Oh I'm sorry, Did I Break Your Conversation........Well Allow Me A Movie Thread by S&T

I tried to sit thru Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, but God damn. 
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  Swear on everything this was The Good Shepherd 2.  Slow as @#$%, random trivial out of sequence shots, I knew all along it would tie to something and would get me to a point, but freakin a, get me to the damn point already.  They lost me TWICE in that movie to sleep.  I made it to the end, saw the big reveal, and then was just glad it was over.  Now I have to start all over and watch it again in hopes of trying to pick it all up better.  And from what I saw, how the hell Oldman get a nom for this?  Every scene he was in he was just sitting there staring blankly, took 20 minutes into the movie before he spoke his 20th word, what the hell? 
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I'll try to work thru it again tonight or tomorrow, but so far I am not amused.  And for the record, even as I own the damn dvd, I never have been able to get thru The Good Shepherd start to finish.  And this is a problem.  I get that spy stuff is difficult and takes time, and good writing can be tough and deliberate, but @#$% Bond and Mission Impossible pull off great spy work, Alias mastered Spy work, damn it, go do something their way, just subtract the explosions if you want to be taken seriously.  Don't just mix and match scene sequences to make your story more "masterful"  Give me the problem, complex it up, give me some backstory if you must, set the players in motion to resolve the issue, finish it the @#$% out.  CUT. 
Was that so hard?  Stop showing me a bird flies by.  Water drips from a faucet.  A hummingbird hums.  #++%!%$+#!+! get on with it.  What the @+++ is going on in this movie I didn't pay to watch, damn it? 

I'll give it a 9 out of 10. 



Just kidding, they get a 5 cuz I like the cast........in other movies. 
 
Ok. See I thought it was just me. I saw Tinker a while ago and even though I kinda understood it...I didn't get it. I got Tom Hardy's part, but everything else was just so random and repetitive and confusing....and unorganized? aimless on purpose? A mystery we weren't supposed to be able to follow? When they pulled the prestige on me, I was just like...good so this is almost over?

Iono...I just assumed I had that weak brain while I was watching it.
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The direction and way they set up a lot of shots and buffers between scenes were great though.
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NT Film Awards Prestige Films

THE ARTIST
THE DESCENDANTS
THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE
DRIVE
50/50
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
THE HELP
THE GUARD
HUGO
THE IDES OF MARCH
MARGIN CALL
MELANCHOLIA
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
MONEYBALL
TAKE SHELTER
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY
THE TREE OF LIFE
YOUNG ADULT

NT Film Awards Popcorn Films

ATTACK THE BLOCK
BEGINNERS
BRIDESMAIDS
CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.
FAST FIVE
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
13 ASSASSINS
WARRIOR

Spoiler [+]
On the other side of it are the movies we either didn't see or didn't care that much about.
If anyone wants to try and convince people to check one of these out and give it a chance...by all means.
But if you haven't seen it, and heard great things...get on it quick.

Prestige dumpster

ALBERT NOBBS
CORIOLANUS
THE DEBT
HANNA
IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY
THE IRON LADY
JANE EYRE
LE HAVRE
LIFE, ABOVE ALL
WAR HORSE
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

Popcorn trash pile

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU
CHICO & RITA
EVERYTHING MUST GO
FRIGHT NIGHT
LIKE CRAZY
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3
PAUL
POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD
RANGO
RIO
STRAW DOGS
THOR

And then the tricky ones:

Prestige Watchlist

BEAUTIFUL BOY
A BETTER LIFE
CARNAGE
CERTIFIED COPY
CONTAGION
A DANGEROUS METHOD
THE FLOWERS OF WAR
J. EDGAR
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE
MEEK'S CUTOFF
PARIAH
SENNA
A SEPARATION
SHAME
THE SKIN I LIVE IN
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Popcorn Watchlist

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
BAD TEACHER
BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE: THE TRAVELS OF A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
CEDAR RAPIDS
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2
HORRIBLE BOSSES
INSIDIOUS
LIMITLESS
THE LINCOLN LAWYER
SCREAM 4
SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
SOURCE CODE
SUCKER PUNCH
SUPER
SUPER 8
30 MINUTES OR LESS
WINNIE THE POOH
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

Someone has tried to keep them in the running...so why?
Give a good reason to keep any of them on the final list.
Quote yourself on what you've already written, or compare it to something that got in.
Hell...give a good reason to keep them off the final list. Go Ska on it.

But if you haven't seen it and heard great things...it's about that time.

We'll do final nominations after the Super Bowl, but for now...watch em and write something.
Best All-Around Actor nominees (The Chris Paul Award)
Spoiler [+]
Ryan Gosling (Drive, Ides of March, Crazy Stupid Love)
George Clooney (The Descendants, Ides of March)
Brad Pitt (Moneyball, Tree of Life, Happy Feet 2)
Tom Hardy (Warrior, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
Michael Fassbender (Shame, X-Men First Class, A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre)
Christopher Plummer (Beginners, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)
Best All-Around Actress nominees (The Bostrich Award)
Spoiler [+]
Jessica Chastain (Tree of Life, The Help, Take Shelter and Coriolanus)
Marion Cotillard (Midnight in Paris, Contagion)
Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids, X-Men: First Class, Insidious)
Carey Mulligan (Drive, Shame)
Paula Patton (Mission Impossible 4, Jumping the Broom)
Kate Winslet in (Contagion, Carnage)
Emma Stone (The Help, Crazy, Stupid, Love.)

For the regular acting awards, I'm only nominating people from movies I saw.
And these are in addition to the Best All-Arounds.
Add on and do the same.

Best Actor, single performance

John Boyega for Attack the Block
Dominic Cooper for The Devil's Double
Jean Dujardin for The Artist
Brendan Gleeson for The Guard

Best Actress, single performance

Rooney Mara all the way at the top for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Viola Davis (cuz past this Slumdog Millionaire type hype for the movie, she killed it regardless) for The Help
Kristen Wiig for Bridesmaids


Best Supporting Actor (Pitt in Tree, Hardy in Tinker, Plummer in Tattoo, Clooney in Ides)

Albert Brooks for Drive
Andy Serkis for Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Nick Nolte for Warrior


Best Supporting Actress aka The Chastain Award
I'm pretty sure every all-around nominee is for a supporting role...
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Shailene Woodley surprised the hell outta me for The Descendants
Elle Fanning, the only good part of Super 8
 
Anybody else get this class action suit form in the mail against Netflix?

Third damn class action suit I've been involved in in the last year or so. About to get three fat checks totaling $16.44 within the next six years.
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Went and saw it tonight, it was a real good popcorn movie. But you really got to suspend your disbelief, and at times it's hard to do so. Beyond the simple premise of the film, they take a ballsy risk in making this a shot-on-film movie, and that's where it falters a bit sometimes. It's great for the first hour when all you see is the perspective of the kids, but once you start seeing outside cameras showing the action, that's where I started to get a little annoyed. It's a fun one, no doubt, I just wished it would have executed a little better in the end.

Going into spoilers..

Spoiler [+]
One of my major issues with it was the use of CGI. It's weird, none of the flying or anything looked that artificial, but there were a few scenes that looked downright amateur. One part when they were playing with legos, and the other during the talent show using the juggling skit. The characters looked great, but the objects looked terrible. I understand that a bigger studio backing with more money could've done it better, and this is a low-budget film (at least I think it is to an extent), so I can give it a pass in that respect.

It sucks that they followed the kid Andrew around, because in a lot of scenes he's not as good as the other two leads in this. I really liked the black dude Steven. Everyone had a dude like that in high school, and he just played it off well. Matthew, Andrew's cousin, wasn't bad either. They all played off each other really well. Any time that Andrew was getting bullied or wasn't around his two pals, it was pretty ordinary, stale stuff.

What really made this fun is when they were innocently exploiting their powers. The kind of stuff you saw in the trailer. They do more with it, and they do a great job pulling it off, very believable. That's where I can see reviewers loving this so much. The dynamic of the three guys really worked well, working together to find out what they can do with their powers.

Another nitpick I have, which someone has mentioned about shot-on-film stuff before, is how exactly are we seeing all of this footage? How are we getting the cameras? How exactly am I supposed to believe this is "found-footage," when it's so well edited together. Plus, early in the film, they lose one of the cameras, but obviously we see everything that went on, so how did they get the tapes? It doesn't make any sense, but whatever. I guess they think the audience is dumb enough to believe anything. And then during the climax, they did a pretty cool thing of taking every ones video phones and camcorders and using them for different perspectives, but it got too over the top. It's hard to explain what they did without you seeing it, but basically, there are on-lookers as the kids fly around the city, taping what's going on. It gets ridiculous pretty fast. Not only do they have helicopter footage, but they have a family looking at the carnage around them, and then the next thing you know, they're flying through their kitchen. Too slapstick for me. The very end was done well, although the performances from the lead could have been much better.

Going to get into major plot spoilers, so you've been warned.

I wish they would have taken a different direction once they start to lose control of their abilities. I didn't like that Steven was killed off so quickly, because he was easily my favorite member of the cast. They needed to pull off the whole "I hate the world angle better," for Andrew. You can see how dark and twisted he could have been, but they just didn't expound on it at all. You see him have issues with his step-father, you see him have issues with bullies at school. I wish he would have taken his reign of terror farther before going city-wide with his destruction. The film is far too short, asking you for more. This isn't a Paranormal Activity where you can pull off an 80 minute film if you deliver a punch at the end. The tension isn't there. You see him get bullied a few times, and problems at home, and suddenly he's causing havoc throughout metropolitan Seattle.

I must say though, the scenes of him beating up on the four druggies and the scenes of them in the sky are PHENOMENAL. That's what sold me on this one. You see them start to fly and you wonder how they'll pull it off, and they do it. It is quite surreal how good they made them looking flying. For as bad as the CGI was on the lego scene, the talent show, and then the airplane they see in the sky, watching them fly was a fun experience. You felt the kids glee as they would just go through the air. Then he goes and deals with the four bullies. I wish he would have done more of this kind of stuff using the firefighter getup as his disguise. Show him going more places trying to get money.

It's clearly made to have a sequel, and I hope this doesn't turn into the next Saw/Paranormal how we have one every years. It's not that I didn't like it, but they leave it open for a sequel, and it's better just if this one is left alone. Saw and Paranormal especially to be more episodic, I'd prefer if they just let this one be.

It was a fun film overall, I just wish it were a bit longer. They could have done so much more with the group of friends. The %+!$ starts hitting the fan a little too abruptly and before you know it it's over.

Is it a must-see before it hits DVD? I don't quite think so, but I think you'll have a good time if you do go.

8/10.
 
The Descendants completely surprised me. I knew it'd be good going into it, but wow. I was hating on it when it won hella Golden Globes because I thought it'd just be Clooney being Clooney, but I suddenly am not upset about that at all (compared to the other nominees; havent seen Shame or Edgar yet). Great, touching movie. Everyone was great for their parts, and I'm glad they avoided a lot of cliches that you'd see in this type of film. It really ended before I knew it, it flew by that fast.
8/10.
Originally Posted by MrONegative

For the regular acting awards, I'm only nominating people from movies I saw.
And these are in addition to the Best All-Arounds.
Add on and do the same.

Best Actor, single performance

John Boyega for Attack the Block
Dominic Cooper for The Devil's Double.

Lets add (assuming we cant also add people from the 'all around' award) Jean Dujardin for The Artist. For a role where you have to over-act to convey everything due to lack of dialogue, I feel like he kept it succinctly understated. Like I never felt that he was taking it too far with the face expressions. I dunno, it's hard to explain a silent film performance correctly. But the climax and all the +!@% surrounding it... perfection.

And Brenden Gleeson for The Guard. Hilarious. Heartfelt. Just everything you'd expect from the man and then some. I feel like he's really underrated for this since it was a really limited release over here.
 
These prestige type movies...normally I maybe put em on a list somewhere, download em...keep em for a year...eventually check out the overhyped ones...the others, maybe try to watch it for 5 minutes then give up and delete em all.
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So I guess this film award thing worked for me.

The Flowers of War

When I heard Christian Bale in WWII China, I just thought some kinda feelgood, stuffy Oscar jerkoff type movie. Yeah...no. The first 10 minutes are like if Saving Private Ryan was directed by John Woo. Seriously.

Christian Bale strolls in like a Johnny Depp character, not understanding that he tripped into a *%%$#@ world and slowly the movie keeps hitting these seriously dark and %%*!*$ up strides. And they don't cut away. The style is bright and light...the use of color and staging, it's that Asian theater flair like in Hero that somehow keeps this sweetness to all the evil stuff happening and that doesn't make you feel like you're watching Schindler's List. Maybe more like The Pianist, but with battles every once in a while.

And Bale does a good (not great) job, he's like the old doctor in The Devil's Backbone, the way he tries to protect all these girls. In a way, I just felt like this was a sequel to Empire of the Sun. It's a cruel, cruel movie that's mostly in English and really well done for what it is.

7.5/10
 
Just wanted to let the NT'ers that were interested in doing reviews for my potentially "new" site to check their e-mails... 
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So finally I got to Let Me In. 

And as I watched Twilight without the big furry CGI dogs in the prequel era, I realized that these Vampire movies are an awful lot like my Alien movies.  I've said in here many times, I could cut and paste a whole bunch of different scenes from diff Alien flicks and put together the perfect Alien Invasion movie ever.  Little of this, little of that, etc etc.   Well, Interview with a Vampire, some ok, some suck.  Twilight, like a few ideas here, like the whole baseball/thunder type stuff, interesting take, but the Titanic teen love crap can go out the window.  Blade/Underworld, whatever.  Vampire in Brooklyn.  Hell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Fright Night, OG or remake.  Once Bitten.  Jesus, there's a million of em.  But I want more.  Something better.  I want a Vamp that can run around and handle things, even with all the BS rules.  This, have to invite them in, the creating of an army, or killing of them depending on how and when and where you bite, etc.  No sunlight.  The transformation to Vamp, from regular folk.  I want an all encompassing universe, where it's all put together. 

Zombie flicks got it down.  Throw in the remake of Dawn of the Dead, and I'm one happy dude.  That joint is fine as is, even if you wanted to make an extended version, ok, gimme 10 more minutes, I can dig it.  But overall, SOLID.  These Vamps and Alien flicks all leave big huge holes in them and that bothers me. 

I don't need to see the pale Vampire with a frozen woody for the regular chick that's paler than he is.  I absolutely didn't need to see 12 year olds knock on walls to talk to each other after getting a wedgy in gym class.  Come on now.  Let's please do this right here. 

I hope that day comes.  I really truly do. 

Anyways, back to Let Me In, eh, liked some of it, liked the eyes for sure when she goes nuts, like the fact that she's with the old dude for 40-50 years and now that he's dead, she finds someone else that will watch over her and help feed her without bustin her.  Nice touch I guess.  I suppose the 8-10 random deaths all in the same area wouldn't attract more than a single cop to the neighborhood is passable, ya know, cops bein busy and such, but really?  We'll just float this right on past me, I'm that stupid? 
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Hell, the best parts were the dude jumpin in cars with a garbage bag on his face to get some blood, that I liked.  And truthfully, that scene when he leaves the gas station and the camera angle from within the car and you can't see the car accident, that was a really cool scene.  Very well done.

Worth a watch, may clip a scene or two for my imaginary CP Vampire movie, but I doubt I ever check it out again.  Oh and thanks for not showin me the climactic scene where she gets the 4 bullies, that wouldn't be cool or anything. 
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I give it a 6, I'm upping it because the only teacher I see in the whole school was busy putting out a dumpster fire while 4 kids were attempting to kill a 12 year old in a pool, and then were blowed up by a girl, and that school should be just fine with that, no explanation needed.  Pool full of blood and bodies, maybe this time 2 cops will come check it out. 
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whoops...super bowl

really CP? a 6?? out of 7?
If I saw one of the Twilight's it'd probably be a 5 or 6.
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gonna try and watch We Need to Talk About Kevin, Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Interrupters soon
or if anyone's seen one of em and wants to vouch?
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Chronicle and The Grey were both great. Both so natural, free flowing, well acted and more brutal than I expected.
-Chronicle should've dropped the found footage thing right before the last act, but still...for $20 mil.
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-The marketing on The Grey was uh....manipulative?
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It reminded me of Jarhead, when everyone was pissed that it was a character study more than a war film. This is a psychological, spiritual, quietly brutal journey more than it is a Pitch Black type survival movie. I really liked it.

try and watch the best picture shortlist movies you missed
I think in a few days everyone'll rank em (marking the ones they didn't see) that'll get us the final nominees and then we'll vote on all the categories.

Do you guys wanna do best directing and screenplay? or any other awards for that matter?
 
Originally Posted by MrONegative

Do you guys wanna do best directing and screenplay? or any other awards for that matter?

Director, at least. And does anyone else have any nominees for the acting awards?
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I mean, best actress is locked up already (Mara
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), but any other for actor?
 
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Exactly what it sounds like. People who spend most of their time preparing for the end of the world. It's actually borderline interesting, and not all that ridiculous.
 
Came in here just to post about "Seeking a Friend.."

Looks pretty good. Tons of funny people involved too judging from the trailer.
Also, I say we should just do a collective screenplay category, both adapted and original. 
 
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