I watched this movie last night; it's a powerful portrayal of life in the methamphetamine world of the rural Ozarks. I spent a number of years in St. Louis, and before that a decade in Kentucky, working with many backwoods people, and can testify to the validity of the presentation of the landscape and the lifestyle (and one that is not geographically limited - you can find people like these in the Rockies, the desert Southwest, the rural Midwest and elsewhere).
It's not an action movie, or a thriller, as the trailer might suggest. It's a picture of a way of life, and one that in this story is almost unremittingly bleak, until a small glimmer of hope for a better future appears in the closing scene. The acting and editing is superb.
Note: YouTube has made available a new embedding technology, which I've used for this video and the "Antogo" one further down the page -
If you use the new embed code style, your viewers will be able to view your embedded video in one of our Flash or HTML5 players, depending on their viewing environment and preferences. Environments that support the HTML5 video player are listed here on our HTML5 settings page. In instances where HTML5 isn't supported (e.g. our HTML5 player can't play videos with ads), we use Flash.
An additional benefit of the new embed style is that it will eventually allow embeds to work on mobile devices, which typically use a built-in player instead of Flash or HTML5.
The list of supported browsers is here. Let me know if you have problems viewing these videos (other than the "wandering" placement problem that plagues the Safari users), because I can opt to embed videos using the old-style embed code.
With all the generally negative comments that have recently been directed toward John Boehner for his propensity to tear up, I thought this would be an appropriate time to post this video compilation of men crying in movies. It's an impressive assemblage - although I do think the final one breaks the otherwise reasonably dignified tone of most of the selections.
This 26-minute Australian animated short film is one of four parts of The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, nominated for an Academy Award in 2006.
An animated short nominated for the Academy Award in 2007.
An old man, Moulin, has cut off the world and lives a miserly existence on his own. One day he climbs a pile of books so he can reach a bottle of spirits and the stack collapses. Fortunately a priest arrives to stop his fall but notices that the old man has brought something else to the ground as well as the bottle - a red sock containing all his savings.
The priest promises Moulin salvation if he signs over the money. He has a device which will ensure his entry in to heacen but the old man wants to see more proof....
A cute story, but what impressed me was the quality of the animation.
Variations on that famous line from The Wizard of Oz appear with extraordinary frequency in films. Rich Juzwiak at four four has compiled 58 examples in this 6-minute video. The repetition is a bit annoying, but strangely fascinating... (A list of the movies is at four four.)
The plot is science-fiction, involving a quest to "restart" the dying sun by delivering a nuclear payload to explode inside it. It goes without saying that you have to have a little bit of willing suspension of disbelief to enjoy the story, and it's also better not to try to figure out exactly what the crew is doing during the action sequences. Instead, I recommend just leaning back and soaking in the entire gestalt they way the crew sometimes soaks in sunshine.
The director is Danny Boyle, and the cast are generally excellent, especially Cillian Murphy and Rose Byrne. The sound track is especially notable for the segment embedded below -
which has a "Music from the Hearts of Space" quality to it. This segment occurs during the separation of the ship and shield from the payload.
I'm going to watch the movie again tonight, listening to the overdub of the director's comments on one of the alternative soundtracks to hopefully learn about the technical aspects of the film's creation.
Update after second viewing: Unlike the supplementary soundtracks on some DVDs, Danny Boyle's comments are well worth hearing if you like the movie - lots of content, and not much trivia. Things I learned: 1) The external views of the ship(s) are entirely CG. Boyle says modelling has gone by the board for modern filmmaking. 2) In a wonderful comment he notes a singular advantage of working with an ensemble cast, none of whom are major stars: "you can kill them off in whatever order you want." !!! 3) The slow pace at the beginning he says is intrinsic to all space-based sci-fi films to establish breadth, scale, distance etc. Can't rush into plot elements. Also, machinery sound is pretty much needed during shots of moving spacecraft to give them "weight." 4) The color spectrum was intentionally manipulated so that interior shots were in shades of blue/gray/green, so that the exterior ones could display the oranges and yellows. 5) Lots of tight shots to establish claustrophobic feelings, and he discusses every director's nightmare of how to deal with space helmets. 6) The "flash frames" of the crew of the doomed previous mission (Icarus I) are truly 1-frame shots and in a normal movie would be invisible to the eye in their 1/24 second duration, but because of the color contrast they are readily assimilated by the viewer. 7) He loved the "great deaths" that he was able to arrange for the crew - from flash incineration to absolute-zero freeze. 8) (spoiler alert!) The fact that the "suicide" of Trey is actually a murder is designated when the drawer is opened and two knives are missing. 9) The reason Capa puts on the "flak jacket" after the knife attack by Pinbacker is to help avoid discontinuities in showing a gaping bleeding wound in future scenes. 10) The coolant really was ice cold, as was the room (to allow visualization of the breath), so the actor wasn't faking the chattering of his teeth after he emerged from submersion. 11) The sound that accompanies the beginning of the depressurization episode is the "reverse orchestra" sound from Dr. Pepper's "Day in the Life." 12) A figure of Icarus is briefly visible on the shield facing the sun, as it separates from the payload.
One last recommendation - if you listen to the director's commentary soundtrack, it's useful to view the video with subtitles, because it allows you to follow the plot elements he is commenting on.
That's Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) in the title role of what I believe is the sixth major movie version of Jane Eyre. It appears to be beautifully filmed and acted. Due to be released on March 11.
Based on a graphic novel from Platinum Studios -- the publisher of the original "Men in Black" comic -- the title is so straightforward one might assume that it's a joke. But as the just-released trailer shows, this movie isn't playing the concept for laughs. It has some seriously big names behind the camera, including director Jon Favreau ("Iron Man"), producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, and executive producer Steven Spielberg. And it has two of the toughest leading men of their generations -- Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig -- in the starring roles...
The 1945 film, directed by Rene Clair, is one of several adaptations of Agatha Christie's novel. I plan to watch this when I get some free time, but I'm sure it can't be as good as the book itself, so I'd suggest this only be watched by those who have already read and enjoyed the book. (Addendum: several readers suggest that the movie is as good as the book, or better.)
Update November 5: I found this comment at the Classic Films Reddit:
The entire movie can be viewed in 12 videos at YouTube.
Update: The Turner Classic Movie station (TCM) will be broadcasting a special program on the evening of November 7 entitled "Metropolis Refound," detailing the restoration of the movie. Earlier that same night their schedule shows a three-hour segment for "Metropolis," but I've been unable to ascertain whether that will be the original or the restored version.
...in the notorious eyeball-slicing scene... Buñuel claimed that he had used a dead calf’s eye. Through intense lighting, Buñuel attempted to make the furred face of the animal appear as human skin.
As a long-time observer of "movie mistakes," I couldn't help noticing that the hand inserted through the door is a left hand with the palm toward the door, and the hand with the ants is a right hand with the palm toward the woman.
Eisenstein's 1925 silent film is embedded in its entirety above. If you don't have the requisite hour+ to view this classic, I posted the iconic Odessa Steps scene (and some related clips) last year.
Many years ago I set myself a goal of seeing all of the Alfred Hitchcock films; most of them were readily available via cable television or library DVDs, but some seemed to be unavailable. Then I found the Internet Archive, which has an incredible number of obscure films and video clips. I found one of my "missing" Hitchcocks there, and have embedded it above.
Bon Voyage is not one of the obscure early English films. It's an obscure mid-career film, made after such Hollywood successes as Rebecca and Lifeboat. I suppose the reasons it is never shown are 1) it is more of a "short" (24 minutes) than a movie, 2) it is in French, and 3) it's not all that great. (Cinematically I think the best part comes right after 22:00 in his sequence of the girl's face).
Bon Voyage was created as a propaganda film for the British Ministry of Information in 1944. I don't believe it has a director's cameo in it. The only reason to watch it is if, like me, you want to view the entire filmography.
A quite comprehensive assemblage, lacking only "Easy Virtue (1927), Blackmail (1929), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Spellbound (1945), The Paradine Case (1947), and Under Capricorn (1949)." This is much better than the link I posted earlier today in the smorgasbord. I do wish that the person who compiled it had come up with some audio background other than an endless loop of the Funeral March of A Marionette.
