anglagard, : Title Edited by anglagard, : clarity Edited by anglagard, : extraneous word 'are' in second sentence Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. - Francis Bacon
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
The Revenant - Boring, and lies about Hugh Glass' story which is questionable to begin with - formulaic. Granted, the movie lasted longer than it should have and a lot of the plot lines are embellished from the real Hugh Glass story, but cinematically I thought it was great. The raid scene and the bear scene were pretty damn awesome... "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1504 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined: |
Hi anglagard,
I was once having a business lunch with some co-workers at a Cracker Barrel. (Not my choice) Somehow the topic of cinema came up and one of the ladies that works in my office asked me "what kind of movies do you likke to watch.?" To which I replied, "I have lately been enjoying foreign films."Immediately all the people at the table went silent. And all were making a awkward face towards me. I asked, "Did I say something wrong?" It was only later I found out that they heard me say: " I have lately been enjoying PORN films." lol. Well I do. Enjoy foreign films that is. I seen a Danish film not to long ago called: "After the wedding"(2006)After the Wedding (2006) - IMDb It was very well done in my opinon and very refreshing in how it was scripted and shot. Which is one of the reason I like foreign films. Another great classic is "The Conformist" (1970) The Conformist (1970) - IMDb directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. To me one of the most gorgeously framed and shot films I have ever seen. Enjoy. Edited by 1.61803, : 1970 2006 Edited by 1.61803, : spell"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
To which I replied, "I have lately been enjoying foreign films."
Actually, when I was a junior-high teenager in the first half of the 60's, I saw the two genres are being equivalent, since the foreign films weren't so strongly censored against nudity.. . . It was only later I found out that they heard me say: " I have lately been enjoying PORN films." lol. Having since been a foreign language major, I also enjoy foreign films and TV, making those what I watch most on Netflix. Appropriate to the Republican primaries (and developed independently therefrom), Netflix has a German satire from last year, Er ist wieder da ("He is Here Again" -- English Title "Look Who's Back" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Who%27s_Back_(film) ). In 2014, Adolf Hitler suddenly appears on the site of his bunker in the middle of Berlin, is mistaken for a street performer, and becomes a media sensation as he plans his political come-back. Many parts of the film were taken from him being in character on the streets and in the Gasthuser of Germany talking with actual Germans. Of course, those were biased towards favorable reactions to him with a few negative reactions included. Their complaints, which he promised to address, were unemployment, complaints about immigrants, and the feeling that they were powerless, that their votes did not count, that they had no say in what the government was imposing on them (especially by letting all those foreigners in). And one of the things that Hitler promised them was that he could make Germany great again. If you've seen "Downfall", you should recognize the parody of the scene where Hitler was finally informed that his military defenses no longer existed, only this time it's a TV executive faced with plummeting ratings having been informed that the host of his only popular show had quit.
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1504 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined: |
I will have to check out "Look who's back" My wife is German so she will probably get a kick out of it. We watch many German films together. I know I do not get the full effect having to read subtitles.
I am leaning German but it is a complex language. Didnt someone famous say, "Life is too short to learn German." ? I did see "Down fall" and will watch pretty much anything that has to do with WWII. One of my favorite scenes in that one is when the oldsalty Field Marshall General is taking artillery fire at his position just outside Berlin. He is covered with dust as he goes marching into Hitlers bunker, unbeknownst to him he is being called there to be shot for cowardice and retreating in the face of the enemy. The look on his face is priceless. I once wrote a long and flowery poem to my wife in English and then used Google translate to translate it into German.How funny it was to see how all my flowery language was chopped into astringent short sentences. Not romantic at all but my wife got a laugh out of it ! German films worth a look: "M"(1931 Fritz Lang) a must see for any film buff. M (1931) - IMDb Peter Lore screaming...."ICH MUSSSSSSS!!!!!!!" "Barbara" (2012 Christian Petzold) Period piece that is a stark, harsh look at life on the East side of the wall circa early 1980's that sharply contrast with the softer side of what love can drive us to do.Barbara (2012) - IMDb "You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
I am leaning German but it is a complex language. Didnt someone famous say, "Life is too short to learn German." ?
German's not that complex. Basically, English is German with a lot of French vocabulary slathered all over it. That means that learning German verbs is easier since the verb system is like in English (eg, sing, sang, sung and singen, sang, gesungen). The French verb system is a lot harder to learn since it is so unlike the verb system in English. But French vocabulary is easier because many of the words are the same (in English words ending in -ble and -nce all sound the same, but they sound different in French so when I was in practice I used their French pronunciation to figure out how to spell them), but German vocabulary is not as easy since only about 25% of English words are from Anglo-Saxon. I think that quote might be Mark Twain from his "The Awful German Language." Netflix also has a German documentary about the film industry in Weimar: "From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses". I saw "M" in college (I was a German major). Lorre's line that I remember most was his defense, "Ich kann aber nichts dafr!" And there's a German shopping center in Torrance that, when I was in college (early 70's) had a Kino that showed a different pair of German movies every weekend. Though most of them didn't have subtitles, since most of the customers were from the local German community. Remember that Anaheim was founded by German immigrants and their Phoenix Club has been operating here for decades. Those movies were our only opportunity to hear German outside of class. Even when video stores appeared nearly two decades later, most of their foreign offerings would be French. Even with all its faults, Netflix is a welcome change. Another movie on Netflix is "The Nasty Girl" (Das Schlechte Mdchen). What was so horrible about her? She wouldn't stop researching for the truth of what the town did during the Hitlerzeit. If you search on German movies, you won't see it. I find that to be a big problem with Netflix. There was also a Moritz Bleibtreu movie, "My Best Enemy" (Mein Bester Feind), which is no longer available -- but it might come back so keep an eye out for it. It also wouldn't show up in the list of German movies. Really frustrating. Early in "Look Who's Back", there's a scene where the receptionist has brought her pet rat (not white) to the office because she needed to take him to the vet after work. The conversation about the rat is different from what the subtitles say. Your wife can explain it.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
Oh frak!
Special Operations Executive (SOE).British organized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Operations_Executive. "The organisation directly employed or controlled just over 13,000 people, about 3,200 of whom were women." The women they mainly used as couriers, many of whom gave their lives. If you have been watching Agent Carter, her first assignment was to the SOE. One agent, the sole survivor of her pre-D-Day mission, wrote her memoir which formed the core of the movie on Netflix, Female Agents (Les Femmes de L'Ombre -- "Women of the Shadow"). C'est en franais, but watch it nonetheless.
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1504 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined: |
Hello dwise1,
quote: Ok, not "that" complex. But complex enough to confound a simpleton like moi. I finally watched "Look who's Back" I found it both amusing (laughed out loud many times.) And my wife found it entertaining as well.Unsettling to say the least though; the director and writer managed to tap into such a wide array of emotions from all walks of life. The film seemed to show through comedy just how much remaining fear and horror of the holocaust still lies in a shallow grave of the world's consciousness. And even though there is laughter it is not a laughter of mirth and merriment but a nervous inappropriate laugh of one who is uncomfortable and not completely at peace with the subject matter. So in that respect I found it to be a good thought provoking film."You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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Ok, not "that" complex. But complex enough to confound a simpleton like moi.
quote:Quoted from memory from four decades ago. For monoglots, grammar is just a bunch of dumb arbitrary rules where what everybody normally says is supposed to be wrong. You already know how to speak English, so you approach English grammar as a bunch of rules you have to memorize in order to pass the next test: you just write what sounds right and memorize the exceptions where what sounds right isn't supposed to be right. But when you learn a foreign language you discover what a wonderfully useful thing grammar really is. Grammar is the key to the language, the description of how the language works. In two years of high school German, I learned far more about English grammar than I ever did in twelve years of English classes. Man kennt die eigene Sprache nicht, ... . Is German your first foreign language? The first one is usually the hardest, because you also have to learn how to learn a language; each subsequent language tends to be easier because you now have skills and knowledge that is transferable. I even went from a foreign language major (BA German with classes in French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Russian, plus a few more on the side -- I only have any proficiency in German, French, and Spanish, followed by a little very rudimentary Russian) to Computer Science in which I used my foreign language learning skills to learn my first programming languages. I already talked about the verb systems in English (a West Germanic language, as is German) and German being very similar. But only about 25% of English vocabulary is related to German (ignoring the French words that German also borrowed), so vocabulary learning is a bit more difficult. Read up on the Second Sound Shift (die zweite Lautverschiebung) which had only made it up to Kln. Hochdeutsch uses the southern consonants, which were affected by the sound shift, which changed from what they still are in the north and in Dutch and in English. Knowing those changes will help you recognize more cognates, words in the two languages that are similar because they are related (eg, Tier and deer, which even in Shakespeare's time referred to small animals). There's also case, wherein nouns are changed to reflect how they are used in the sentence. Russian still has it, as did Latin and classical Greek, but most other Indo-European (AKA Indogermanisch) languages have largely lost it except in the personal pronouns. German still has it in the definite article and in adjective endings (AKA "declination" as in Mark Twain's outburst, "I've much rather decline a drink than a damned German adjective!"). That actually makes things much easier for you as a listener. It also allows spoken German to become much more terse and condensed. I was watching a German TV movie version of "Valkyre" and there was a scene at the family dinner table where the conversation was in small fragments that all made perfect sense in German, but which had the subtitles scrambling to keep up. I have three pet peeves about monoglot native English speakers:
Also, in my German classes we were taught that young children are hard-wired to learn language, but then around puberty that wiring gets messed up so it becomes harder for adults to learn a foreign language. I think that personal pride and self-consciousness must also play a part as we become afraid to make a mistake, something you cannot avoid in language learning. I married into a Mexican family in which my in-laws provided day-care while my wife and I worked. As a result, both our sons (and their four cousins from my two sisters-in-law) grew up knowing both English and Spanish, though they were reluctant to try to speak it. I remember one night I was alone at home so I started watching Ghostbusters in Spanish. My sons and their mother returned and my older son saw what was on and sat down to watch. After at least five minutes, he started to get a puzzled look on his face and then he finally figured out that it wasn't in English. I saw that as a mark of his fluency with Spanish. Similarly, almost as soon as my niece learned to speak she had also worked out which of her grandmothers spoke English and which spoke Spanish -- young children are lean, mean learning machines! My father had spent part of his childhood in Texas and my son (at 3 or 4 years old) would get mad at him whenever he used any Spanish, because he was supposed to speak English. Along the same lines, I tried speaking German to our first son, but he paid no attention to it; instead, he always paid close attention to what two adults were speaking to each other. I thought that to be very interesting. BTW, I already mentioned that there used to be German communities in my area. On NPR some years ago I heard a report on old dance halls in Texas and that they were associated with German communities there. Not quite related is the story of Lawrence Welk who grew up in North Dakota but who mainly spoke German until he left home to pursue his music career. I don't know anything about the distribution of German communities in Texas now where in Texas you live, but if you look around you might find some communities that you could tap into. An embassy (USA embassy in German?) produced an excellent brochure about Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language" that contains the original, a German translation, and a number of letters by Mark Twain "in German" that are "a hoot and a half" for anyone bilingual in English and German to read. Unfortunately, it's now been place behind some weird kind of Google sign-in wall. I will post it on my site and give you the URL, international diplomatic considerations be damned!
I finally watched "Look who's Back"
I think the film's message was driven home hard in the end in which the rightest demonstrations are shown as Henry Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary plays (which was also the title music to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange). Last summer I got a new car with Sirius XM, so I've been listening to the Insight Channel (121), a kind of leftist talk radio. Some months ago on one show, they were commenting on the situation in Europe. For centuries, European nations have been monolithic, have consisted of basically one kind of culture and ethnicity. For decades, Europe has been laughing at the USA's on-going problems with race relations and cultural diversity. Now suddenly they are themselves facing the exact same problems and it's tearing them apart such that we are seeing a resurgence of far-right political forces. What had struck me were the parallels between Hitler's street conversations with every-day Germans and the Donald Trump campaign. When I was in Germany in 1973, there was a Dritte Reich magazine (you could also order Schallplatten). One issue had an article which used a quote from Hitler: "Gott, ich konnte aber reden!" A subsequent documentary talked about how Hitler would plan out all his speeches and every gesture he would use. And certainly we have all seen his over-the-top mass speech performances (which in one German movie ... this one? ... I have heard described as "over the top"), but that wasn't in any of his speeches in this movie. They were all directed to smaller groups, so the restraint makes more sense to me. Did your wife explain a couple jokes to you? The comedian host of the show that Hitler appeared on was named Michael Witzigmann -- "funny man". And when Sawatzki first encounters Franziska Krmeier pet rat she had brought to work to take to the vet later. He assumed the rat was pregnant but she informs him that those are his "Eier" (eggs) and he's confused into thinking that rats lay eggs. Sorry, I was listening to the German instead of reading the subtitles. Did your wife explain to you that testicles are called Eier in German? Apparently for sharing the same general size, shape, and fragility. Perhaps Hitler's conversation with Sawatzki on the roof-top contains the film's message. Sawatzki cannot kill Hitler, because Hitler is a part of him, of us. We cannot get rid of him. 60 years later and we see the same messages from Donald Trump. Here's another Netflix movie, Experimenter. Stanley Milgram's infamous psychological experiments where subjects would willingly administer lethal electrical shocks under the direction of an authority figure in a white lab coat -- Wir befolgten bloss unsere Befehle. A really scary part of that is that fundamentalist Christian morality operates on the exact same level. Are you also a Star Trek fan? An independent company is working on a new Star Trek film, "Star Trek: Axanar". They produced a trailer for it, a mock-historical documentary, "Prelude to Axanar", about the Federation's "Four Year War" with the Klingon Empire leading up to the final decisive battle at Axanar (in the heart of Federation space, less than 11 light years from Terra and within striking range of the other principal planets). Incredibly excellent production quality. CBS and Paramount are taking legal action, but we wants "Star Trek: Axanar".
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4344 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 5.9 |
I like comedies and mysteries.
Bagdad Caf is one of my faorites.
quote: One of the things that I liked was a haunting song, Calling You, by Jevetta Steele. . The other comedy that I remember (and always laugh at the memories) is The Frisco Kid.
quote: What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy |
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