Movie review thread...
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After seeing "Public Enemies" at the cinema last week, I decided to go retro and watch earlier filmed versions available on DVD the past week. Each one is somewhat imperfect, but each rates at least a 7/10 and deserves a viewing.<br />
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[color=#FF0000]"Dillinger"[/color] (1945) a.k.a. "John Dillinger, Killer," starring Lawrence Tierney in the lead role. Excellent pulp, with several fictitious anecdotes. They have Dillinger's gal Billie Frechette and the "Lady in Red" as being one in the same. Wrong!! Still, very cool gangster visuals, some of the footage from this film was used in Errol Morris "Thin Blue Line" (imo the best documentary feature film of the 1980s).<br />
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[youtube:3tjpo4sj]7df6vmwoz7c[/youtube:3tjpo4sj]<br />
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[color=#FF0000]"Dillinger"[/color] (1973) is an excellent, graphic violent biopic starring Warren Oates in the lead role, and Richard Dreyfuss as "Baby Face" Nelson. This one written & directed by John Milius, the screenwriter of "Apocalypse Now" and "Magnum Force." Some of you may remember Oates from that late 70s Kiwi-flick "Sleeping Dogs," as well was "The Wild Bunch" and other great films from the 60s/70s. Excellent cast also stars Harry Dean Stanton and Ben Johnson.<br />
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[youtube:3tjpo4sj]oX72ZdOJh3o[/youtube:3tjpo4sj]<br />
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[color=#FF0000]"Public Enemies"[/color] (2009) is in current release, and probably won't be available on dvd for several months yet. Directed by Michael Mann, starring Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as his FBI manhunter Melvin Purvis. Much more historically accurate than the others, and yet I can't say for certain that it's necessarily a more entertaining pot-boiler, but definitely worth seeing to get a better grasp on the reality underlining the mythos.<br />
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[youtube:3tjpo4sj]Q8xOgO7_eT8[/youtube:3tjpo4sj]<br />
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I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the immortal pre-film noir [color=#FF0000]"The Petrified Forest"[/color] (1936). An absolute gem of a film, this one doesn't exactly have John Dillinger, but this is the movie that made Humphrey Bogart a star, and his character "Duke Mantee" was based upon Dillinger. Bogie got the role because of his close resemblance, and it was the sort of character that helped define his career in the ganster genre for years to come.<br />
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[youtube:3tjpo4sj]SbRH__KePbQ[/youtube:3tjpo4sj] -
[quote name='Tim']Did anyone else watch the feature length pilot for Ron Moore's new series, [i]Virtuality[/i]? It was pretty good, and it's a real shame it probably won't go ahead as a series.[/quote]<br />
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I'm half way through it at the moment, it got pretty good reviews from the critics. -
watched Let the Right on in.<br />
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I liked it, 7.5/10, a couple of really bizzaro moments though...<br />
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[spoiler:3654nn8v]the bit where Oskar spies her naked, the cats attacking that woman[/spoiler:3654nn8v] -
[i]For All Mankind [/i]- HD reissue from Criterion of a great documentary about the Apollo missions to the moon. Amazing use of the archive footage to create a beautiful experience. Brian Eno music used for the score. 9/10. Great way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of man setting foot on the moon.
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[quote name='Tim'][i]For All Mankind [/i]- HD reissue from Criterion of a great documentary about the Apollo missions to the moon. Amazing use of the archive footage to create a beautiful experience. Brian Eno music used for the score. 9/10. Great way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of man setting foot on the moon.[/quote]<br />
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Related - this odball news item hit the newswires today on the anniversary:<br />
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[quote][size=7]Moon landing tapes got erased, NASA admits[/size]<br />
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Thu Jul 16, 2009<br />
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said on Thursday.<br />
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NASA released the first glimpses of a complete digital make-over of the original landing footage that clarifies the blurry and grainy images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon.<br />
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The full set of recordings, being cleaned up by Burbank, California-based Lowry Digital, will be released in September. The preview is available at [url="http://www.nasa.gov"]http://www.nasa.gov[/url].<br />
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[color=#FF0000]NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing.[/color]<br />
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Since then, Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who oversaw television processing at the ground-tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission, has been looking for them.<br />
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The good news is he found where they went. The bad news is they were part of a batch of [color=#FF0000]200,000 tapes that were degaussed -- magnetically erased -- and re-used to save money.[/color]<br />
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"The goal was live TV," Nafzger told a news conference.<br />
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"We should have had a historian running around saying 'I don't care if you are ever going to use them -- we are going to keep them'," he said.<br />
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They found good copies in the archives of CBS news and some recordings called kinescopes found in film vaults at Johnson Space Center.<br />
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Lowry, best known for restoring old Hollywood films, has been digitizing these along with some other bits and pieces to make a new rendering of the original landing.[/quote]<br />
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Rest o' the story here:<br />
[url]http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE56F5MK20090716[/url] -
There's a really nice collection of photos here:<br />
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[url="http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/07/remembering_apollo_11.html"]http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/0 ... lo_11.html[/url] -
[quote name='Tim']There's a really nice collection of photos here:<br />
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[url="http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/07/remembering_apollo_11.html"]http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/0 ... lo_11.html[/url][/quote]<br />
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Those are cool. About five years ago I bought two huge banana boxes of newspapers at a garage sale, one a box with fifteen different newspapers about the first Apollo landing, and the other a dozen newspapers about the JFK assassination. I asked the seller how much he wanted. He told me "five bucks." I asked, "each?" "No, both." I was stupified that somebody would take up so much storage space preserving the newspapers, then basically giving them away for peanuts. "Sold!!" Love looking back at that historic stuff. I still remember watching the Apollo landing when I was a small kid and being pretty damn mesmerized. -
[quote name='Tim']<br />
Skite: I went to grad school with one of the guys 21 based on.<br />
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Mike Aponte? Jeffrey Ma? -
Not actually a movie I've seen, but from memory a lot of posters on here will be stoked about this - <br />
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[url="http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006050.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562"]http://www.variety.com/article/VR111800 ... 1&nid=2562[/url]<br />
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1st of Bernard Cornwells books to hit the big screen soon... (well, 2011). If that works theres a fuckload of a back catalogue to mine!<br />
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[b]Independent takes aim[/b]<br />
Hirst to adapt Cornwell's bestseller 'Agincourt'<br />
By SHARON SWART<br />
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Luc Roeg's London-based Independent Film Co. has tapped "The Tudors" creator Michael Hirst to adapt Bernard Cornwell's bestseller "Agincourt." Pic will focus on Nicholas Hook, the humble archer who fought the French alongside Henry V in 1415 in one of the bloodiest battles in European history.<br />
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Independent optioned the feature rights to "Agincourt" earlier this year and plans to mount a E25 million ($35 million) European co-production. Pre-production is slated for late 2010, followed by a spring 2011 shoot.<br />
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Cornwell's 2008 novel sold nearly 200,000 hardback copies in the U.K. in the first three months and sat on the New York Times bestseller list for four weeks.Outside of Showtime hit "The Tudors," Hirst is primarily a feature screenwriter. He penned 1998's "Elizabeth."<br />
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A former William Morris London agent, Roeg co-founded management-production company Artists Independent Network in 2000. Four years ago, he spun off a separate production-finance-sales shingle, Independent, backed by VC fund Living Capital Group.<br />
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Independent most recently developed and financed "Mr. Nice," a biopic of a London drug dealer who got out of jail time by posing as a MI5 agent, starring Rhys Ifans, David Thewlis and Chloe Sevigny. Company also is repping foreign on Duncan Jones' "Moon," which it boarded at the script stage. -
Finally saw Gran Torino last night. While it has probably been done on here, i thought it was fucking awesome. Clint is THE man. Can't rate it highly enough<br />
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I now have a roll-model for my advanced years. -
[quote name='mariner4life']Finally saw Gran Torino last night. While it has probably been done on here, i thought it was fucking awesome. Clint is THE man. Can't rate it highly enough<br />
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I now have a roll-model for my advanced years.[/quote]<br />
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Exactly what I said to my wife, that's how I'm going to grow old. -
Gran Torino is certainly beloved at TSF, and deservedly so. <br />
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Has anybody else seen "Man On Wire" yet? Well...? What did you think? Maybe it draws yawns from others.<br />
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I think I may have given it something like 11/10 a few months back, or if I didn't, I should have. Second time around, I know all the spoilers, I'm still in complete and utter awe. It's probably the most spectacular and fantastical and unbelievable thing I have ever seen, in art and athletics. -
watched The Hangover last night. Top film, 8.5/10<br />
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I am sure most males have had that 'strip club' talk with thier wives, while all the while inwardly rolling eyes xzxcool -
[quote name='mariner4life']Finally saw Gran Torino last night. While it has probably been done on here, i thought it was fucking awesome. Clint is THE man. Can't rate it highly enough<br />
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I now have a roll-model for my advanced years.[/quote]<br />
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No doubt. A living legend. Makes me want to grow old as well although having never fought in any wars it'll be difficult to tell any ethnic minorities to stay off my lawn and use cool lines about stacking them five feet high and using them as sandbags ! -
I really want to see The Hurt Locker. [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurt_Locker"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurt_Locker[/url]<br />
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Still in very limited release schedule here, but I am contemplating going to the artsy fartsy theater near my work to catch it, as it is the only place in Maryland showing it.