Movies

[alla]

Out of curiosity (since I am going to go and see it myself tomorrow night), has Baz Lurhmann's Australia been released overseas, and if so, what did people think of it? I'm interested on the basis of impressions from people of other cultures/nations.

I've seen the new Bond. While staring at Daniel Craig for two hours (twice, two nights in a row), for me it didn't really feel like it had a climax, just a series of action sequences. I hope that the next one is a little more like the Bond movies I know and love.

[Stormwind]

I've seen the previews of Australia.. and was surprised to see Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman... (if I'm thinking of the right movie) starring together, that's a couple I never thought of...

I've been watching Prince Caspian since I got it, and I've loved it for the most part, though I know some who didn't like it as much as Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I love all the Chronicles of Narnia.
I haven't seen a movie in a theater since I relocated my life, but all will come in time...

[Cress]

I'd like to see Australia. I also want to see Milk and Frost/Nixon. I hope I can see them over Christmas break...I haven't seen movies in ages.

[Kathy Li]

Frost/Nixon is something I want to see. Also Milk, but I'm still not sufficiently recovered to hit the movie theatres, alas. I did, however, listen to a Downstage Center podcast that Frank Langella did about being in the Frost/Nixon play on Broadway, and it really makes me want to see the film version, particularly since they kept most of the Broadway cast intact. That almost never happens.

I've seen the previews of Australia.. and was surprised to see Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman... (if I'm thinking of the right movie) starring together, that's a couple I never thought of...

Funny. When I saw them together I thought, "D'oh! Of course! All the top A-List Aussies together! Why didn't I think of that?" My second thought was, "They coudn't get Cate Blanchett?", though.

[Septimus]

Valkerie looked good anyone seen it? lots of my friends only liked it because of the explosive trailers. but no one i know has seen it yet.

[pawelmarta]

Hello everyone,

My top 5 favourite movie are listed below. The movie which I often like to watch.

- Mission Impossible
- Troy
- The day after tomorrow
- Gladiator
- Transporter
- Transformer 2

[Kathy Li]

Since there was a mention of Disney in the ToGR, I had to post that I'm really excited about The Princess and the Frog.

Disney, in its corporate stupidity, decided that since CGI animated features were doing so much better than their drawn animation features, that they needed to axe their drawn animation arm. Never mind that it's the arm that created the company. (sigh). Never mind that what people actually want is a good story and they don't care if it's drawn, CGI, or stop-motion. No. They thought they knew. The same way they thought that middle management people had a right to stick their oar in the creative process without knowing anything about movie making or animation. All their top animators were retrained to do CGI animation. A lot of people left. The animation tables were sold. Teams were broken up and scattered to the four winds.

Then, Steve Jobs did a deal with Disney--they got Pixar, he got a seat on their board (and probably a lot of interesting Disney/Buena Vista/ABC deals for the iTunes Music Store), and Ed Catmull and John Lasseter (the two top honchos at Pixar) were going to be put in charge of Disney Animation.

John Lasseter is the guy who directed Toy Story, Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Cars. He was Pixar's first and sole animator through most of the Lucasfilm years, when Pixar stayed alive by selling Renderman and animating Listerine commercials and effects sequences for Lucasfilm/ILM (e.g., the "Genesis Effect" animation in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan). He trained at CalArts and worked at Disney in the '70s as a traditional animator, before he got intrigued by Tron into looking into computer animation.

But his classmates at CalArts included people like John Musker (Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Princess and the Frog), and Brad Bird (Family Dog, The Simpsons, Incredibles, Ratatouille). And Lasseter, of course, is a fan and friend of Hayao Miyazaki, and championed the Studio Ghibli films being released through Disney. Lasseter knows, appreciates, and best of all, has practiced drawn animation.

And their agenda from Day 1 was to get drawn animation back at Disney. So, they hired people back from other companies, and rebuilt the animation arm. The first fruits of all this work is The Princess & the Frog. Drawn, a musical, and based on a fairytale. In other words, return of the Classic. It's been a while, eh?

So, I'm looking forward to The Princess and the Frog, and a whole new era at Disney.

[rick455]

I agree with your assessment of Disney's corporate wisdom. Drawn animation is still very popular. Just try to get it on Netflix, it usually takes a couple of weeks.

[EricG1793]

Has anyone seen Hugo?

My uncle came down from Maine this week and he was telling me about Hugo, saying it was about a kid whose dad owned a clock shop and they would fix things together. The father worked in a museum and took home an automoton, basically a robot that writes. The father died and Hugo's uncle tok Hugo as his apprentice maintaining the clocks in a train station (scene is post WWI Paris). Hugo held onto the automoton and stole a bunch of parts from a grumpy toy store owner, who ends up being the secret behind the automoton and the message that Hugo's father left for Hugo through the automoton. My uncle said Hugo reminded him of me, since I like tinkering and fixing things. So I got the DVD from my school library and my parents and I watched it with him.

There is a scene that really touched me. Hugo states that broken machines are sad because they have lost their purpose; they cannot do what they need to do if they are broken. By fixing things, he gives them new life. He also said that machines only come with exactly as many parts as they need to function and related the world to one huge machine that he is a part of, and because he is a part of the world, he serves some purpose, but he has to find out what that is. He ends up fixing the grumpy store owner's broken heart. I really related to that scene in the movie, since I do get somewhat sentimental when I fix things. I work in the IT department at my school and nothing thrills me more than reviving a bunch of dead laptops we have piled in the back of the office by swapping parts from all the dead ones and making some that work, or replacing consumables in copiers or our battery backup supplies for the servers to keep them all running. My best friend lives on a farm and he and I fix cars, tractors, lawnmowers, etc.

*Spoilers ahead*

There was some sort of synchronisity as to my viewing of this movie. I'm not one to watch movies ingeneral. I only do it if someone else asks me to watch something with them, or if I find a movie based on a book I've read. I enjoy watching them, but other things take priority. Movies class was an option for the core classes for college so I decided to take it and broaded my horizons a bit.

In class, we've learned about cinematography, sound, lighting, acting, sets, costumes, makeup, writing, the whole nine yards. My teacher showed us a clip from a movie that showed a film professor's flashbacks to the day that he visited a film set and met Georges Melies (the grumpy store owner) before the film industry collapsed and he gave up everything. The clip showed how early movies were produced -- set construction, actual filming, the process of making cuts and starting over to improve on things, editing the film, etc. Basically what happens behind the scenes.

My teacher then skipped to a scene in which the professor visits Georges Melies at his house, set up by Hugo and Georges's goddaughter. Georges's wife answers the door and at first shoos them away, but when the professor told her he could show her one of the movies that she thought no longer existed, she agreed to watch it (it turned out she starred in most of the movies). Georges is in the background watching the clip, and he tells his complete story of his filming career and how it ended and he tried to forget about it. I was very interested in seeing the whole movie. Halfway through when I watched it with my uncle and parents, I realized that it was that film I had wanted to watch in Movies class.