What Movies are you Watching?

[GhostontheNet]

The Tale of Despereaux

An extremely weird kids movie. Includes rats attempting to strip the flesh off of a young girl. Also, magical soup.

I'd say that's a bit risque for a children's story, but actually, a lot of the fairy tales we have today are basically codified stories about the promises and perils of human sexuality. (Oh, and yes, Disney is probably aware of this in the production of their animated films). In this respect, a horde of presumably male rats swarming over the princess to strip away her flesh provides an apt but suitably flexible metaphor for certain goings-on nowadays. Of course, I still haven't seen the movie, but these are my impressions from reading what you have written.

[ich1990]

I'd say that's a bit risque for a children's story, but actually, a lot of the fairy tales we have today are basically codified stories about the promises and perils of human sexuality. (Oh, and yes, Disney is probably aware of this in the production of their animated films). In this respect, a horde of presumably male rats swarming over the princess to strip away her flesh provides an apt but suitably flexible metaphor for certain goings-on nowadays. Of course, I still haven't seen the movie, but these are my impressions from reading what you have written.

Uh, yah, something like that. It had a surprising amount of heavy topics for a "G" rated movie. For instance, one mouse was ostracized from his society because he wouldn't cower like "a mouse should". Also, a poor servant girl bemoans the fact that fate placed her at the bottom of life while the princess gets whatever she wants --even though she didn't earn it-- so she uses a butchers knife to even the odds. I guess you could probably read a phallic narrative out of that if you wanted to, but I am not sure that the point of the story wasn't simply mundane.

Either way, the movie wasn't really that great. The storyline was fragmented to the point of needing a narrator to straighten it out, and it contained several "magical" plot devices that weren't even necessary.

EDIT: Oh, and congratulations on the birthday.

[GhostontheNet]

Uh, yah, something like that. It had a surprising amount of heavy topics for a "G" rated movie. For instance, one mouse was ostracized from his society because he wouldn't cower like "a mouse should". Also, a poor servant girl bemoans the fact that fate placed her at the bottom of life while the princess gets whatever she wants --even though she didn't earn it-- so she uses a butchers knife to even the odds. I guess you could probably read a phallic narrative out of that if you wanted to, but I am not sure that the point of the story wasn't simply mundane.

Either way, the movie wasn't really that great. The storyline was fragmented to the point of needing a narrator to straighten it out, and it contained several "magical" plot devices that weren't even necessary.

EDIT: Oh, and congratulations on the birthday.

Actually, that's another thing I've noticed about more contemporary fairy tale movies, they're much more conscious of elements of class conflict implicit in the original tales. I guess this is because now that the spectre of communism is no longer haunting Europe, and we can no longer blame all our problems on it, the taboo on the ideas of Marx is gradually being lifted over the past few decades as some of the problems he described about capitalistic societies become painfully apparent. Here in America, I think it's very difficult to deny that you are living in a kind of fairy tale, although I tend to feel it has much more in common with "Hansel and Gretel" than it does with "Cinderella". So while it's very popular to lampoon or critique fairy tales for different reasons, as ritual stories deeply rooted in the collective unconscious, they'll never go away or lose their impact. The effort to stifle or repress their influence is misguided then, because it would be easier to extinguish the sun than to abolish an archetype.

The more effective thing to do, then, is to pay very close attention to the messages you are sending with these archetypes, which will allow your story and characters to take on the echo of thousands while repairing the damage and distortions inflicted by your forebears. In this respect, I think a good fairy tale can speak to a nation both lost and cynical on a deeper level in a way no other medium can. This will only become more and more true as a culture densely saturated with media and information technology grows more and more hyperreal, redefining the boundaries of what is possible in ways practically indistinguishable from magic. In such a cultural context, the impulse to mask the hyperreal behind the rhetoric of the "real" will make the fairy tale to seem far more relevant, honest, and authentic by comparison. For new generations of lost children whose unprecendented experiences have made them unknown to both mother and father (a sequence that not coincidently begins in the period you and I grew up) the importance and impact of fairy tales to those who wander lost through a gingerbread planet.

P.S. Thank you for the congrats on the birthday, I didn't do any cakes or parties or anything today. But I had a nice lunch with my dad and was able to do a good film shoot on campus with the lovely pollen spores flowing in the breeze right on frame at the most beautiful spots on our campus.

[shade of dae]

Bride of Frankenstein
I was expecting a crazy and unintentionally funny film, and was not disappointed. Some of my favorite scenes, though, were when the old blind monk tell's Frankenstein's monster, "Wine, good. Smoke, good", and Pretorious used alcohol to get the monster to do what he wanted. Which, of course, resulted in a murder-suicide, showing that alcohol and science experiments don't mix.

[GhostontheNet]

Bride of Frankenstein
I was expecting a crazy and unintentionally funny film, and was not disappointed. Some of my favorite scenes, though, were when the old blind monk tell's Frankenstein's monster, "Wine, good. Smoke, good", and Pretorious used alcohol to get the monster to do what he wanted. Which, of course, resulted in a murder-suicide, showing that alcohol and science experiments don't mix.

Lol, I suppose that's one way of looking at it, although I don't think the moral of the story is about the dangers of alcohol. Notice the irony of the scene when the blind monk initiates the Frankenstein monster into the symbolic order by way of language. When they sit down to table fellowship, he both offers the monster the bread and wine of communion, and also his first vice in the form of a cigar. Dr. Pretorious, of course, is aligned much more closely to the latter, as can be seen by the way that his "only vice" constantly changes throughout the film, and uses the monster's association of alcohol with "friend" to control him. I think the reason for the Monster's suicide-murder of himself, Dr. Pretorius, and the Bride to cancel, or at least delay the arrival of "a new world of gods and monsters", are more existential in nature. Throughout the film, the monster's inability to find a place within the symbolic can be seen by his persecution by male lynch mobs and inability to find a woman who isn't repulsed by his presence, effectively signaling his abjected existence. So when the creation of the Bride offers the hope of a place in a new symbolic order, the "new world of gods and monsters" spoken of by Dr. Pretorius, he's on board 100%. The punchline, of course, is that just because a couple of arrogant male scientists think they can play God and create/reconstruct a woman on your behalf, does not mean she has to like you. So while I often ponder about the ethicality of the Bride's premature death, as an expression of their shared despair of finding a place in the symbolic, it sort of makes sense.

[GhostontheNet]

I recently watched Nosferatu the Vampyre.

[shade of dae]

Lol, I suppose that's one way of looking at it, although I don't think the moral of the story is about the dangers of alcohol. Notice the irony of the scene when the blind monk initiates the Frankenstein monster into the symbolic order by way of language. When they sit down to table fellowship, he both offers the monster the bread and wine of communion, and also his first vice in the form of a cigar. Dr. Pretorious, of course, is aligned much more closely to the latter, as can be seen by the way that his "only vice" constantly changes throughout the film, and uses the monster's association of alcohol with "friend" to control him. I think the reason for the Monster's suicide-murder of himself, Dr. Pretorius, and the Bride to cancel, or at least delay the arrival of "a new world of gods and monsters", are more existential in nature. Throughout the film, the monster's inability to find a place within the symbolic can be seen by his persecution by male lynch mobs and inability to find a woman who isn't repulsed by his presence, effectively signaling his abjected existence. So when the creation of the Bride offers the hope of a place in a new symbolic order, the "new world of gods and monsters" spoken of by Dr. Pretorius, he's on board 100%. The punchline, of course, is that just because a couple of arrogant male scientists think they can play God and create/reconstruct a woman on your behalf, does not mean she has to like you. So while I often ponder about the ethicality of the Bride's premature death, as an expression of their shared despair of finding a place in the symbolic, it sort of makes sense.

Good points. And while I didn't think that the moral of the story was about the dangers of alcohol, It took me quite a bit of thinking to figure out what exactly I thought it was. At the beginning, Mary Shelley says that there is a moral in the first story, which I knew, but I assumed that there would be a obvious moral in the Bride of Frankenstein. However, overall, I found the message to be very much the same as the last one. Man tries to create and control human life but finds he can't control the soul. Monster longs for acceptance but doesn't find it. So, basically, I found the only additional message to be that history repeats itself. Is that similar to what you thought the moral to be?

[Etoh*the*Greato]

My room mate and I have been on a schwarzeneggathon. Total recall, Predator, Running Man. Next up: Terminator 2: Judgement daaaaaaaaay!

[the_wolfs_howl]

Horton Hears a Who

Still a great movie, still very funny, still lovely in how they transformed Dr. Seuss's drawings into CG. And I laugh heartily all the way through the random anime sequence every time.


Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Need I say more?


Barbie: The Crystal Palace

While not quite as good as I was hoping, it's better than the Barbie movies have been for a while. Didn't quite reach the standards of Magic of Pegasus, and there was a lot of wasted potential (not to mention a very sloppy deus ex machina at the end), but I liked the core message of friendship. And they got Amy Powers to do the singing, which was beautiful as ever. And the two love interests were actually funny most of the time, rather than stupid, which was a pleasant surprise. Still, I think they should stick to making adaptations of already-existing stories, because usually when they make up their own thing, it just flops.

[Htom Sirveaux]

My room mate and I have been on a schwarzeneggathon. Total recall, Predator, Running Man. Next up: Terminator 2: Judgement daaaaaaaaay!

GET TO DE CHOPPAAAH!!

[Kkun]

My room mate and I have been on a schwarzeneggathon. Total recall, Predator, Running Man. Next up: Terminator 2: Judgement daaaaaaaaay!

I was going to say that you need to watch Commando, but then I looked at your list and thought "Nah, he's covered all of the good ones."

[KagayakiWashi]

Last night I watched "The Mouse That Roared", which was just a weird movie......it reminded me of a live action Warner Bros. short.
Then I watched "The Bellboy" which is a great Jerry Lewis movie that seems almost Mr. Bean-esque.
After seeing a special on Spaghetti Westerns though, I really wanna see more Italian westerns and samurai films!

[animewarrior]

I just watched the Death Note Live-Action Film 1... and I just bought "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" from Wal-Mart XP... I've never seen it.. >> hopefully I can watch it today!

[GeneD]

Last night I watched "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!". It was cute and surprisingly funny. That little gasping, yellow creature is the best combination of cute and creepy I've ever seen.

[ADXC]

Today, I watched The Godfather with my dad for Father's day! It was really a good movie well worth the praise that it got. I still have part two and part three to watch with my dad.

[ich1990]

Journey to the Center of the Earth

This movie was made for 3d and I recommend that people not bother to watch it in 2d. A good movie for kids. For adults, well, be warned that it has no realism whatsoever. It made me want to read the book, though.

[Makachop^^128]

just saw Up
almost made me cry lol

[ich1990]

Father of the Bride

One of the most viciously crafted horror movies ever made.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched Frontline: ://GROWING_UP_DIGITAL and The Matrix.

[Bobtheduck]

Just saw up. Cried like a baby. It was a good movie. I say was because every last copy of it spontaneously combusted. Including the servers it was rendered on. Or because I'm not watching it anymore, one or the other.

[KagayakiWashi]

The other night I watched Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru", which I wish I could have enjoyed more, but it's not a movie you can "just watch anytime for enjoyment". It's on the more philosophical side of Kurosawa (more so than his other films I've seen), and I wasn't mentally prepared for it.
Tonight, I saw "Gran Torino" with my family. Absolutely loved it. A little rough on the language, but an excellent, excellent film. Clint Eastwood is still, and always will be awesome.
I plan to watch Kurosawa's "Stray Dog" as soon as I can since I got it in Netflix this week. You just can't go wrong with Toshiro Mifune as the lead actor.

[ich1990]

Well, I haven't been watching many movies lately, but I did finish off a lot of television.

Stargate SG-1 seasons 1-3

Great stuff. This is the only series that I have ever started re-watching. Season one is a little slow but seasons two and three steadily ratchet up the quality. I look forward to reviewing (literally) the shows golden days, seasons 3-7.

Stargate Atlantis seasons 2-3

Again, very good sci-fi. I wouldn't go so far as say that it is better than SG-1, but it is pretty darn good. Favorite character is definitely Zelinka. Rodney is all right, but he seems to always be the focal character. It would be great if Zelinka got more air time. Aside from that, I do not have any complaints whatsoever. Oh, and it is weird seeing Kaylee on this show.

X-Men Evolution season 1

I haven't read any of the comics and only recently watched the modern trilogy adaption. If you don't set your expectations too high (think Saturday morning cartoon) it is not a bad series. It doesn't interest me terribly greatly, but the episodes are extremely short (about 20 minutes each) and the plot is moving quite rapidly, so I have kept with it. I still can not listen to Magneto's voice with a straight face, however, because Teal'c from SG-1 does his voice.

[Davidizer13]

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

They simply don't make movies like this anymore. The plot is simple: There's a whole bunch of people going for a whole bunch of money buried somewhere. Obviously, it gets more complex. More people get in the chase, things get chaotic, hilarity ensues. The Three Stooges show up for about ten seconds. It's an old-style comedy epic like no other; see it if you can.

[the_wolfs_howl]

Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi

Ah, I love the final battle with Luke, Darth Vader, and the Emperor....


Tocar y Luchar

This was a documentary-type thing, about a program in Venezuela where they take children from low-income families all across the country and teach them how to play musical instruments, to enrich their lives and give them something to live for. It's really amazing what these children can do, because most of them started lessons at the age of three or four. Very inspiring.

[GhostontheNet]

Last night I watched Clash of the Titans, The Seventh Seal, and The Crow.

[KagayakiWashi]

[quote="Davidizer13 (post: 1324168)"]It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

They simply don't make movies like this anymore. The plot is simple: There's a whole bunch of people going for a whole bunch of money buried somewhere. Obviously, it gets more complex. More people get in the chase, things get chaotic, hilarity ensues. The Three Stooges show up for about ten seconds. It's an old-style comedy epic like no other]

I absolutely LOVE that movie. If you haven't seen "Rat Race", it's a more modern movie with the same idea and alot of big stars acting in it. I love it when Doodles Weaver (known for his acts with Spike Jones) shows up.....but Jim Backus is my favorite....."....just push the button marked BOOZE! It's the only way to fly *insert Jim Backus' signature laugh*"

I just saw "Stray Dog" which sounded amazing and WAS amazing. A very young Toshiro Mifune plays a cop who's had his gun stolen. As he searches for it, he learns that it's been used in a crime. The search heats up and....well, you just have to see it. It's a story that no one but Akira Kurosawa could have told.

[Fish and Chips]

V For Vandetta.

Back when this film first came out I thought it was "Okay." Now going back to it for a literary criticism class, I can't stand it. I don't know how they got away with this.

[ADXC]

I too love It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, it's one of my favorite movies.


Last Sunday, I watched The Godfather part 2.

[GhostontheNet]

V For Vandetta.

Back when this film first came out I thought it was "Okay." Now going back to it for a literary criticism class, I can't stand it. I don't know how they got away with this.

I tend to find people either really like V for Vendetta or they really don't like it. What is it in particular that you don't like about it? If you "don't know how they got away with" making the film, who do you propose should have prevented its production, and by what means?

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched The Invisible Man.