To Die For

IMDB

Never underestimate the power of blue eyeshadow.

Drugstore Cowboy

IMDB Dope on a rope.

LOTR: Return of the King

IMDB I can't wait for the 19 hour director's cut.

Don't Say a Word

IMDB

Michael Douglas plays a grandmother who is murdered so that her apartment can be used as a staging area for a pyschiatrist who, using all the tricks of his Harvard education, tries to get Britney Murphey to remember her own telephone number. In a side plot that can only be described as blockbuster mano a mano, Phoenix must keep the keys to Xavier's mansion away from Boromir, despite her shattered fibula that must have occured when Wolverine (played by Oliver Platt) tried to hump her leg.

Alien 3

IMDB It's a mad mad mad mad prison planet.

Morvern Callar

IMDB My best friend went to Youth Med and all I got was this stupid book contract.

Aliens

IMDB James Cameron gives us the touching and tragic love story of an ovipositor seperated from her ovi as she is positing, all on board a large metal romantic vessel.

Alien

IMDB

In space, nobody can hear your budgets increasing on sequels based on gross profits.

High Fideltity

IMDB

I tried to find this movie on vinyl, but all the fucking dj's are hoarding it.

Insomnia

IMDB When I went to Alaska a common topic of conversation was how easy it is to die up there. You can get caught in silty-mud as the tide comes in. You can come face to face with a Moose (mean buggers). It's almost as if it's a point of pride to Alaskans that they're alive in the face of all of this danger. Never, however, did I hear that you could get trapped under a log boom and drown. I'll add that to the list now.

Brassed Off

IMDB I play the frugalhorn.

Bringing Down the House

IMDB

This movie made me uncomfortable with my liberal white racism.

The Triplets of Belleville

IDMB

I wish my winter was as short as the one in this movie.

Fargo

IMDB Jose Feliciano should be in more movies.

Lianna

IMDB

Nobody makes fun of John Sayles and lives to tell about it. Nobody.

Being There

IMDB I thought this repackaging was a clever disquise so that people could rent the Reagans without the right wing finding out.

The Fluffer

IMDB 1. My new job sucks. 2. My new boss is a dick.

Road to Perdition

IMDB

Wasn't this the title of an AC/DC song?

Ronin

IMDB The studio head said "Dammit! You can't start this script with a gambit the MacGuffin is light the dialog's trite. I'm calling in David Mamet."

Zulu

IMDB

Michael Caine, white courtesy phone. Mr. Caine, white courtesy phone.

Midnight Cowboy

IMDB Now that's what I call a universal remote.

Dreamcatcher

IMDB What's pokey, slashy, gashy and comes from your ass?

The Conversation

IMDB We never talk anymore.

Cold Mountain

IMDB We've seen Jack White work way through the triptych of punk, rock and blues--now watch the first stage of his second trilogy unfold with mountain music. Next: klezmer and madrigals.

Whale Rider

IMDB The true story of the Hilton family struggling to accept a young Paris as their new C.E.O., cleverly disquised as a Maori tale to avoid lawsuits.

Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier)

Amazon I know I started this little blog-thing-experiment to log the movies I've seen this year, but I decided (despite the misleading URL) to log books as well. Since I've read this book and seen the movie quite recently, I'll compare the two instead. Cold Mountain the book and Cold Mountain the movie are like the little angel and devil on your shoulders. Both look just like you, but underneath their intents are completely different. The book uses a love story as an excuse to tell Civil War Stories. The movie uses the Civil War as an excuse to tell a love story. Problem being, the love story is not one to rate among the ages. It's a love story of only the impression of love each character carries with them, and not the toothy, solid love you can pop your corn to. It's wistful and intellectualized love, used by each character for their own purposes. When Ada and Inman finally face each other in the book, they are wondering how the reality of the other might sure up to the pathways they've so deeply cut through their neurons. When their little-devil-mirrors face each other in the movie, there is no intention behind their eyes other then to fulfill the Emotional Cinema 101 plot-point guide. You know what’s going to happen. The book's Odyssean journey away from the underworld of the war is seething with mud, meat (bruised, pierced, shot and rotted) and murder. It’s coated with lust (blood and body), lord and labor. It has a lead-metal tang and an aching-muscle doggedness that chill. The cruelty of life and cruelty of spirit imposed on every character give an arc to their story—a digging from the hole of war to the hill of peace. The movie looks pretty when it shows gore, but it never truly grits up. Dirty faces don’t make dirty souls. But, specifically, let me list a few particular things I disliked about the movie in comparison to the book (even given my understanding of how much a story need be changed for the shift in medium. Also—potential spoilers ahead—ye been warned). 1. Foremost—the movie imposed race into the story. This may sound odd for a story about the civil war, but one of the things about the book that made it interesting was Inmans (and, frankly, all the characters) non-feelings about race. They were Southerners fighting to keep slavery, but it wasn’t their cause. Inman wasn’t a slave owner (or pro-slave), but he was certainly no abolitionist. Ada’s father, who owned slaves in the movie, was a non-Baptist, non-traditional (read: liberal) preacher in the Deep South. It would be likely (although subtextual) that he would be gently leading his flock towards a more healthy view on race relations. But the movie made Ada and Inman modern liberals by putting them in positions where they had to defend or show kindness to slaves. This makes the war their war, when the harsh reality of the book is that they were involved in a fight that had little to do with them except for its overwhelming imposition into their lives. 2. Tegue. Oh man, what a mess. They lost an opportunity and gained horrible formula by making this man and his deputies the sneering, snarling bad guys. The acrobatic-albino sharpshooter was a laughably ridiculous character, and his very existence and actions early in the movie completely undermined the reason for his actions (and negated the tension it created) at the end. Plus, giving Tegue an interest in Ada’s land was trying to create tension while losing the tension that the original story created. It was the Franco-American Italian food of screenwriting. What they did with Sally Strangler and family was the cinematic equivalent of the modern-primitives dance/sex scene in the second Matrix. Talk about unnecessary. 3. They shouldn’t have shown the battle at the beginning. It was a great Civil War re-enactment in the wrong movie. In the book, his wounds drive him home. His disgust with warring drives him home. In the movie, Ada drives him home. What matters the battle? It was gratuitous. At the very least, they should have shown this in flashback only. By starting with text on the screen and showing enemy characters before anybody else, the viewer is put in the position of dispassionate observer. They could have hooked you right away with close emotional ties to Inman if you had been close to his gory, bloody neck and the flies infesting it in the hospital to begin with. 4. Stobrod's music. In the book, Stobrod finding his voice is a metaphor for his own transformation. The moment where he first plays for the soldier who doesn't want to hear one of his few tunes (which I have no argument with how they handled in the movie--crossing Stobrod with Inman early on) hints at the melancholy and strangely original voice he discovers. By shoving old moutain standards on him later in the story, they undermine the character who finally found his voice after a lifetime of searching. Some of the most endearingly lyrical passages in the book were of describing Stobrod's powerful music. Too bad they didn't even really attempt in the movie. I'll bet T-Bone would have been up for the task. All that said, the acting was just fine. Of note is Phillips Seymour Hoffman (always spot on), Natalie Portman, who really shone in her role, and surprisingly good is Renee Zellweger who had no control over the stupid changes they made to her character, so cannot be faulted for literacy (when in the book the beauty of the relationship between Eda and Ruby is that Ada is all books and no street and Ruby is all street and no books). Which is not to say that Nicole and Jude were poor—they were quite good. But they could have been great if, say, Michael Winterbottom had directed it ala The Claim. Anthony Minghella did a disservice to the text when the adaptation could have easily become Apocalypse Now for the Civil War set. Like poet Heather McHugh says: using a synthesizer to imitate a violin is a waste of an opportunity.

Ginger Snaps

IMDB Puberty's a bitch.

Mystic River

IMDB Cheery. Like puppies drowning with their pleading eyes open and watching you. Please. Please save me. Please.

Defending Your Life

IMDB I'm going to have to defend having a blog about movies in my afterlife trial. Especially after having this line in my resume: "Have never, to my knoweledge, blogged." =========================
Between Albert Brooks and Rip Torn:
(Brooks)"Where were you yesterday? I'm just curious"
(Torn) "I'd tell you, but you wouldn't understand."
"don't treat me like a moron. try me."
"I was trapped near the inner circle of fault."
"I don't understand."
"I told you."

The Guru

IMDB A friend of mine's father once talked to Heather Graham at a party for an hour without realizing who she was until he rented Boogie Nights the next week.

the Man from Elysian Fields

IMDB Encouragement for all writers--because, as we all know, most writers are confident, attractive, and secure enough in themselves to work for an escort service.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

IMDB Makes me wonder if the lawyers at 20th Century Fox went into a robotic mind-logic-loop when they tried to get a handle on copywriting characters who were in the public domain.

Alien Hunter

IMDB The Evil Preppy goes up against beautiful biologists who wear sexy one-piece bathing suits in Antartica: Think the Thing + Contact - (John Carpenter ÷ Jodie Foster)

Owning Mahowny

IMDB $10 million? That's nothing. the LXG producers got $78 million from Fox.

Winged Migration

IMDB Allez! Allez! Honk-eh-Honk-eh-Honk-eh.

LOTR: Return of the King

IMDB Note to self: movies with diving swooping cameras will make you regret your hangover, not forget it.

Recommend a movie for us to see

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