movies

[JL21]

I'm still sort of digesting The Master. I think it's nowhere near the quality of TWBB, and is also below Boogie Nights. But it's still very good, somewhere between 4 and 5 stars.

There's a lot of goofy sexual politics at play. I'm really not sure if I'm reading more into that than I should. There's a lot of handjobs and jerking off that occur in that movie. I also feel like it's a bit incomplete. A lot more could have been fleshed out without giving away too much. PTA had to whittle it down to avoid getting sued by the Church of Scientology and I'd love to see what got hacked out of the screenplay.

There are also a lot of really cool themes that pop up. The beginning and ending boob scenes, for instance; his beginning with the woman made of sand, mirrored later when he's got rendered sand (glass) and he's fake humping it; Lancaster Dodd and Freddy Quell working as great mirror image characters, one painfully grounded in reality and the other embarrassingly anchored to fantasy; etc... And of course, the whole free will/religion angle.

Naming his character "Quell" was way too on-the-nose for my tastes.

[lukethedrifter]

One member of the audience I saw The Master with belted out "What the [expletive]?" at the roll of the credits.

Also was a lot of what I would consider inappropriate laughter.

[Schlich]

One member of the audience I saw The Master with belted out "What the [expletive]?" at the roll of the credits.

Also was a lot of what I would consider inappropriate laughter.

I'm glad my theater wasn't the only one. I swear to god they thought they went to see a comedy. I cringed at their laughter so often.

I think it's a pretty great testimony to how uncomfortable it made the audience though. I feel like laughter was the only way they knew how to deal with what they were seeing.

[JL21]

What parts are you guys talking about?

I definitely laughed when Quell flung his apple core or whatever it was at the dissenter at the party. Although I can't think of any other time the audience really laughed.

[Schlich]

What parts are you guys talking about?

I definitely laughed when Quell flung his apple core or whatever it was at the dissenter at the party. Although I can't think of any other time the audience really laughed.

There was laughter like every five to ten minutes throughout the movie at my theater. It was awful.

[pioneer98]

Anyone else interested in this?

[/youtube]

So, I started reading the book before going to see this movie next month. I'm going to spoiler my comments. Don't know if this should go in the "movie" or "book" thread, but I'm putting it here.

[SHOW]

I'm 60% finished with the book at this point. The over-arching theme of the book really has nothing to do with people being reborn in future lives. To me, the concept of "reincarnation" is more like the vehicle that the book uses to make a larger point. I hope the movie follows this as well, because it will be more powerful. To me, the real theme of this story is the battle between the quest for knowledge, and the fear of knowledge. Or put differently, a battle between the forces of civilization vs the forces of savagery. Knowledge can be a good thing, but it can be used incorrectly, so some people are right to fear that it will lead to something bad. The idea of reincarnation is just there to show that we've been through this struggle many times before in some form or other. I do really, really like this book. And I can't wait to see the movie. I'm not a literary critic or anything, but the book is not perfect. There are a couple things I'd change, but these themes I am talking about could make for a very interesting movie if they are done correctly.

The book is set up weirdly. It tells 1/2 of a story that occurs around the mid-1800s, then tells 1/2 of one in the 1930s, then 1/2 of one in the 1970s, then 1/2 of one in the present day, then 1/2 of one in the distant future, then finally 100% of a story in the FAR distant future. I've read through to this point. Then, I see the book goes backwards in time and tells the 2nd half of each of the stories mentioned previously, in reverse order. I guess in the movie they switched this up and told the entire story in a linear fashion. I'm curious how this will work. One of the things that is a bit of a letdown is that I feel like I can guess how the 2nd half of these other stories will end, in light of what I've read so far. I could be wrong, though, because there has been a surprise or two. And there are 2 stories in particular that could go a couple different ways. So, IMO it could work out to be an advantage to tell the stories in a linear fashion in the movie. Like I said, there are a few things I'd have done different if I were telling this story. But it's still a neat story.

[robbotis]

Watched Ides of March this weekend.
About half way through the movie I said to my wife, man, this guy would get my vote, I agreed w/ every single word he spoke.
Then, Boom! the plot thickened...

[cardinalkarp]

Do not go see Trouble with the Curve. I was hoping for an enjoyable baseball movie & what I got was Clint Eastwood being a grumpy old man, a role he's truly embraced & perfected. My feeling is that his role doesn't differ much from real life.

[go birds]

can't wait to see Ben Hoofleck in Argo.

Not because he's a good actor, but becuse hes a good director.

[The Third Man]

Wooden acting and "Bennifer" aside, Affleck has always seemed like a pretty funny, easygoing guy so I'm happy that he's turned out to be a skilled director. Argo should be a nice test case to see if he can branch out beyond Boston crime flicks, as much as I like The Town.