Light sabers=samurai swords.

Lucas should've sued the shit outta Kurosawa.

disney owns all swords now

Lucas apparently took the idea of C3PO and R2D2 from the two peasants in Hidden Fortress.

Even the GZA?
http://youtu.be/KBr_rAfAZQw

I was fucking around. Lucas took a lot. But he has always fessed up to it. A "homage."

Lucas needs to fess up to that hideous goiter he carries around

Yeah I know. I was replying to el Symbols talking about the stuff with the princess.

As you say, whatever else Lucas may be, he's pretty up front about his influences.

i just read somewhere (i googled) that for lucas (per his criterion confessions) "the story is told from the point of view of the lowest characters" and he took that as inspiration, but that has been the trademark of comedy since its inception, as opposed to tragedy which tells of noble characters (this since aristotle, yeah?)

the cool thing about hidden fortress is that it juxtaposes both worlds, so you have this feudal high drama while the peasants bicker along, so it's full of pathos and at the same time incredibly hilarious. but tragicomedy wasn't invented by kurosawa-- or even shakespeare whom he admired. still he (they) did it brilliantly though. lucas goddamn illiterate fucktard. alec guiness hated that movie for good reasons-- number one reason was that he read decent books and couldn't stand his crummy lines.

This was a weird movie. I enjoyed many aspects, and cringed at many aspects, but it was good.

Alec Guinness comes from a long tradition of respected British actors (see also Olivier and Anthony Hopkins), happy to accept the Hollywood $ so long as they can bitch about how beneath them it all is afterwards. He could've always stayed in the theatre or stick with the made for TV films and series his career was reduced to in the years leading up to making Star Wars. As for the crummy lines, didn't he read the script before accepting the role?

actors are whores, of course. they don't have to love their johns. btw, watching hopkins play odin in the latest thor movie was a sad thing.

and i get that star wars was a huge success. i get why, too--it gave magic to children who had already given up santa claus. and it gave nerds a new ersatz religion. in that sense it is very well done of course-- the first one, anyway, made good use of joseph campbell's ideas. but my favorite lucas movie is thx1138.

Star Wars is in that category of uber-cult movies (alongside stuff like Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Sound of Music, Jaws, Titanic, ET, Casablanca, etc) that almost transcend criticism. Not saying they can't be critiqued but it's hard knowing what criteria to use, given they now represent so much more than just movies.

the last 3 star wars destroyed any true cultism around Star Wars. Now it is just merchandise fixations

Never enjoyed this when i first saw it in the 90's. My girlfriend bought it the other day for 50p and it wasn't as bad as i first thought. Surprised to see Sheryl Lee in it.

I have alot of Kurosawa's films recorded and ready to watch, Hidden Fortress being one of them. Also working my way through every Ghibli.

Have you stumbled into Pom Poko yet?
Sheer magic.

^^Not yet, i'm maybe 2 to 3 films from it, i'm proceeding in the order they were released. I loved Laputa.

That's my all time favorite (aside from Castle of Cagliostro). I think both that and Cagliostro are the perfect cross section of his Disney/Hitchock influences, with Laputa having more of his unique vision.

wait wait-- who is the "he" of "his vision"?

laputa was miyazaki

pom poko wasn't. was it? imdb sez other name!

kindly explain.

I like the weirdness that was Paprika

Pom Poko was made by the same studio (Ghibli). At this point I was talking about Laputa and Castle of Cagliostro

Somehow that's my least favorite Satoshi Kon movie. Perhaps I'd have liked it more had I seen it before Inception. Even though Paprika came first, my familiarity with the basic concept robbed it of some of the essential novelty/bewilderment.

Ahh I felt the same way about Inception, but backwards! I found Inception very boring.

ah! okay. i missed the leap a bit. thanks!--

ps- i'll check out pom poko!

Awesome! It's very different from Miyazaki's work, but I think it's just as enjoyable.
Let me know what you think.

i read the netflix blurb and the premise sounds awesome. it's coming soon!

For some reason I thought you were talking about Ponyo?! I have seen Pom Poko and yes it was really good, festival scene is superbness. There's some creepy parts too (Raccoon impersonating human) differentiating this from other Ghibli's. Definitely one of the best.

Yea Castle Of Cagliostro was surprising, I didn't think the studio would produce something so good in the early beginnings (this being Miyazaki's directorial debut) and hit the ground running. I know they made things before this (although not as Ghibli) but i'm yet see any.

On Mayazaki, I watched Nausicaa and it's many random up-the-skirt shot scenes which just seemed weird and out of place. I mean, there's an animator sitting at his desk for hours on end drawing these perverted knicker shots to be included in this PG rated apparently innocent film. Although, maybe i'm just a massive racist towards animators because I've sat through the 4 hour long knicker-shot fest that is Love Exposure and felt no resentment: and i'm the real perv wanting live film shots. On Nausicaa though I thought it wasn't that well animated and looked bland (however, I think this was the point in this post-apocalyptic world) albeit through my unjudgeable post 8 hour bender eyes.

Bling Ring

Absolutely love this. Brilliant. Emma Watson is laugh out loud funny. "I wanna lead a country one day, for all I know"

7.5/10

The acting leaves a lot to be desired almost all the way around. That said, this is one hell of an action blockbuster and well worth seeing if you've enjoyed any of the comic book movies, as this is one of the best in recent memory.

Naussica is an unfaithful adaptation of a comic book, which is weird that it would be an unfaithful adaption because the book is also by miyazaki. the book is a lot better than the film.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nausicaa-Val...words=nausicaa

^I never knew, Thanks. I see the main protagonist is moderately dressed on the cover, one obviously musn't judge by the cover but still it's there: i'm guessing Miyazaki probably won't be commenting on it writing 'there she goes on her flying hovercraft dodging the monsters and bullets, incidentally wearing the whitest of knickers with not a blemish in sight bought from the latest Primark summer range'.

Seven volumes crammed into one 2 hour film seems overly ambitious and would start shedding light on why the film didn't work.

The film is more or less the first volume of the comic but with a different ending that makes less sense to the story overall than the one in the book.

^^ didn't know it was a comic! thanks! (buy i don't remember any panties).
--
anyway, watched

THE GREAT BEAUTY



WOW. no, this photo doesn't really capture it. this photo has little to do with the movie. beautiful movie though. think of la dolce vita if marcello had more grace and charm and had stayed with the rich friends and had written the novel the never did. really, something else. makes america looks like the fucking wild west it still is.

speaking of the wild west i also saw

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB



SPOILER WARNING, OF A KIND…

great story and great performance, but was disappointed to learn that the real ron woodroof was actually bisexual not straight as depicted in the film. guess that's what it takes to make you eligible for an oscar. boo, hollywood, boo! but still great movie in many ways, don't let my spoiler ruin you, watch it.

SPOILER END

I loved that movie!

I saw this at an art museum and it got a standing ovation from it's older/intellectual crowd at the end. No small feat.
I fucking love this movie though, the second after I left the theater I preordered the Blu Ray, I've already watched it twice since getting it in the mail.

it's fucking magnificent. was going to tell you something but i'll go on after this:


normally when i get something off netflix i'll be in a hurry to return it so i can get more stuff. this one i cannot part with-- i'm holding on to it and i'll be rewatching this week. i'm sure i'll be re-queing it soon after i send it back.

only thing i didn't get was the ramona storyline. yes, i got what happened and i saw the dad later but i didn't get jep's reaction afterwards or anything really. as if some footage had been cut maybe. puzzled me a bit. maybe i missed something (he does mention it, later, in a conversation with someone, but it's not the same.)

but anyway, fantastic stuff. the interview with the performance artist was superhilarious. everything was great, really. nothing was as expected-- i love that in a movie, the avoidance of cliches. with hollywood movies i can always tell you what's going to happen next. and what amazing camera work, hot damn.

i had never before heard of paolo sorrentino. now i have to watch everything he's done before-- which can't be as great as this, but still… and he's got a movie coming up, plus one segment in another.

Blitz - based on the Ken Bruen book. I always enjoy Jason Statham but he really seemed to be phoning it in with this one. Inspector Brandt by Bruen has a LOT of personality and Statham's has none.

One False Move - 1992 - Carl Franklin
The big names were not that big then, and have a bit deflated now: Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton (who cowrote the script).
That's a brilliant film noir, classically shot, with a well balanced story that blends perfectly the usual (the difference between an LA cop and a cop from a little town in Arkansas) and the not-so-usual-in-a-movie... The whole thing seems plausible, and all characters seem to be treated on par. A beauty.