Last movie seen — Page 37

Apocalypse Now. Really powerful, that movie is. I don't know if I'd put it really high on my list, but I'm rarely fond of war movies. Definitely one I'd watch again; it's quite the experience, for sure. Even the theatrical cut was at times slow, but I don't have much of an attention span I'll admit... Part 2 was ultimately far superior (part 2 as noted by disc 2 of the DVD set).

Favorite scenes:
-Death of Mr. Clean. I don't think I've ever seen a more poignant death scene, or at least not one that was beautiful in a movie-watching sense like that.
-The End. Have to lump that all together in one category. I also loved the contrast between using the uncensored and the censored versions of the song at different points in the movie, especially considering how it fit with Mr. Kurtz's speech right before his death.

I showed some friends movies for Halloween:

Don't Look Now and The Wicker Man.

They didn't go over well. I think today you have to have Nicholas Cage being attacked by bees for WM to be acceptable. I also think I was born in the wrong decade.

And no one today gets poor Nicolas Roeg. I don't understand how people can loathe DLN. It's so multilayered and unforgettable.

Godfather Part II. I think I prefer Part I, but they're still both fantastic movies. Though neither of them beat Apocalypse Now, which only gets better the more I think about it. That, my friends, is more of an experience than a movie.

Bingowings said:

Tonight I've been mostly watching The Odd Couple.

It never goes stale, not like the contents of Walter's fridge.

The Odd Couple is one of my favorite movies ever.

"It's not spaghetti, it's linguini"

"Now it's GARBAGE"

Now that I'm thinking about Matthau and Lemmon, Grumpy Old Men was great too, especially Burgess Meredith's character:

Gustufson On Health

Leonardo said:

Saw "The Money Pit" (1986) with Tom Hanks, last night. Pretty nice flick.

I quite enjoyed the Money Pit before I became a homeowner.  Now, I can't watch it and find it anything other than depressing.  :(

Father of the Bride (1991) was really popular when my sister was getting married.  Everyone was really into it except my father, who was, *ahem*, the father of a bride.  I thought he was mostly joking, about how he couldn't stand watching it... but now I totally understand what he meant.

We watched The Band's Visit.  I don't dislike foreign films on principal, but I do tend to dislike a lot of them individually.  I just find that they don't mesh my gears...  The movie had some really good parts, but at the end... I think I must have missed the point.  It seemed to have a bunch of whimsical things happen to people without a real resolution to anything at the end.   It just sort of ended.

Phantom of the Opera-silent with live score. Color tinted print with the original Technicolor masked ball. Stunning.

Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only-childhood favorites. Reminded me of how much I hate the Lowry transfers, but hard to believe that FYEO is almost 30!

Control-brilliant B&W bio pic of the late singer of Joy Division.

Saw the re-release of BTTF. It's one thing to see a movie in your own living room, it's another to see it in the theather. Even if you know it inside out, in english AND in italian, production details, trivia and whatnot...

This movie (and its sequels) never disappoints me, it's always a fun ride. I came out of the theatre with a smile on my face. Why can't we experience this kinda pleasure with the SW OT re-released in pristine quality???!!??

Just one little thing, though: digital projection. You really can tell the difference (or at least it could've been because I knew). It makes me miss film. It had this strange motion blur with vertical movement, I can't put my finger on it... Great colors and definition, though.

Oh, and here in Italy it was just a one day thing, only the 27th of October, instead of the 23rd and 25th as I heard of in the US. There were 3 shows at the local cinema, I went to the first one at 18:15. The place was almost empty, there must've been no more than 20-25 people including myself!

People were watching "Despicable Me" instead!!

I don't know.  In theory, film has jitter, generation loss, undesirable grain (at least it was undesirable until someone developed a way to avoid/get rid of it) and is locked (almost exclusively) at 24 hz/fps.  And if you do an average amount of post processing- anything you shot on film is scanned... and then if you project from film, it's printed back to film from the digital.

Digital should never have vertical tearing or motion blur (more than film) like you said.  I tend to think you might have been on a witchhunt or talking yourself into seeing things that weren't there.  But I'll concede that it's possible that the equipment was crap, not properly configured, performing some odd pulldown, or other unfavourable whatevers. 

Over the past 10 years, as digital has improved drastically (and film hasn't), I see film apologists ditching all of the logical or 'fact' based arguments and sticking with more esoteric "it feels warmer, looks more natural" kind of arguments that can never be vetted fully... it just comes down to opinion at that point in time.

And then there's this odd thing.  The limitations of film are what we associate with film.  You get rid of those limitations, and everything starts looking like telenovela.  I think in a couple of years, these associations will weaken and the peoples (that's us) will be less affected by high fps or deep focus, etc.  Today we see those things and think "day time television".  Tomorrow we'll just see the film.  Really clearly.

xhonzi said:

  Today we see those things and think "day time television".  Tomorrow we'll just see the film.  Really clearly.

That reminds me. My dad recently got an HDTV with some kind of optional MotionTrack setting (can't remember the real name of it for the life of me), and I think it's meant to be used primarily for sporting events, but it makes everything look like day-time television. It's really strange watching Dexter or Star Wars with that on. We flipped to a channel where Tomb Raider was on, and it makes everything look really cheap, because it almost looks like it was filmed like a behind-the-scenes documentary and the sets looked a lot faker.

Nanner Split said:

xhonzi said:

  Today we see those things and think "day time television".  Tomorrow we'll just see the film.  Really clearly.

That reminds me. My dad recently got an HDTV with some kind of optional MotionTrack setting (can't remember the real name of it for the life of me), and I think it's meant to be used primarily for sporting events, but it makes everything look like day-time television. It's really strange watching Dexter or Star Wars with that on. We flipped to a channel where Tomb Raider was on, and it makes everything look really cheap, because it almost looks like it was filmed like a behind-the-scenes documentary and the sets looked a lot faker.

That's 120Hz mode right?

Dracula and The Mummy. There's nothing like the Universals around this time of year.

Transmitting Joy Division. :) The film is really very good, but I am a bit biased because I adore Anton Corbijn's work.