A lot of people don't take the time to think about Fight Club, they just write it off as violence for the sake of being violent.
I think one of the funniest parts of the commentary was Fincher talking about the ratings board and the scene with the dildo. Evidently there was a lot of rules about how big they could be, how floppy, how long they could be in the shot, etc. Funny, but also very sad.
That included, strangely, Roger Ebert.
He chastises the movie for being pro violence. It's actually anti-violence and the fact that the actual "Fight Club" part occurs in the second act of the movie should have tipped him off.I'm surprised that he didn't recognize the film as satire and dark humor.
I like Ebert as a writer, and I often agree with his takes. But sometimes I don't understand his intense dislike for some movies. He hated Gladiator.
His review.
ebert no doubt makes mistakes, but i find him a generally good guide for my own taste...not having the time (or inclination) to read many review sites, i use him as a filter... though this thread is a great resource as well... incidentally, with so many blu-rays being released on an ongoing basis, i also like the reviews at high-def digest... not ony for picture & sound quality, but for the movie review proper...
i haven't been reading him as much LATELY, & not sure if the quality has slipped with his health problems...
even when i don't always agree with his takes on movies, i appreciate his insightfulness...
not sure, but i think he is the only critic to win a pulitzer prize for his work...
i also like the fact that ebert doesn't view everything from one perspective, as great art, but can evaluate it on its own merits, as adventure, entertainment, etc... he gets that...
* i basically just agreed with your take, as usual, j-dog...
** because of this thread, i added in bruges, mongol & the jacket to the queue, & will report back...
some other titles mentioned upthread...
hudsucker proxy & indiana jones & crystal skull...
for some reason, some movies like raising arizona i didn't like as much the first time (incredibly, now i think it is hilarious)... oh brother where art thou fell into this category, whereas movies like blood simple, millers crossing, barton fink, fargo & no country i thought were instant classics... i appreciated hudsucker proxy more after a second & third time... that said, i have no desire to go back to the clooney/zeta-jones romantic comedy vehicle, which is the only real clunker i can think of by them off the top of my head...
i also liked indiana jones IV better the second time... maybe because i wasn't comparing it as much to first three, and was able to just let it unfold and enjoy it as an adventure movie... the first time, i didn't really buy shia lebouf, the relationship with karen allen... the villain is pretty weak, & the jungle chase scene/sword fight was pretty over the top... it is a dropoff from the first three in the franchise, & disappointment is understandable given extremely high expectations... but imo, it would be hard for a spielberg/lucas collaboration to make a terrible movie...
i have been immersed in the bond blu-ray six pack & got sleeping beauty for my wife...
almost got through the bonds (paused in die another day, but that is by far the worst of the bunch)... it seems like i had seen these hundreds of times, but some not as much as others... parts were new to me... because they are shown in HEAVY ROTATION, there is a lot of duplication damage on prints shown, so the clarity & resolution on the blu-rays (taking advantage of the restorations) was a revelation & amazing... it was almost like seeing them for the first time... the making of docs were cool... my favorite was the alligator farm dude they used in the famous live & let die stunt, who ended up doing the triple gator jump when no stunt man in his right mind would (the character that played tee hee with the metal claw arm said he wouldn't have done it for a $mill, & i completely beivied him... hard to spend it from several gator's stomachs
)...
i'd recommend sleeping beauty as a family film... i thought this was a curious choice for the first blu-ray release at the time, but after seeing some of the documentary material, i can appreciate the choice far more... it was almost a decade in the making, allegedly cost $6 million (an astronomical sum in the '50s), was the last fully hand drawn feature they ever made, was the first shown in widescreen 70 mm format, first to employ multi-channel stereo, based on a great tchiakosky ballet score, etc... it was shot in a 2:55 aspect ration (theatres were 2:35), so you get to see stuff on the side that even those at theatre didn't...
the animation was a little offputting at first, as the background characters are very flat & graphic (though not the main characters)... the background detail of the cityscapes & forests are stunning... some cool extras... a half hour disney look at the grand canyon set to the grand canyon suite looked & sounded incredible, like it was recorded yesterday... the look of the movie was a stylistic departure from previous features, & the making of documentary described why (disney wanted the entire look to be filtered through eyvind earle, in charge of the overall "look")... there was also a cool disney show (brought back memories) about the life of tchiacosky, which intersected with the subject matter in interesting ways...
i had already seen baraka, but just rewatched on blu-ray (high praise from ebert, who i think said it was one of the greatest movies he has ever seen, & is by itself sufficient cause & reson to get a blu-ray player... i wouldn't go quite that far, though i also like it a lot, as you'll see below)...
some may be already familiar with ron fricke for his work on koyanasquatsi... that movie was perhaps a bit more didactic & moralizing (as much as is possible in a movie with no dialogue
)... unfortunately, for our purposes, across the great divide of modernity & post-modernity, the core message (technology bad, nature good) is a bit simplistic...
baraka is also without dialogue, and came off as a far more mature work, & less preachy (in fairness, fricke collaborated on earlie project with somebody else, i think gottfried reggio?)... its hard to characterize in a few words (using no words itself, there isn't a linear plot)... the word comes from the sufi language & i think has something to do with the common threads that links & unites all life... it is shot all over the world (those who appreciated this aspect of the fall will really enjoy this movie... i strongly suspect tarsem singh has seen baraka & seemed to borrow a few shots... most notably, the taka-taka-taka tribal ritual, & the breathtaking shots in baraka of the sufi dervishes spinning in slow motion... than again, singh grew up in iran for a time & may well have seen this first hand)... the images are stunning, & like koyanasquatsi, i found i invested more time, energy, focus & concentration on them, as i had no plot intricacies or zippy dialogue to use as a crutch to prop up any preconceptions i might have brought to the film...
a very broad canvas, depicting the unfolding of life, death, society, culture, ritual & the beauty of nature, on a planetary & even universal scale... i can't praise this movie enough...
if you can watch it on blu-ray, the sound is enhanced as well as the image (they supposedly restored it by scanning the original negative at a resolution that approaches the limits of human perception)... michael stearns has a haunting score that is world music in a good sense (not just layering some congas on a western riff, but incorporating many world instrumentation with electronic to serve the overall purposes of the structure, pacing of the score & film)... if you have a good sound system, though it is at times ethereal, crank it up, it offers a very immersive experience with the film (with no words, the score is obviously very important, & has to pick up some of the slack... & it does)... with no dialogue (or narration of any kind), the DP/cinematographer fricke plays the role of director, & makes some brilliant choices in terms of locations... there was apparently a lot of serendipity on the shoots, in what was an extremely challenging schedule logistically (five man team lugged around a ton of stuff literally all over the world)... they would try & get one shot, it didn't work out, & they would spontaneously find something better nearby...
my favorite shots... the sleeping/meditating simian... the aforementioned whirling dervishes... the mirrored mosque in southern iran (i first wrongly thought it was the haggia sofia in istanbul), which looks like something from a dream, with every surface of the interior seemingly bejeweled by diamonds or crystals... there was also a very haunting song from the female half of dead can dance, shot as they show indians rummaging through garbage dumps that was heartbreaking...
i've seen this 3-4 times in the past few years & can't imagine it being the kind of film i could ever get tired of...
- here is the recent ebert blu-ray re-review...
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.d.../810150290/1023
Baraka (1992)
October 16, 2008
by Roger Ebert
"If man sends another Voyager to the distant stars and it can carry only one film on board, that film might be "Baraka." It uses no language, so needs no translation. It speaks in magnificent images, natural sounds, and music both composed and discovered. It regards our planet and the life upon it. It stands outside of historical time. To another race, it would communicate: This is what you would see if you came here. Of course this will all long since have disappeared when the spacecraft is discovered.
The film was photographed over 14 months by director Ron Fricke, who invented a time-lapse camera system to use for it. In 1992, it was the first film since 1970 to be photographed in Todd-AO, a 65mm system, and in 2008, it seems to have been the last. The restored 2008 Blu-ray is the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined. It was made from the Todd-AO print, which was digitally restored to a perfection arguably superior to the original film. It is the first 8K resolution video ever made of a 65mm film, on the world's only scanner capable of it. It is comparable to what is perceptible to the human eye, the restorers say. "Baraka" by itself is sufficient reason to acquire a Blu-ray player.
The film consists of awesome sights, joyful, sad, always in their own way beautiful. By that I do not mean picturesque. A friend came into the room while I was watching the film, saw a closeup of the head of a Gila monster and said, "That's beautiful." I asked if she liked lizards. "I hate lizards," she said, shuddering. She wasn't thinking about lizards. She was observing the iridescent scales of the creature's head. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We are the beholder.
A large gathering of men, shaped in a rough circle, join in synchronous dancing, bowing, standing, kneeling, sitting, standing, their arms in the air, their fingers fluttering like the wings of birds, their voices a rhythmic chatter. Asia, somewhere. They face a statue of the Buddha. Their movements are more complex and intricately timed than the drummers at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. More inspiring, also, because they have chosen to do this as worship and have not been drilled. They have perfected their ritual, and in their faces we do not see strain or determination, despite the physical ordeal, but contentment and joy. Their movements have the energy of deep enjoyment.
There's the indescribable beauty of aborigines, their bodies bearing necklaces, bracelets and body ornaments made from countless tiny beads, their arms and faces painted in intricate patterns of innumerable dots. They dip a cheap plastic comb in paint and rotate it across their skin to leave the dots. Their hypnotic dancing somehow reverberates with the Asian dancers. We see the bright scarlet paint on the brow of a young Amazonian girl, peering solemnly from bright green leaves. A young woman of the Maasai tribe in Kenya, is clothed in a beauty to render "designer fashions" threadbare.
More images: the sorrowful fall in slow motion of an ancient and lofty tree in the rain forest. The sad poetic beauty in slow motion of a chain of explosions for a strip mine. The despoiling of the land by the deep mine pits. The undeniable beauty of the access roads circling down to the pit bottoms, one line atop another. A virgin forest seen from high above, looking down on wave after wave of birds, hundreds of thousands of them from horizon to horizon.
Scavengers, in an enormous garbage dump in India, claw at the refuse to make a living, competing with birds and dogs. Women, boys and girls. Barefoot. Bold boys climb atop a dump truck to slide down with fresh garbage and grab at treasure. There's not a T-shirt to be seen. They are all garbed in the cheapest fabrics of India, a land where a woman can crawl from a cardboard box on the sidewalk and stand up looking elegantly dressed.
Eggs, thousands of them, float by on a conveyor belt. Recently hatched chicks, dressed in yellow down, tumble from a conveyor belt down a chute onto another belt. Their eyes are wide, they look about amazed, their tiny wings flutter. This is the most freedom they will ever know. They are sorted, tossed into funnels, spin down in a spiral, emerge one at a time to be marked with dye and have the tips of their beaks burned off. This process, one second per chick, is repeated time after time by workers. Endless rows of chickens stacked atop each other in boxes too small to allow them to move. Girls and young women, thousands of them, as far as the eye can see, make cigarettes by hand in a South American sweatshop. Too close to stretch. Workers assemble computer parts in a Japanese factory, thousands of them, each one repeating a small action all day along, one who is working with a bandaged hand, three of its fingers too short.
In the factories, the high-angle camera shows rows of these workers reaching to the vanishing point. These are not computer graphics. The images result from painstaking care and perfectionist detail in the filming and restoration, and thoughtful camera placement. Consider a shot from above looking down on the great hall of Grand Central Station. Two movements at once: commuters dashing across the floor in speeded-up time, while the camera pans across them in slow motion. It is easy enough to achieve fast motion, but how difficult with a camera that is panning with exquisite slowness. There's an overhead shot of an intersection in Tokyo, with alternating swarms of thousands of cars and thousands of pedestrians. Escalators on the subway system, a speeded-up shot, pour out travelers as the conveyor belt poured chicks.
An orangutan stands shoulder-deep in a warm pool, steam rising around it. We regard it. The eyes look old and thoughtful. The sky is filled with stars. The same thoughtful eyes again. What is it thinking? W.G. Sebold: "Men and animals regard each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension." What are the people thinking? The man waits for a light to change in Tokyo, inhaling his cigarette. Prostitutes gather outside their brothel. Steelworkers are covered with grime. Monks, girls at a subway stop, kabuki dancers. Why does no one make eye contact with the camera during crowded street scenes? Where was the big Todd-AO camera? How was it concealed? Why did it not frighten a herd of springboks, standing at rest in perfect focus?
Will the aliens viewing this film comprehend some of the scenes? Tiny bright plumes in a desert are revealed as the burning oil fields of Kuwait. Mothballed B-52 bombers reach to the horizon. Manhattan. Corpses are burned on the banks of the Ganges. Will they know the donkeys are pulling a cart much too heavy for them? They will probably understand mountains, waterfalls, volcanoes. Do we? "Baraka" is paced so we can contemplate the places we will never go, the places we are destroying, the places where we might find renewal. It is like a prayer.
"Baraka" is a Sufi word meaning "a blessing, or the breath, or the essence of life, from which the evolutionary process unfolds." In Islam generally, it is "a quality or force emanating originally from Allah but capable of transmission to objects or to human beings." In Judaism, it is a ceremonial blessing. In Swahili, it means "blessing." In French slang, it means "good luck." In Serbian and Bulgarian, it means "shack." In Turkish, it means "barracks." All over the world, it is the name of a character in the "Mortal Kombat" video game."
"Baraka" will be released Oct. 28 only on Blu-ray.
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*** glad the fall has been so well received in the thread...
Of the stuff I've seen lately, The Orphanage and The Strangers are more my speed.
Of the stuff I've seen lately, The Orphanage and The Strangers are more my speed.
Of the stuff I've seen lately, The Orphanage and The Strangers are more my speed.
Of the stuff I've seen lately, The Orphanage and The Strangers are more my speed.
until I saw he was talking about the song "Killing an Arab". To me, that was typical Mick LaSalle... even if it wasn't him who wrote it.
almost every scene.Tropic Thunder disappointed me though. It got a little better as it went on, but there was almost nothing I found funny for like the first 45 minutes or so. Possibly Ben Stillers least funny comedy. Mystery Men was better than this.
Pretty much any thing the Indian cat did made me chuckle.
almost every scene.Tropic Thunder disappointed me though. It got a little better as it went on, but there was almost nothing I found funny for like the first 45 minutes or so. Possibly Ben Stillers least funny comedy. Mystery Men was better than this.
I laughed. 
Pretty much any thing the Indian cat did made me chuckle.
... always fun to see reviewers let loose on something they hate. And holy crap- I forgot all about the man in the seat graphic. Do they still do the Sunday Pink section?I could be wrong about this- my memory is bad at best- but I recall LaSalle being kind of anti-elite. Seemed to give a lot of man in seat clapping attentively or falling out of the seat reviews to the biggest, dumbest movies. held his venom for the indie-foreign films. Does that sound right? 
