I watched Linda Linda Linda last night.  I saw a trailer for it probably over a year ago now and have been trying to track it down ever since.  Over the weekend I was out shopping and lo and behold there it was.  It's a Japanese film about some girls trying to get a band together for the school festival.  It was surprisingly different from what I thought it would be.  Especially with the way it--and a lot of Japanese films--are packaged and presented in the US, I kind of figured it would be a big MUSIC SAVES THE DAY film, but instead it was completely understated (which I think is good--high school festivals are far from an epic event).  I really enjoyed it.

Timecode is brilliant! I have a book by Mike Figgis, the director. It's a superb read.

I just finished watching The Purple Rose of Cairo. I'm a huge fan of Woody Allen, and this is easily one of his best. He doesn't act in this one at all and as a result he explores in more depth some of the themes that are present in some of his more well known movies but get overshadowed by his trademark neurotic-jewish-new-yorkerisms. It's a sort of fantastical romantic comedy set during the great depression - Mia Farrow is the cinema-loving waitress who gets beat on by her drunk of a husband, Jeff Daniels the star of a movie named The Purple Rose of Cairo, whose character magically jumps from the screen and falls in love with her. It's light and funny, not lacking any of Woody's wit because of his absence in front of the screen. Simply put, it's just wonderful. 

I went ahead and watched a FILM CLASSIC, Chinatown. It's interesting how well this movie's aged, although a scene where Nicholson slaps a woman actually had more impact on me just because while it's not casual or anything, it's definitely more shocking for us now.

What I found interesting was my mother's reaction at the end of the film. Those of you who don't like spoilers (to be fair, with one of the most famous ending lines in film you probably know at least the tone of it) should avoid the rest of this post but Chinatown has a bleak fucking ending. No one good wins; the pedophile gets to rape his daughter, make millions, the decent people die, the rich get richer, and we're told "forget about it, it's Chinatown". It's not a coincidence that the movie ends with all those foreign faces surrounding the dead woman, immigrants and strangers. It reminded me of the Great Silence, another movie that ends "unfairly" and of Lord of the Flies, every single copy of which seems to include the same essay at the end that ends the same way: "who will save the soldier?"

The reason I bring this up was my mom's instant reaction was "What kind of ending was that?" In Bollywood, there is a strong escapist tendency. You can have a melancholy ending, but someone must escape or win. Movies like The Great Silence and Chinatown though, deliberately show us that no, we don't win, sometimes even slightly. Chinatown beats Gittes over and over.

And I told this to her, and her opinion shifted. Now she likes the movie.

The roundabout point being my mom figured out in one sentence and a few seconds what Grindie is still trying to snidely imply with a bunch of HEH I WATCHED A MOVIE SO FUCKING STUPID I DIDN'T NEED TO THINK ARE YOU JEALOUS posts so man you're a stupid piece of shit Grindie no one cares that you watched Commando 2 and have a false sense of pride about it because you literally can't figure out movies don't have to conform to a standard of bullshit and I really hope you realize that you can constantly drop "ya don't need ot think to figure it out" and this will hopefully be the last time anyone takes the bait because I really just wanted to talk more about how bleak Chinatown was but then remembered how dumb you are.

oh shit thank you for reminding me, I bought Chinatown a while ago intending to watch it again (too young/stupid/high to get it the first time) but it's been sitting on the shelf for a while and I keep forgetting to watch it.  i haven't had very many good opportunities to watch movies lately.

the first like two thirds are dashiell hammet as fuck so if you aren't into neo-noir it might bore you but there's a drastic shift in tone that made me actually SHUDDER in how unexpected it was. so maybe GETTIN HIGH you didn't catch that but it really struck me as An Important Film when that happened.

just goddam went from HEH IM SAM SPADE to "welp"

nah boredom won't be a problem.  most of polanski's movies are really slow but I enjoy them anyway.  I just call them "carefully paced" because that sounds classier.

i'm surprised anyone would call a polanski film slow. i mean 2001 okay that's intentional but man i haven't seen much his film seem fine in pace!

anyways because they were on netflix instant watch and i needed something in the background i watched two children's films that were both very different and i wouldn't make a comment on them normally but they struck me as strange. they are both movies you will have to struggle to remember though!

the first was really weird. it was called MEET THE ROBINSONS. i guess they were trying to jump on a nickelodeon Jimmy Adventure Boy Genius or whatever vibe, but failed. the premise of the movie starts out disney enough; some boy inventor in an orphanage cant get adopted, decides to invent a machine to see the past and look at his mom. there's honestly a LOT more suspension of disbelief in this movie than you'd expect; as in uh none of it should have even happened. this kid spends hundreds of bucks making an invention even at the age of five i would understand would be beyond any child's ken. it was a strange beginning that got a LOT stranger in a few minutes; the invention blows up thanks to the sabotage of a man in a sentient bowler hat, the kid gets upset and is all I'LL NEVER INVENT ANYTHING when another kid shows up, says the man in the bowler hat changed history by stopping his invention from working, hes from the future, go back and fix the science fair. our protagonist ignores him and goes into the future with a time machine and meets the Robinson family.

here's where the movie abandons any sense of being a movie. we're introduced to what must be twenty different characters, each with a single personality trait of being WACKY or whatever. like there's not even an attempt to pretend these are anything but burger king toys. there are homages to kung fun movies, references to things, and none are over your head but none BELONG. the movie then remembers it needs to do something, shovels in the obvious detail that guess what this is his family in the future dun dun duuun.

this part is actually less cool and kind of creepy as the mom of the family offers to adopt our protagonist...who is really her husband in the future, though she doesn't know this yet. and he's hanging out with his own kids. and uh. yeah this was weird.

the movie then powers along for about half an hour and throws in a stupid NEVER GIVE UP MESSAGE, the man in the bowler hat is jimmy neutron's old roommate who missed a baseball catch on science fair day because jimmy kept him up all night and so this was his revenge, the bowler hat is defeated because jimmy realizes since he invented all he has to do is say I NEVER INVENTED YOU (which once again leads less to HOW NEAT and more to wait couldn't he resolve every single conflict in the plot by doing this?) and basically I don't understand how this movie got made. I almost want to recommend it because of how confused it made me.

the second movie i saw was the Ant Bully which was just terrible. somehow they got some big names for the voices. this is it though. this movie is a mess. it's not funny, the 3d could have been done by a competent GW modeler, the action sequences are boring, and it belongs in the same heap as Igor and other forgettable pieces of 3d shit. don't watch this movie even casually. it's no Disaster Movie but it's dross and a pure waste of time.

I'm now going to watch the Fountain which I've heard is really bad from a lot of people.

i liked the fountain a lot, if only for the imagery. i'm not much of a SPECIAL FX GUY or whatever but damn that movie is pretty. i saw it at the theaters and it was almost ruined for me because this dumbass guy i used to hang out with came with me and he kept asking me questions

i don't know, i really liked that movie! a lot of people told me it was bad too but fuck them..they.. they dont understand it

Meet the Robinsons was awful, and throughout the whole thing I couldn't understand the process that went behind making it.  I can't imagine the people writing it and saying "MAN THIS IS GOOD....THIS IS GOOD STUFF...."

I think you summed up my problems with it very well.

its not even bad like normal though, i've honestly had to think about what the hell was up with any of that movie and i stilldon't get it.

its not SO BAD ITS FUNNY, it's not SO BAD ITS IGOR, it's not SECRETLY GOOD its just bad on a level i've never known things could be???

the only way i can explain it is that it's right up there with that movie where that kid has a talking baseball and talking bat that....i don't even remember what the actual plot of it was because it was so bad!!!


kids movies have basically turned into WHAT CAN WE CGI? and their movies end up indescribably hopeless...i mean, they don't even have stories you can really follow, or if you can follow them you can't understand why the hell they were ever, ever made

I just watched Fight Club.  Does anyone else really like this movie?

i'm going to go ahead and say not only do i think fight club is a good movie regardless of how many, SO MANY, people seem to not actually understand the movie is not about HEH TEH COOL MINDFUCK when you think about what's good about it and how absolutely insane the fan level for the movie is, but that i think the movie is substantially better than the book.

not going to lie i pretend that shit was intentional even though absolutely nothing indicates it was.

when i watch a movie i see the characters and not the actors, with maybe the exception of Nicolas Cage since he always seems to deliver things exactly the same way

Nah, dude there are alot of bad actors except Cage. I like Brad Pitt though. He's both hot and a good actor in most of the shit he's in (12 monkeys for example). I like the actors that "over-act" just enough to make stuff interesting though so yeah.

i liked the fountain a lot, if only for the imagery. i'm not much of a SPECIAL FX GUY or whatever but damn that movie is pretty. i saw it at the theaters and it was almost ruined for me because this dumbass guy i used to hang out with came with me and he kept asking me questions

i don't know, i really liked that movie! a lot of people told me it was bad too but fuck them..they.. they dont understand it

nah this is pretty bad so far and if you were visually STUNNED by it im hoping its in comparison to XMEN ORIGINS or something because yeaaaa. you should watch better movies. seriously space is apparently photoshop difference clouds.

although i'm gonna show my hypocrisy and recommend this movie called the Return that came out in Russia a while ago that while it had some weak parts actually was really REALLY strange from a visual perspective. he uses some crazy filters or something. let me wiki...

HOLY SHIT

Actor Vladimir Garin, who played Andrei, drowned shortly after the end of shooting in a lake near the one where several of the picture's scenes were filmed.

jaw floor.

(lake imagery is like 50% of this movie)

god that's actually really sad though. he was like a fucking kid and he did a good job in the picture. man. that sucks.

edit: but yeah man this movie is kind of dumb and i think you're forgiving it for the gimmick. like we've got three plots, the most interesting of which is this old spaniard one. the middle one is so overly fucking dramatic man.

we cured the brain disease...but guass shes dead. that's a stupid plot twist no matter how you swing it. idk this could have all been done a lot better!

i mean better the Fountain than SNOW DOGS but we're not talking about that and yeah this movie is about as dumb as i was led to believe. and this buddha tree is, with zero homophobia, the faggiest story in the world.

okay bulletpoint: do not ever watch the Fountain. what a dumb movie. aaa mailman i hope you haven't come yet so i can throw this shit in the netflix. I will say the music, for this kind of overblown post rock stuff, was pretty good. sort of like all of Mogwai/Kronos Quartet stuff I guess.

I just saw Knowing last night... and I loved it.  It was totally fucking insane.  It was creepy, amazing, and intriguing all at the same time.

There was one scene in the vein of Children of Men, where it's one long continuous shot, and a shit load of stuff is going on. 

I might be biased in liking it, due to it being an original sci-fi film.  It's rare to see a decent on in theaters these days.