Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Dogville :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews
His dislike of the United States (which he has never visited, since he is afraid of airplanes) is so palpable that it flies beyond criticism into the realm of derangement. When the film premiered at Cannes 2003, he was accused of not portraying Americans accurately...
What von Trier is determined to show is that Americans are not friendly, we are suspicious of outsiders, we cave in to authority, we are inherently violent, etc. All of these things are true, and all of these things are untrue. It's a big country, and it has a lot of different kinds of people. Without stepping too far out on a limb, however, I doubt that we have any villages where the helpless visitor would eventually be chained to a bed and raped by every man in town.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040409/REVIEWS/404090303/1023
"Killing Them Softly" continues as a dismal, dreary series of cruel and painful murders, mostly by men who know one another, in a barren city where it's usually night, often rainy and is never identifiable as New Orleans — not even by the restaurants.
Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that many readers must have assumed was unfilmable, it is a triumph over its difficulties. It is also a moving spiritual achievement, a movie whose title could have been shortened to "life."
In this 50th year of the James Bond series, with the dismal "Quantum of Solace" (2008) still in our minds, "Skyfall" triumphantly reinvents 007 in one of the best Bonds ever.
I've rarely been more aware than during Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that Abraham Lincoln was a plain-spoken, practical, down-to-earth man from the farmlands of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Roger Ebert:
"eventually every player ventures into that unknown land where there are more possible moves than atoms in the universe. All you have is your mind as it tries to find its way through the infinite better than your opponent can.
As a player of mediocre strength, I have no hope of playing at the level achieved by these students. But if I win, I have proven myself better than the person seated across the board from me, and every player knows the finality when the other player sadly turns over his king, signaling surrender. We know it even better when we do it ourselves."
As a player of mediocre strength, I have no hope of playing at the level achieved by these students. But if I win, I have proven myself better than the person seated across the board from me, and every player knows the finality when the other player sadly turns over his king, signaling surrender. We know it even better when we do it ourselves."
Thursday, November 1, 2012
New Star Wars films
…” A new film is already in the works and slated for 2015 with plans to release a new Star Wars film every two to three years.”…
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Did you choose your religion? - Roger Ebert's Journal
"Today I saw an extraordinary film named "The Other Son," about Israeli and Palestinian baby boys who were mistakenly switched at birth.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/10/would_you_kill_baby_hitler.html
The switch is discovered when the Israeli boy is turned down by the army because his blood type doesn't match his parents. We have two boys accustomed to think of themselves as Jewish or Palestinian, and they are legally each other."
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Roger Ebert on the Higgs Boson
"Every second at the Large Hadron Collider, enough data is generated to fill more than 1,000 one-terabyte hard drives -- more than the information in all the world's libraries. The logistics of filtering and analyzing the data to find the Higgs particle peeking out under a mountain of noise, not to mention running the most complex machine humans have ever built, is itself a triumph of technology and computational wizardry of unprecedented magnitude."
"My childhood question remains unanswered: "Why is there something and not nothing?" No scientist at Geneva, to my knowledge, has asked why there is a Higgs boson and not a Higgs boson? But they now know that there is something and not nothing, and they have seen it and identified it and named it and it is as they thought it would be. That is an enormous discovery to come during our lifetimes...
I don't understand the Higgs boson in the way a theoretical physicist does. What I know is that inside that mountain on the Swiss-French border, they went looking for something and they found it. They will keep on looking for centuries after we are dead. Maybe someday they will find God. Wouldn't that be a gas? Whatever they find, they will find more and more and more. It's not turtles all the way down."***
Roger Ebert
*** This is a reference to a Stephen Hawking story:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
Friday, July 13, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
FW: Movies?
From: Witmer, Robert
Spider Man
While sitting in the theater I thought, this is the same story different day. But after listening to some of the reviews I liked it much better. The main positive points are that this Peter Parker has more sides to him than the previous versions of his character. The negatives I agreed with were that the monster was pretty shallow. The writers missed a big opportunity to a better story with a “Jekyll and Hyde” subplot.
Act of Valor
Pretty cheesy acting but I still liked it for the attempts at realism and sincerity.
Johnny English Reborn
I’m starting to like this guy.
We bought a Zoo.
Not the goofy movie I thought it would be and was pleasantly surprised.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Iron Sky
Watch the trailer and try not to laugh.
40% of Rotten Tomatoes, but I think that it might still be good for a laugh. I don't know if this is a comedy, but it definitely should be. I just checked the credits: No Mel Brooks.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Kung Fu Panda 2 (***½)
I could tell you the plot, but what is the point? An evil lord rises up to conquer all of China and has to be defeated. What makes the all too familiar story interesting is how well it is executed, the humor, and the quality of the characters. Here Po struggles to understand where he came from and who he is. It is revealed that Mr. Ping is not Po's real father, but that is not even a little bit of a surprise given that he is a Chinese Goose.
The computer animation is so beautiful and so detailed, it had me wondering how they do it and how much it cost to produce a movie like this? ($150 million.) Kung Fu Panda 2 looks better than the first film and the first film looked pretty good. The beauty of the animated scenery becomes like another character because we are entertained just by looking at it.
The first film had me wondering why the movie needed to be animated and why did all the characters have to be animals? It seemed a little odd to see all these different animals interacting like human characters. The original story could have used live human actors with Jack Black playing the lead, but in this animated universe the characters do extreme martial arts that would seem impossible and silly if humans did them. The two movies have a certain amount of charm showing that many different types of animals can interact and be friends. It also made me wonder what all these animals eat? They all seem to be vegetarians, which is convenient given that the animals aren't eating each other.
Check out the trailer here.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Screen Rant » J.J. Abrams Discusses “Khannnnn!!!!” for Star Trek 2
Personally, I think Khan would be an amazing character to see brought back to the big screen, especially given the excellent casting of Kirk and Spock. On the other hand, it's becoming rarer and rarer to find a good original story in Hollywood these days, so part of me would rather they start fresh with an interesting new villain for the new look crew.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Battleship (film) 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_%28film%29
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120516/REVIEWS/120519990
This is a fun movie, if you don’t think about it too much. There are some major plausibility problems. Good to see the Navy get some Hollywood air time.
I’m always glad to see Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights and John Carter) get lead roles. From the previews you would think this is a Transformers movie, but it’s not. That’s good, because I dislike all the Transformer movies, but I still watch them when they come out on disk just to keep up.
Bob
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
Netflix streaming catalog?
I have the same problem…
From: Robert
Is there a place you can look that lists what currently is in the Netflix streaming catalog?
I’m not interested in scrolling in their interface. I want to see a list that I can browse by title or search. Is the list a secret from the competition (Apple)? You don’t know if something is available until you go look for it and see if it is or not? And that’s only after you signed up for the service?
I wanted to watch Titanic over the weekend but couldn’t figure out if it was in the streaming catalog or not. I got indicators that it was, but since I dropped streaming long ago I could not see what was in the catalog. Well my streaming is now active and I see that Titanic is not in the streaming catalog. PHFFT!
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Immortals and The Darkest Hour
From: Witmer, R
I watched Immortals and The Darkest Hour. Both were big disappointments for me. I cannot recommend anyone watching either of them.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Snow Doesn't Melt Forever
Bizarre trailer. I believe that it is a Russian made horror movie due out in 2013.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
RE: Butterfly Effect
I saw the movie some time ago and I liked it.
From: Witmer, Robert C.
I’ve never seen Ashton Kutcher play a serious role before. LOL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butterfly_Effect
The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 American science fiction psychological thriller film that is written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber and starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Streaming
I had a disappointing experience with a Redbox machine that was not working. I invested much time figuring out which movie that I wanted to watch, what Redbox had the movie, and then reserving it online. When I got to the machine, it was non-functional. I then called customer support to see if they could resolve the problem, which they couldn’t do immediately.
I am thinking that life would be easier if I just paid a few dollars per month for online streaming either through Netflix or Amazon Prime.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Contagion. Rating: B+
Contagion, like “Titanic”, is a movie where you think that you already know the story: A pandemic infects hundreds of millions of people. What you don’t know is how well that story is told and how interesting some of the characters are. If you aren’t at least a slight germaphobe before watching the movie, you will be afterwards. The movie constantly reminds us of the different ways that disease can spread. In a world with SARS and H1N1, the movie is very relevant.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Best actors from the last 40 years.
This is interesting ...
If I had to pick a favorite actor, right now it would be either Matt Damon or Philip Seymour Hoffman. Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise would be runner ups. I thought about trying to rent more of their movies.
Why the First 'Star Wars' Is Still the Best 'Star Wars'
http://m.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/why-the-first-star-wars-is-still-the-best-star-wars/245128/
- I disagree. I think that The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie
I have ever seen. The last 40 to 50% of "Star Wars" is nothing but
action making it more video game like, and therefore it explores the
characters less. It does do a great job of exploring the characters
in the first half, but the movie starts out slow; it takes 15 minutes
before we even meet the main character, Luke. We are half an hour
into the movie before Luke decides to leave Tatooine.
The Empire Strikes Back is a little slow in middle when Luke is
training with Yoda on Degoba, but it is a necessary part of the
character development leading up to the confrontation between Luke and
Darth Vader. Everything else in the movie is rich with action, but
that action in most scenes seems to exist for the purpose of revealing
more about the characters. This makes the movie high art.
(IMHO the few extra special effects that Lucas added in 1997 only
serve as a distraction from the original movie.)
Both movies will still be around a hundred years after they were made.
Speaking of which, we are not that far off from the hundredth
anniversary of Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights". Although not great by
modern standards, it certainly was great when it came out. It is my
favorite silent film.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Thumper
The first minute of this video is from the original Bambi movie, and is IMHO one of the best parts of the movie...
... the last 30 seconds are from Bambi II, which is a direct to video movie made in 2003. This part seems less interesting.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
FW: Source Code 2011 SF movie
From: Robert
I watched “Another Earth” another SciFi over the weekend. Interesting movie, and like Code 46, not typical SciFi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Earth
Bob
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
FW: Source Code 2011 SF movie
From: Robert
Source Code is a 2011 American science fiction-techno-thriller film directed by Duncan Jones, written by Ben Ripley, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Russell Peters and Jeffrey Wright. The film had its world premiere on March 11, 2011 at SXSW,[4] and was released by Summit Entertainment on April 1, in North America and Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code
I was pleasantly surprised. I liked it. No anticipation because I never saw any of the trailers. I had not much of an idea of what it was about or that it was even considered science fiction. And the best surprise of all was when I found out it was directed by Duncan Jones who directed “Moon”. I didn’t discover that until I was watching the DVD extras. Just like the main character in “Moon”, our hero is very very screwed!
BTW: Most current Netflix CDs have all the extras removed now. I’m not sure which studio is doing it the most but it’s very annoying. If the disk even has any extras listed if you select any it gives you a nice little annoying message about how this cd is for rental purposes only and you need to go purchase the blu-ray version.
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