Slashdot Mirror
Holiday Movie Thread
"Ripley" could have been a few minutes shorter, but about the only negative thing to say about it is that you might get depressed that you don't live in Italy.
Any Given Sunday "Any Given Sunday" is Oliver Stone's take on the NFL as well as on media and culture (his twin obsessions). Through his eyes and perspective, this is much more than a sports movie, but a blunt look at race, celebrity, money and the high-cost gladiator mentality present in athletes, (and many Slashdot posters).Stone is watching too much MTV. Too many ominous clouds are moving, and it sometimes seems as if even drunken fans are having sepia-toned flashbacks. Robbie Robertson's soundtrack is outstanding, but mournful Native-American chanting doesn't always mesh with pro football.
Still, this film strikes home on several levels. It presents a blunt look at how race permeates football, and how an increasingly corporatized sports culture has overpowered ethics, sanity and tradition, putting almost unbelievable pressure on the participants - owners, coaches and players alike.
There are few heroes or villains here, something of a step forward for Stone, who is definitely your most-issues-are-black-and-white kind of director.
Al Pacino plays an aging coach whose young new owner - played by Cameron Diaz - doubts his will to win. He can't communicate with his star quarterback, who is black. Obnoxious, blow-hard ESPN-inspired reporters drive him nuts.
By Oliver Stone standards, this is an almost gentle movie about money and sacrifice. Some of the camera work is amazing, and "Any Given Sunday" is cinematically dazzling at conveying the banging and crunching of pro football, something that doesn't come through nearly as well on TV.
Those are my opinions. Jump on in.
(Holiday Movies, Round Two: Magnolias, Man On The Moon, Cradle Will Rock - coming soon.)
I'm sort of puzzled at "Open Source" things, like "Open Source Movie Reviewing"... so, can we have "open source sex" next? *g*
But, I have to be concerned with Jon Katz's writing. Surely as a writer, he would have started out doing review writing (I took that as an undergrad writing course), but it looks like that he quickly blurted something out because he hasn't posted anything in a few days. What's up with that?
Or is Katz just getting lazy? I'm not ususally one to poo-poo (what am I, twelve?) but it seems that he just threw this up there without any rhyme or reason. Open source reviewing? I believe that is called a "discussion" Mr. Katz. Perhaps you've heard of it.
/.)
(I'm not even going to mention that these movies have little, if anything to do with
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
While I know that "Man on the Moon" will be reviewed in your next batch, I did, however, wish to share my opinion on it. The movie was excellent and Jim Carrey's portrayal of Andy Kaufman was brilliant. There were times that it seemed as if you were watch Andy himself all over again. The film kept you in your seat, making you wonder what antic he was going to pull off next and the ending, while sad, was uplifting and positive overall.
I suggest that anyone who wishes to see a movie that is funny yet undeniably human go see it and see it soon.
-- Shadowcat
kageneko@kageneko.net
"I can roleplay. I can frag. I can PK while you lag."
Hmmm...this is a good opportunity to bring up something that's been nagging me for a few months now. Jon Katz tries really hard to be subversive and underground and never misses an opportunity to demonstrate how some subculture will triumph over the corporate masses. He rah-rahs Linux, never misses a swipe as Microsoft, immortalizes lifeless geeks and DVD crackers...well, you get the idea.
What's odd in that light, though, is that he repeatedly talks about mass market, mass culture films as if they're some sort of inside secret that he's privy too. He tried to pin down The Matrix as some sort of little known art film that only hardcore geeks would seek out, for example. And while I enjoy film criticism, it doesn't work when coming from Mr. Katz. It's like listening to a zen buddhist go on about the joys of Wal-Mart.
hmmmm..I just can't decide which movie to watch...Any Given Sunday, Rudy, Air Bud: Golden Reciever or Blue Chips
No..hold on..here's a brick wall I can pound my head against instead.
However, that aside- congratulations on the new 'hr' tags! Maybe I'm weird but to me, seeing you pick up new bits of tech and knowledge (rather than ossify and rot in a rut) is more exciting than any of the movies you're talking about.
Any chance of a 'Slashdot HTML for Beginners' article by you? I'm sure there are some slashdotters who don't know what a horizontal rule tag is, and now you do (dear god, let him not be doing these things in word). If you posted such an article, it would immediately be pounced upon by legions of clued slashdotters- who would probably end up providing huge amounts of education for all. Care to give it a try?
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A. Mr Showbiz Liked Mr Ripley. means I will avoid it like AIDS.
B. Any Given Sunday was ignored/shunned/blacklisted by the NFL. Says it all right there. Besides, its an Oliver "I know what REALLY happened" Stone.
I'll go see Toy Story 2 instead.
From the trailers I've seen for Any Given Sunday, the film looks like it's an unlicensed look at the evolution of the Dallas Cowboys.
From what I can tell, Pacino is playing Tom Landry, the aging quarterback actor is Roger Staubach, Cameron Diaz is Jerry Jones, and LL Cool J and that guy from Living Color are something like Michael Irving and Deion Sanders. Of course the timeline of these people being involved with the Cowboys is wrong for this to be a literal interpretation, but the movie looks like a cool adaptation of this theme. Escpecially since the trailer contains at least one shot in Texas Stadium. After the disappointing North Dallas Forty, I am really looking forward to a good 'Dallas Cowboys' movie.
Since we're doing these reviews 'open source' I'll assume some other reviewer will come along and fill in the actor's names I've omitted.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Like him or not, you have to give him credit. He has posted some of the most interesting and "post-ridden" stories that Slashdot has presented. As another poster put it, he likes to "stir it up" which is a good thing. Isn't that what Slashdot is based on? The sparking of discussion? I, for one, like to hear the opinions of others whether I agree with them or not. Maybe I'm one of the few, but I like his stuff.
By the way, I'm currently reading his new book, "Geeks" and I like it quite well.
Keep up the good work Jon.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
And this same "Ripley" novel was made into a film once before -- in 1960, it was released as "Purple Noon," a French-Italian thriller starring Alain Delon and directed by Rene Clement.
Hope this helps.
How about this:
Skip these two papfests and check out Almodovar's latest, if it's playing in your town. (It's been out here in NYC for several weeks, so some prints likely have filtered out to the rest of the States. In Europe, it may or may not be easier to find.) Now THAT's a movie.
Don't want to spoil it with a lengthy review; I find I enjoy movies better when I don't know too much about them first. Suffice it to say, that the title (which might imply some sort of Woody Allen nebbish) is a bit misleading. No Oedipus complex here.
Oliver Stone gets a big miss from me on this latest effort.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
No, you'd be drinking lager and watching, er, football...
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Mr. Katz has one advantage over all those other writers: he has the power to publish immediately. Apparently there is no editorial review, or if there is, it's amateur.
I'm not a Katz basher; I've enjoyed almost all his previous columns. It bothers me that I have to become a Katz nay-sayer. But I have to say it; after this second batch of reviews, and pending the third batch, these review columns are inappropriate and unnecessary.
They detract from Slashdot's strengths, fail to give any insight, and draw large amounts of flamage. I would probably even excuse it all if they served to build community, but they do not.
At the very least, create another topic for these sorts of things so that advanced users can skip them. I do want to read about things like Toy Story and digital projection systems, so I don't want to skip the "movies" category. Maybe there should be a topic called "off-topic" or perhaps "diversions", specifically not relating to News for Nerds?
He could be a smart guy, I don't know if he is or isn't -- Mr. Katz just strikes me as intellectually lazy. The most clear evidence for me is the way his articles tend to ramble on and on and on. It's as if there was no thought of how to make the writing more concise, which would help illustrate his point to the reader much more effectively. Instead, the approach just seems to be a combination of, "Let me throw everything out that I can think of, so that I'll have a better chance of having something stick," and "Everything I've just written is crucial, I can't think of anything to cut out."
The second example for me would be the way he decries the way the media stereotypes people, and then he goes and does the exact same thing. Instead of cutting through the chaff, he just turns the story around 180 degrees and stereotypes the players from his perspective. I doubt he's dumb, so he's got to realize that he's doing this, and I attribute his failure to do anything about it to laziness. In a similar vein, there's his seeming need to tell us how everybody throughout history that he admires was really a geek in disguise. Ugh.
Lastly, I can't hold anyone in high intellectual esteem when they do as much pandering to the crowd as Mr. Katz does. The thing is, he presents himself as some non-conformist iconoclast, but his choice of outlets is nothing but preaching to the choir. Wired? Slashdot? I'm curious whether he could ever muster a criticism of the audiences for which he writes. The whole faux-populism, "Down with The Man!" bullshit. The entire "I'm a Mac user, but ya know, I think the geek lifestyle is so cool, that goshdarnit I'm gonna start using Linux, then tell you about my experience while I sugarcoat 90% of the problems that I had with it" claptrap. Now if he were a truly critical writer, his followup to that series would be a thorough explanation of why, despite the wonders of Linux, he ended up going back to his Mac. Of course, that would require telling Slashdot readers things that they don't want to hear, so don't look for that article any time soon, kids.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
P.S. If Mr. Katz hasn't actually gone back to his Macs, then I withdraw that particular conjecture, but stand behind my point. I just mentioned that as something I can easily picture Mr. Katz doing, but not something of which I have first-hand knowledge.
It's to stress the fact that having Katz on Slashdot is a "Feature", not a bug.
spoo
I did think that Carrey did a masterful job of portraying Kaufman, but the lack of a story is what made this movie a dud for me. I wanted to see more insight into what made Kaufman the person he was.
Basically, the movie just redid a lot of Kaufman's comedy bits, except with Carrey in his place. The thing is, almost all of these are available on TV/video, so you would think that the movie would go deeper than that. Well, they didn't.
I did laugh a lot during the movie, but the word-for-word imitations just aren't nearly as funny as Kaufman doing them. It's not that I wouldn't recommend not seeing this flick, I just was disappointed. If you're undecided, you might want to wait until it's on video or cable. Seeing Kaufman's old tapes are better than seeing this flick.
On a humorous note, did anyone notice how, even though everyone else was wearing their hair and their clothes as if they were in the particular time period of the movie, David Letterman looked exactly like he just walked off the set yesterday? I guess he wasn't exactly thrilled with the project, because the word is that he told them that he'd only give them 90 minutes to shoot the scene, and he refused to do his hair/makeup/clothes/glasses like the early '80s Dave.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
> OK if football is so stupid and you're so smart
> pick next weeks winners and post them here!
I don't think its that simple. I don't know about
some people but, I just can't stand sitting around
watching someone else play a game.
I like to be doing something, participating. Games
that _I_ also enjoy playing I can stand watching
but...only for a very short time.
As I never played football, I have no love for the
game. I have no desire to watch it. It is very
boreing to me. All I see is a bunch of sweatty
men running after a ball.
Of course...to each their own. Most people aren't
in to writting perl code or listening to indian
classical music, or admiring statues of Shiva or
taking quantities of mind altering substances and
sitting admireing plants.
I think football is pretty stupid. You probably
think at least one, if not more, of my ways of
spending my time is stupid. such is life.
I just wish you sports watching people would stop
refering to your teams as "We". When I was on the
wrestling team in High school, I said "We Won"
or "We Lost". When I was not on the team...I never
said it. Why? Cuz "We" was not part of the team.
"We" sat around and watched THEM win.
Thats really my main peve with sports. That and
well... I hate it when they put on some game and
cancel the TV show I WANT TO WATCH (I only watch
a very fw hours of TV a week...so the shows I do
watch are ones I truely enjoy) because some game
went into overtime and they just HAVE to show the
whole thing, or due to some other thing the game
goes 30 mins over time.
That truely pisses me off. When TV shows are too
long to fit in their time slot...they get "To be
continued..." when sports go over time...showes
get canceld or bumped to inconvinent times
(or worst..."already in progress").
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You're right-on about the movie being an allegory of sorts for Mister Stone's experiences in tinsel-ville. Very enjoyable on many levels; great filming and editing, great sound and great acting. It's not the Be All or End All of anything, but as a Really Good Movie(TM), it Kicks Ass. See it on the biggest screen possible.
**>>BELCH
You've got *3* problems. One, you felt the need to point out that he felt the need to point out that his sarcasm was sarcasm, even tho' such was clear from the start without your chiming in as well. Two, you think 'Buffy' is cutting edge. Three, you have yet to form a meaningful relationship with GWAR.
**>>BELCH
First, it helps to understand the attraction of the book and its sequels. Tom Ripley is a charming, lovable sociopath without a moral bone in his body. Incredibly clever and amazingly gutsy, he takes chances you wouldn't believe and usually gets away with them. Even when he gets caught, his smooth tongue and implausible but unprovable lies get him out of many jams. The amazing thing about his character in the books is that you can't help but feel sympathy for this person with his complete lack of morals.
"Purple Noon" ("Pleine Soleil") captures that amorality very well. As you follow the convoluted plots that Ripley lays out, you have to admire his audacity. It is a great movie, and the only trouble with it is that it doesn't leave you feeling all that sympathetic for the character, the way the books do. You admire the skill with which he escapes detection of his crimes, but that doesn't make you actually like the guy.
That brings us to the new movie directed by Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient") and starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Cate Blanshett.
As anyone who saw "The English Patient" knows, Anthony Minghella has a love for showing scenery. Where "The English Patient" had the vastness of the desert, "The Talented Mr. Ripley" has the picturesque villages of Italy, and Minghella makes them one of the stars of the movie. That can be a good thing if you are a fan of travelogue, but is rather distracting from the subject matter being shown, I think to the movie's detriment.
Minghella apparently was aware of the problem I mentioned with "Purple Noon", because he goes to great lengths to make the audience sympathetic to the character. This Tom Ripley feels great guilt about his crimes. It is only circumstances that cause him to commit them in the first place, rather than a cold calculation as displayed in "Purple Noon".
Furthermore, in this movie Tom Ripley displays a lot more passion. Whereas in the books he was somewhat androgynous and adapted his sexuality to suit his environment, in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" there can be no doubt as to his true feelings.
By going for the sympathy vote, a believe that a vital part of the Ripley character has been torn away. If you haven't seen the previous film or read the books, you probably wouldn't even be aware that it was gone. But for those of us aware of it, the loss was a bitter disappointment. The loss also causes some odd moments in the script that are only really explained by knowing about the character from other sources.
Then there is the acting. Matt Damon just didn't have what it takes to get across the complexity of the character. Sure, the script had toned the complexity down a lot but he could have replaced some of it with some subtle acting. He doesn't. His Tom Ripley is a creature that is totally reactive rather than proactive, and lacking the sociopathic nature that is key to the character.
The rest of the cast varies from good to very good. Jude Law is outstanding as Dickie Greenleaf, conveying exactly the right combination of sincerity and decadence. Cate Blanshett does a very good job, and Gwyneth Paltrow is quite good for the first half, though in the latter half of the movie her acting is fairly simplistic. Philip Seymour Hoffman is also excellent as usual.
Overall, I walked out of the theatre having enjoyed it but disappointed about what could have been. I give the film 3 stars out of 5, where I gave Purple Noon 4 stars.