General Movie Thread

[Paul DeLouisiana]

I never want to see another movie about the origin of a superhero, his backstory, and so on.  If you can't make a movie that is just about a superhero's continuing adventures, maybe the character is shit to begin with.

This is a good point. I never think about the boring, formulaic storyline used for all these movies. I watched the first 20 minutes of Kick-Ass and was never so bored.

[theElizabethanCaller]

When I was a younger man, I secretly developed an affinity for a movie called "Class of 1999".  You know where this is going...many years later, I was aghast to discover that not only was this favorite bad film from my youth a sequel, but is, in fact, the sequel to one of Tom's childhood favorites ("Class of 1984").

For a time, I believed that I had imagined the film until my suspicions got the best of me and I started asking around.  Sure enough, my nerdiest friend had seen it too and also possessed an equally secretive love for the movie. 

Who else out there has seen "Class of 1999"?  Or maybe I did imagine it...and maybe I even imagined the friend!

[buffcoat]

When I was a younger man, I secretly developed an affinity for a movie called "Class of 1999".  You know where this is going...many years later, I was aghast to discover that not only was this favorite bad film from my youth a sequel, but is, in fact, the sequel to one of Tom's childhood favorites ("Class of 1984").

For a time, I believed that I had imagined the film until my suspicions got the best of me and I started asking around.  Sure enough, my nerdiest friend had seen it too and also possessed an equally secretive love for the movie. 

Who else out there has seen "Class of 1999"?  Or maybe I did imagine it...and maybe I even imagined the friend!

Admittedly, they did not have Google in Elizabethan Times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_of_1999

[stephen]

When I was a younger man, I secretly developed an affinity for a movie called "Class of 1999".  You know where this is going...many years later, I was aghast to discover that not only was this favorite bad film from my youth a sequel, but is, in fact, the sequel to one of Tom's childhood favorites ("Class of 1984").

For a time, I believed that I had imagined the film until my suspicions got the best of me and I started asking around.  Sure enough, my nerdiest friend had seen it too and also possessed an equally secretive love for the movie. 

Who else out there has seen "Class of 1999"?  Or maybe I did imagine it...and maybe I even imagined the friend!

There is indeed.  And Class of 1999 also had a sequel: "Class of 1999 2: The Substitute", starring Step by Step's Sasha Mitchell as an evil cyborg substitute teacher.

[cavorting with nudists]

I watched Polanski's The Ghost Writer last night. It was a decent political thriller but if you had just given it to me to watch without knowing anything about it I never would have guessed that it was by a master director or that the lead actor, Ewan MacGregor, was a bankable star.  For those who haven't seen it, it takes place in a weird, science-fictiony alternative universe in which people actually give a shit about war crimes and suborning torture can actually have legal consequences for national leaders.

[JonFromMaplewood]

I liked Moneyball.  I especially liked it because Aaron Sorkin dialed down the dialogue a notch, giving the movie some much needed silences and a chance for the characters to be human.

Tonight I plan to watch Marwencol.

[wood and iron]

I liked Moneyball.  I especially liked it because Aaron Sorkin dialed down the dialogue a notch, giving the movie some much needed silences and a chance for the characters to be human.

Tonight I plan to watch Marwencol.

I, too, liked Moneyball. I did rather think it unnecessarily long, particularly the ending.

However, I'm under the general opinion that nearly every movie can use a trim of 15 minutes.

[Omar]

I liked Moneyball.  I especially liked it because Aaron Sorkin dialed down the dialogue a notch, giving the movie some much needed silences and a chance for the characters to be human.

Tonight I plan to watch Marwencol.

Moneyball is great.  As for the screenplay, Steven Zaillian's draft was fantastic. I was a fan of the book, and I could not believe the resulting screenplay adaptation was that good.  It was floating around the Internet circa-2009 when the the Lipstick City overlords pulled the plug a week before filming due to their displeasure with Soderbergh's rewrites. He planned to have animated Bill James segments! Insanity. He also intended to use all the actual players. And the new ending involved Scott Hatteberg and Morganna The Kissing Bandit getting struck by lightning.  The Oakland Coliseum was built atop an ancient Indian burial ground.

Zaillian's draft did have more Bill James stuff -- the film would often cut away to him explaining the statistical analysis material.  Sorkin wisely cut that stuff out and got it all in via the Peter Brand character. (Demetri Martin was going to play that part prior to the plug pulling.)  There are definitely Sorkin touches/changes in the final version, but Zaillian definitely deserves a lot of credit.  There are scenes in the film that are essentially untouched from his draft.  Sorkin has a great chance to win back-to-back Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay, although Zaillian may defeat himself/Sorkin with his solo adaptation of The Girl with the Back Bathroom Area Dragon Tattoo.

Pitt and Hill delivered their best-ever performances.  PSH killed in his brief screen time as Arthur Howe.  In a recent interview, director Bennett Miller revealed that there was a strong, post-turnaround Beane-Howe scene that he liked a lot, but cut to increase the pace in a film that was running pretty long.  I agree with woodandiron that it could have been trimmed a bit. 

[Hugman 3.0]

He did a Q&A after the film when I saw it a few weeks ago and casually talked about how he is both dyslexic and colorblind and how he mostly just films things he wants to see, like Gosling in a satin jacket. I thought he was fun.

Yea, who am I to criticize? Forgot that I try not to shoot my mouth off about people that are actually doing good stuff for things I interpret as annoying at one particular moment. I'll probably really eat crow when I see Drive and love it.

[dave from knoxville]

I am sort of interested in knowing what Art Howe thinks of both the book and the movie. But not enough to look it up.

[JonFromMaplewood]

Moneyball is great.  As for the screenplay, Steven Zaillian's draft was fantastic. I was a fan of the book...

Same here. It is one of my favorite books ever.  If someone told me back when I was reading it that Hollywood was going to make a half-decent film based on it and that it was not going to be a documentary, I would have asked them who they were and why did they feel compelled to travel back in time to tell me that.

[crumbum]

He did a Q&A after the film when I saw it a few weeks ago and casually talked about how he is both dyslexic and colorblind and how he mostly just films things he wants to see, like Gosling in a satin jacket. I thought he was fun.

Yea, who am I to criticize? Forgot that I try not to shoot my mouth off about people that are actually doing good stuff for things I interpret as annoying at one particular moment. I'll probably really eat crow when I see Drive and love it.

It turned out to be a big disappointment for me. Somehow I got myself excited despite the fact that I didn't like the only other Refn film I've seen (Valhalla Rising). It's nice to look at and the few setpiece scenes (the elevator fight, the opening sequence and the motel scene) are beautifully conceived, but the narrative is super-hacky and only made interesting by the fact that the main character (spoiler) turns out to be kind of a psycho. However this idea is left completely undeveloped and in the end just seemed like intellectual window dressing.

[theElizabethanCaller]

When I was a younger man, I secretly developed an affinity for a movie called "Class of 1999".  You know where this is going...many years later, I was aghast to discover that not only was this favorite bad film from my youth a sequel, but is, in fact, the sequel to one of Tom's childhood favorites ("Class of 1984").

For a time, I believed that I had imagined the film until my suspicions got the best of me and I started asking around.  Sure enough, my nerdiest friend had seen it too and also possessed an equally secretive love for the movie. 

Who else out there has seen "Class of 1999"?  Or maybe I did imagine it...and maybe I even imagined the friend!

There is indeed.  And Class of 1999 also had a sequel: "Class of 1999 2: The Substitute", starring Step by Step's Sasha Mitchell as an evil cyborg substitute teacher.

AMAZING!  Wait are you serious?

[Martin]

If only there was a way to find out

[Sarah]

This is what I watched during the week I was computerless (in order):

Requiem
Duplicity
Terminator Salvation
Adam's Apples
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Pan's Labyrinth
The Band Visits
The Visitor
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Boys and Girl from County Clare
Day Watch
Days of Darkness
Naturally Native
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Joe's Palace
Capturing Mary
Roadkill
Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?
Schultze Gets the Blues
The Memory of a Killer
The Best of Youth
Confetti
Volver
Hot Fuzz

Yes, almost all my time is spare.