Its a 22 year old film find its way in a new genre... it was always gonna be less than good.

Ooh I'd heard Apocalypto had some good stuff in it - worth a watch then?

I saw Blood Diamond a while ago. I thought it was gonna be a bit pants, but it turned out to be pretty good. Leonardo Di Caprio put in a very good performance. It's another one that kinda manages to avoid too many Hollywood conventions.

Babel and Last King of Scotland are both on my rental list.

Now, last night I watched 'A Scanner Darkly' - the one based on a Philip K Dick novel with Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Junior that was done in a cartoony style. Overall it was quite good, although I don't think I'd go out of my way to watch it again. It seemed to meander around for the majority of the film with not much in the way of plot driving it forward - the only thing that saved it from the off button was the rather excellent banter between the three lead characters - particularly Downey, who was superb - although he mumbled a lot! Then it picked up with the last quarter with a couple of twists.

I'm not sure what the benefit of the cartoon style was. It would have been just as good a movie if they'd filmed it in a traditional style. At first I assumed that they'd done it to keep costs down - you can get away with ropey lighting, dodgy sets and even crappier acting if you're cartoonizing them. This theory only stood up if the cartooning process was some sort of cheap automated one, though.

Turns out they hand-drew each frame on top of the filmed frame and it took about 50 people 18 months to complete. So overall the costs would have been about the same. So the only reason for the style was to...er... make it look a bit different from other movies and maybe draw in a few curious punters to a movie that probably wouldn't attract that many viewers. I don't think it added anything, although it was kinda pretty.

-- Edited by ddvmor at 14:28, 2007-05-28

Babel, was a bit like that - although it scored highly in the arthouse oddity stakes - I guess our conclusion was that it was a little like chaos theory - a butterfly flaps its wings over the amazon and etc, etc. No big message apart from illustrating the randomness of existence.

Agree with your comments on Blood Diamond especially with regard to Leo.

Also saw the Departed recently - had major issues distinguishing between leo and the other one (Matt Damon?) until about half way through - pissed me off at the time, but now, on reflection maybe it was intentional?

I can't get excited about Ocean's 13. The first one was a great movie. The second one was awful. Really really awful. It was a bit like opening up a big Sara Lee chocolate cake to find that a bag of sick had been left in it's place. So the thirs one will either be the cake or the bag of sick!

Still, there's plenty of really cool looking movies coming out this year, so one stinker won't cause too much of a problem!

So... Pirates of the Carribean! Went to see it at the weekend, I did. It was lots of fun and I liked it it... but... It kinda had all the same problems that the second one did. Y'see the first one set up PoTC as a period action adventure movie with some zombie dudes in it. But mostly it was a traditional piratey movie with piratey action. The second one had a much stronger fantasy/horror element to it and was far more reliant on the special effects. And the third one... did it even more! And raher then being the smallish, personal story about a couple of kids who fancy each other and a bunch of pirates who get in the way of that which the first onewas, we're treated to a world changing apocalyptic plot which...er... Anyway...

Still, Jack Sparrow was a cool as ever, there were some great fights, lots of twisty plot bits and the big battle at the end was pretty awesome. It was long, but I didn't find myself looking at my watch. And if you haven't seen it yet, you must stay to the very very end as theres a short scene after the credits which I didn't hang around for. Yay.

Nice one KT well posted!

And there was me thinking that the 12 endings they'd already used up to that point would have been enough for them! silly Stead...

I suspect there is some part of the curse of the Flying Dutchman (often known as the Plot Device Curse) that prevented her from doing so. If I remember right from the previous film, she'd have had to die at sea and to have had some sort of debt to the captain of the Dutchman.

I read somewhere that there was a line about halfway through the film which was cut out, which explained that if the lover of the captain of the Dutchman remained faithful for 10 years, the captain was freed from the curse and could live happily ever after. But they cut it out. So there.

Bearing in mind he looks like the girl in the relationship already - its only going down hill from there!



I like Troy...

Hmmm sounds like quite a cast!

Die Dard 4.

DIE HARD 4!!!

YIPPIE KAI AY!!!

Just saw it. It was a beautiful thing!

So over the last few weeks, I saw Transormers, which was awesome and Harry Potter XVIII which was a load of old b*llocks. I figure that anyone who cares will already have seen these movies, so I won't bother going into detail on 'em.

What I will tell you about is Brick and Smokin' Aces, both of which I caught on DVD.

So Brick was a pretty cool movie about a hard boiled detective investigating the death of his ex who was involved with some pretty unpleasant and shady gangsters. There's lots of junkies and people hitting other people, damsels in distreass, femme fatales and someone even gets threatened with a milk jug shaped like a chicken at one point. It's just like one of those old black and white detective noir movies except... er... it's set in a high school.

I thought it was really well put together, mostly well played and certainly kept you wondering what the hell was going on until the final act. Also, it starred that guy from Third Rock From The Sun, who I've never seen in anything else, but did a pretty good job here.

Smokin Aces was a lot of fun once you got past all the exposition at the beginning. Lots of people telling lots of people, some with questionable facial hair (I'm lookin' at you, Affleck) who lots of other people are and what they do and why someone wants them dead and/or alive and/or in bits. Then about five million hit men go after one guy and the inevitable train wreck occurs. Lots of shooting. Most of the people and the other people end up dead (sometimes with chainsaws) and there's a not very surprise twist at the end. I reccomend it if you like movies with gangsters and FBI dudes and guns, lots of guns in. very silly, though. The laws of pysics don;t seem to apply here!

So there you go. Some more movies that I saw! yay!

-- Edited by ddvmor at 08:16, 2007-08-20

Hmmm saw that trailer for that and wasnt inspired to watch it - glad it was OK though!

I saw Four Brothers over the weekend starring Mark Wahlberg (or summit) and three other guys as the adoptive children of a lovely old biddy who gets killed in a robbery so they go all Johnny Rambo on those involved - it was... ok... it had a few good moments in it - some of the performances were good and the direction was ok but it was totally unbelievable really...

thats all...

Ong Bak?

Its ironic that the amount you spent on Four Brothers equalled its budget...