Started grad school. The next 9 months are going to be fucking BRUTAL. I'm doing a fast-track Master's, but they're doing everything in their power to make sure you fucking earn that degree, cramming a ridiculous amount of work into an insanely short time period. The orientation was cool, though, sitting in a room with Tom Gunning and D.N. Rodowick. I definitely got off at the right stop :icon_chee
Arsenic >>>>>>> His Girl Friday >>> Bringing Up Baby
in terms of cary grant, hes probably coolest in HGF
Out of those three, for sure, as the other two are buffoon performances. All-time, though, it's
The Philadelphia Story for me.
War of the Worlds is pretty good. I love the cinematography. Some of those shots are amazing, which helps the intensity. Like 2/3 of the movie is extremely intense. I hate the ending, though.
From the moment the son runs off like a moron, the movie tanks miserably. Up until then, it's an 8 or 9 out of 10, firing like a motherfucker, but by the end, it's like a 6 at best.
I finally realized that my favorite genre is sci-fi. I can't believe it took me this long to see it.
You know what comes next, right? You've got to list your favorite sci-fi movies now. And while you're thinking them over, I'll update you after having watched
Se7en again a few days ago.
Se7en is up near the top of the list of movies I
want to like so much more than I actually do (and with this,
The Game, and
The Social Network, this is par for the course). Whenever I watch that movie, I spend the whole time wanting it to be better, because based on the plot, there are no excuses for why it sucks so much. The script blows, Fincher's direction is worse, Pitt was even more terrible than I remembered, Paltrow is barely a blip, Spacey is wasted, and Freeman is just there.
The entire dynamic between Freeman and Pitt makes no sense, is written so clumsily, and performed like shit. The antagonism is extremely forced and the friendship over dinner is one of the most cringeworthy things in movies. And I don't think anybody involved in that film at any point knew what the fuck they were trying to do with Freeman. What the fuck was that character? He's no cynical Sam Spade, he's no smarmy Philip Marlowe, he wasn't a misanthropic Mike Hammer. What was he supposed to be? And what was he supposed to end up as? His "philosophy" was imbecilic and incoherent and never cohered in the film's
Weltanschauung.
A filmmaker once said of Tarkovsky that he wasn't a great thinker but that he was a great practitioner, and I think that's quite a fitting a description for Fincher. Beyond the shitty script and the worse acting, the pursuit of such philosophically deep material was something neither Fincher nor his screenwriter were intellectually equipped for, and it shows in the finished product. However, as a great practitioner, much of
Se7en's aesthetic is excellent, particularly the sequence where they follow the SWAT team into the sloth's place and most notably that magnificent sequence where they track down Spacey from the library records and he gets the drop on Pitt. Cinematically, the latter sequence is pure perfection from every perspective, especially the cinematography and the sound design, and not even I would dare attempt to take anything away from those few minutes. But beyond those few minutes, there's little of merit, IMO.
no love for To Catch a Thief in the Cary Grant catalog? I'm sure Ricky wouldn't dig it if he didn't like NXNW but I've always enjoyed it and usually watch it when it pops up on tv.
That's always been down near the bottom on my Hitchcock list. It's just so superficial, indeed superfluous.
And speaking of kids in Spielberg films- I caught some but not all of Empire of the Sun, a film I'd seen parts of when I was real young but never saw the entire thing. I have to say, maybe it was cause I didn't catch it from the beginning or that I wasn't completely paying attention (damn iPad) but I was having trouble really getting caught up in the story.
My thoughts when I watched it for
Sigh:
Empire of the Sun was so. . .Spielbergy. Christian Bale was unbelievable, definitely made it worth the watch, but on the whole, it was just another Spielberg affair where nothing really felt significant and there was very little tension since you knew everything was going to work out literally perfectly, and sure enough, it did. And the only moments of real inspiration were, not surprisingly, the moments of the innocent beauty of childhood (Bale finding the busted plane, his weird relationship with the Japanese kid on the other side of the wire, his "friendship" with Malkovich), while the supposedly "heavy" moments (Bale's breakdown with the doctor, the fate of the Japanese kid) were painfully inept and laughably clunky, perfect examples of Spielberg's limitations as a dramatist.
It's also another one with a shitty ending.
His Girl Friday was fucking funny. Grant's delivery was flawless. Really liked Russell as well. Just a great movie experience.
Making up some ground :wink:
Seven Days in May was great. I loved the whole cast, and the way it's just driven by talking instead of "plot points." Lancaster was great, but I've noticed he squints a whole lot, and does this weird stop and start cadence.
I knew you'd enjoy this one. And as for Lancaster's weirdness, just wait until you see
The Rainmaker and/or
Elmer Gantry. Have him say weird shit with his weird way of speaking and it's a hell of a lot of loony fun, which is the reason one of my all-time favorite moments in
Seinfeld is in the finale when Kramer is rambling about what a beautiful day it is and how there's something in the air and Jerry tells him he's turning into Burt Lancaster :icon_chee
Bull, you watch Across 110th Street?
Haven't gone back to the movie challenge yet. I'm going to close that out at a glacial pace, but I won't forget about it.