30 Day Movie Challenge - Day 17-19
Feb. 4th, 2011 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI figure that, given my track record, I'm probably not going to post over the weekend again. So I'm getting the next three days done today!
Day 17 - The best movie you saw during the last year
I don't think this was limited to new movies, just movies that were new to me. In that category, Network blew all the competition away, which is saying something. (Other contenders: Out of Africa, Let the Right One In, and The Warriors.) I have said previously that dramas aren't really what I seek out, let alone most enjoy, when I watch movies. Network would have to be an exception. I'd heard it was amazing--not just for that now cliche "I'm as mad as hell..." bit--and it was. It absolutely delivered a frankly astonishing story via some breathtaking performances and jaw-dropping lines. For all that Faye Dunaway's character was written off as a stereotype (the career woman who is an automaton where it comes to matters of the heart), she was kind of a revelation. I loved this. Loved, loved, loved.
I don't know that I could watch it again without wanting to cry, though. What has become apparent to me is that movies about the future of television never go far enough. This is something I commented on while rewatching The Running Man recently. We put just about anything on television these days, and we're losing our ability to be shocked. Network posits that a TV network would, gladly, give a man who's clearly having a nervous breakdown on his own show in order to get ratings, and this is supposed to be evidence of how depraved and freakish these executives are. Pssh, isn't that what reality TV is already? And The Running Man having people killed on TV, who risk their lives for money and (let's be honest, Arnold plot line aside) fame? Are we really so far removed from that? We have all the components on TV already--the shows about convicts, game shows, Survivor--someone will put them together eventually.
Day 18 - A movie that disappointed you most
Wow. Just wow. I only saw the original Tron a couple of years ago. It's dated but still charmingly inventive. It's a time capsule of how people imagined computers worked, yes, but it's obvious that the imagination part ran away with the reality. I doubt people thought little people performed functions within their computers, but it was a way to relate to those obscure bits of code, and it was adorable.
In short, it was everything its sequel was not: upbeat and ultimately uplifting, inventive and imaginative, traditional and yet transcendent. The sequel stripped everything from the old movie's classic man-out-of-his-element story line in favor of...what, exactly, I don't know. There's no there there in that movie. The one truly interesting concept--besides the character that Michael Sheen invented out of whole cloth--was the idea that computer code could spontaneously evolve. Then they did nothing with that. (They did almost nothing with Michael Sheen, too, but he solved that problem by warping the film around him and how awesome he is.)
Would I have been less disappointed if I hadn't been really excited going into this? Most definitely. But I was so excited because I liked Tron, the trailers hadn't looked awful, and I didn't expect Shakespeare, just something like Tron--silly, fun, endearing. I got noise, more noise, metaphysical nonsense, some more noise, and, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glvalentine pointed out, a hero with all the sense of a dizzy labrador. I was depressed after leaving this movie. That's how much it let me down.
Day 19 - Your favorite actor
This is a tricky question. Hmm. I'm going to have to split this up into several categories.
Favorite classic movie actor:
I don't even care that he's a good actor. I just love him in anything he's in. I didn't love The Philadelphia Story, but even when he was a bastard, I still loved him. I enjoy Cary Grant in movies I don't like, that's how much I like him. And when he's on--North by Northwest or Arsenic and Old Lace--he's amazing. My favorite role of his will always be Mortimer Brewster from Arsenic and Old Lace, though. Grant apparently hated that performance. He thought he was a ham. I think he's a hoot.
Favorite modern day actor:
I hope this surprises some people because I honestly surprised myself. When I think about it, I tend to go see just about any movie Matt Damon is in. Is it for him? No, not usually. He just picks projects I want to see. So perhaps it's not really that he's my favorite so much as he is my benchmark for good films.
He's certainly very good in everything that I do see. It's funny--he's not a character actor by any means, but he's a very workmanlike actor in everything he does. He commits fully to the characters he plays, but not in scary Method-acting ways. He seems to sink under the skin of the character and let the character be the center. He's not a chameleon, but he's so unpretentious that he disappears into the persona. It may help that Matt Damon isn't frequently tearing shit up in his public life outside of movies. It becomes easier to forget "movie star Matt Damon" when he doesn't have a movie star persona to interfere with what are usually deeply affecting but superficially stony characters that he plays.
Favorite role? Probably Jason Bourne in the Bourne movies. I don't know if it was the early exposure to his roles in Good Will Hunting and The Talented Mr. Ripley, but he's always had a sense of menace about him in his roles. Like, he could, at any point, do horrible violence to a person. (He'd feel really bad about it, though.) That frisson of tension carries over into films like Hereafter, where he's really mostly a sad-sack. Somehow, that improves the performance because you understand how hard it is for someone like his character not to lash out at people constantly expecting things of him.
"Favorite" actors I will see in anything because of teh LOLZ:
Day 01
Day 02
Day 03 - 06
Day 07
Day 08
Day 09
Day 10
Day 11-13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17 - The best movie you saw during the last year
I don't think this was limited to new movies, just movies that were new to me. In that category, Network blew all the competition away, which is saying something. (Other contenders: Out of Africa, Let the Right One In, and The Warriors.) I have said previously that dramas aren't really what I seek out, let alone most enjoy, when I watch movies. Network would have to be an exception. I'd heard it was amazing--not just for that now cliche "I'm as mad as hell..." bit--and it was. It absolutely delivered a frankly astonishing story via some breathtaking performances and jaw-dropping lines. For all that Faye Dunaway's character was written off as a stereotype (the career woman who is an automaton where it comes to matters of the heart), she was kind of a revelation. I loved this. Loved, loved, loved. I don't know that I could watch it again without wanting to cry, though. What has become apparent to me is that movies about the future of television never go far enough. This is something I commented on while rewatching The Running Man recently. We put just about anything on television these days, and we're losing our ability to be shocked. Network posits that a TV network would, gladly, give a man who's clearly having a nervous breakdown on his own show in order to get ratings, and this is supposed to be evidence of how depraved and freakish these executives are. Pssh, isn't that what reality TV is already? And The Running Man having people killed on TV, who risk their lives for money and (let's be honest, Arnold plot line aside) fame? Are we really so far removed from that? We have all the components on TV already--the shows about convicts, game shows, Survivor--someone will put them together eventually.
Day 18 - A movie that disappointed you most
Wow. Just wow. I only saw the original Tron a couple of years ago. It's dated but still charmingly inventive. It's a time capsule of how people imagined computers worked, yes, but it's obvious that the imagination part ran away with the reality. I doubt people thought little people performed functions within their computers, but it was a way to relate to those obscure bits of code, and it was adorable.In short, it was everything its sequel was not: upbeat and ultimately uplifting, inventive and imaginative, traditional and yet transcendent. The sequel stripped everything from the old movie's classic man-out-of-his-element story line in favor of...what, exactly, I don't know. There's no there there in that movie. The one truly interesting concept--besides the character that Michael Sheen invented out of whole cloth--was the idea that computer code could spontaneously evolve. Then they did nothing with that. (They did almost nothing with Michael Sheen, too, but he solved that problem by warping the film around him and how awesome he is.)
Would I have been less disappointed if I hadn't been really excited going into this? Most definitely. But I was so excited because I liked Tron, the trailers hadn't looked awful, and I didn't expect Shakespeare, just something like Tron--silly, fun, endearing. I got noise, more noise, metaphysical nonsense, some more noise, and, as
glvalentine pointed out, a hero with all the sense of a dizzy labrador. I was depressed after leaving this movie. That's how much it let me down.Day 19 - Your favorite actor
This is a tricky question. Hmm. I'm going to have to split this up into several categories.
Favorite classic movie actor:
I don't even care that he's a good actor. I just love him in anything he's in. I didn't love The Philadelphia Story, but even when he was a bastard, I still loved him. I enjoy Cary Grant in movies I don't like, that's how much I like him. And when he's on--North by Northwest or Arsenic and Old Lace--he's amazing. My favorite role of his will always be Mortimer Brewster from Arsenic and Old Lace, though. Grant apparently hated that performance. He thought he was a ham. I think he's a hoot.Favorite modern day actor:
I hope this surprises some people because I honestly surprised myself. When I think about it, I tend to go see just about any movie Matt Damon is in. Is it for him? No, not usually. He just picks projects I want to see. So perhaps it's not really that he's my favorite so much as he is my benchmark for good films. He's certainly very good in everything that I do see. It's funny--he's not a character actor by any means, but he's a very workmanlike actor in everything he does. He commits fully to the characters he plays, but not in scary Method-acting ways. He seems to sink under the skin of the character and let the character be the center. He's not a chameleon, but he's so unpretentious that he disappears into the persona. It may help that Matt Damon isn't frequently tearing shit up in his public life outside of movies. It becomes easier to forget "movie star Matt Damon" when he doesn't have a movie star persona to interfere with what are usually deeply affecting but superficially stony characters that he plays.
Favorite role? Probably Jason Bourne in the Bourne movies. I don't know if it was the early exposure to his roles in Good Will Hunting and The Talented Mr. Ripley, but he's always had a sense of menace about him in his roles. Like, he could, at any point, do horrible violence to a person. (He'd feel really bad about it, though.) That frisson of tension carries over into films like Hereafter, where he's really mostly a sad-sack. Somehow, that improves the performance because you understand how hard it is for someone like his character not to lash out at people constantly expecting things of him.
"Favorite" actors I will see in anything because of teh LOLZ:
Michael Sheen really doesn't deserved to be lumped into the same category as Nicholas Cage, I realize. Even when Nicholas Cage was acting his hardest in indie films (one of which won him an Oscar somehow), he wasn't as good at what he does as Michael Sheen is. It doesn't hurt that Michael Sheen is also the best at what he does and he does everything. I saw him first in Underworld. He was kind of the only person really trying to have any fun with the movie. Everyone else was so goddamned serious. The next thing I knew, he was playing Tony Blair opposite the divinity masquerading on earth as Helen Mirren, and he was so utterly infused with nebbishness, I could not believe it was the same person. Then he was a vampire in Twilight, and you'd think someone had replaced vampire blood lust with a passion for predigested scenery. Then it was back to posterity for Frost/Nixon. Then--WHIPLASH--he's nancying it up in Tron: Legacy, making for the only five minutes I was totally in love with that movie.
But the point is still valid: I'd watch Michael Sheen in anything, and I'd watch Nicholas Cage in anything. Nicholas Cage is locked in a career death-spiral, and though such things usually make me embarrassed by proxy, I cannot look away. I'm already in line for Drive Angry and I'm picking out a tent to set up in front of a theater for a midnight showing of Ghost Rider 2: Ride Harder. (I think that's actually the title, you guys.)
Day 01
Day 02
Day 03 - 06
Day 07
Day 08
Day 09
Day 10
Day 11-13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 04:19 pm (UTC)A movie that disappointed me most: Matchpoint. I'd heard such great buzz about it, it sounded interesting, and it was SO BORING!
My favorite actor: a tough call indeed! (And I'm assuming "favorite actress" is on a separate day.) So I'm going to follow your example and divide it up:
Favorite classic actor: Danny Kaye. I will absolutely see anything he's in. He was simply amazing--so funny, so engaging, so charming. Awesome.
Favorite current actor: Tougher by far. In fact, I'm not sure there's anyone current who makes me say "oh, he's in it? I'll see it, then." Even with actors I really like, I often won't see movies they've done. I think I'll play it safe here and go with Hugh Grant. I generally enjoy his performances. Ooh, no, I take it back--Alan Rickman. I'll seriously consider seeing anything he does, even if it's not normally my kind of film.
Favorite actor for LOLZ: Cage is a good one, but I'll probably go with Jason Statham here. He's always entertaining, and if he's in the movie it pretty much guarantees there'll be a lot of fun action sequences. Plus I can usually get the wife to watch it with me. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 09:02 pm (UTC)Matchpoint was interesting for one reason: the main guy was a bastard and never got his comeuppance. He's not a comically bad guy, he's a bad guy with no redeeming qualities who commits murder and has that lifestyle validated by ending the movie happily. That's kind of nuts.
I don't really have favorite actors. They're just people I like in stuff. I wouldn't go pick a fight over any of those actors. I'd defend them if someone said they weren't good, but I don't get transported by actors. Individual performances, yes, but one guy/gal over all others? Not as much.
Jason Statham is starting to bore me. Crank was dreadful, and nothing he's done since those early Guy Ritchie movies has really impressed me.