Light films
I was on the road for past few weeks. And very busy doing other stuff. I usually try to keep up my goal of watching 7 films a week. But apart from IFFLA 2008 that happened in April I had hardly seen any movies in last few months. That was taking its toll on me. I feel thats the real reason behind my speeding ticket.
So the day I was back in LA I immersed myself in some serious film watching. I also realised I wanted to watch light films or action films. Films I would usually dismiss as waste of my time.
So this was my chance at watching such films.
I started my Marathon with SHOOTER. And it was a blast. It was a old school action film. They just replaced the 80s action heroes like Arnold with Marky Mark. It took me back to my childhood when there was nothing better than watching a action movie of Arnold or Stallone.
I started with THE BLACK DAHLIA. It was a very long film. 122mins. Though the film has its moments, its mostly a very average effort from someone like De Palma. The choice of Josh Harnett for the lead didn’t help. The best moments of the film belongs to Aaron Echhart. The worst part of the film was the character of Madelenine played equally horribly by Hillary Swank. I have to admit the 1st hour is not so bad. Its when the film starts to solve all the puzzles that it falls apart.
Next I watched HOLLYWOODLAND. It was from the same era in the same town of Hollywood. It was quite interesting to watch them back to back. This one was the directorial debut of Allen Coulter who has directed a lot of Sopranos. I remember HollywoodLand getting a lot of positive reviews. Esp Ben Affleck’s Acting. He even won the Volpi Cup at Venice Film Festival. I didn’t find anything special in it. Adrien Brody’s character of a Hollywood Private Eye is such a cliche. It was painfull to watch the subplots of his life.
Then I started THE BIG BOUNCE from 1969. Its based on a Elmore Leonard novel and was remade in 2003 starring Owen Wilson. This was stars Ryan O Neal & the stunning Leigh Taylor-Young. She will just take your breathe away. Esp in the 1st 15 minutes. Then the film takes over from her & it just keeps getting boring with each passing minute. After watching 50 minutes of it I decided to watch something else instead.
Having watched 3 bad films I had to redeem myself. I did more than that by paying to watch Tarsem Singh’s THE FALL. It was brilliant. Thats the kind of film i would want kids to watch. Dabba has done a good post on THE FALL. Check it out
So I watched MEAN GIRLS. Its written by the amazing TINA FEY of Saturday Night Live. I have always wanted to watch this film but whenever i’m at the library i ended up opting for something more serious. As I said before I was in a light mood & I made the most of it. I haven’t seen any high school/college movie in years, which made this experience sweet. Watch out for this Indian Actor who plays the captain of Mathelete team – Rajiv Surender. He is the best thing about the film. He has done only one film since. I wonder what happened. …
Later that night I went to the theater in the name of supporting one of the worst & most weird films I have ever seen. MISTER LONELY directed by Harmony Korine. Harmony Korine is the acclaimed writer of KIDS. Some of my friends love his work. But this film was a bit too much for me. I’m gonna try to catch his 1st 2 films soon.
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Yes I had not seen this milestone of Hollywood cinema. And I managed to fastforward through most of it. James Dean does give an amazing performance.
I ended my run with a indie film GEORGE WASHINGTON. Its a debut film of 25 year old David Gordon Green. He made this film in 1999 straight out of film school(North Carolina School of Arts). It won numerous awards & blew the critics away. Its not everyday that a 25 year old gets on Charlie Rose Show right after film school.
I won’t say much about the film except that it has moments of magic. Pure cinematic magic. But the last 20 mins just killed it for me. I think it was also Paul Schneider’s break out film. He also starred in the director’s next 2 films.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Those trailers … very interesting .. esp “mister lonely” .. u mean u dint connect with the film or u dint like it ??? it sure makes me want to see that !!!
I was in mood for some light films too … preferably action n adventure this week … and hence resulted in
Boondock saints
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144117/
fun watch .. njoyed it for sure !!! will watch it again !!!
Stand and deliver
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094027/
horton hears a who!!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451079/
comfortably makes it to the top 10 animated movies of all time for me .. may be even top 5 !!
MAN WHO COPIED
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367859/
Interesting movie with an amazing ending !!!
indianna jones (sorry kinda disappointed )
aamir
just saw it today !!! loved it !!!
@Medium
It was both. I didn’t connect with the film. And I didn’t like it. I felt like I wasted my time. Though I dont regret about money. I dont mind paying for even a bad independent work. We can’t expect everything to be great. It was just too absurd & surreal for my taste.
MAN WHO COPIED looks very interesting. Will check it out.
No interest in Indiana Jones. Never couldnt sit through more than 15 mins of it.
ok here u go…
whats the george washinton one about.. didnt get the trailor..
i havent seen much last few months, just El Topo courtesy one Raja sen post.
the summer fare has not been interesting either.. still waiting for hellboy and batman
I got black dahlia’ed into a cheap imitation. So by the time I got my hands on the real one, I fell asleep in 30. I have to go back to wicker park and this one some day. I always get confused between these guys – Hartnett, damon, Affleck, and that demi moore boyfriend whatshisface butterfly guy
Wonder how you convinced yourself to watch dahlia and hollywoodland. Guess the light films dedication is working for you. Don’t remember much about mean girls but I guess this was the one where they have all those takes on child education in foreign country n all..
Mister lonely looks neat. May be bubba ho-tep meets murakami.
George Washington looks like some nice VO shit. Well shot. Does this guy make music videos?
My current list includes – Americano, black snake moan, bobby, sliding doors, school for scoundrels, miss potter, home of the brave, crank, perfect storm, 21, mad max, some short films I got on a Film Movement DVD(no bikini, diamonds in a bucket, the sickie, the dance lesson, man in the moon), some music docu’s on birth of rock n roll, stones, REM, work of the director series – michel gondry, spike jonze. I wish I cud get this sympathy for the devil film by godard, science of sleep, and altman’s prairie home companion, Kansas city. Still to catch in the valley of elah. I am into john c reilly these days, so don’t mind anything with him. Don’t mind category includes zohan, love guru, the happening, get smart. Sarkar raj and aamir have been already spoiled for me by now.
Tonight’s list – caffeine, when stand up stood out, a little trip to heaven & some porn.
btw, any word on the happening?
@ Tushar
I’ll tell you how I managed to watch both films. I came back from a road trip & went to my friends apt to do laundry. It takes 1hr & 30 minutes. I had 2 loads. Thats when I watched both the films. Black Dahlia & Hollywoodland. Apart from them rest of the light films are turning out pleasantly nice. Except for WE OWN THE NIGHT.
Man someone needs to write a post. It was so bad. It was quite unbelievable.
Anyway seen that film?
@tushar
No the director of George Washington is not the music video type. Watch his interview with Charlie Rose.
I don’t care about THE HAPPENING. I don’t care about Shyamalam’s films or his career right now. If he does a film with no supernatural stuff, i will go check it out.
Nice. now I know what films to watch at laundry. we own the night, sid had seen it, and liked it. it was one of the strange unexpected hollywood releases in bangalore. if you consider we still haven’t had no country yet.
Sid liked WE OWN THE NIGHT?
Is it the same Siddharth pillai who writes here?
I’m still in shock!
Can you ask him to write a post about it?
LOL.
“Don’t go by the films in our list, go by the way we see them”. whatever that means….but you would know, how subjective and conditional it is. I ll ask him in my next love letter to him.
No Tushar
Some films are bad no matter from which perspective you see them. We Own the NIGHT is unbelievable. The plot is really really bad. And you put Robert Duvall & Joaquin Phoenix in the same film. Very few things in cinema can be worse than that.
lol. OK. I surrender.
Keeping with my mood of light films I watched Shoot’Em Up & Die Hard
Loved the latest DIE HARD. The action was amazing. The plot was great. Acting was good. Bruce Willis as usual rocks.
The villain in this part was a bit compared to Bruce. usually Die Hard Villains are real bad ass. Timothy Olyphant was more of a College Film bad Boy.
Shoot ‘Em Up was terrible.