Do you even read your own blog anymore?
I keep meaning to Netflix that movie.
Less than a month until Spiderman 3. And I have my doubts about yet another Die Hard, but in the preview Willis rams a helcopter with a car, so for now I'm keeping an open mind.
You are more correct than my co-blogger, as I will get around to pointing out eventually...
Just saw it. General applause in the cinema at the end. Very good movie. All go see it now. Now! (although the end was very "Return of the King"-y.)
And the lead actress is 47, if you can believe it.
I thought the gswift character was a little one-dimensional.
I saw it on a Lufthansa flight from Los Angeles to Munich...last July. In German. It was okay. The epilogue I thought was a little twee.
I could have blogged about it too! The Lufthansa had wireless internet in-flight, which was awesome. Too bad they discontinued it.
Meh, I thought the epilogue was beautiful; it wasn't exactly a naturalistic movie.
I thought the gswift character was a little one-dimensional.
Unfortunately, I don't get out to many movies, and the ones I do are usually ones I can take the kiddies along. Also, my local theatre has an awful selection. Things like Lives of Others have to get Netflixed.
Meh, I thought the epilogue was beautiful; it wasn't exactly a naturalistic movie.
Ok, we'll have to disagree on that point. ;)
Oh look, Anthony Lane gets it exactly right:
It is a shock to find the action lasting until 1993. As the events of 1984 hastened to a climax, with treachery being punished on a damp street, I was already reaching for my coat. So why press onward? Why drag us into the debris of the broken G.D.R.--into the opening of the Stasi files, and the queasy afterlife of politicians and playwrights alike? Against all odds, though, the best is yet to come: an ending of overwhelming simplicity and force, in which the hopes of the film--as opposed to its fears, which have shivered throughout--come gently to rest. What happens is that a character says, "Es ist für mich"--"It's for me." When you see the film, as you must, you will understand why the phrase is like a blessing. To have something bestowed on "me"--not on a tool of the state, not on a scapegoat or a sneak, but on me--is a sign that individual liberties have risen from the dead. You might think that "The Lives of Others" is aimed solely at modern Germans--at all the Wieslers, the Dreymans, and the weeping Christa-Marias. A movie this strong, however, is never parochial, nor is it period drama. Es ist für uns. It's for us.
Oh boy, a "Lives of Others" thread!
The "Hundred Worst Movies" posted on that site were really disappointing. The were really bad movies, either with B-list talent or big names stretched beyond their abilities, which were forgotten immediately. "Showgirls" was too good for that list. It was sort of a reminder of how much money is spent on movies that couldn't possibly have been good -- they were almost all unsuccessful attempts to find the lowest common denominator.
The "Best Movies" list was ho-hum, with lots of Brando.
Do you even read your own blog anymore?
Just not your posts, Ben.
The epilogue was necessary, I thought (and also provides the funniest moments of the film, when Dreymann discovers the made-up Lenin play). And come on, it's not like it's a happy ending! Wiesler is still the guy who delivers flyers, and Dreymann, the big GDR author, hasn't been able to write anything since the Wende. And then when he does write this big new book, it's a memoir (i.e., he's stuck in the past).
It's the details that really made the movie for me, though. This dissertator on East German drama especially enjoyed the contrast between the play at the beginning of the film and the same play at the end, now in exaggeratedly West German avant-garde style.
I haven't seen The Lives of Others, but I did have a really odd movie-related experience last night. Last weekend, our fraternity had its alumni reunion weekend, and I was having the "who have you heard from" conversation with one of the guys from my era. We remarked that neither of us had any idea what had happened to one particular brother from our time that we had both been good friends with, and who had just vanished off the face of the earth, for all we knew. No word at all in years.
So anyhow, last night I finally got around to watching John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus—which I enjoyed very much—and in the very last scene, there's a marching band. There's a three- or four-second shot of a guy playing bass drum, and once it panned off of him, I hit rewind and pause. "Damn, but that guy looks like Quince." So off I go to imdb.com and, sure enough (though they have him listed as an actress).
though they have him listed as an actress
Well as you yourself say, you don't know what "he" has been up to these many years since college...
Blume, I loved that contrast too.
It struck me as odd when I said something to Ellen about "the main character" a few days after we had seen the film and she assumed I was talking about Dreymann. Huh?
Heh. He still has a beard, though in that movie, it wouldn't be a guarantee. He does have an ambiguously gendered name.
I saw Sebastian Koch (Dreymann) in a cafe in Berlin, making out with a much younger woman. He is significantly less attractive in person.
(Sorry, it had to be done.)
Way too hott for him. But not as hott as Martina Gedeck.
14: That "Hundred Worst Movies" is a joke. The distribution is completely skewed towards the past few years (i.e. the movies that the critics can remember). And some of them just aren't that bad. Gigli (Martin Brest, 2003), as I've said before, would have been a hit at Sundance if the leads had been a couple of unknowns instead of Jen&Ben. Compare it to the truly awful and patronizing Goat on Fire and Smiling Fish (Kevin Jordan, 1999) which was the darling of the festival circuit despite its treacley appeals to sympathy for old people and frequent recourse to the most cliched cinematic tropes. If you're going to make a list of terrible films, you have to look outside of Hollywood and beyond the last 8 years to find the really horrific examples.
Ah, good. Can't wait to see this now.
Just saw The Lookout, which was good but not great. But it's nice to see that little actor dude who stars in it continuing to pick interesting roles after Mysterious Skin and Brick. Also just saw Con Air, which was so bad that I'm angry now all over again just for having typed "Con Air." I may not be able to speak to the person who recommended it.
Also: yeah, Short Bus really WAS pretty good, unexpectedly (to me); I'm surprised at how much I liked it, and that I kept watching after the opening scene. Mitchell is turning out to have a really novel sensibility that's more divergent from the same-old-thing than anything I've seen or read in a long time.
He still has a beard
Yeah, but how convincing is she?
Yeah, after Hedwig, I was willing to watch anything Mitchell did. This one didn't let down at all, and now I'm even more psyched to see his next projects, Oskur Fishman and Nigh.
24: You're kind of complaining that milk doesn't taste more like orange juice. From the site:
"With the trusty Tomatometer as our guide, we've plowed through 100 of the rankest, foulest, most misbegotten movies to hit the multiplex in recent memory."
They're not claiming its some sort of historical uber list. It's recent, and based on their existing RT ratings.
Also, why is having two dislikable and not terribly good actors in the lead roles a bad reason to pan a movie?
Actually, I'm complaining that milk doesn't taste more like oranguatans, but I can see where you would be confused.
I guess I must have scanned over the "recent memory" part. Still, as a list even of recent bad films, I think it leaves a lot to be desired. The vast majority of the bad films selected were from genres that are predictably unappealing to the reviewer demographic -- teen horror, teen romance, teen comedy (anyone else see a theme emerging?) -- so it's a bit pointless to look at them as exemplars of bad film in general.
With regard to Gigli: if the thrust of the negative criticism had simply been "Affleck and Lopez are mediocre talents at best, and both are terribly over-exposed right now, so why see a movie with either or both of them in it?" then I could see what people were getting at. But many, many critics decried it as the worst film of the year, when, as Roger Ebert pointed out, it wasn't even the worst film of that summer. There's a pretty big gap between "worst film of the year" and "why bother seeing it?"
There's a real problem with worst lists in general (another example: worst songs). If something has nothing at all going for it, it's boring, boring, boring. It has to have some kind of value to be really awful (example: "The Little Drummer Boy", which is infectious).
Pa rum pa pum pum, bitches.
Is it bad that I'm already drunk at 2:30 on Easter?
It's only bad to the extent that you are taunting those of us who are unfortunately still sober.
I hate you, apo. I haven't even had food yet, and I'm going to have to go pick up my aunt at the nursing home and then drive her back later. No booze for me.
Is there a special reason for wanting to be drunk on Easter? Awkward family time coming, something like that? If you were preparing to watch "Songs of Praise: Easter, hosted by Darryl Waltrip," you might want to fortify yourself, I suppose.
No, I guess I don't want to be drunk after all. Damn you, voice of reason!
No, I just picked up my wine store's case of the week, which was the first white case in many months, and was intrigued by the description of one of the bottles. I'm intending to sober up some before going to the in-laws for dinner and starting all over again. I should make some coffee.
which was the first white case in many months
And the mixed-wine cases weren't good enough for you? Racist.
Some of my best friends are rosés!
Is there a special reason for wanting to be drunk on Easter?
It's the weekend?
Speaking of the lives of others, this is a window into a very wierd world.
Don't take shots at B, JM. It's Easter.
There are a lot of funny lines in that article. "I'm Art Hammer, not Art Haley" might be my favorite.
a special reason for wanting to be drunk on Easter
Small children revved up by running around outside hunting eggs and stuffing chocolate and jellybeans into their loud little mouths as fast as possible?
And of course, what OFE said.
41: Whoa.
And to think just moments before my head was filled of images of my little nieces in Easter dresses.
Interracial orgies are the new golf.
Huh -- I was in the breakroom and noticed something on the cover of Details about "America's Disturbing New Sexual Fetish" -- oh boy! and open up the magazine (thus popping my hard-copy Details cherry), only to find myself reading JM's 41!