[JLOGIC]

You Don't Know Jack is amazing (movie about Jack Kevorkian).

[y66]

Saw Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen. Akin is hands-down the best 30-something director out there imo. This movie was decent+, esp. for foodies, immigrants and Seinfeld fans. In German.

Saw Vicky Christina Barcelona by Woody Allen. I enjoyed Javier Bardem's character for the first half of the movie. Penelope Cruz was awesome. The movie was ok but not one I'd recommend to others.

[y66]

Saw The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle last night. It's imaginative in parts and fun to watch for the first 30 minutes or so.

[y66]

My wife caught "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" on TV last night. She doesn't rave about a lot of movies. But said this one is worth watching.

Capsule review:

In “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” a ferocious, unsentimental, often brilliantly directed film about a young woman who helps a friend secure an abortion, the camera doesn’t follow the action, it expresses consciousness itself. This consciousness — alert to the world and insistently alive — is embodied by a young university student who, one wintry day in the late 1980s, helps her roommate with an abortion in Ceausescu’s Romania when such procedures were illegal, not uncommon and too often fatal. It’s a pitiless, violent story that in its telling becomes a haunting and haunted intellectual and aesthetic achievement. “4 Months” deserves to be seen by the largest audience possible, partly because it offers a welcome alternative to the coy, trivializing attitude toward abortion now in vogue in American fiction films, but largely because it marks the emergence of an important new talent in the Romanian writer and director Cristian Mungiu. — Manohla Dargis

[gwnn]

Best Romanian film of all time, and you should definitely see it.

[y66]

Just saw it. That's the best movie I've seen in a long time. Can you imagine having a friend like Otilia? That would be something.

[kenberg]

Ok, I will take your advice. Where on tv? I see it is available on netflix and on amazon demand, neither of which we are plugged into. Was it on a regular (whatever that means these days) cable channel?

[y66]

Sorry, I was mistaken about its being on TV. Leanna got it on DVD from the library.

[kenberg]

I'll watch for it.

[cherdano]

Why did "The Social Network" get good reviews? I found it one of the most boring and annoying movies I have seen in a while.

[kenberg]

cherdano, on 2011-January-25, 10:48, said:

Why did "The Social Network" get good reviews? I found it one of the most boring and annoying movies I have seen in a while.

I am glad to hear it! I have come to see Facebook as annoying and the thought of seeing a movie about what a great idea it is seemed unbearable.

[Fluffy]

I use facebook regularilly but the idea to watch a film about how rich someone got making it seemed like a very bad idea. Why it gets good critics its because they pay a lot of money to people who wite/publish them

[Phil]

cherdano, on 2011-January-25, 10:48, said:

Why did "The Social Network" get good reviews? I found it one of the most boring and annoying movies I have seen in a while.

Can you be more specific?

[cherdano]

Phil, on 2011-January-29, 23:55, said:

Can you be more specific?

When I read about the beginning of facebook, I found the story actually interesting. (It must have been an Atlantic or New Yorker article, I don't remember.) The movie added this whole standard-movie-story non-sense that he is this anti-social character who gets dumped by girls and doesn't get into the clubs (that were important in Harvard 50 years ago) and is generally unpopular, and has to get even for all that by creating facebook. I.e. the typial movie-genius cliche. That seems a much more boring story than the real Mark Zuckerberg.
(Btw, I don't even claim that it paints Zuckerberg in an unfair light, the real Zuckerberg is probably a much more social and likeable person, but also did more ethically questionable things in the wild first months/years of facebook. I.e. he is bad in a more interesting way than the movie persona.)

That overs why it was boring and partly why it was annoying. What got me besides the flat story was the constant and completely artificial rhythm of the dialogues. Nobody talks the way the figures in the movies were talking with each other.

[kenberg]

I am thinking that they could make a movie about Brin and Paige. Maybe call it The Searchers. Sergei was in my advanced differential equations class while he was in high school. I see Brad Pitt as playing my part.

[Phil]

I'd like to read the article you reference Cherdano.

I saw it Saturday night. Its not in my top 10 much less 100, and I'm puzzled why its even being nominated for an Oscar. However, to call it (very) boring and annoying is a serious overbid to me. I thought it did a reasonable job capturing the little turf wars, and the issues involved with a start-up, although I would be interested to know where the documentary stops and fiction starts in the storyline.

I found it reasonably entertaining - maybe a 5 out of 10. However it sounds like the producers and writers didn't think Zuckerberg's story was interesting enough and had to bring in a simplistic "nerd vs the establishment" element and that's a shame. I also think what they did to Saverin was totally reprehensible. - edit - just read the facts - he got diluted from 35% to 5%, not the .07% referenced in the film lol

[Phil]

Also saw "The Mechanic" on Saturday. I love Statham, but it isn't worth the $8 nor the 2 hours of your life.

[gwnn]

cherdano, on 2011-January-31, 15:23, said:

When I read about the beginning of facebook, I found the story actually interesting. (It must have been an Atlantic or New Yorker article, I don't remember.) The movie added this whole standard-movie-story non-sense that he is this anti-social character who gets dumped by girls and doesn't get into the clubs (that were important in Harvard 50 years ago) and is generally unpopular, and has to get even for all that by creating facebook. I.e. the typial movie-genius cliche. That seems a much more boring story than the real Mark Zuckerberg.
(Btw, I don't even claim that it paints Zuckerberg in an unfair light, the real Zuckerberg is probably a much more social and likeable person, but also did more ethically questionable things in the wild first months/years of facebook. I.e. he is bad in a more interesting way than the movie persona.)

That overs why it was boring and partly why it was annoying. What got me besides the flat story was the constant and completely artificial rhythm of the dialogues. Nobody talks the way the figures in the movies were talking with each other.

I thought that standard movie story nonsense about him not being popular was a rather short part of the story, in the film he grew notorious/popular after his 'facemash' experiment. I think almost all films have artificial rhythm in dialogues and it doesn't bother me much, but it's been a few months since I've seen the film, so I couldn't comment. What I particularly liked about the film was the way Jesse Eisenberg played a low-key, but also impatient and arrogant genius, I thought it was a complex character, and with an average performance the film would be next to worthless.

Obviously what I'm trying to do here is not to disprove your opinion, just to let others know that the whole forums community is not against the Facebook film

[y66]

Question: Why did Martin Strel swim the Amazon River (5,268 kilometers or 3,273 miles)?

Answer: See Big River Man. The movie doesn't really answer the question. But it is an amazing documentary.

[barmar]

cherdano, on 2011-January-31, 15:23, said:

Nobody talks the way the figures in the movies were talking with each other.

It's an Aaron Sorkin screenplay. Did you watch his TV shows "The West Wing" or "Sportsnight"? Nobody in real life talks like his scripts. Can you really imagine a courtroom dialogue like the one between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men"?

He likes clever dialogue.