Random Movie Talk, Louis the XIVth Edition

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In the mid '80s, SNL director Tom Schiller wrote and directed a gushingly romantic fantasy B&W (with moments of Technicolor) picture called Nothing Lasts Forever. Billy from Gremlins plays a wannabe artist who finds himself in this retro-dystopian New York City run by the Port Authority, mixed up in a fantastical journey to the Moon, and all wacky shenanigans. There's no shortage of wild ideas here, stemming from shout outs to Melies, Lang, H.G. Wells, Eisenstein... just an astounding picture that I've only recently heard of and was thoroughly blown away by this evening.

Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Larry "Bud" Melman, Lawrence Tierney, and Eddie Fisher all pop up in small bits, but the real star here is Howard Shore's incredible score. Trust me on this one, guys.

MGM has never released it on any format, but the whole joint is available on YouTube. The Drafthouse screened it last year and cut a solid trailer for it from a high quality source that I'll definitely be asking about:

TRAILER:
http://vimeo.com/m/55632934

MOVIE:
http://youtu.be/8QmOWbFqKlw
 
Man, I haven't seen The Scorpion King since it first came out. It's on TV right now and all the first 15 minutes have been so far is the world's longest parody movie trailer. It's fantastic.
 
I love that entire franchise, really. The Mummy movies, Scorpion King, all great, to me.

I'm glad I watched this whole thing because it's fantastic.
 
Picked up the Robert Downey Sr. Eclipse set from the B&N sale. Putney Swope is hysterical.
 
Listening to a guy in class do a presentation on 3-D video. He's an absolute know-it-all in every class I have. Really enjoying him fill the class' heads with incorrect information :love:
 
lazarus said:
I haven't bought anything the last couple sales, sadly. Sticking to used Criterion stuff for now.
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I debated a whole bunch of titles but felt adventurous on a budget. Also found New York Stories on Blu for $3 and figured why the hell not? Been meaning to see Scorsese's and Woody's segments for a while.

No spoken words said:
Robert Downey Sr. and Paul Thomas Anderson on Babo 73 - YouTube PT Anderson's initial reaction is perfect. Finally saw Gravity today. In 3D. With my FATHER.
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Excuse my name-dropping bastardom, but I got to see PTA geek out in a panel discussion with Jonathan Demme a few months back. It's delightful to see filmmakers on that level gush over each other's work.
 
I liked it well enough, but the hyperbolic reactions, both critically and from the mainstream audience, are ridiculous. Bullock is as bland as always, and her backstory was a desperate, amateur choice by Cuaron and his son (who co-wrote).

For a film with a similar story/lack of narrative I much preferred All Is Lost.
 
I'm back East, am sure I could find it here but the next few days are already fairly busy. Thanks, though, maybe when I get back it'll still be playing in Pasadena.
 
No spoken words said:
I think that's awesome and worth the scorn you might get due to your bastardom. So, quick show of hands, who liked Gravity and who didn't?
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I dug it. The more overt digital moments hit that Uncanny Valley hard and took me out of it. Besides that, I found it to be an effective and intense survival flick.

Whenever someone at the theater I work at said, "it's the best movie I've seen in years" depressed me but what can you do?
 
It's very much in line with Tintin and the Uncharted games in terms of digitally-driven, long-take, fluid, highly-choreographed set-piece whatsit adventures. Which have their own particularly kinds of thrills and deeper satisfactions. I love them, Gravity included, but yeah, hardly best-anything ever material.
 
Lancemc said:
It's very much in line with Tintin and the Uncharted games in terms of digitally-driven, long-take, fluid, highly-choreographed set-piece whatsit adventures. Which have their own particularly kinds of thrills and deeper satisfactions. I love them, Gravity included, but yeah, hardly best-anything ever material.
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The photo-realism is close but not there for me to put Gravity in the same strata as Tintin, though they do share those formal similarities.

Btw, you'd love Nothing Lasts Forever, Lance.
 
Ah well the photo-realism element didn't really factor in for me. Just so happens one's a "live-action" film, another animation, another a video game (hybridized some might say). But it's really the focus on hyper-natural camera motion aided through digital means, long-take driven set-pieces, and a degree of superficial narrative turns which revel in archetype and convention for momentum if not outright cliche.

I'm not sure what Nothing Last Forever is, I'm sorry to say.
 
Lancemc said:
Ah well the photo-realism element didn't really factor in for me. Just so happens one's a "live-action" film, another animation, another a video game (hybridized some might say). But it's really the focus on hyper-natural camera motion aided through digital means, long-take driven set-pieces, and a degree of superficial narrative turns which revel in archetype and convention for momentum if not outright cliche. I'm not sure what Nothing Last Forever is, I'm sorry to say.
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I posted about it on the last page. Sorry for being vague.
 
That movie I color corrected over the summer? They needed me to redo a few scenes...this is a nightmare. I have no idea how to add a file into After Effects, apparently. This is probably really obvious, but the problem I'm having is making me want to slam my head into a wall.
 
Starting off my 2013 Catchupalooza with Johnnie To's Drug War was the correct decision.
 
Lancemc said:
Blind Detective is even better
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Would you consider that the next To stepping stone? I caught Election at the tail end of a To retrospective and was blown away by it.

Didn't expect to see Reese Witherspoon bludgeoned to death by a rock, but it felt right.
 
Haha. The Election films aren't nearly my favorite even. So brilliant is To. One of the worlds greatest. Blind Detective encapsulate sooo many genres and tones, it's almost a career-summing work, but not self-consciously. Have you seen Exiled? Maybe my favorite of his. He tends to go back and forth between romantic comedies and action films, great at both. Check out My Left Eye Sees Ghosts, The Mission, PTU, Sparrow, Breaking News, Needing You, Don't Go Breaking My Heart
 
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