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The Great: Fritz Lang's "M" was on cable TV. I last saw this about 20 years ago, but it still sends chills up my spine and I doubt if anyone today could portray a creepy character better than Peter Lorre. His facial and physical contortions when confronted with the photos of his child victims outdo anything Jim Carrey is capable of with his body. A must see!The Good: "Traffic" is the best of the Oscar buzz films I've seen in the past year. But as it is based on a British documentary ("Traffick"), I'd like to ask British Asylum Inmates who have seen both to compare the two. Also, I wonder if all the Senators and Governors portraying themselves in this film get paid union scale for their appearances (Orrin Hatch had the most lines)?
The Beautiful: The Japanese animation blockbuster, "Princess Mononoke", on DVD is simply gorgeous to look at (thanks, Pam!). This is not a typical Disney/Dreamworks story, as there are no clearcut good guys vs. bad guys in this Shinto-based environmental epic. Could children watch it? Maybe, but there are decapitations and maimings and some of the kids who saw it were scared of the possessed animal demons. Adults will have an easier time comprehending it and, if you don't understand Japanese, I recommend setting it up using the Japanese soundtrack with English subtitles, over the English-dubbed presentation. The music is excellent as well. If the upcoming live-action "The Lord Of The Rings" is done half as well, I'd be impressed.
The Awful: I missed seeing the horror film "Equinox" (1970) as a kid as I thought the ads for it looked cool, but finally caught it at 4 am on cable's AMC. This is worse than most of the high school student films I've seen, with cheesy claymation (Harryhausen would die of embarassment if he made this), awful acting (Frank Bonner, "Herb Tarlek" of the TV sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, is one of the mutually befuddled cast), dialog and plot ("Evil Dead" Necronomicon and Asmodeus as a Forest Ranger) appear to have been made up along the way, and the camerawork and lighting are chaotic and confusing. You would do better renting "Battlefield Earth".
Follow Ups:
""The Great: Fritz Lang's "M" was on cable TV. I last saw this about 20 years ago, but it still sends chills up my spine and I doubt if anyone today could portray a creepy character better than Peter Lorre. His facial and physical contortions when confronted with the photos of his child victims outdo anything Jim Carrey is capable of with his body. A must see!""Good one! I haven't seen it since I was a kid but I still remember bits of it. Also liked Lang's Metropolis, though I saw the one with Queen, Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tylor et.al. doing the soundtrack (Never was a Queen fan, but I loved Bonnie Tylor's songs and most of them fit quite well with the action)
""The Beautiful: The Japanese animation blockbuster, "Princess Mononoke", on DVD is simply gorgeous to look at (thanks, Pam!). This is not a typical Disney/Dreamworks story, as there are no clearcut good guys vs. bad guys in this Shinto-based environmental epic. Could children watch it? Maybe, but there are decapitations and maimings and some of the kids who saw it were scared of the possessed animal demons. Adults will have an easier time comprehending it and, if you don't understand Japanese, I recommend setting it up using the Japanese soundtrack with English subtitles, over the English-dubbed presentation. The music is excellent as well. If the upcoming live-action "The Lord Of The Rings" is done half as well, I'd be impressed.""
Oh yes Mononoke Hime is great (BTW mononoke means something like animal spirit/life-force and Hime is a title for a young woman of noble birth so I guess it's nearest equivalent would be princess). The forest scenes are gorgeous and I've never ever seen water drawn so well. Oh yes, IMHO the Japanese seiyuu are better than the English voice actors (For once they didn't mangle the English dub too badly though they still changed a lot of things... they did toss a few explanations into some added narration in the silent parts to explain things that might not be familiar to American audiences though. Still, the emotion and timing comes through better in the Japanese track and the voices fit the characters better... for some reason Lady Eboshi comes across as more likeable in Japanese, which is part of the point since she and San are equally noble people working for noble causes, and I just couldn't take Billy Bob as Jigo)
Another one to try is the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs (for some inexplicable reason the American distributor decided to call them "Samurai X", which makes no sense except they thought "Samurai" would make it sell... Kenshin was an orphaned peasant and a slave not a samurai. Actually it is a 4 part (on two disks... fortunately the disk inserts are reversible and have the original Japanese covers on the flip side, which are much nicer) historical piece about an assasin who fought in the revolutionary war in the Meiji era, and also a quite ironic and emotional romance. It pretty realistic (though a few historical liberties were taken, some of the characters were real people) and the artwork and story are great. (this one is recommended for age 17 and up as there is some pretty realistic violence and the political/historical/romantic parts would probably be boring and incomprehensible to a younger audence unless they were pretty mature). Also another one to watch in Japanese with subtitles.
Billy Bob may have finished ahead of these choices for the voice of Jigo: Bobcat Goldthwaite, Gilbert Gottfried, and Charo.Thanks for the "Samurai X" recommendation.
It should be noted that the concept is based on the british series, and not a re-telling of their story. Instead, it takes the concept of how drugs infiltrate a country, but tells the story from the American point of view.Doug Schneider
I'm not geocentric to the point of thinking that only the U.S. has a drug problem. We're just the country spending the most money on a drug war.I was wondering about the quality of the British program version. Guess it can't be mediocre. Nobody is making a motion picture version of "Pink Lady and Jeff."
There was a remake of this film in 1951 that I saw (before the original Lorre) starring David Wayne in the Lorre role. I vaguely remember it being pretty compelling as well, but nowhere near as good as the original. Anyone seen both and have comparisons?
I rented "Battlefield Earth". Unless the second half of it is better than the first, I don't see how someone could do worse. Appallingly bad. It's only the second video I've switched off midway over the past few years, the other being "Bats". I won't be renting "Equinox" to compare though."M" is one of my favorites. Anyone who hasn't seen it should do so immediately!
How the hell Lang did it, with limited technical material to make a movie psychologically so interesting, to make you feel sympathic towards a childrapist-/murderer is simply unbelievable. What I also liked was that scene with the bums around the table in a meeting what to do. The viewpoint of the camera is greatly done in that scene and it proves moviemaking can really be art.Rob Whistling Some Grieg And Waiting for the Release of the New Ang Lee Movie ( God, I loved 'The Icestorm'.)
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