What was the last film you watched? v3

i saw half of Iron Man the other night, he'd just built his suit and killed some ragheads, then i went out.

Tropic Thunder

eminently plausible.

fuck off.

watching mike bassett, football manager now. lol, england aren't very good at football

just kinda boring tbh. pretty americans meet disaster with blatant 9-11 heart-strings. meh.

more like japanese nuclear holocaust angst meets the age of the digital camcorder... I quite enjoyed it, but then I am a sci-fi geek.

I recently saw Hellboy 2 which was pretty crap, and Step Brothers, likewise (though a few funny scenes).

In other news the Hatian film-maker Raoul Peck is in the process of making a movie about the life of the young Karl Marx (I vote for the title Lil' Marx). Should be good as I don't really bother with movies anymore, I prefer the short fixes of the TV.

Primer is awesome. Pretty fucking confusing, but awesome.

Steven - I haven't seen that one yet, but the 1981 made for TV movie of the same name was pretty interesting. Some friends of mine at a different school to me actually studied it at age 15 or so...

Last movie I saw was Battle In Seattle, which, as a movie, was ok - politics obviously shit though. Much better than the last movie of its type that I saw, This Revolution.

Film that I'm most looking forward to comes out next year, Watchmen. I'll probably end up being grumpy and disappointed, but the trailer looks pretty good.

I hated Cloverfield. If I wanted to watch a badly made home movie with horrible shadowy monsters and collapsing buildings, I'd just film the student house next door.

Well, we have good films at the Infoshop and the local film festival is on, so I actually saw about a dozen films in the last two weeks. Some words on a few of them:

Military Intelligence and You - A spoof about the American military and, among other things, it's involvement in Iraq.
Another funny one about the mlitary: Full Battle Rattle. Obviously this one needed the approval of the army to get made since they film on a military site where the government set up fake Iraqi villages for military training. So, it doesn't really come from a critical angle, but does provide an interesting insight into what the military believes it's doing.

On Sunday we had a film doubleheader at the Infoshop: Battle in Seattle and Raspberry Reich. I laughed my head off with Raspberry Reich, but you need to have some twisted post-situ humour for that. Any film that exposes how "Cornflakes are Counterrevolutionary" gets a thumbs up from me. Plus you get full penetration and cum shots from masturbating Che Guevara fans who are the political sex toys of a crazy woman.

Battle in Seattle was less fun, although the crowd liked it and apparently thought it was balanced. I thought it was pretentious and politically shallow but didn't think it was tragic. It probably deserves a separate review and the more comments from participants in the events, the better,

We also showed Zanon, Heart of the Factory. It raised questions for me. I was extremely interested in the worker who was not satisfied with the way financial information was not given frequently. Also, there were repeated incidents with the women complaining about sexism but you never got to see what caused the problem or what it was about. Rather interesting stuff, but as I said, watching it raises questions.

At the film festival I saw an interesting documentary called "Be like the Others" about sex change operations in Iran. This was extremely sad - about how in Iran homosexuality is a big no-no, but sex change operations are allowed. So if you are properly diagnosed, you can get changed. Apparently, the do quite a lot of these operations. The documentary showed how the people involved were treated and how, unfortunately, some of them really didn't want these operations but felt there was no other way to have certain relationships.

Na it was a good laugh.

laurekai - The Zanon film sounds interesting. I'll have to keep an eye out for it.

Raspberry Reich is hilarious (and bizarre) indeed. The censored version is pretty funny too - George Bush and Tony Blair's heads get superimposed over the genitalia! Apparently the director had only done porn before he did that...

Simple Jack a little too close to home was it?
I understand.

burn after reading. much better than i'd been led to believe.

Asher - Bruce LaBruce had some contact in his punk days with some anarchist friends in Toronto. So he has a background in the underground let's say.

Weeler, don't worry, when the film festival is not on I occasionally take in some crap - and yes I watch "non-political" films. If people want talk about culture here, OK. My preference, if they are playing, are for documentaries and politically oriented dramas. The week before this festival was a Vietnamese festival where I saw some very interesting documentaries, including one about how the Polish state cooperates with the Vietnamese secret services to deport people.

At the film festival I saw the film "Choke" and had a few laughs with it, if you like that type of sex humour. I don't know how mainstream it is or not - so maybe it is not coming to a theatre near you. I also saw "Able Danger", which is like a spoof of spy thrillers based on a 9/11 conspiracy buff. Also some laughs, but less funny and more amateurish than "Choke".

In terms of more mainstream stuff, the last thing I saw was probably Elegy, basically because I like Roth. It's passable but you're better off reading "the Dying Animal". Still have about 7 or 8 more films before Sunday to see; maybe something will prove interesting.

uncle buck

Uncle Buck is a good film

I've Loved You So Long - frenchies, very good.
Gomorra - Mafioso story with a twist. Also good.

Bad Taste (Again).

haha I think I saw that trailer, wasn't he pulled over by the police and start calling them all imperialist racists and went off on a political rant? that ain't gonna help you get out of trouble is it.

The Fall - best eye candy, done without CGI in a couple of dozen locations around the world. Kind of like a bit older, darker, "grown up" Princes Bride. Kind of.

Yep, This Revolution is the one with Immortal Technique playing himself (and on the soundtrack too), and yep Bob, he does exactly that, and is then let go (oh so realistic )

notch8 - Bad Taste is fucking awesome. I still have a soft-spot for Meet The Feebles too.

My mate told me before that he was drunk in town and the police stopped him for some reason or another and wanted to arrest him. and he just went off on a rant about how they protect the status quo, and started talking about the concept of power and shit, and theylet him go. probably because they didn't want to have to deal with a wanker like that.

not even an anarchist, just a drunk.

I also enjoyed Brain Dead

I've been watching Studio Ghibli anime. I started with Tales of Earthsea, after reading Ursula K. Le Guin's review essay. I agree with her remark that it's not her stories but a good movie nonetheless. After that I've downloaded Castle in The Sky and Howl's Moving Castle, both good stories and beautifully animated.

Also at a friends house we watched the first two Starwars episodes on a big screen projector. Still good cheesy fun after all these years

The last movies I saw were The Battle in Seattle and Lola Montes. The former was a fairly good account of the 1999 WTO shut down, better than any Hollywood version would dare to be (it was financed with Canadian money and has an Irish writer-director.)

Lola Montes is a 1955 Max Ophuls film recently restored. It was spectacular and quite extraordinary. Ophuls is one the great auteur directors, and his portrait of a woman trapped in the system of patriarchal capitalism was very moving.

notch8 - Brain Dead is ok, but it's my least favourite of the early Peter Jackson works. If you haven't seen Meet The Feebles, you should definitely do so ASAP, it really pushes Bad Taste for the top of that list.

David - Studio Ghibli stuff is great. Saw My Neighbour Totoro recently, I think it was the last one I hadn't seen, really enjoyed it. I heard a rumour (dunno if it's true) that the next one (coming out sometime in 2009) will be the last before he retires.

That's an amazing anime, and a real children's movie if I've ever seen one. Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away are highly recommended as well, also by Miyazaki.

Princess Mononoke didn't really do that much for me, but Spirited Away is incredible.

Dunno if I'd say My Neighbour Totoro is a kids movie, I watched it with a bunch of other 20 - 25 year olds, and we were all enthralled and talking about it for days afterwards

I don't agree with the assessment of "Battle in Seattle".

The positive thing is the film sympathies with the protestors - but this film sympathizes with most of the characters there. It is rather taken from a humanistic point of view than a political one.

Nevertheless, it is a bit soft in its message, gives no real background, has too much time devoted to the character of the pregnant woman and is shallow in terms of plot and dialogue. Not tragic, but nothing great.

The anti-American stereotype about the finance behind it doesn't pan out: there are lots of American-made film that come down much harder on various elements of the system than this one. It was rather fluffy.