Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So what are you WATCHING?

EDE, you saw any of the Oscar related films? btw, I saw the 1990 Lord of Flies movie which I commented on a page back. What you think of that if you've seen it?

Last night I saw something...different. You know when you want to see something no one has heard of? Sigourney Weaver and Michael Caine star in Half Moon Street (1986). I read about it somewhere and got interested because it's a political-erotic thriller set in London dealing with the Middle East.

It was...different. Despite the horrible dated soundtrack it wasn't that bad. Good plot, good acting, a very sexy Sigourney (well when she isn't wearing the biggest shoulder pads I've ever seen). It was very professor by day HOOKER by night.

She actually became a high priced hooker and has no qualms about it. It's a bit Basic Instinct with politics instead of psychos.

You know... I don't think I've seen any movies released in 2007, Oscar-nominated or not. I've been so busy catching up on "classic" films lately, that I really just haven't been paying much attention to newer stuff.

I actually just watched On the Waterfront last night, which was pretty cool.

I think I saw the 1990 Lord of the Flies back in high school (when I was obsessed with the book), but I don't really remember much about it.

My last visit to the libray brought home High Noon and Transporter II. I got Transporter one day, because I couldn't find anything else. Good stuff. A most underated action hero.

One the Water Front is one of my favorite movies of all time. Mainly because when I was a kid, it was so important to my Dad, who is a quintessential blue-collar guy. Its what I believe is Brando's finest performance on screen.

High Noon is also one of my favorites (I assume you mean the Gary Cooper western BB, b/c I don't know of any others). I watched it whe I was a kid, all by myself, at about 3:00 AM one night after sneaking back down to watch TV. I've watched it a dozen times since. The sense of being so alone in so strong in that movie, and so oddly liberating at the end.

"alone" I got too but the "liberating" part, not so much. His wife is a Quaker and had to do what she had to do. That scene was very powerful with me.

No waste in that movie. Every scene seemed to have a play.

(^^^ Big fan of High Noon here too! LOVE the wordless montage sequence as the clock ticks over to 12 and the train arrives!)

Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' is one of the best books I've ever read. And I read a lot! I whole-heartedly reccommend it to everyone here.

And if you won't listen to me, perhaps you'll listen to Oprah -

http://www.oprah.com/obc_classic/featbook/road/obc_featbook_road_main.jhtml

I haven't seen anyone reference this one here, but yesterday I rented "Across the Universe", a recent musical which uses Beatles songs for all of its numbers (and to name all its characters). This movie has some absolutely gorgeous renditions of many of their classic songs (of course pretty much all their songs are classics!) sung by a very vocally-gifted cast!

Okay, the story won't blow anyone away...like the story in most musicals is really its selling point, but it gives a nice flavor of the '60s with an attractive, talented cast. And I really enjoyed the psychedelic imagery, particularly in the segments featuring "I want you/She's so heavy", "I am the walrus", "Dear Prudence", "Happiness is a warm gun" and "Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite".

At heart it's a fairly simple love story between two leads, Jude and Lucy, who have an involving entourage of friends they come to share their lives with. All of them are very interesting as well, particularly Lucy's brother Max.

My only caveat with the entourage is that one of the characters, Prudence, really seems to get the shortest shrift, and I've a feeling a lot of her story was left in the cutting room. If I read between the lines correctly, Prudence was struggling with her sexual identity, and that would've been a welcome storyline.

I absolutely love the Beatles and found this celebration of their work thoroughly entertaining! Not only are the voices of the main cast terrific, but we get a lot of terrific celebrity singing appearances by the likes of Bono, Joe Cocker and Eddie Izzard. I don't know if people who don't worship the Beatles will like it, but I feel confident that those who do will be in heaven while watching "Across the Universe"!

Love the trailer for that one, I've been meaning to pick it up.

Library pick-up:

Black Snake Moan

Music aside, this just couldn't hold my attention. It just couldn't decide if it wanted to be dark, a feel good, what. Just not to my tastes.

Return to Oz
When the chicken started talking, I switched out the dvd.

1408
What?

I'm not even going to bother putting in the "Simpson Movie." It's probably just a hard to please me weekend.

OTOH: "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" sounds great on this new laptop with all the speakers and woofer an such.

I saw the historical drama "The Other Boelyn Girl" at the theater. Natalie Portman (Anne Boelyn, doomed wife of King Henry VIII) and Scarlett Johanssen (Mary Boelyn, Anne's sister) both look lovely and give excellent performances. The movie is probably historically inaccurate and definitely a bit soap operatic, but I liked it.

The Alan Parsons album BB? My favorite album of all time.

Yep

Great album. I ripped it to my new laptop, 204 MB of magical sound.

I'm watching 'The Right Stuff' on the History channel right now. I saw it years ago when I was a kid and remember loving it, because my Dad loved it so much.

Its really a damn great movie. Sam Sheperd as Chuck Yeager is my favorite in the movie. The role he plays just speaks volumes to me about what a man is.

I'm getting ready to watch Seven Samurai! I'm pretty excited!

I saw There Will Be Blood the night before the Oscars. I have a thing for the director, Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia is one of my favorite films ever).

When I walked out of the theatre, I thought: "I'm not sure I liked that." The ending was incredibly odd, not what I was expecting in light of what had come before.

As the film has percolated in the back of my head for the past week or so, it has started to tower in my mind. I love it. I think it is a great work. If this "growing trend" keeps up, I might end up founding a religion based on it.

On another note, I highly recommend "Into the Wild." My mind wouldn't let go of that movie either.

And it was as awesome as I was expecting! It took two nights to watch, however!

Now I'm getting ready to watch Hitchcock's Jamaican Inn!

Seven Samurai rules! Great movie Eryk! As I'm sure you're already well aware, "Magnificent Seven" is a take off on it, and I personally think once you've seen 7S, M7 actually is better because of it.

You know, I've never seen Jamaican Inn, but have wondered for *years* about it. You've got to let me know about it! IIRC, its one of his earliest films.

Hitchcock, huh? Think it'll be suspenseful?

Yeah, I really want to re-watch M7 now.

It's not quite one of his earliest, but it's pre-Hollywood Hitchcock. Actually, I think it's his last British film. I'd put in a similar category to Rebecca (his first American film), not the least because both were based on Daphne du Maurier books (though it seems like JI is much less faithful to the original source, from what I can tell).

Anyway, it's a solid movie, but nothing to get too excited about. After seeing Rope, I keep thinking there's got to be at least on more fastastic Hitchcock movie out there I haven't seen, but this wasn't it. I've got Marnie recorded to watch sometime this weekend, so I'll see how that is.

Let me know what you think about Marnie. Marnie is good, I'd even say 'very good', but it's probably not in my top three Hitchcock movies (close to fantastic, but not quite deserving of that designation). Rope blew me away too by how much I enjoyed it, since I honestly never gave watching it a second thought until they started playing it on AMC last summer. What I do like about Marnie is that Tippi Hedron is in it, and I really like when Hitchcock uses her.

I'd probably rank Marnie much higher than the Birds in terms of Hitchcock films.

There are still many Hitchcock movies I have not seen. For example "Strangers on a Train", which sounds like it may have some of Rope's themes, intrigues me.

BTW, if you haven't seen "Notorious", watch it ASAP. Its not only fantastic, its worthy of being a contender for his 'best'.

I actually recorded Strangers on a Train last night (I just happened to notice it was on Chiller), so that may get watched this weekend in addition to Marnie.

Yeah, Notorious is pretty powerful. I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a top three favorite Hitch films. Besides Rope, Vertigo is probably my favorite, though I'm a huge fan of Lifeboat as well. And of course North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief are just cool. And I love both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and am firmly convinced if you could combine the two of them in the right way, you might just have the perfect film (with Jimmy Stewart as the hero and Peter Lorre as the villain...)

I like Birds because I think it shows Hitch's dark humor in a really interesting way. About half the movie is a pretty conventional 60s love story, then it kind of gradually converts into this crazy movie about attacking Birds. There's something kind of perverse about it.

I tend to think Psycho is way overrated. I mean, it's good, but maybe I've just seen it so many times that it's lost its impact. Or maybe it's just that it spawned so many imitations that its hard for me to enjoy it as the original.

I agree with Psycho, and I probably feel that way for the reasons you list.

That's an interesting way to look at the Birds. I think that's exactly what the recent film 'Hostile' was trying to immitate: one-half of the film is this really funny 'college kids partying across Europe' sequence and then the next half this horrific and graphic torture craziness. In an odd way, that about sums up the change in culture from now to then from a really pessimistic point of view (instead of romance we get sex/drugs/let's party dude and instead of attacking birds we get graphic torture sequences).

North by Northwest if my favorite, but I also really don't think I could narrow it down to three or even five. I love Rear Window. I'd say the last 5-10 minutes of Rear Window are far more terrifying than any part of Psycho, and the combination of Hitch's suspense building, Jimmy Stewart's acting, and Grace Kelly being in peril (and then Jimmy Stewart) only heighten it.

I'm interested in what you think about Strangers on a Train!

"Let it Be" was one of my favorites also (and one of the most powerful scenes in the movie) along with "Come Together."

My latest DVD borrow from the library.

Rather than overtly "anti-war," I found it very non-judgemental, letting the times tell the story. At the very least, they were subtle I thought.

With all the great singers and arrangements, Cocker was just glory, a whole different level to me. Also impressing me was how well they integrated the catalogue, the songs never took me away from the story telling.

I particularly enjoyed catching Beatles homages, my favorite being the rooftop scene.

I can't imagine I'll make it though the weekend without watching this again.

BB, hope you caught my own review of "Across the Universe" last page. I've watched it twice in the last week. Excellent, excellent movie for Beatles fans!

Watched it tonight and it's pretty awesome! Definitely one of Hitch's most memorable villains! I can see some similarity with Rope, in that you've got the same kind of amoral sociopath who see murder kind of as part of experiencing life to the fullest.

I actually wasn't a huge fan of the action sequence at the end, but the movie as a whole was really good. I loved seeing Pat Hitchcock (his daughter) in it, as well. She's really underrated as a character actress, and I wish she was in more stuff.

rokk steady, I haven't seen Magnolia. I have to correct that!

Seven Samurai I saw when I was about 23 to 24? 8 to 10 years ago. I have to rewatch it. I did remember loving it.

I'm also a Hitchcok fan. My wife is a big fan as well. Isn't there a CD collection with some of his best work? I need to get that.

Cobie, when the Right Stuff come out? I remember seeing it but I was quite young methinks.