What's the last movie you've seen?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The King's Speech.

Did not approve of some of the language, but overall a very good movie, intriguing story line, brilliantly acted.

Historically factual.

Actually, there were some major aspects of it that weren't correct in that regard.

Which ones? The one that struck as the most obvious was the depiction of Churchill as supporting the King, whereas in reality he damaged his political career immensely by being solidly behind Edward VIII.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/13/reel-history-kings-speech-colin-firth

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Looking at that list, the one I mentioned seems to be the only really grave one. The others are pretty understandable and more minor.

That was basically the judgment of the article as well, of course. I think more questionable is making a film about Britain in the thirties and making it about that.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's a really weird thing, how even a movie not directly about WWII sees some need to promote the cult of Churchill, even by 100% reversing his IRL stances.

Great movie if you can get past that.

Churchill was Britain's only source of comic relief until the invention of Monty Python.

TW3

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I'm pretty sure that Olivier's Hamlet is supposed to be written as HAMlet.

I thought that recent televised one of Macbeth was quite good, especially as it managed to avoid certain irritating clichés.

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F for Fake by Orson Welles. Pure awesomeness. I think it must be the first mockumentary.

I really need to get my hands on a copy of that...

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Jar City, a wonderfully twisted Icelandic film. Loved it.

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Channel 4 were showing Brassed Off and there was nothing else on, so I watched it. As always I'm reminded that while its certainly not a great work of art (and the plot is even more screwy than I remember), its heart is very much in the right place and a couple of performances were actually pretty good (Postlethwaite especially, but that goes without saying). More to the point (and the real reason I watched it) hearing the hilariously awful attempts at Yorkshire accents from the non-Northern cast members remains a truly delightful experience.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Film Four showed The Seventh Seal the other day, so I watched it. Never actually seen it all the way through before. Anyway, I liked it a lot which I'm sure is a highly controversial opinion (haha). Two things must be said though; the first is that none of the homages, parodies and references come even close to those scenes (which was a nice surprise), the second is that while much of the film was even more 'dated' than you'd expect from the late 50s, this wasn't a problem for me as it was aesthetically pleasing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bergman was dated even in the 50s, in a sense.

But the Seventh Seal is very, very good. I imagine it must be better for a Swedish-speaker though. The way he says things like "I am death" the intonation is rather special in Swedish.

Gunnar Fischer who did the cinematography for it died just last month.

Anyway, if you enjoyed that one you might also want to check out The Virgin Spring by Bergman.

Very dated. But in a way that doesn't matter, so, in a way, it/he isn't. It's an odd* comparison and a different medium, but Thomas Hardy is a bit like that.

It was subtitled rather than dubbed, so at least you got to hear the words spoken by the actors and all that. Though, yeah, I imagine that it would be. Though hearing people speak Swedish is always vaguely amusing (in a nice way) to anyone who lives in the part of Wales that I do.

*Or wonderfully appropriate given their shared sense of the morbid? Did I just write 'a shared sense of the morbid' on the internet? Oh dear.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Right, dubbing is an atrocity that I'm glad ytou escaped. What I meant was rather that the way they speak Swedish in that movie is not how anyone speaks Swedish in reality, not even in the 50s. That's part of what I meant when I said it was dated even then.For me, that contributes a lot to the atmosphere of the movie.

Ah, that's interesting. I did spot that the way some of the characters spoke was oddly sonorous and very theatrical and found that effective, but (obviously!) didn't pick up the full implications.

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Yeah, I'll be doing that I think.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Withnail & I

A defining work in the history of western civilization.

How it must hurt to never play the Dane!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mars Attacks!

Pretty weak.

That was the beginning of the end for Tim Burton IMO.

Didn't that worthless c**nt Martin Amis have a role in the writing of that?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bowling for Columbine - trash.  Absolutely idiotic.

I can understand not liking the argument, but surely you'd accept that it's very well put together?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bowling for Columbine - trash.  Absolutely idiotic.

I can understand not liking the argument, but surely you'd accept that it's very well put together?

For me a documentary that gives me obviously stupid arguments isn't very impressive.

Most documentaries give obviously stupid arguments

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Page Eight, a piece of smug bourgeois excrement written-and-directed by pompous hack 'playwright' David Hare for television and shown... a few hours ago. Technically it's a film, but I think I'd find an excuse to complain about it even if it wasn't.

It is quite possibly the worst thing I've seen on television all year. Appalling.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Technically the UK government supported Saragat at the time; not that there was much of a difference in practice.

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be and in the sort of way I wanted as well; a genuinely fresh (and also very well done) adaptation rather than an expensive and ill-judged remake of the television adaptation. Much of the acting was outstanding (to be expected with a cast like that, but, still) and many of the shots were really quite beautiful. Perfectly paced as well.

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Never heard of the novel or the original BBC miniseries until I saw the trailer.

Really?

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I'll be the odd one out and say that while I have of course read several Le Carre novels I had no idea there was a movie coming out...

He has a slightly surreal cameo as a drunk at a Christmas party. Which also featured a Father Christmas (it's Britain in the 1970s, so no Santa's) with a Lenin face mask.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Train Spotting 

Not actually a film about middle-aged men in anoraks with an interest in train numbers?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Two films on telly recently named after places; Copenhagen and Brazil. Inevitably (for nothing in the world is as predictable as my tastes) I liked both. I'd seen bits of the latter before, but only bits, so it still counts for this thread.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I would actually agree that it doesn't work particularly well as a cohesive whole (although it certainly could have with a bit of severe editing). But, and this is the main thing to me, the details are often (in a strange way) oddly lovely. Like the children with the matches. Heart warming, right?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Il Divo

Really, really, really good.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Il Divo

Really, really, really good.

Oh! Watched that one in cinemas when it came out here (two years ago, maybe?). I remember me and my friend laughed so hard we were hushed by someone.

'I have a weakness for ice cream'

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Unrelated, but a red avatar now?