THEM. French horror movie that Shiv has posted about. Pretty solid effort if you're looking for something to creep you out. The lead actress was hot as all hell too.

Netflix instant streaming has added a ton of great content within the past month. All the South Park seasons up to number nine. I have never really watched the show too much and it is surprising me with how often it cracks me up.

Other recent additions:

Let the Right One In - hells yeah
Krull - terrible movie but the special effects from that era (early 80's) hold a place in my heart
Fantastic Flesh - Great Starz documentary about make up artists throughout the history of films.
Clint Eastwood spagetti westerns
Mythbusters
Deadliest Catch

All in all, I'm still very pleased with Netflix instant and use it for the majority of my movie watching

most of the french horror movies i've seen have had really hot actresses.

karina testa (frontier(s)), alysson paradis (inside), morjana alaoui & mylène jampanoï (martyrs).

It's probably safe to say that France has the highest ratio of hot actresses.

The Wrestler

Jeez, this was terrible, but it was obtuse in all the right ways for indie appeal. I'd rather watch a Macho Man Randy Savage documentary. Movie was pretty predicable and extremely boring.

The only good thing was Marissa Tomei.

Too much melodrama and bad 80's music...but despite those facts, this was still pretty cool. The Killer is the superior film, but this is worth checking out.

I think A Better Tomorrow II is always talked about as the better of the series. I really can't remember myself.

San Francisco International Film Festival is on now. The Tyson doc was $25 because they were giving Toback an award and it was some big deal... blah blah blah. But this is the best of what I have seen so far:

Adoration- The new Atom Egoyan. Pretty good, not great, post 9/11 film about racial profiling, terrorism, internet, lies, family....

Soul Power- Doc on the concert in Zaire that was part of the Foreman v Ali fight. Culled entirely from left over "When We We're Kings" footage and put together by the editor of WWWK who fought for years to get it done. James Brown, Bill Withers, B.B. King, Fania with Celia Cruz and a bunch of African artists. Pretty dope, but not as good as WWWK without Mailer and Plimpton to interject.

Tulpan- Pretty interesting one from Kazakhstan. Kept reminding me of Tarkovsky with the camera movement and the use of sound along with the dead pan humour of Milos Forman's early stuff.

Kisses- Okay film from Ireland about two abused kids who run away and spent the night in Dublin. It spends too much time in musical vignette mode and didn't really deliver as the coming of age film I wanted. A funny anecdote came out of the Q+A with the director after. Swedish money went into the film so part of the film had to be shot in Sweden so they decided to use alleys in Sweden (half the film is spent in alleys). The alleys in Sweden were so clean they had to import trash from Ireland to make them look like a dublin alley and then when they were done in Sweden the officials insisted they take their trash back with them.

Man Bites Dog - The disturbing cult classic "documentary" about a blase psychotic.

Crazy Love - Documentary about the true decades long romance between a woman and the man who blinded her.

I liked it, thought Rourke was great in the role. Basically it was like whomever wrote the movie saw the Jake 'The Snake' Roberts segment in Wrestling with Shadows and fleshed it out a bit more.

Indie is being used clearly as a negative above. What would you rather it be? Should they have cast Nicholas Cage or something and have Ratner direct it up with some real gutsy action and have him fuck Tomei in the ring at the end?

Over the weekend I saw:

Quantum of Solace. Enjoyed it. I was really annoyed by the editing throughout the first half. Just way too many cuts, too choppy. I realize that was to give it higher energy, but it gave me a headache. It was beautifully shot, though, and I like the new Bond well enough for it still have been a fun, worthwhile (especiallly for a $1 rental) movie.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Pretty much what I expected. It wasn't too bad overall, except for some truly terrible CG in some parts (the claws in the mirror scene). It was neat to see which characters were incorporated although I was kinda annoyed by what they did with Deadpool. A lot of Korean people wanted to see this because of Daniel Henney (Agent Zero), including my wife, but his part was kinda small. He had almost no lines.

Slumdog Millionaire. Really was pretty great. Formulaic and all that, but so what? Maybe not the best movie of last year, but it wasn't far off.

notes from iffboston. . .

i saw best worst movie and interviewed the director and main subject. . . doc with a heart about the little b-move that can

automorphosis (and interviewed the director). . . going in i thought it was just people and their weird cars and came out being touched by folks just doing what makes them happy

makeout with violence. . . strange mix of genres that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. it's won a couple best of awards (one at the nashville FF) and it'll be interesting to see what these folks do next

children of invention. . . great, quiet little film about kids of a chinese immigrant woman who gets taken advantage of by a direct marketing pyramid scheme. documents a story without editorializing or judging. won the grand jury award at iffboston. keep an eye out for the director, tze chun.

the higher force. . . really great. set in iceland about a sad sack's chance for small time notoriety as a criminal. quirky, small time reykjavik hoods et al.

stingray sam. . . follow up to american astronaut--got to interview cory. serialized space cowboys. fun.

trust us this is all made up. . . definitely worth seeing for the improv. not much there outside that performance which takes up the vast majority of the film.

the animated shorts program included hertzfeldt's latest, i'm so proud of you, was absurd but very poingnant and a great french short called skhizen that was really great, too.

art & copy, the latest from sctratch documentrian doug pray was a fucking ad biz wank-fest for big egos. didn't like it.

world's greatest dad is bobcat goldthwait's film and stars robin williams. really really great. reminded me of election. . . dark comedy but the kind you can really laugh at.

what heard about but didn't get a chance to see. . .
that evening sun is getting early award buzz for holbrook--i'll see it when it makes the art house circuit.

we live in public. . . ondi timoner's follow-up to Dig! Heard Ashton Kucher is on board for widescale distribution. . . she'll maybe be be in oscar contention given the of-the-moment material

the louis tiant documentary done by the farrelley bros. (the lost son of havana) sold out twice

helen was a film i heard things about and was getting comparisons to elephant--lyrical rather than episodic.

Please. This movie was easily as predictable as a Nic Cage film. Except it was boring, and didn't have soundtrack. The dialogue was terrible too.

The big budget action film is a nice false dichotomy, but I would have just enjoyed a good movie. My problem wasn't lack of action but rather lack of anything interesting. And Rourke was okay but nothing particularly special.

Saw this over the weekend and thought it was great. Anyone nostalgic for that time in everyone's life when you had little responsibility, a shitty summer job, and a summer romance. Although it's much deeper than that. More about that time when we're technically adults but still lacking the maturity to deal with real world problems and real relationships.

Not sure why this thing has been so overlooked. Could be that I think it was marketed as "from the director of Superbad" or something when it couldn't be further from the over the top crude humor of that movie.

This has more to do with 80's movies like Pretty in Pink or Say Anything. Funny bits but at the core of the movies were the relationship of the main characters. The John Hughes comparisons could be there but I think that's more due to the movie being set in 1987 and the subject matter.

Much like Hughes, the soundtrack is great. Some pop from the era but mostly college rock like Replacements, Big Star, The Cure, Velvet Underground, etc. Also like Hughes, music is used to great effect. The scene with Kristen Stewart and Ryan Reynolds to an acoustic version of JAMC's "Taste of Cindy" is burned into my brain, not to mention the 4th of July scene done to "Don't Dream It's Over".

Recommended but don't go in thinking you're going to get some teen raunch comedy. It's much better than that and better than anything I've seen of it's ilk in a long time.

Had some time on my hands this weekend and picked up some flicks from my local indie video store. Picked these off of Ebert's "Great Movies" list.






Withnail & I
The Big Red One


Both great. I watched Withnail twice because the accents were so thick the first go 'round that I didn't get some of the lines the first time. Pretty funny movie with some great lines. The whole thing is just great absurdity and the fact that the main character are OPEN DRUNKS endeared this to me.

The Big Red One. Solid war movie. You can tell Speilberg studied this pretty close when he was making Saving Private Ryan. Lee Marvin is great in this.

terminator salvation was alright. good action scenes but the rest was pretty dopey, though i liked bale saying "i'll be back".

I'd like to give Withnail another shot. The first time I tried watching it, I ended up fast-forwarding to the end to hopefully see the demise of the characters.

One of my fave movies of all time. I can drive friends crazy quoting that film.

Uncle Monty cracks me the fuck up:

I often weep in butcher shops.
I mean to have you boy, even if it means burglary.
I've always found the root crop infinitely more attractive than the rose.

"I'M GETTING THE FEAR!"

The first time I've ever heard that referenced outside of when I'm talking to Gar or Bloor. More proof it's all been done, or in this case, said before.

Not sure how I missed this one the first time around. Really enjoyed it.




This was great.

I loved it.

I just bought it. Looking forward to this.

Finally got around to watching this. Amazing cast, and by a former Bond director. Holy crap. I really liked it up until the 3rd act, when it just kinda fell apart for me.

Saw it twice. I loved this film, despite Kristen Stewart's propensity to mess with her hair. I haven't smoked weed since 2002 and holy hell this movie made me want to smoke with a couple of my friends. I agree with your statements, though. Really enjoyable film.

Finally saw Let the Right One In.

Good movie. I like how open-ended it was, and apparently this was a huge improvement over the book it was taken from. My wife did a little reading about the differences between the movie and the book, and the whole "less is more" approach did wonders for this story.

very true.


I watched Touch of Evil last night for the first time. Great movie.