The 'Recently Watched Films' Thread

[learna]

Two comedies.

Ivan Vasilievich: Back To The Future ("Иван Васильевич меняет профессию") by one of the greatest comedy directors - Gaidai, 1973.

Russian Video: Ivan Vasilievich Changes Occupation (Movie)!



And the modern comedy -"О чем говорят мужчины" by Dmitry Dyachenko, 2010.

That is the third film with acquainted protagonists. This time they decided to have a trip. They had two days full of events and time to speak about life and women.

[waalkwriter]

I first saw How to Train Your Dragon about a month and half ago, when it first came out. I left comments here, but they weren't especially great. In the time since, due partially to a lack of many other movies I want to see and partially to the fact I'm going to the theater a lot more these days, (twice a week the last two weeks in fact), have led me to see it several more times.

I was initially blown away by it, and unexpectedly because its uninspired trailer and poor title had left me with poor expectations going in, (and it is very rare for me to love a movie when I start it with poor expectations). But what has proved to be more amazing is it's durability. It hasn't lost anything upon repeat viewings, in fact each time I see it I am more strongly struck by something I missed, or an element of the production.

It's simply an astonishing film. There are so many places to begin and no desire in me to break them down so I won't. I'll just give general ideas as best I can.

What I've been enamored with most of all perhaps, is the music, which plays a critical role I feel in the movie. John Powell's score is beautiful, it touches me on a personal level, (through its usage), and it is simply beautiful and in a way I feel is incredibly pure. The film's use of it is fantastic as well and this forms part of the appeal for me. Its crucial scenes are completely dialogue-free, narrated by the visual beauty, action, and music, and this lends them a certain emotional intimacy I feel, and a certain visceral purity. While I could link half the music in the film, I have mainly just been telling people to listen to these two examples:

YouTube - How To Train Your Dragon Soundtrack 8 - Forbidden Friendship
YouTube - How To Train Your Dragon Soundtrack 15 - Romantic Fight

Those are the two most exemplary pieces I think, people who are skeptical about the film, I ask them to listen to those first. And those scenes have no dialogue as I said early, and yet they form the two critical turning points so to speak. The music is the animation; there is a level of synchronization there that is stunning. It is so perfect that it makes me wonder if the score was written to the animation or the animation done to the score. They are each other, to put it as best I can, and the effect is immensely touching in both scenes, the second is also one of the most beautiful scenes I've gotten to see in movie. John Powell is incredibly deserving of an Oscar for his work here.

There's something to be said about the wonderful quality of the animation as well. Its engrossing and constantly fascinating. Its so much fun just to watch this film, with the way it everything looks, the dragons, the vikings, and beyond. The scenery is often beautiful as well, in the aforementioned scene, and in backgrounds, views of the ocean, and the film's excellent use of motion and changes of angle make it vibrantly shot.

It would be a disservice to say the least appealing thing is the acting, because the acting is so well done and if anything is even with the other elements. Craig Ferguson and Gerard Butler really are wonderful with their brogue accents here, its one of the many elements I enjoyed. Jay Baruchel steals the show though as Hiccup. He truly carries the weight as the protagonist and embodies his character through his acting. Its his performance that really helped me make such a personal connection to this film and its themes. The voice of the main character is important to me, and the way they look. Its often the difference between liking a character, and connecting with a character which makes a film a lot more unique, I feel at least. So there is an element of my love for the film that is utterly subjunctive to my personal feelings, but even my friend Brian who doesn't share the same connection to it, will say that it is a perfectly executed film, (for him that alone doesn't qualify it as unique).

This film I think can resound even more deeply to an older more mature audience. Certainly it is nowhere near as childish a movie as it comes off as, but for some reason they have chosen to target a very young audience, maybe doing it a disservice. For one a great of the humor and elements of sarcasm in the visuals and elsewhere are completely over the head of these little 8 year olds, (I get a big kick out of them, and its really nice actually to have a movie that can be action-packed, touching, and sincerely funny all at the same time without making any of those elements seem cheap).

I mean this is a lean movie. I even felt they could have run it 30 minutes longer, and certainly provided a greater development time to the ending, which I love anyway. Narrative-wise this film has such a nice, fast flow, through scenes without dialogue, to character development, to plot development. I think this is partially why it endures so well upon rewatching, (whereas due to my memory and attention to detail most films don't), and also why I think young kids don't get everything out of it. There's a lot of nuance in it, really, a lot of what is noticed in the characters is just body language.

Of course I have been watching in 3D. If I had to make a value judgment between its use of 3D and Avatar, I would hand the crown over to "Dragon" which doesn't get as ambitious as Cameron does, (and which left a lot of things in different places slightly blurred and undefined and began to bother me after a while). "Dragon" (yes I'm too lazy to write that all out), doesn't use it so heavily, doesn't get constantly flashy with it. Yet it does use it to give everything a wonderful sense of detail and movement. And here they didn't have to worry about dimness because the film is in such rich, darker pastel colors anyway.

If you have trouble seeing how I could get caught up in it while waiting for it to suck...well its hard to explain, partially I dislike laying that kind of stuff out. But basically I was drawn in by the music, which started playing as the dreamworks logo is still on the screen, and the dark shape flies across a starry sky behind it. The music has a beat of motion to it, and instantly drew me. Then immediately I was grabbed up by narrator, the quirky sardonic voice. With that followed by an immediate immersion into action and rapid plot development, there's little one can do to not get caught up in it, I feel. A particularly wonderful early moment lies in seeing a blaming maw of teeth burst forward through the screen and seeing Gerard Butler's character beat it down with a huge hammer. The film never stops flowing from that first scene until the last.

So I urge anyone who has not given it a chance yet to go see it, and I would suggest seeing it 3D. I think it gives the best experience of this movie and a full realization of the artistic intentions behind it. I've been really enamored with it personally. Beyond the many personal connections I make to it, the film hits on an exceptional number of tactics and themes that are very dear to me and that I always really enjoy watching. I partially love it because it is so rare for a film to push so many of my buttons at once and not screw any of them up.

I like what DreamWorks did as well. It was a departure from their past tactics. Unlike other horribly unenjoyable films they've made in the recent past and will release in the near future, they didn't just pack this film with stars and a huge advertising budget to try to manufacture a hit. Gerard Butler is the closest thing to a big name and I wouldn't call him that really, he's a second tier A-list star at best. Instead they released a quality product, and word of mouth fueled an astonishingly strong hold in the market.

In fact this film has something like a 97% positive rating from Rotten Tomatoes. The problem for me is that so many of the critics seem to like this film, but none of them seem to love it hardly. Everybody is stuck in this 3 star range like Roger Ebert was with it.

Ebert's review in fact rather annoys me now. Because he spends most of the time meandering about the youth of protagonists these days and calling it a weaker version of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid". Now that partially annoys me because Ebert liked Diary so much. I won't chastise him, he probably hasn't been watching Disney's live shows like I have one way or another and doesn't realize there isn't much of anything in Diary that hasn't been done to death slapstick wise. I didn't like that movie because at this point its story simply bores me, it was probably a lot fresher for Ebert.

But I still dislike the fact he gave very little time to exploring, sincerely, the real merits of the film. He seemed like he was almost bored when he wrote the review, and he did a disservice I think.

I mean I watch this film, and say, at the end I see the shot, (giving away some plot detail here), of Hiccup leaning against Toothless to walk with his new prosthetic leg and there is that moment where the camera slides into a shot of the two standing by each other by the door, with Toothless's half tail right beside Hiccup's one leg. Both need prosthetics, and both rely on each other to use them. It highlights the relationship between the two and the running parallel they've shared throughout the film and I find it a truly touching moment in its simplicity, its beauty, and the directness in which it is presented, (and I'm not touched all that often by movies). Yet neither Ebert nor anyone else I've come across so far has seen this connection at the end, perhaps because they were already typing up their reviews, "Lukewarm story, nice special effects, fun to watch, 3 stars".

Now to lead into the second part of what I wanted to write about, and not entirely neatly, I was very disappointed in Ebert when I read his recent smack-down of 3D. I say this as an enormous fan. We are about as similar as two independent thinking people with their own, individual tastes can be, and of all critics I tend to trust him to avoid snobbery and he does. When I'm not sure about watching a movie, I refer to his review of it and his only and I put a lot of trust in it.

Thus his high profile critique of 3D caught my eye. I'm no 3D fanboy. Far from it. I have hated the 3D usage in so many films, from Spy Kids 3D, to the dumb gerbil movie I got drug to, to The Clash of the Titans and Alice in Wonderland. Like any technology it can be used and will be used by Hollywood as an excuse for laziness, a technique to try and manufacture a guarantee Michael Bay-esque hit. The same is true for CGI, a valuable tool that can do wonderful things in a film, but which is now often extensively and cheaply overused by lazy directors who use it for fight scenes and car chases, etc. There will be that same flash affect aspect for the soon to boom 3D market.

But I don't deny it can be used to greatly improve a film, to be a part of the new experience the same way sound, color, and CGI were before it. I personally don't think that 3D will ever work well for live-action movies, but I think it is uniquely suited to science fiction and fantasy animated movies, (and I'm including CGI generated movies like Avatar here). There you have a combination of factors. A big one is that an animated film is presenting you with a hyper-real reality, a sort of beautiful collage of moving artwork, an idealized and fascinatingly different world. There is something to be said about putting on those glasses to experience this; it is a literal way of cutting everything else out and entering into the film. It is a way of actually helping to create the sense of where the film exists and helping people enter by giving them a physical doorway to move through, (finding this a little hard to nail down unfortunately). And second, the subject matter and form naturally I feel both come together to invite such additions and integrate them. The added depth and sense of movement work very well for such movies, its just I do feel it is crucial they be animated, I think animation is the true form in which 3D can be expressed a positive manner.

Not backing a campaign to make a bunch of 3D animated movies either though. I thought such 3D flicks as Bolt and Monsters vs. Aliens were cheap, didn't really care for the 3D, didn't think it added anything to the story or the experience other than the ticket price, unlike "How to Train You Dragon" where I really feel the 3D is a major element of the intended experience of the movie.

So, like I said, I am no fanboy of 3D. Yet the part of Ebert's argument that I bothered to read through made me very annoyed, and disappointed. He started ranting basically about how a movie like Casablanca didn't need 3D, how Lawrence of Arabia showed depth and motion without 3D. It was an utterly ridiculous argument because No one has been trying to make those kinds of movies in 3D. They aren't making war dramas in 3D. They aren't making comedies and romances and family dramas in 3D; they're starting to use it in areas that it seems to apply itself to, action movies, fantasy, science fiction, and so forth. He was bothering to make a really moot point to excuse his rather reactionary dislike of 3D.

The second part of what he was saying that bothered me was an element of "things are enjoyable right now, why change them". My instant response was why move to sound? Why move to color? Why start using CGI? I was shaking my head, literally saying, "Come on." No film critic should be saying there isn't room to improve or take the experience to a different level. Again, there is a very real and very potent place for 3D, not only for its actual affects but the affect of having to put on the glasses and literally enter into a different mindset, its hard to explain the feeling they help create of entering the films world, of moving away from the theater and directly immersing in the film, and that is a very valuable tool to helping get people even more involved in your story.

The caveat is what it is with everything. Your story and your technical elements can't suck. 3D is no different than any tool of cinema. It can be used genuinely, sincerely, and well, or it can be used for money, laziness, and shock value. I don't think we are looking at a total revolution, like with sound or color, it seems quite obvious at this point that such fears are misplaced as 3D seems to be heading the route CGI took as it became cheaper and more technologically developed.

But it has the potential to do very good things. Including help theaters again by giving them something unique to be selling again. Theaters don't have the same leverage they used to with their product; people don't get enough out of the experience to want to pay for it frequently and they have other options. I think this gives theaters something to sell, and as it becomes more widespread the ticket prices will undoubtedly fall to meet new demand and it will cease being purely a money issue with studios.

So without dwaddling any longer on what I felt compulsed to finally try and write and throw out there, (been considering it for weeks now in the back of my mind, but never could express my feelings satisfactorily), I just want to simply suggest strongly to any of holdouts that you might want to give this film a shot if you haven't. You probably won't connect with as personally or intimately as I do, particularly insofar as all the small things and nuanced details like that one shot close to the end of the movie that I was talking about, but I feel relatively confident in telling you that you won't regret it. You'll still enjoy the movie and its technical mastery regardless, and you'll probably at least enjoy the other aspects, mildly if nothing else.

I'm relieved to finally quit have quit messing around and gotten this written down. Now it won't be knocking around the back of my head whenever I happen to consider the film, or if I go take some friends to see it Sunday.

-jw

[saliotthomas]

I propose a collect of found to finance the loss of Waalkwriter virginity.
Please give.


I saw Daybreaker and it was nice.
Sort of the vampyres rules the world angle.

[waalkwriter]

I propose a collect of found to finance the loss of Waalkwriter virginity.
Please give.


I saw Daybreaker and it was nice.
Sort of the vampyres rules the world angle.

lol. That wouldn't change the fact that I'm a terrible insomniac so I tend to write extensively on my thoughts to pass the time or help get relaxed at night, or if not my thoughts then usually on some form of writing, lately been working on a new project that's going along pretty good. Great timing too because I've had a terrible bout of insomnia lately.

[saliotthomas]

lol. That wouldn't change the fact that I'm a terrible insomniac ....

Hahaaaaa but it would.
No insomnia resist an hard working woman (or man).
Well a least it works for me.
Always.

[waalkwriter]

Sigh. I really don't know how to deal with comments like this. There is a reason I hang out with professors...not frat boys. A night out doing a poetry reading is far more appealing to me than going and getting drunk and sleeping with someone I don't even know. Call me a strange college student, but it doesn't. :/

I suppose I'll get flack from mirabell here too, even though I partially wrote this to show him that I'm not a solely negative person, that I can indeed write about enjoying something rather than just tearing things down, which he criticized me for.

[Liam]

There is a reason I hang out with professors...not frat boys.

Come on, man, those old trolls are only sucking your youth away. Tell them there's a couple of more uses they can put their mouths to than just poetry readings, .

...getting drunk and sleeping with someone I don't even know...

Dude, that's what your 20s are for. When you're old and nobody wants you any more you'll look back on this with real, palpable regret. As Ecclesiastes has it, there's "a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing." When you're old and in diapers again, it will be that time, as for now, just have sex as much as possible while you still can. Girls, boys, it's all good.

[Unless you're saving yourself for marriage, in which case: sorry, wrong address].




Cheers,
L

[waalkwriter]

Come on, man, those old trolls are only sucking your youth away. Tell them there's a couple of more uses they can put their mouths to than just poetry readings, .
Dude, that's what your 20s are for. When you're old and nobody wants you any more you'll look back on this with real, palpable regret. As Ecclesiastes has it, there's "a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing." When you're old and in diapers again, it will be that time, as for now, just have sex as much as possible while you still can. Girls, boys, it's all good.

[Unless you're saving yourself for marriage, in which case: sorry, wrong address].




Cheers,
L

lol, Liam that post made my day. Technically I'm still two years off from even being in my twenties, so I have plenty of time

So does that mean when you finish graduate school soon your fun is over and you'll start sucking peoples youth away :P

[Mirabell]

rather than just tearing things down, which he criticized me for.

My memory isn't what it used to be but I don't think I did that.

[titania7]

My memory isn't what it used to be but I don't think I did that.

How a person perceives something is always of more relevance than what actually occurred. Our reality is defined by our perceptions.

Titania-Alexis

[waalkwriter]

My memory isn't what it used to be but I don't think I did that.

Well you pretty clearly directed comments at me once to the tune of you being frustrated with this site because of all the tearing down and negative criticism as opposed to just genuinely talking about why you like stuff.

I don't talk about why I like stuff a lot because I come here for discussion, and people frankly just don't care enough to give feedback and thoughts and disagreements when you post positive statements, so they aren't worth the effort.

[Mirabell]

Well you pretty clearly directed comments at me once to the tune of you being frustrated with this site because of all the tearing down and negative criticism as opposed to just genuinely talking about why you like stuff.

sure you don't confuse me with one of the others?

[waalkwriter]

sure you don't confuse me with one of the others?

It was you, but I probably read far too much into it. I do that far too often.

[Mirabell]

It was you, but I probably read far too much into it. I do that far too often.

do you have a link?

[waalkwriter]

do you have a link?

lol, I just remember being very steamed about it, but not enough to save the address for future reference. It was a while back, probably during all the arguing about post-modernism.

[Mirabell]

lol, I just remember being very steamed about it, but not enough to save the address for future reference. It was a while back, probably during all the arguing about post-modernism.

I looked through all the links and while I was frequently condescending, I never once said anything to the effect you think I said, unless I overlooked something. You have confused what I said with what, for example, ejoseph said. Mind you, not a bad thing since that's an absolutely marvelous chap, but still.

[waalkwriter]

K, I probably did.

[titania7]

while I was frequently condescending

Prithee do not take this in the wrong spirit, Marcel, but I find myself smiling at these words, for I never would have believed you would actually admit to being condescending.

Titania-Alexis

[titania7]

I don't talk about why I like stuff a lot because I come here for discussion, and people frankly just don't care enough to give feedback and thoughts and disagreements when you post positive statements, so they aren't worth the effort.

If you post your comments for yourself and not because you want people to react to your observations in a certain way, you may find that you will once again experience the freedom that comes with expressing one's views with an abundance of passion and enthusiasm.

I, for one, have always read your posts with great interest, waalkwriter.

Titania-Alexis

[Loki]

I don't want to go off-topic but I would like to say my opinion on my "recently watched film"... Sorry to interrupt!

Anyway, I've just watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Well, I expected a lot more from this supposedly great Spielberg's film. I mean, the basic idea is good, and wonderful for the time (1977) maybe, but the plot goes on really slowly, especially in the last scenes. Then, I don't know if it was me but some parts were rather tangled and difficult to get: but I hope it was just me. Anyway, I am a little disappointed.
I think that I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had watched in 1977 (and the same goes for The Exorcist, Alien...).
Still, as it is a classic movie, I thought it would be important to watch it.