Hey folks, Harry here... I find it odd that some people are so vocal about not wanting to hear about BNAT. At this film party we showed 7 films that have yet to be released. Not only that, but the were major films. OLDBOY would absolutely blow you folks out of the water. I guarantee it! PASSION and ROTK added to that make for 3 of the absolute best films you'll see in years. The debuting of the WORLD OF TOMORROW trailer and just how much ass it kicks through uprights is astonishing. Don't be jealous... this is YOUR FUTURE. These are the films YOU NEED TO LOOK OUT FOR! You're a movie loving super freak... You are being tapped on the shoulder and being told... MEDIOCRITY IS NOT AHEAD! Celebrate it, the same way we do when we heard PULP FICTION destroyed Cannes... or AMERICAN BEAUTY owned Toronto. Here we have absolutely passionate honest to goodness film loving super freaks with ZERO CONDITIONS or Studio ties telling you about these fantastic films... Enjoy...
Finally caught up on sleep and thought I'd write up some random thoughts on things I saw at BNAT.
Harry better show us the complete Return of Captain Marvel serials next time around. It was actually really cool.
ROTK is the best film in the trilogy. That being said, I really should have asked Peter Jackson if he's started the extended DVD yet since there were obvious holes. For example, the healing that takes place after the Minas Tirth battle. We also have the fact that Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli, along with the army of the dead, show up the on the boats that were once filled with Orcs and other friends of Sauron...but we never see the boats being attacked. I'm hopeing these will be in the extras. Other then the missing scenes, the movie completely blew me away and I hope it gets recognized by the Academy, but I'm sure they'll pick some tripe instead. Having Peter Jackson and his cohorts there to answer questions afterwards was amazing and is something I will always cherish.
Buster Keaton's The General with a live soundtrack perfromed by the Guy Forsyth was THE GREATEST FILM EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. Ignoring the fact that Peter Jackson and Mel Gibson were at BNAT, watching The General was the highlight of the show for me. I might move to Austin so I can experience more of this silent film with live band coolness.
Wasp's Nest and Ginger Snaps 2 were both a lot of fun to watch.
Old Boy blows Kill Bill away in terms of a revenge flick. What it has that Kill Bill lacks is emotion. Kill Bill is all style, very little substance IMHO. This film actually draws you into it's characters and makes you care about them and question their motives. Harry mentioned that there is talk of an American remake, but I don't see how this could be accomplished without completely rewriting it as I don't think mainstream American audiences will react well to the ending. However, if whoever picks it up decides to make it into a smaller, "arthouse" film, it will probably do well in that market.
Switchblade Romance is bad. House of a 1000 Corpses bad. I almost walked out of the theater but was too lazy to do so. It started out with really really good possibilities, specially with the nudity, female masturbation, and the hope that there would be hot lesbian sex. And then it just got bad. And more bad. And worse. And finally the writers ran out of ideas and realized that the movie made no sense so they added a plot twist that makes it even worse. I'll have to find this one on DVD and make everyone I despise watch it.
Teenage Mother should be shown in every high school sex education class in America! This is one I will hunt down and show everyone just like I hunted down Crippled Avengers after last year's BNAT.
Undead had some problems in the making sense department, but it was a good movie to watch right before the final movie to get everyone woken up. Action, zombies, killer fish, aliens, Gillian Anderson look alike, what more can you ask for.
And finally, the film that everyone's already talked about "The Passion of the Christ." I like many of the other folks who've already reviewed it, am a pretty devout atheist. I'm also very much against organized religion and strongly believe that faith should be a deeply personal thing that belongs to each person and not something that one needs to go to church for. I don't know what I can say that hasn't already been said. It's brutual, vivid, moving, etc. I cried a lot. I tried to close my eyes but could not b/c the images kept drawing me. I have hard time thinking about the film without being the edge of tears. This is truly one of the greatest works of art ever shown on the big screen and Mel Gibson should be highly praised for having the guts to create something he truly believes in instead of throwing out something that will certainly sell but is filled with meaningless drivel as much modern cinema is. Unfortunately, as much as I loved this film, I am very pessimistic about how mainstream America will react to it. It's not an easy film to watch. It doesn't have many subtitles. And most importantly, it really asks you to think and be engaged instead of just being a mindless zombie. I don't know that mainstream America is ready...but that may not matter. As long as even a small portion of the population sees this film, it will live on and it will hopefully spread through word of mouth to others who are open minded and take a chance on a beautiful film.
Everyone has talked about how great this film is, but I want to talk about what it meant to me. Like I said already, I am not a religious person, so this movie to me was not as much about religion as it was about man's own inhumanity to man. I think of this movie and then I think of all the suffering that still goes on around the world b/c one group of people thinks that it is right and another group is punished for disagreeing and I realize that we have learned nothin in the last 2000 years. We have cell phones, PDAs, the internet, amazing medical technology, but underneath all that, we are just as monstrous as the men who sent Jesus to his death.
Call me Duncan Idaho
