I also caught the trailer for Letters from Iwo Jima, which I'm definitely going to see because I already saw Flags of Our Fathers.
I am one of the three people who wanted to see Nell when it came out in the theaters, but I never got around to it. So I finally rented it from Netflix!
Boy, what a disappointment. I guess I shouldn't have expected much, but the whole story was so fake. The speed with which Nell comes around to the researchers, the "interpretation" done in the courtroom scene, the two researchers falling in love so fast...it all just screamed cheesy to me! I don't know what I was hoping for - perhaps a good, semi-realistic wild child story - but that's not what I got at all.
There are much more interesting wild child stories out there - particularly more interesting stories of language development, which is of course a primary interest for me. Nell just wasn't believable on that score...the fact that she had "her own" language but still managed to understand the researchers (and judge) was not realistic at all. So again, Nell was a major disappointment after all those years of waiting to see it.
I have seen the first two parts of Sci-Fi Channel's The Lost Room starring Peter Krause, and I can't wait to see the third one tonight! I'm not sure what about it is so good - the writing, the acting, or what - but it's really captivating. To give you an idea of how good it is, I am going to watch Part 3 tonight instead of watching CSI:NY which is about a deaf family - I'm giving up a deaf show for The Lost Room! If you missed the first two parts, they will probably rerun them plenty of times. The third part starts tonight at 9:00pm.
I was surprised to find so many comments already on Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; I didn't realize that it had been widely released in Europe before it was available in the U.S. I just saw a special screening as part of a perfume club event, and I was approaching this from the perspective of someone who had not read the book.
The movie is pretty good, but that's all I can say about it. I felt no attachment to any of the characters, particularly any of the girls - it had no impact on me when they met their fates. I found Grenouille an utterly distasteful character, and not at all well-played; the actor did not seem to put any heart into the role, I didn't think he made it his own...he was wooden the whole time. Dustin Hoffman, on the other hand, was an excellent choice for his role.
Perfume is artistically decent. It was refreshing to see a well-crafted movie that was not a huge Hollywood blockbuster - from an American perspective, the film is somewhat edgy, but it was easy to look at...not a single scene was poorly designed.
A word of caution for animal lovers: Avert your eyes during the scene where Grenouille discovers the smells of glass and copper cannot be distilled.
This HBO documentary is from 2000, which is a long time in web terms. But this isn't really about the web, except for the fact that hate groups are using the Internet to reach out to people who couldn't otherwise hear about them.
There's a lot more to be learned about hate groups from sites like Tolerance.org - which is run by the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose founder Morris Dees narrated the documentary. (That site is mentioned at the end of the movie too.) You don't really need to watch a movie like this to learn about hate groups. Of course, that doesn't stop hate groups like Stormfront.org from responding, and the Nationalist Movement had something to say too - but who reads those sites except people who are already following their values?
PS for hate groups: I've linked to two hate sites in this entry. If you find me in your referrer logs and come see me, please know that I am a female homosexual of Jewish descent, and you can kiss my ass.
All I can say is: damn, no wonder that's a classic movie. I don't think I've been so compelled by a movie in a long time - I usually have my laptop around, and I check e-mail during movies, etc. But I actually watched this one, because I couldn't take my eyes off the television.
No wonder it's among Jack Nicholson's best-known roles. I can't believe McMurphy was offered to Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman before it was offered to Nicholson. And this was also the only time I've seen Louise Fletcher as anything but Kai Wynn from Deep Space Nine - does she ever play anything but villains?
It was also quite amusing to see the film debuts of Brad Dourif and Christopher Lloyd, as well as a very young Vincent Schiavelli.
If you haven't seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, you really should. There's a reason it's #12 on IMDb's top 250 movies. This is a damn good flick. Go watch it!
Yeah, that was embarrassing. Bad bad bad.
Fortunately I can redeem myself by watching the original Star Trek show for the next 11 hours on Sci-Fi Channel.
I'd like to forget I ever saw White Chicks, if that's okay with you. Don't ever remind me of it, please. It makes me cry.
I had a series of busts with Netflix.
- British
- Cult favorite
- 1970s
- Sci-fi
- Teenagers
One thing about this movie did impress me - they had an actual signer playing the interpreter. Unlike Soundproof, which annoyed me because the "interpreter" was so bad, Two Shades of Blue had the ASL-fluent Beverly Nero in the role. Granted, it wasn't much of a role, but she was there. The movie treated Marlee's deafness in a unique way - I can't remember a movie in which I've heard her speak so much. Her voice is perfectly clear, of course, but it seems most of her appearances are in signing-only roles. (Then again, I never saw West Wing, so maybe she voices in that.)
The lesbian part was a lot of navel-gazing. It was a narrative told over scenes of San Francisco - very long, slow shots that lasted a long time even when I had the fast-forward speed up to 30x. It might have been interesting to read the story, but it just didn't work at all in movie format and I ended up skipping it completely.
The bridge part was a lot of shots of...the bridge. With more voiceover. It didn't tell me much I hadn't already learned from the San Francisco Chronicle's outstanding article Lethal Beauty, and I could have had the same effect by reading that article while looking at pictures of the bridge in another window.
So all in all, these movies were a waste. I will have to pick some good movies and bump them to the top of my queue to make up for it.
I caught Species on TV last night. I'd never seen it before; I'm not sure I need to see the follow up.
How can an all-star cast - okay, Ben Kingsley - star in something like this? The man has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth, he's won an Oscar award for Best Actor...surely he's better than this, right? But apparently this isn't the first time he's taken questionable roles, as he's been nearly nominated for Razzie Awards a couple of times.
Anyway, I would have liked to see much more of the younger Sil, played by Michelle Williams. I realize the alien was supposed to age quickly, but I wish we could have seen a bit more of her in the observation chamber, and perhaps a bit more of her interactions with people before she grew up. Then again, I was watching this on basic cable, so for all I know there was more to it.
Holy crap, that was softcore porn.
I barely remember watching this movie with some friends back when I was in college (so about 1997), and I don't remember it being like that. I think my wife was disturbed by the movie - even though she loves James Spader - but I actually liked it. It's somewhere between racy and outright pornography...the element of the car crash fetish is a little bizarre, but I don't think that detracted from the sex scenes throughout the movie. I was a little surprised by all of the swapping going on - just because someone has a kinky, rare fetish doesn't mean they're automatically polyamorous.
A lot of the characters seem to be emotionally dead, particularly Catherine. To tell the truth, I really disliked her character - she was so dispassionate and so blasé, even when she was supposed to be "enjoying" herself, that it made her scenes almost unwatchable.
I found myself wondering through a lot of the film how they faked some of this stuff...because damn, some of it looked realistic.
