The Movie Thread

[princessofcairo]

Woody alert: TCM is showing the great What's Up, Tiger Lily? tonite at 11pm. Always worth watching -- and I've seen it many times.

"Meet me in the bedroom in five minutes... and bring a cattle prod."

TANC: I just downloaded this film after a friend was talking about it on Sunday. Planning to watch it tonight.

Hope you like!  "name 3 presidents..."

"Roosevelt, McKinley...Lincoln?"

Awesome film!

[Tinka Cat]

Woody alert: TCM is showing the great What's Up, Tiger Lily? tonite at 11pm. Always worth watching -- and I've seen it many times.

"Meet me in the bedroom in five minutes... and bring a cattle prod."

TANC: I just downloaded this film after a friend was talking about it on Sunday. Planning to watch it tonight.

Hope you like!  "name 3 presidents..."

"Roosevelt, McKinley...Lincoln?"

Awesome film!

I heard it's funny ...  and I heard Woody disowned it, saying it was a mistake to use someone else's art in that way.

[RGMike]

NY Magazine's David Edelstein on SATC2:

The most depressing thing about Sex and the City 2 is that it seems to justify every nasty thing said and written about the series and first feature film. The SATC dynamic has always been fragile, but at its most affecting you could see beyond the costumes and artifice and feel the characters fighting for validation -- and connecting with one another in their struggle. Now there's nothing but surface. And what a surface -- the film is an epic eyesore. It's as if they set out to make a movie that said, 'You're right! We are hideous!'

The thinking behind the movie (written and directed by Michael Patrick King) is undisguised. Let's start with an over-the-top gay wedding! Then we'll send the girls to Abu Dhabi so they can rile up the fundamentalists with their sexuality! Then they'll make fun of women in niqab ('Certainly cuts down on the Botox bill!') but later show (campy) feminist solidarity! Won't they look great swishing around the desert being waited on by smooth young Arab men?

Amy Odell, of nymag.com's The Cut, accompanied me to the screening and was kind enough to whisper that a particular dress of Carrie's cost 50 grand. But what's the point of spending that much when the cinematographer, John Thomas, lights Sarah Jessica Parker to bring out the leatheriness of her skin? How did he manage to mummify the lovely Cynthia Nixon? Kim Cattrall, fresh off her witty, subtle work in The Ghost Writer, is costumed to look like a cross between (late) Mae West and (dead) Bea Arthur. Kristin Davis gets by (just) pulling little-girl faces, probably for the last time. For all the sniggery double entendres, virtually all of Sex and the City 2 is a pale shade of vanilla.

Yeesh.

[RGMike]

An even nastier SATC2 pan from Roger Ebert:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100525/REVIEWS/100529986

[RGMike]

An even nastier SATC2 pan from Roger Ebert:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100525/REVIEWS/100529986

and yet another great quote from the NY Post:

"Despite its Lawrence of Arabia length, this film — the Sexless and the Self-Pitying — is as unfunny and shapeless as another famed desert epic. Just think of it as Bitchtar.”  When your movie makes the uber-hetero Kyle Smith channel Rex Reed, you are in serious trouble...

[RGMike]

Interesting evening: Watched the HBO movie The Special Relationship, with Dennis Quaid as Bill Clinton, Hope Davis as Hillary and Michael Sheen playing Tony Blair for the 17th time (I keed, I keed!). Quite well-done.

But then I caught Paul Schrader's Blue Collar from 1978 -- which shows up on many "underrated gems of the '70s" lists. Wow. I'd managed to miss it until tonite. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto as Detroit auto workers dealing with corrupt union officals. Pryor was especially great -- maybe the best "serious" perf I've ever seen him give. Worth a rental if you've never seen it.

[RGMike]

Finally caught up with Iron Man 2 today. Very entertaining. As sequels go, not quite in the Spiderman 2 league, but Downey is wonderful yet again. I found Mickey Rourke more silly than scary, but Sam Rockwell was an amusing sleazeball and I loved that the big finale takes place in Flushing Meadow Park, of all places. All this, and ScarJo's cleavage too.

[RGMike]

Movie Title of the Week: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead -- about a bunch of vampires putting on an off-B'way production of Hamlet. Seriously.

[princessofcairo]

Movie Title of the Week: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead -- about a bunch of vampires putting on an off-B'way production of Hamlet. Seriously.

wow.

[Tinka Cat]

Movie Title of the Week: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead -- about a bunch of vampires putting on an off-B'way production of Hamlet. Seriously.

a case were one stupid pun sets a whole series of events in motion.  (you KNOW they came up w that title, and it drove the whole project...)  It's like finding a valve for a 74 Chevy 400 V8 and then deciding to build a car around it.

[RGMike]

Movie Title of the Week: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead -- about a bunch of vampires putting on an off-B'way production of Hamlet. Seriously.

a case were one stupid pun sets a whole series of events in motion.  (you KNOW they came up w that title, and it drove the whole project...)  It's like finding a valve for a 74 Chevy 400 V8 and then deciding to build a car around it.

I assumed the guy who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies did the same thing.  (I suugested on FB this weekend that the next SATC sequel should be Sex & the City & Zombies.)

I just watched that HBO docu about John Cazale -- just wonderful. Only 40 minutes and I wanted it to be twice as long. I could listen to Pacino, Buscemi, The Streep et al talk all night about acting.  And I want to watch all five of those movies again, esp Dog Day Afternoon, which (unlike, say, the Godfathers), I haven't seen in years.

[RGMike]

OMGWTF: totally unexpected, but Antichrist, the VERY controversial  Lars von Trier film from last year (in which Charlotte Gainsbourg cuts off Willem Dafoe's, er, little Willem) is showing on IFC in 5 minutes.

[Wayback]

Friday, June 4 at 8PM, the 1966 Lynn Redgrave film Georgy Girl is at the Paramount Theatre Oakland: http://www.paramounttheatre.com/schedule.html

[RGMike]

Friday, June 4 at 8PM, the 1966 Lynn Redgrave film Georgy Girl is at the Paramount Theatre Oakland: http://www.paramounttheatre.com/schedule.html

very cool.  and check out the lineup for their "70’s SOUL JAM": The Stylistics, Chi Lites, Bloodstone, Ray Goodman & Brown, Harold Melvin’s Bluenotes, and New Birth. Hosted by Jimmie “JJ” Walker (!)  Dy-no-MIIIIIIITE!

[Alicat]

Friday, June 4 at 8PM, the 1966 Lynn Redgrave film Georgy Girl is at the Paramount Theatre Oakland: http://www.paramounttheatre.com/schedule.html

very cool.  and check out the lineup for their "70’s SOUL JAM": The Stylistics, Chi Lites, Bloodstone, Ray Goodman & Brown, Harold Melvin’s Bluenotes, and New Birth. Hosted by Jimmie “JJ” Walker (!)  Dy-no-MIIIIIIITE!

KISS fm has been giving away 70's Soul Jam for what seems like forever and a day. I went to the Paramount last month and thought it was a lovely theatre.