Yes...the blonde from L & O that no one liked as the ADA ....... I remember her now. She really did a good job and showed that she is not as stiff as she would come off in those episodes of L & O. I could not recognize her at all......but I knew I saw her from somewhere.Originally Posted by Chip R
Wolf of Wall Street was very good. It's not really about Wall Street or the financial industry, it's about a con artist. And for some reason I love movies about con artists. I personally find them deplorable in real life, of course, so I really can't explain it.
But it's worth watching, and probably not exactly what you expect.
The movie is also about events that took place like 15-20 years ago, I guess it's a parallel to recent events (sort of, kind of), but otherwise I don't know why it's being positioned like it has anything to do with the financial crisis.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Watched "The Apartment" with Jack Lemmon and Shirley McLaine. From 1960, it won a bunch of Oscars. Acting is great and it was a pretty adult topic (adultery and infidelity) for that era. Great movie.
She used to wake me up with coffee ever morning
Lone Survivor is good. I thought a couple of the performances were lacking but the battle scenes were incredibly intense and technically about as good as a movie could be.
"I know a lot about the law and various other lawyerings."
Hitters who avoid outs are the funnest.
Saw Inside Llewyn Davis today, it was really great. The lead actor is incredible. One of my favorites ever from the Brothers Coen.
"I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn't. And that's what makes it great." - Joe Posnanski
One of those movies that is a one time watch for me. Knowing it is a true story makes it tough to watch.
Razor Shines (01-12-2014)
I just watched this Friday night. Are we on the same netflix schedule? I loved it. Might go on my favorites list.
We tried to see The Wolf of Wall Street last night but someone (who might be writing this post) messed up the movie times so ended up seeing Her instead. It's a good movie, fairly unsettling, probably not for everyone. I thought it did a very good job of posing a lot of questions while leaving it up to the audience to come to their own conclusions. One thing that I really loved is that it's beautifully designed, taking place in a sort of unnamed future with just enough recognizable stuff to not seem far-fetched, but still clearly not of this time. Los Angeles of Spike Jonze's future (which is apparently Shanghai) is way more desirable than present-day LA. It even has a viable subway system. Also, Chris Pratt/Scott Hatteberg is Prattly wonderful in a minor role.
There is no such thing as a pitching prospect.
The Apartment is fantastic.
My wife and I watched it just last month, she had never seen it and I've been going all film school on her because there are just a ton of classics she's never seen. As a matter of fact she's upstairs watching The Godfather for the first time right now.
I think the next one we see in the theaters will be "Her". It's playing just up the street from our house and we can walk there.
School's out. What did you expect?
I've been in (metaphorical) film school this past year as well, with a focus on movies from the 70s. I think my favorite from that decade so far was Network. Like The Apartment, I was just floored by how modern and prescient it seemed.
I think maybe it's not my understanding of society that is taking me aback when I see these but that it's rather emblematic of how moviemaking has changed. By and large -- not always, but often -- movies that put such a sharp and honest eye toward society are now mostly relegated to indie movies (an industry that is itself shifting). Billy Wilder, Sidney Lumet -- my understanding could be wrong, but I feel like these were bigger-name player directors, the likes of which now make mostly blockbusters. Wes Anderson is an indie-roots director who does well in the mainstream, I think, but his thing is really style, not forthright social critique. I also feel like Hollywood doesn't do satire as well as it used to.
I don't know much about movies so I can't quite put my finger on it, but I just feel that movies like The Apartment and Network and Dog Day Afternoon strike me as being downright bold decades and decades after they were made. The Apartment was made 54 years ago, for crying out loud. And very little that is released now, especially in the mainstream, strikes me as bold.
There is no such thing as a pitching prospect.
The biggest "name" directors can't even get studio-backing to make the movies they want to make these days. That's why half of them end up being released by Annapurna Pictures. God bless Megan Ellison and her daddy's money--look at the films Annapurna has produced since it started in 2012:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna_Pictures
dougdirt (01-12-2014)
The bad news is, studios aren't backing non-blockbuster type movies anymore. The good news is, for the price of one Panavision camera 10 years ago, you can get 6 Red Epic's stock full of lenses, drives and rigs and shoot it on a much smaller budget if you can find someone else to back your project for a much smaller cost than what it used to. Sure, you probably aren't getting Brad Pitt to do your movie, but you can still get quality actors and make your vision much easier today than you ever could because of where Red, Alexa, Canon and Sony have come with their Cinema cameras over the past 5 years.
*BaseClogger* (01-13-2014),757690 (01-12-2014)
I don't consider many of the films on that list "risky" (per its stated mission) or overly bold. Maybe Zero Dark Thirty. American Hustle would have found backing and distribution, for crying out loud. It has about a half-dozen bankable stars in it including a reigning (and very popular) Oscar winner. But it's sad to hear that directors of this caliber can't get financing.
There is no such thing as a pitching prospect.
I love that you're not watching it with her--just assigning it to her to watch on her own time.
"I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn't. And that's what makes it great." - Joe Posnanski
*BaseClogger* (01-13-2014),vaticanplum (01-13-2014)
Funny how some of us watched the same 54 year old movie within weeks. Cosmic, man.
Bear with me here, I'm going to make a point but its an odd path to get there.
So, I was grocery shopping with my wife at Kroger. She likes a yogurt called Lite and Fit, the fruit kind (Dannon I think) that comes in 4 packs. But a month or so back, Kroger just stopped stocking it. No announcement or anything, just gone. I told her to complain but she never did.
So we were at Kroger a couple days ago and walking past the yogurt department and I saw a guy stocking the shelves. Being me, I struck up a conversation with him and asked him why they didn't stock this yogurt any more.
Man. I struck a nerve. This guy goes on a rant about grocery stores and how they never listen to employees and ended it with "why? I dunno, probably a bunch of people sitting in a conference room drinking Starbucks coffee and just looked at a spreadsheet and cut it".
Which was something that I had noticed about Kroger was that they don't seem to stock the normal staples of a grocery store all that much any more. It's all trendy stuff. All the yogurt is the Greek stuff and the only Dannon they stock is coffee flavored.
And knowing what I know about Big Data, I'm sure all of the millions of individual items that get purchased daily at a Kroger get analyzed twenty-eleventy ways to Sunday. And its all the sifting of those millions of data points eventually specifies what gets stocked on the Kroger shelves. Big Data at its best (or worst) depending on your viewpoint.
My point is that movies are the same way now. At least big studio ones. I always get the feeling that the movies have been screened and analyzed and the version that gets to the screen are the ones that the mass market wants to see. That's all the people that flock to the Deerfield Regal 16 or whatever megamovie complex you live by and its all been scoped out as to who the audience is and is scientifically targeted to be a movie that they will be attracted to and will go buy tickets for. After all, it's all about the green.
So idiosyncratic mainstream movies just don't get made nearly as often as they used to. Half the time I see a preview for a movies, I swear I've seen it before but its usually just a variation on a theme with a lot of kabooms or car crashes or a spectacular explosions or maybe just some impossibly perfect breasts. I dunno.
Speaking of "Network", I feel like Howard Beale.
I always loved the Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) monologue. Reminds me a lot of the world these days:
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
She used to wake me up with coffee ever morning
*BaseClogger* (01-13-2014),RichRed (01-13-2014),vaticanplum (01-13-2014)
Saw August: Osage County last night.
Intense.
BTW: The Apartment is one of my favorite films of all time
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