Let's Talk Movies #33: Star Wars: Jabba Rising...Captain America Trumps China...and MORE!

[Aussie Willy]

I saw Ghost in the Shell on Friday. Yeah not bad.

On the weekend I saw a Russ Meyer's film called Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!. What prompted me to watch this was seeing a fundraising campaign on Facebook for a documentary about Tura Satana who was one of the stars of the film. I had never really heard of her before but I had seen her before in a film called Astrozombies years ago that was dubbed with comedy voices. They gave her a line "I think I go have shower".

Anyway very interesting. You could not take it seriously. Had some really bad script and acting and in places just made no sense with regards to character motivation and actions. And the car driving scenes were pretty funny. However you could totally see why Tura was such a fascinating person. And the roles the women played were so sexual, forthright and aggressive which was totally contrary to how women were meant to behave. It reminded me of Bettie Paige and that kind of genre. So worth watching. Just suspend disbelief.

 

[Wyliefan]

Just saw it myself yesterday with the kids. First off, the cartoon version is my favorite Disney so my expectations were high. They did a good job especially on the group numbers. The opening and the tavern scenes were extremely well done and enjoyable. Like you I prefered the first half where we see the village and the other characters. The way the interactions between Belle and the Beast were handled was the weak link in this movie. The beast was not menacing and scary enough to start with and he turned too quickly into a sad puppy eyes creature. Lefou and Gaston were the highlights, great job by both actors.
Overall, I still prefer the cartoon version, more magical.

I was exactly the other way around. I liked Stevens and Watson best, and thought most of the group numbers and Lefou and Gaston (especially Gaston) were better in the animated movie! Evans and Gad did fine, but I missed the other Gaston's deep voice and the other Lefou's extreme shrimpiness. I did think the "Belle" number was really well done, though, and made the closed-mindedness and claustrophobic nature of the village feel much more real.

 

[smurfy]

I saw 'Life' and enjoyed it. Very well made, good cast. Story is a bit typical, run of the mill, but I loved the ending - it stopped being predictable. I saw it in matinee, would recommend, or at least see on cable.

 

[Vash01]

Saw The Zoo Keeper's wife today. Liked it a lot, though I had to close my eyes during some scenes. Will Jessica Chastain finally receive her Oscar? The early release could hurt her chances but I wish more films were released early in the year.

 

[lmarie086]

I just got back from Beauty and the Beast, and I have very mixed feelings on it. There were parts of it that were so, so good - I actually loved the changes from the animated version (which was my all time favorite movie as a kid) because they all really added to the story, I thought. But the movie kept falling flat for me in moments that seemed like they were really supposed to be poignant. Overall, it lacked emotional depth for me. I liked it better than I thought I would, but I think I'd give it a B-.

 

[Cachoo]

I could not sleep and happened to turn to a channel that was showing a documentary called "Living On One." Four college-aged American men went to rural Guatemala to see if they could lived on one dollar a day. The subject matter is grim but the film is not grim at all because the people they filmed were not grim though they were well aware of the obstacles in their lives. I was heartened by the kindness and openness and willingness to share when they have close to nothing. And I was frustrated because they want to be able to break that cycle of poverty so badly but it is like scaling Mt. Everest without oxygen---nearly impossible.

And it made me sicker than ever to think about people like Trump and what they say about these folks; disgusting, ignorant..and so wrong it seems obscene. I would love to see Donald manage in their shoes for a couple of months.

 

[Vash01]

I saw the trailer of the documentary that is a sequel to 'An inconvenient truth'- due to release in July, I think. Can't wait to see it.

I saw two movies on DVD this weekend.

1) Charlie Wilson's war. The subject was very interesting but the movie felt flat. I remember liking it when it came out in theatres. One thing that struck me was that after the US helped the Mujaheddin (SP?) defeat the Russians they turned on us in 2001.

2) The edge of seventeen. I had missed it when it was running in the theatres. Good overall, but my expectations were sky high because of the comments here. It came up a bit short for me because of that, but I am sure it was much more fun in theaters. Hailee Steinfeld was very good.

 

[Buzz]

Marvel just released the first trail for Thor Ragnarok!!! The sneaky devils!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ODqPGttjjOY

 

[MacMadame]

Actors like Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and Johnny Depp are all people who are in positions to say no to roles that should be played by people who aren't white.

But Swindon and Johansson are women who also are under-represented in Hollywood. Swinton, in particular, is older and meaty, unusual roles for older women are sparse.

I think that artistic vision requires us to accept changes from source material. This includes casting women in parts written for men, black people playing parts written for white people, etc.

And if that's okay, in an ideal world going the other way around would be okay too. But we don't live in an ideal world. Which means many of these casting decisions are not done with good intent. Or the intent is good, but the person making the decisions isn't self-aware enough to realize their decision came about because of prejudice or ignorance.

But, until the day that people make casting decisions because of artistic vision and not because of short-sighted ideas of what is acceptable to the public or just having outdated ideas of what the world and people are like, I don't blame the actors who are trying to get jobs playing good parts but the people on the other end who are doing the casting.

Now, if a rich actor who has lots of choices wants to turn down a role to make a point, that's a bonus. But it's not required.

 

[watchthis!!]

100 Movies You Need To See Before You Die (100 - 80)
http://entertainment.ie/cinema/news/100-Movies-You-Need-To-See-Before-You-Die-100-80/392228.htm

I guess they're going to release their list twenty films at a time. So many documentaries at the beginning of their list that I thought the whole list was actually the 100 best documentaries that you need to see. But then South Park was listed at #89 and I felt pretty sure that it was NOT a documentary. I can see why Toy Story and Up made the list, but...Fritz The Cat?

Rarely can you look to the original author. They sell the rights to their products long before a screenplay is ever written, let alone casting and production decisions are made. The deal is mainly financial and they mostly have no input into the final product, unless they are able to negotiate some kind of producer role.

If others are saying the rules are different for lesser-known actors, would it be the same in regards to authors? Because I was thinking about J. K. Rowling and I believe when she sold the rights to the Harry Potter books, she had it in her contract that she would have a certain amount of control over things, including casting. If I'm not mistaken, all actors who appeared in every Harry Potter movie was from the United Kingdom? So she was able to determine who would portray the characters she had written...so she kept the power in her own hands as far as what happened to her work.

 

[Cachoo]

OMG there is a film short there I have not seen since college days when I was drunk or high and laughed through the film which is actually very clever and charming. I'm going to watch "The Dot and the Line" again but I have to tell you that in my college days it was the squiggle that made me laugh.

 

[Artistic Skaters]

We saw The Last Word with Shirley MacLaine & Amanda Seyfried. A cantankerous retired businesswoman hires a young obituary writer so she can control the final sentiments about her life before her death. Comedy ensues as they work together to determine the most important content for her obituary. Shirley MacLaine (like Lily Tomlin in Grandma) is getting along pretty well in her golden years so she dances across the screen in this one. It's a totally predictable but enjoyable film with a great soundtrack.

 

[PeterG]

I watched The Last Airbender last week and it was WAY better than I expected it to be. I remember it being trashed so much that I thought it must be AWFUL. But I quite liked it. It's a beautiful film to watch, it's worth seeing just to enjoy the visuals. The cast is decent with Dev Patel being the standout. Not surprising to see him end up getting an academy award nomination with early work like this and Slumdog Millionaire. Once again I'm missing the imdb message boards because when I googled The Last Airbender, one search options was "The Last Airbender 2", so I'd like to see what posts existed (or could exist) about a possible sequel. And to see where the dislike for the movie came from. Not that I'd agree with what most people said, but there'd be a few posts that would have given me food for thought.

But Swindon and Johansson are women who also are under-represented in Hollywood. Swinton, in particular, is older and meaty, unusual roles for older women are sparse.

Meaty as in anorexic? Google says Swinton is 5'10" and 126 pounds. Too skinny!

 

[Buzz]

Part of the hate for The Last Airbender is because of what we now call "whitewashing" but I remember really enjoying the movie. But the latest article I could find does seem to indicate there maybe some hope yet for a sequel.
https://moviepilot.com/posts/3542674

 

[Jay42]

Tilda Swinton's career is full of unusual roles, including playing men(Suspiria from what I've read. At least at some point she's fully costumed as an old man), androgynous (Constantine) characters and roles originally written for men (Snowpiercer.) Not to mention playing the incredibly old Madame D. in The Grand Budapest Hotel. She is absolutely someone I would have hoped would have more to say about whitewashing in Hollywood.

Scarlett Johansson tends to stray away from anything that could court controversy. She pretty skillfully dodged questions about the wage gap after the Sony hacks so I suppose expecting her to do anything about whitewashing is probably too much.

Jessica Chastain seems to be more willing to talk about this than a lot of other actresses. She also makes a point of working with female directors which is so great because they are out there and they don't get enough attention.

 

[Japanfan]

Tilda Swinton's career is full of unusual roles, including playing men(Suspiria from what I've read. At least at some point she's fully costumed as an old man), androgynous (Constantine) characters and roles originally written for men (Snowpiercer.) Not to mention playing the incredibly old Madame D. in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

She took the risk of playing in the lead for a feminist film called 'Orlando' by Sally Potter - the film didn't do that well, although the film-maker did go on to make the more successful 'Yes'.

She also took the risk of playing in 'We Need to Talk about Kevin'. All I can say about that film is if you haven't seen it, don't - unless you enjoy psychological pain.

Now that I'm mentioned 'Yes' I'm going to highly recommend it. It stars Joan Allen, and all the dialogue in the film is in iambic pentameter. I thought that would be tedious prior to seeing the film, but it was brilliant.

'Yes' is an entirely engaging, life-inspiring and uplifting movie. It is one of my top ten favorites of all time.

 

[Tesla]

(Suspiria from what I've read. At least at some point she's fully costumed as an old man)

Holy shit! They're remaking this film?! How the hell are they going to get away with all that violence? I don't see how it can compare to the original.

 

[agalisgv]

While I understand that producers are in the business of making movies that make money, I think society is reaching a point where they want to see more diversity in movies and they want to see characters who aren't meant to be white played by people who aren't white.

I think the issue is a little different in The Great Wall and Ghost in a Shell. Both are Asian movie productions that are trying to break into US audiences. But Chinese movies have very different feels and tones to them than US films. Ditto with Japanese films. There is much more fatalism in Asian films generally than you find in US films, and US audiences tend to prefer good winning out in the end.

So the introduction of US actors serves as a bridge for US audiences to see and appreciate Asian made films that don't adhere to traditional Hollywood formulae. And that's seen as less intrusive than rewriting the stories to conform to US movie expectations (as I believe happened in Snowpiercer). So I think in these particular cases, it's less about a role and more about trying to widen audiences of Asian produced films to US audiences.

Johnny Depp as Tonto was probably Tim Burton's doing, but it still wasn't good decision making, especially when you consider Hollywood's history of casting white people as First Nations people.

The Comanche Nation sure liked it. And the Lakotas sure liked Dances with Wolves (though that's a slightly different phenomenon). That's largely because both were heavily consulted and involved throughout production. Native nations are less concerned about who is playing what, and more about how Native culture and history is represented overall (e.g. The Revenant).

That's not to dismiss your point, but rather put it in perspective.

Should also point out people of color frequently play roles that were either written for whites, or at least not originally envisioned as a person of color role. I think that's fine. Can you imagine someone besides Morgan Freeman playing Red in Shawshank Redeption? But that was a role explicitly written for a red-haired Irish man (hence the nickname Red). How many times has Will Smith played in roles that were originally supposed to be for white actors?

And then you have the phenomenon of people like Ben Kingsley being accused of not being being sufficiently Indian enough to play Gandhi. Or Chinese actors criticized for playing Japanese characters (and vice versa). Or Omahas playing Lakotas (Rodney Grant), and Cherokees playing Pawnee (Wes Studi). Or if someone is sufficiently Native to play Native characters (Lou Diamond Phillips).

To me these are discussions that have as their central concern economic justice rather than artistic representation. And that might be why people want to carve out exceptions for starving actors.

 

[watchthis!!]

Last week I watched the re-make of Arthur. I don't remember the Dudley Moore original, although I assume I saw it sometime around when it came out! Just saw this one at the library and thought I'd give it a shot as it has a good cast. Russell Brand seems to be playing himself. I don't see that much energy on his part (or the director's) to create a character rather than let Brand just do some of his schtick for most of the movie. Jennifer Garner plays the women he's supposed to marry in order to keep his wealth and she's probably the least menacing villain in all of movie history. This isn't a swipe at Garner, I just think they wanted to keep the tone of the movie light, so there was little expectation for her to go all eville. Helen Mirren is wonderful, I kept wishing they'd just hand the movie over to her and making Brand's character the supporting one. But the biggest surprise for me was Great Gerwing, playing Brand's love interest and she's incredibly sweet and endearing here. Her acting choices overall seem to be too quirky for me, but here she's perfect. Lastly, it was a shock to see three-time Oscar nominee Nick Nolte in almost a walk-on role...it felt like he has six lines for the entire movie.

The trailer for the Arthur remake (2011): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtTVquZ2TFk

 

[Jay42]

Holy shit! They're remaking this film?! How the hell are they going to get away with all that violence? I don't see how it can compare to the original.

I honestly don't know anything about it besides it's existence, which I only found out about when people started doing the whole "guess who this actor is" game with pictures of Tilda Swinton costumed as an old man.

I think the issue is a little different in The Great Wall and Ghost in a Shell. Both are Asian movie productions that are trying to break into US audiences. But Chinese movies have very different feels and tones to them than US films. Ditto with Japanese films. There is much more fatalism in Asian films generally than you find in US films, and US audiences tend to prefer good winning out in the end.

Ghost in the Shell is produced by Paramount and Dreamworks. While the source material is Japanese the movie wasn't produced by an Asian company.

My original post about this did point out that the situation with The Great Wall was different. However there was a perception of whitewashing with Matt Damon's casting in The Great Wall which I attempted to address but possibly didn't do as well as I meant to. Which is why I did mention that The Great Wall probably could have been marketed better than it was because it wasn't until I saw people go into detail about plot points in The Great Wall and some behind the scenes information about why Matt Damon was cast that I saw why it isn't an example of whitewashing.

 

[PeterG]

Facebook: Name a movie everybody liked but you didn't.

Me: The Lord of the Rings (whole trilogy, and didn't even start with The Hobbit...)

 

[VGThuy]

Saving Private Ryan. I'm not a big fan of the more popular Spielberg films.

 

[manhn]

American Beauty. Carol. Elizabeth. Goodfellas. Manchester By the Sea. Zero Dark Thirty. Birdman. The Notebook. The Queen. Brooklyn. Braveheart. Bridge of Spies.

 

[Buzz]

Here are just a few:

Avatar
Titanic
Logan
Notebook (or any movie based on a Nickolas Spaks book!)
Gone With The Wind
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Shawshank Redemption
The Godfather
American Hustle
La La Land (or most movies ever nominated for best picture. LOL)

 

[Tesla]

I honestly don't know anything about it besides it's existence, which I only found out about when people started doing the whole "guess who this actor is" game with pictures of Tilda Swinton costumed as an old man.

I didn't know until I went to Google and looked up Tilda Swinton. I thought you meant she was in the original movie. I wanted to know who she played.

 

[Japanfan]

Facebook: Name a movie everybody liked but you didn't.

Me: Forrest Gump. Although I actually never did watch - I do not like Tom Hanks one bit and knew I would hate.

How about movies that everyone hated, but you loved.

Me: Dennis Hopper's film 'The Last Movie'. Apparently me and the jury of the Venice Film festival are the only one who liked it - I have watched it several times, and people I've had watching it with me have screamed because they hated it so much. And the Venice jury gave it a best picture of the year type of award. I don't remember precisely what the award was, but it was major.

Hopper made the film at his drug and alcohol bottom, playing an American bumming around Mexico in a drug and alcohol haze. Kris Kristofferson and some other notable actors made an appearance in the film, all loaded at the time.

Sounds terrible, right?

Then there is a scene in which Hopper is driving a trunk down a road, and a piece of scrap type paper fills the screen with the words 'Scene Missing' written on it in a childish scrawl. Then we go back to Hopper driving the truck.

Getting worse, right?

But to me there was a really spiritually poetic quality to the film. I felt that Hopper was looking into the very darkest depth of his soul to find a rhyme and reason for living. To this day a scene of a little girl playing in a field of yellow flowers remains vivid in my mind.

No accounting for taste, as they say.

 

[Japanfan]

There is much more fatalism in Asian films generally than you find in US films, and US audiences tend to prefer good winning out in the end.

Your comment on fatalism brings to mind the Zhang Yimou film 'Ju Dou' to mind - described as "an erotic tale of forbidden tale passion".

It was made in the 90s, and really is a must-see. It stars the wonderful Gong Li.

Yimou was also the director who made 'Raise the Red Lantern' about concubines, a better-known work and another excellent film.

This thread is bringing back all my favorite films to mind, so I better start keeping a list.

 

[Buzz]

Thor Ragnarok has become Marvel/Disney's most watched trailer ever for the first 24 hours after release with 136m views! The record however is held by New Line Cinema's IT followed by Fate of the Furious, Thor Ragnarok is third overall.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/he...s-marvel-disneys-watched-ever-24-hours-992978

 

[Nan]

Facebook: Name a movie everybody liked but you didn't.

Me: The Lord of the Rings (whole trilogy, and didn't even start with The Hobbit...)

Peter, you break my heart.

Me: Forrest Gump

 

[VGThuy]

If you guys were filmmakers, which existing films would you think would best match your style? Feel free to give multiple films and even tonally different films as I'm sure people here would love to shoot different sorts of films.

I'd have to go with:

Edward Yang's Yi Yi (my favorite film of all time)
Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Millennium Mambo
Fellini's Nights of Cabiria
Sofia Coppolla's Lost in Translation
Jane Campion's The Piano and Bright Star
Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata
and I know I may get flack for this below choice but...
Woody Allen's Another Woman/and aspects of Hannah and Her Sisters, especially the Dianne Wiest scenes.