Last movie seen — Page 43

The Men Who Stare at Goats

*snore*

TV's Frink said:

The Men Who Stare at Goats

*snore*

Aw, I liked that movie.  :-(

But nothing happened!  It had so much potential, too.

Tis true that not much happened in The Men Who Stare At Goats, but I found it pretty funny and interesting.

Saw Half-Blood Prince last night.  Only a few minor quibbles with that one; it's not far behind Order of the Phoenix in terms of ranking the HP films.  Going to see Deathly Hallows part one tonight.  Think I'll re-read the books fairly soon in preparation for part two next summer.

I'm still adamant that I won't read any of the books until I see Deathly Hallows, Part 2 twice, the second time being part of a marathon where I watch all 8 movies.  That way, I get to see the entire film series, at least once, as objectively as possible.

Then I'm going to re-read all 7 books, and watch the movies again, so I can watch them the way my mother watches each new one - with an impossibly critical eye, comparing every scene in the movies to every chapter in the books.

hairy_hen said:

Tis true that not much happened in The Men Who Stare At Goats, but I found it pretty funny and interesting.

To be clear, I don't insist that every movie has stuff that happens.  I can't help but compare Goats with one of my favorite movies, The Big Lebowski.  And not just because of a whacked out Jeff Bridges character.  Nothing happens in Lebowski either.  But it's a movie so rich with characters and dialogue, whereas I found Goats to be completely flat.  I wanted to like it, and yet I was bored bored bored.

Saw Deathly Hallows part one last night.

Despite having severe grievances with the book, I found myself really enjoying the film a great deal.  By presenting it at length rather than cutting out a huge amount of material as the previous entries have done, it allows each scene and the story as a whole to develop at a better pace and make much more sense, resulting in a film with quite a different feel than any of the others (quite aside from the extremely dark and grim tone).  If only they had been able to do all the movies this way!

I think part of the problem with the book is that it isn't a story particularly suited to being written out--in many places it feels much more like a movie script that has been adapted to book form, with additional unnecessary padding.  Seeing this same story actually presented as a produced script, it unsurprisingly comes across as if it were in its natural state, as if it were meant to be this way all along.  It also helped that the parts that didn't work originally were often subtly altered in the movie into forms that improved upon the source, as I had hoped.  Highly recommended, and it's going to be tough waiting all that time until part two next summer.

If John Williams had never done any of the HP scores, I wouldn't really have any complaints about the music, but it's just that he set the bar so high initially that his absence is all the more noticeable.  For instance there will be a scene near the end of part two that would be a perfect place to use the lovely 'A Window to the Past' theme from movie three (the theme for Harry's family), and this will undoubtedly pass right by as a wasted opportunity, as it did throughout movie five.  Also, six and seven could have had a romance theme for Harry and Ginny, in the vein of Han Solo and the Princess from ESB, or Indy and Marion from Raiders.  (I ended up composing one myself a couple years ago since I knew such was not to be.)  Ah well . . .

Sorry if I'm turning this into the 'hairy_hen talks Harry Potter' thread.  lol  It's just a subject I have at various times invested a lot of interest in.

You should have announced that in my New Thread Thread.  :-(

lol  Well, I just saw The Matrix.

Been a few years since I watched that.  It's easy to forget how good it actually is, in the wake of those wretched sequels and all the horrible imitations it spawned, but the original film holds up as well as it ever did.

Oh yeah, I don't like the colour timing on the newer transfer of The Matrix.  It makes it look just like the sequels, which is bad both because the other two sux and because it's just worse colour to begin with.  It's too digital and fake looking--yes of course it's supposed to look like that anyway to some extent, but in the original it seems more subtle and less beating you over the head with the idea.  Didn't they use a filter on the lens for part of the effect instead of doing it all on the computer?

The newer transfer does have nice contrast and definition, though.  It would be cool if someone could colour correct it back to the original look, to get the best of both worlds.  Although sometimes I even wonder about that, because when you look at the menu the colours are clearly different again.  Hmm . . .

Especially R-rated movies.