We talk about the shootings in AZ, The Pharmacist that denied bleeding medication to a woman because she suspected she had an abortion, the war on drugs and how they handle it in Amsterdam,this anti- atheist billboard. and the rebuttal
We watched the Fall and Bottle Rocket. Tom Thinks The Fall was a little confusing and gives it a 2.5, Cecil likes it and gives it a 3.6. Tom loves everything Wes Anderson giving Bottle Rocket a 3.8, Cecil hates it and gives it .25.
Two movies are the way to go. We are watching Up In the Air and Toy Story 3
Next time vote for TWO:
1. Inception
2. How to Train Your Dragon
3. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
4. Knight and Day
5. Last Airbender
Also Free Ham sent this in. Hi-Larious:
Listen to the show:
Advertisement
How to Train Your Dragon, ’cause it’s absolutely marvelous.
The Last Airbender, ’cause I want to read your review.
Ditto Andrew – even though I don’t actually want to torture you, I feel an urgent need to hear your skewering of Last Airbender.
Inception and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Inception and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
I vote for Inception and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Good luck with Up In The Air. It is the feel good movie of the decade for masochists. It is exactly like an anti-suicide psa where at the end the narrator says, “On second thought, you’re right, nobody will ever love you. Also, you’re fat. Good night.”
Oh, good times.
That was the most dead-on description of how I felt at the end of Up in the Air, except it was a really well-done anti-suicide PSA until the twist ending it with “On second thought, you’re right, nobody will ever love you. Also, you’re fat. Good night.” I had to just sit there for a while after the credits ended in depressed silence, analyzing my own sh*t life along with admiring a well-done film. I then had a bit of good scotch and then called a film-making friend to share a “WTF was that?!?” conversation.
The strangest bit is, this is almost the same reaction I had to _The Proposition_, but not with nearly as direct a comparison to my own life and a little more proper stunned awe.
Inception (because I think there’s much in this flawed film worth thinking about and building upon) and Last Airbender (because I am a mean bastard).
Forgot a couple of notes:
1) I’m with you on drug legalization. Make it all legal. If possible, make alcohol less attractive than pot. I’d much rather have people who are buzzed on pot giggling and munching chips than people who are buzzed on alcohol leaping toward anger and awful judgment.
2) While I agree it’s not realistic that guns will be outlawed in the U.S., I wish that were not so. I cannot tell you how nice it is to live in a country nearly devoid of guns. If a gun is *fired anywhere in Japan*, that story leads every news broadcast. Six kids can be shot in a day in Chicago and it doesn’t merit a mention. That’s sick. I love it when the NRA says, “If owning a gun is made a criminal act, only criminals will own guns” to which I’d like to answer, “That’s the way it works here and nobody gets shot.” While I’m sure you guys are both responsible, upstanding gun owners, I don’t think it would reduce you in any way to be rid of your guns. I think the same of the U.S. as a whole.
I really wasn’t looking forward to watching “The Fall”; a vanity piece by an ex music video director who prefers to be known simply as “Tarsem”. He threw millions of his own dollars into this movie (it shows), but I think the gamble paid off. I enjoyed it a lot, surprisingly, and agree with pretty much all the points the pair of you raised.
I thought the kid was great, I thought her interpretation of “The Indian”, was clever, I liked the joke that Darwin got all his ideas from his monkey, Wallace,(after Alfred Russell Wallace of course), and I liked the way the ending made me feel uncomfortable. I even liked her little narration at the very end (if she didn’t actually see the stuntman himself in those movies then perhaps she saw movies that had been made before his accident). It sure isn’t perfect, and there’s a definite case of style over substance when you sweep away all the tinsel and glitter, but I thought it was a very pleasant surprise.
I haven’t seen Bottle Rocket, but you can bet I’m going to root it out after listening to that!
This whole second amendment, “right to bear arms” thing that has you guys in such a spin over there…if you’d only behaved yourselves in the late 1700′s and realized that us lovely Brits weren’t so bad after all then perhaps you wouldn’t be in this mess.
Just think, you could now be enjoying the sight of your local Police Officers wearing hats that look like pert breasts, and fighting crime with polished wooden sticks. What fun!
I guess the founding fathers didn’t have the foresight to see that some of the people given that right in the future might be as mad as a box of frogs.
That DADT vid, I swear I had to watch it five times before I knew what the hell was going on. Her voice, her coat, her weird misplaced grins, the stream of fucking nonsense coming out of her mouth all confused me terribly. Seriously, it was like listening to someone flick through a dictionary and say words out loud at random.
My two movie choices are Inception, and Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.
Totally agree with you about drugs and alcohol. Totally agree with you about guns too, come to think of it.
Guns will never be banned of course, but I think that some of the problem lies with the ease with which they can be acquired. I’ve no idea what the gun ownership rates are per capita in the USA, but I’m guessing that if you’re pissed off/psychotic/fucking stupid (take your pick) it’s relatively easy to go and procure a firearm pretty damn quickly when compared to the UK, for example.
If you’re pissed off/psychotic/fucking stupid over here, and feel the urge to shoot someone, then whatever emotions you have for doing that will have probably worn off by the time you actually managed to get your hands on a gun.
Ease of availability MUST play some part in this problem.
I like what Dan Carlin says about gun control and abortion. The Right uses abortion to get their base riled up while the Left does the same thing with gun control. Candidates keep getting elected because of these stands, yet mysteriously, nothing ever changes. In fact, legislators know that if contributions are down, the most surefire (ha!) way to get money rolling in is to bring these hot-button issues to the fore, usually by inventing stories of the nefarious plans by the Other Side to Infringe on Your Rights.
This kind of cynical baiting would be lots more tolerable, though, if America weren’t such a congenitally violent place. Rugged individualism and all that. Prying cold dead fingers, etc.
At least I’ve got the right to choose. I’d hate to have to shoot myself in the uterus with a black-market Sig Sauer to abort.
whoops…pressed “reply” for my movie post.
voting for Last Airbender and Knight and Day
I have to disagree with the argument that The Fall is purely a matter of style over substance. Yes, it’s certainly very stylized, but in my opinion it also happens to be quite substantial–certainly more substantial than most other movies out there. Cecil, I thought you were very insightful when you mentioned the notion of sacrifice during the climax of the film. In my view, that’s what the entire movie is about: Sacrifice for the sake of the art and the joy that can bring to others. The theme runs throughout the film in a way that’s beautiful, poetic, and never heavy-handed.
I also finally watched Bottle Rocket. I have now seen every Wes Anderson movie, and I still don’t know what to make of him. However, I will say the one movie I enjoyed most from him by far was Fantastic Mr. Fox. It may even be good enough to bring Cecil around. Maybe.
Well, it’s interesting to see The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo on your nominations list. I have not yet seen the film. but I did browse IMDb’s keyword page just to get a sense of what the movie will be like. I have to say, it is the single most bizarre list of keywords I have stumbled upon–ever. Some of the keywords include “Brother Sister Incest,” “Taught How To Kill By One’s Father,” “Bestiality,” “Cutting Fat From A Body,” “Throwing Kerosene Into Someone’s Face,” “Kicked In The Crotch,” “Rape With A Dildo,” and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I suppose I’ll vote for it for the curiosity factor: My first vote goes to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
My other vote will go to The Last Airbender. That film generated a lot of praise for the TV show it was based on, despite the ire for the movie adaptation. Although I rarely watch TV and never watched animated TV, I checked out the show because of the ubiquitous positivity for it. It was, indeed, a lot of fun and well worth the time. As expected, the movie was not, although I have to say it was oddly amusing to see some of the worst acting I have ever seen in my life joined with beautiful costumes, set pieces, and special effects. I’d like to hear your take on it.
I choose Knight & Day (is Cruise the new Costner?) and Girl with the Dragon tattoo
I think my favorite part of Bottle Rocket was Dignan getting his ass kicked at the bar. Caw-coo Caw-coo. Throughout the movie these guys are constantly getting knocked back down to earth, but like true American Idiots they get up and dust themselves off and try try again…And fail.
Dignan: Bob Mapplethorpe, potential get-away driver: go!
Bob: Well, I think there’s a real air of mystery about me.
Dignan: Don’t complicate it. Your number one strength is you have a car you can provide. Sell yourself! Start over. Ready, go!
Bob: Okay, alright. I’m a risk taker! I’m growin’ an entire crop of marijuana plants in my parents back yard! I think that shows…
Dignan: Wait, you’re growing an entire crop of marijuana in your back yard?
Bob: Dignan, look. I’m just not very good at this selling-yourself stuff, okay? So, I’m just gonna tell you the truth. I really wanna be a part of this team. And I’m the only one with a car.
Dignan: That’s good. That’s good. ‘Cause that hits me right here.
Bottle Rocket gets me right here…
The Fall is one of my top ten all time movies. Interestingly enough, zero CGI were used in the making of the movie and for the most part the actors are unheard ofs, and if you consider the Mystic scenes (Tree and Birds) or Odious’s knights coming out of the mazework it’s quite an accomplishment. I thought the juxtaposition between the world as the girl Alexandra wanted it (happy, overcoming, trusting, romantic) and the world as Roy knew it (depressing, failure, jealousy, heartbreak) was so interesting. In the end, Alexandra optimism and goodness (despite the revelation about being driven from her homeland and her father and being tricked by Roy) win out, and Roy rises from the water. It soberly reminds me of the President talking about Christina Green, the young girl shot down in Tucson, and that while we shouldn’t delude ourselves about the reality of the world, we should avoid being jaded and cynical.
Ha! funny that y’all think I sound like Justin Wilson. When I read British Andy I hear Noel Gallagher and imagine I’m reading the subtitles…
*Baddum Tish !
Inception – because it was fun, and possibly the only original movie last year
and…..
The Last Airbender, because fuck you guys. Just kidding. I just want to hear more vitriolic ranting. That’s why I love your show.
May I point out that the votes are currently:
Last Airbender – 6
Inception – 5
Girl in the Dragon Tattoo -5
So now is the time to vote or convince someone else to change their vote.
OK, I’ll even it up for a 666. Watch all three, you S&M freaks! (Oh wait, that’s so 80s.) Watch all three, you B&D freaks!
Although you could now go for the Anti-Anti-Christ thing and just cover the remaining two. How’s that for a twist?
I change my votes to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and ….Last Airbender.
In the States does the term “Bender” have the same connotation as it does over here?
Let’s go with Inception and How to Train your Dragon
Damn. I’ve been watching the Egyptian Riots live streamed on Aljazeera.com. Powerful stuff. Here’s a clip of folks protesting, thought some of you might be interested
Inception, and I don’t care what else. I’ll post more once I get a chance to read up on the comments!