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What Is The Last Film You Watched? (Older Films)


Mr. Breathmask

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The Social Network

It's like many of Fincher's films... it just leaves me cold and detached. Armie Hammer's twin characters are both annoying and fascinating, while Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg is both aloof and fascinating. And for all that hoopla for his performance that won him the Spider-Man role, Andrew Garfield is better here in this pic than he was in Amazing Spider-Man (but that's not saying much). Justin Timberlake's turn as Sean Parker is okay at best. Technically, it's very well-shot, paced and edited -- but this one of the most overrated films of 2010.

Especially its Oscar wins... Joel & Ethan Coen deserved that Best Adapted Screenplay for True Grit or even the story staff for Toy Story 3. Aaron Sorkin's screenplay was good but not great. And Best Original Score... my ass. The Best Editing one was the only award that deserved it.

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It's not a warm, fuzzy film with sympathetic characters and a sugary soundtrack but the film had my full attention which is quite rare these days. I immediately classified it as one of Fincher's best.

Alex

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Because the film really isn't about Facebook at all.

But it is about success, and what the price of it is. And what it can do to friendships.

All of this has been done to death in other movies, but way way this was written and filmed just appealed to me.

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I don't mind how the film is crafted and all. Everything is fine with it.

But...

It is simply not interesting.

I was amazed how much effort was put there, with many brilliant scenes by themselves, for a story that I found uninteresting at best.

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Because the film really isn't about Facebook at all.

But it is about success, and what the price of it is. And what it can do to friendships.

All of this has been done to death in other movies, but way way this was written and filmed just appealed to me.

Me too. I was amazed how that facebook dude went straight after his goal, sacrificing those who get in his way, even his best friend. Biopics usually are about adorable persons who chase the American dream but for this guy business always came first. I was also amazed with that pop star dude who played that music sharing dude. I thought he played the character with great poise. I was amazed with the overall storytelling. Great control, firmly paced and always interesting. I wasn't bored once. And finally, I was amazed with the photography (although, strickly speaking,it's a part of storytelling), but then again, it's Jeff Cronenweth (yes, the son of the great Jordan Cronenweth), one of my favorite working cinematographers.

Alex

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I was also amazed with that pop star dude who played that music sharing dude. I thought he played the character with great poise.

That pop star dude's a decent actor and all-around likeable guy.

Who just married the oldest daughter from 7th Heaven. I hope she got to take it out of the box on their wedding night...

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I was also amazed with that pop star dude who played that music sharing dude. I thought he played the character with great poise.

That pop star dude's a decent actor and all-around likeable guy.

Who just married the oldest daughter from 7th Heaven. I hope she got to take it out of the box on their wedding night...

good one :thumbup:

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It's not a warm, fuzzy film with sympathetic characters and a sugary soundtrack but the film had my full attention which is quite rare these days. I immediately classified it as one of Fincher's best.

I was surprised. I was expecting a good but cold film, somewhat similar to Zodiac, which was certainly well made and interesting but failed to draw me in. But Social Network was actually really entertaining and despite its length never seemed to drag.

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I'd say so too. It's Fincher in full control with his perfected style.

His style was perfect for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo... beautifully put-together, well-acted, and well-edited. The Social Network looks like a made-for-TV film in some scenes... I don't know if that was the digital photography or the lighting in general.

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I don't mind how the film is crafted and all. Everything is fine with it.

But...

It is simply not interesting.

Karol

Yeah, this one. I have Facebook and use it occasionally, but the story of how it came to be just didn't interest me.

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The film is not about Facebook

And that was clear before it was even released. In fact, I was surprised how many technical tidbits they managed to put in without distracting from the plot.

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Anyway the job is a film maker is not being 100% factually accurate. His job is to tell a story in the most interesting way.

My dad said something similar when we walked out of The Passion of the Christ eight years ago, still sick to our stomachs.

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The race scene looks great.

I agree, but that scene is heavily processed in post production or filmed with a special tilt-shift lens. It's how the popular 'miniature look' photos are achieved that people love to post on facebook. It's the only deliberately 'flashy' moment in the film. The rest of the film is low-key, naturalistic, yet elegantly composed while still maintaining Fincher's signature.

Alex

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I thought Che part one was very good. I love the natural way it was made. I've wanted to see something like this for a while. With undramatism, showing a variety of characters. I'll see part two tonight.

I don't think it was necesary to have the translator speaking so much in English over Del Toro's dialogue, however. I mean, there's much more people than just an English-speaking audience, and they would have already been seeing the rest of the film with subtitles.

I also liked the map part at the beginning of the film (nobody ever thinks on that) and the song in the credits which I didn't know.

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I've never done this before, but I want to thank George Lucas.

I saw that Starcrash is available on Netflix, so I decided to stream it. I'm about five minutes in, watching its giant starship pan overhead from the foreground into the distance over a planet. Very much like the opening shot of Star Wars. In fact, it's a complete carbon copy of the shot. Except it feels totally wrong. When I watch the Star Destroyer chase Princess Leia's blockade runner over Tatooine, I "know" that I'm seeing a plastic assemblage of old model parts, but the sense of scale is incredible. It feels like a vast spaceship miles long, and I am humbled by its size and cinematography. Then I watch this spaceship in the opening sequence to Starcrash, and it's so clean, so simple, and moves so fast with jerky camera movements that I can't shake the feeling of watching a cheap toy filmed rather amateurishly. Subsequent shots are filmed at 90 degree angles from above and then re-used several times, with screen-filling explosions cutting between shots of clean spaceships darting all around the screen without explaining who is who. It's as if two years was not enough time for the filmmakers to make a really good copy of the Star Wars concepts.

I turned it off. I can't watch that crap. No matter how attractive the pilot lady seems to be.

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I've never done this before, but I want to thank George Lucas.

I saw that Starcrash is available on Netflix, so I decided to stream it. I'm about five minutes in, watching its giant starship pan overhead from the foreground into the distance over a planet. Very much like the opening shot of Star Wars. In fact, it's a complete carbon copy of the shot. Except it feels totally wrong. When I watch the Star Destroyer chase Princess Leia's blockade runner over Tatooine, I "know" that I'm seeing a plastic assemblage of old model parts, but the sense of scale is incredible. It feels like a vast spaceship miles long, and I am humbled by its size and cinematography. Then I watch this spaceship in the opening sequence to Starcrash, and it's so clean, so simple, and moves so fast with jerky camera movements that I can't shake the feeling of watching a cheap toy filmed rather amateurishly. Subsequent shots are filmed at 90 degree angles from above and then re-used several times, with screen-filling explosions cutting between shots of clean spaceships darting all around the screen without explaining who is who. It's as if two years was not enough time for the filmmakers to make a really good copy of the Star Wars concepts.

I turned it off. I can't watch that crap. No matter how attractive the pilot lady seems to be.

I remember getting baked and watching it, and thinking it was the most incoherent piece of crap ever made.

Then I saw it sober... and it was STILL the most incoherent piece of crap ever made!

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We watched Attack of the Clones the other night. It cannot be defended. Truly a piece of shit. Thoughts:

- Performances are terrible all around, even Christopher Lee. I hadn't watched it in a while, I just remembered being more bored with his character than algebra. Totally underutilized actor. I realized this time that he certainly seemed to phone in his performance as well. His deliveries are the same as everyone else. What I mean is, it seems as though Lucas gave little direction to the actor, filmed one take and then moved onto the next scene. Plus, his character just stinks. His plan to defeat Yoda was to toss a pipe at him? Why does he tell Obi-Wan the truth about what's happening? What is his motivation, is he like a mole inside the dark side? Inevitably, it doesn't end up mattering at all because he dies within a minute of his introduction in the next movie. So what the hell is the point?

- The best performance in the movie is probably the voice actor of the prime minister, who has a minute of dialogue, if that.

- The designs of everything in this film are terrible. It rarely feels anything like Star Wars to me.

- The movie sure looks bad. The CGI is pretty awful and a total waste of computers. It ends up looking like a cartoon. The actors always look pasted onto fake backgrounds.

- The plot is nonsensical. Assign the 20 year old kid with emotional problems to Natalie Portman. 15 minute chase scene from slugs, jumping out a window over a massive abyss to getting a dart that leads to the clone planet. What? We looked up Sifo Dyas and what the deal with that guy is. It's a complete waste of dialogue in the film. It could simply have been established that Count Dooku ordered the clone army and also formed the separatist army, engineering the war for the Emperor. What we found via Wookieepedia is that Sifo Dyas was a real Jedi who was manipulated by the dark side to order a clone army and then killed. This is completely unnecessary.

- Random stupid line: "A clone army and one of the finest we've ever created." So, this is like a normal thing for these aliens on this planet to create clone armies? It seems it would be pretty easy to just show up there with a fortune, breed an army and then take on the Republic.

- Planet of bugs who hold gladiatorial matches with monsters in an arena.

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Oh, also the idea that Yoda is frequently right next to the Emperor and can't sense that he's Sith. The whole idea that the "dark side clouds everything." Eh, I don't know. My buddy compared it to Gandalf standing next to Sauron and not realizing he's fucking evil.

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We watched Attack of the Clones the other night. It cannot be defended. Truly a piece of shit.

It still amazes me how everything feels wooden and forced in this film (all the prequels, actually) while in Star Wars and Empire everything feels natural and spontanious, as if we are talking about two different directors (well, you know what I mean).

The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948):

sierra-still2.jpg

The biggest surprise of the movie is that the main character (played by Humprey Bogart) is a son of a bitch. The gold doesn't change the man, it simply amplifies the traits. 6/10

Alex

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And yet, they are easily watchable. Strange, ins't it?

Yeah like you can easily watch an episode of NCIS. Doesn't mean it has any real quality.

Really? I can't watch NCIS for 3 seconds. I hate it!

Terminator Salvation is on. This is much worse than Prometheus, fellas.

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Of course, we all know it's not the quality of the scripts or the performance of the actors that makes it easy to watch. No matter how bad it gets, something still makes it intriguing ... but what? The Star Wars universe? John Williams? What?!

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