9 posts tagged “movies”

I heard about Danny Boyle years ago.  His movie Trainspotting was all the rage when it came out.  As a recovering alcoholic, the idea of watching a movie about heroin addicts just didn't appeal to me at the time.  As a matter of fact, I didn't see any of his films, as acclaimed as they were, until I came across a DVD of Millions at the local AIDS thrift store.  I loved that movie.  Indeed, it now ranks in my pantheon of favorite Christmas movies, along with Love Actually, Miracle on 34th Street (the original) and Christmas Story.

Now Danny Boyle has made a great film.  I don't use the word great lightly.  But his depiction of the life story of three poor orphans from the slums of Mumbai Slumdog Millionaire is destined to become considered a classic.  I would not be at all surprised to see Oscars in its future.  Told in flashbacks during a sequence of episodes of a Hindi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the story is positively Dickensian in scope and ambition.  And that ambition succeeds.  From Anil Kapoor as a sleazy game-show host, to Irfan Khan (who was brilliant in The Namesake) as a police detective to each of the actors playing the children through time, there is not a single false note in the casting.

Here is a clip of the trailer, which does not do the movie justice:

 

It's only open in 32 theaters in the US so far, so you may need to keep an eye out.  (LC, it's due to be released in India in late January).   

This is a film which deserves to be seen.  After Millions, and now this film, I am willing to call Danny Boyle the new Frank Capra.  Oh, and if you do go, stay through the credits.  Trust me on this.

For one of my most recent posts,  I excerpted a very small portion of a monologue from Last Tango in Paris.  This was inherently unfair, since the one sentence I used was part of a much longer paragraph of monologue.  It also does not do justice to the entirety of Brando's monologue.  I want to show you the entire set piece.  Because of the rawness of the monologue, I am marking it as potentially offensive.

This should be required watching for any aspiring actor.  Not just for its brilliance, but to warn them as to what they may be called upon to do in order to achieve greatness.

 

Star Trek is back.

And I'm ready.

What's your favorite soundtrack?

There are some great ones out there.  Wizard of Oz, Jaws, Lawrence of Arabia, Fistful of Dollars; the list is endless.  But I can think of no movie where the score is more important than the following (written by Prokofiev):

 

Alicia de Larrocha, one of the great female pianists of the twentieth century.

And Douglas Fairbanks, the original action hero, part of the first Hollywood power couple (with Mary Pickford).  Here shown in Zorro.  He did all his own stunts.

 

First performed this date in 1792.  Here is my favorite use of the French anthem.

 

What is your favorite movie that was released in the 1980s?

It is hard for me to overstate the impact the following movie had on me at the time I first saw it.  I went to see it with a group of friends, and walked out of the theater unable to speak for several minutes.  This clip is the best I can find to give you the tone of the movie.  Unfortunately, there are no subtitles, and the movie, directed by Wim Wenders, is primarily in German.  Imagine the words you hear as the interior thoughts of the people you see on the screen.  The man with the wings is an angel listening to the people.

 

Where do you go or what do you do when you need to get away from it all?

What movies have you seen that were better than the book?
Submitted by Referencegirl.

Quite a few.  Here are some clips from a few: