What I Watched This Week (w/e April 6th 2008)

Should this be a blog or a discussion topic?

DVD:

No Country for Old Men - I loved it at the cinema and I love it on DVD. The Coens are well and truly back on form and Anton Chiguh is one of the great cinematic villains. :D

A Place in the Sun - It deserved every one of the six Oscars it won. The story's great and the chemistry between Montgomery Clift and a stunning Liz Taylor is palpable. :D

The Age of Innocence - Sumptuous costumes, production and set design. An excellent performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, but not quite Scorsese's best. :)

The Haunting - A great 'haunted house' film that scares by showing nothing and features a terrific performance by Julie Harris, driven mad by guilt and sexual frustration. :D

The Thomas Crown Affair - An enjoyable romp, but I actually prefer the 1999 version, which is smarter and has a more satisfactory ending, despite not having Steve McQueen driving a dune buggy around the beach! :)

Funny Games - Michael Haneke continues where Benny's Video left off, with his comment on cinematic violence and how the viewer is complicit in what is produced. Some of it is hard to watch, but his assertion that you watch as much as you feel is necessary seems a bit OTT - I watched it to the end because I wanted to see how it finished! It will be interesting to see Haneke's English language shot-by-shot remake to see if it offers anything new. :)

Laura - One of the original film noirs and one of the best. Voice over, intrigue, murder, odd composition - it has the lot. :D

Cinema

The Orphanage - Belén Rueda, who was so good in The Sea Inside, puts in a thoroughly moving performance as a mother who returns with her husband and adopted son to the orphanage where she grew up. Her son, Simón, begins to see and talk to his invisible friends - but are they? Similar to The Innocents, The Others and Dark Water, this is a really moving and creepy ghost story, with some excellent jumps. Guillermo del Toro has lent his name to this for a reason and Juan Antonio Bayona is a name to look out for. :D

Television

European Rugby:
Sale vs. Brive - Brive are obviously concentrating on the Top 14 rather than the Challenge Cup and the weather was hardly to their liking but this is to take nothing away from Sale who, led by a superb performance by Luke McAlister, put the French side away in terrible conditions at Stockport.
London Irish vs. Perpignan - The Exiles employed a smart game plan to beat the Catalans: play the game in their half, dominate the breakdown and take your chances. Simple really, but they executed it perfectly.
Gloucester vs. Munster - As in many of their recent games, Gloucester simply did not 'front up' and, when Chris Paterson, 'Mr. Reliable' himself, missed his three relatively simple shots at goal, Munster almost visibly grew in confidence with a victory made by their brilliant centre partnership and Paul O'Connell, who looks back to his best. They'll be difficult to beat.
Newcastle vs. Castres - This is the only competition in which Newcastle had any interest, unlike Castres who, like Brive, are concentrating on the French league. The result was a surprisingly scrappy game with a lot of ball going to ground but Newcastle were much better in the second half and deservedly progressed to a semi-final clash against Harlequins.
Toulouse vs. Cardiff Blues - The favourites and current leaders of the Top 14 went ahead early but only went into half time with a 6 point lead. Guy Noves' team talk and substitutions paid off and they thoroughly dominated the Blues, especially in the last quarter and look good for a successful trip to Twickenham to face Irish.
Saracens vs. Ospreys - So much for a Toulouse-Ospreys final; Saracens obviously learnt lessons from their 30-3 defeat to the Welsh province in the EDF Cup two weeks ago and put the Ospreys on the back foot, from where they had difficulty playing.

Amir Khan vs. Martin Kristjansen - The WBO rankings are a joke and there is no way that Kristjansen deserved the #2 slot - he is a weak puncher and had only fought out of Denmark once before. He was made for Khan to look good against and the Bolton quicksilver put on a polished display to put him in prime place for a shot at the WBO title once Nate Campbell and Joel Casamayor have sorted out true ownership.

F1 Bahrain Grand Prix - Massa needed to score points and he did, bagging ten with an accomplished drive from start to finish. The Ferraris were the quickest and best cars on show but the improvement shown by BMW Sauber will worry McLaren and the Tifosi.

Louis Theroux's African Hunting Holiday - Theroux is one of the great interviewers with his disarming nature meaning he can ask probing questions without appearing rude but he met his match with one of the men who organise hunting holidays and breed animals to be killed. There was a really tense moment when he had his crossbow trained on a warthog and I'd no idea whether he was going to pull the trigger. Top stuff.

Headcases - This wants to be Spitting Image but it's not even in the same league as 2DTV. The Incredibles-esque animation doesn't help and it's just not funny or clever enough.

Idiocracy - An interesting premise, badly executed, with no laughs. :(

Kiss of the Vampire - A really boring and hammy Hammer vampire flick, where you see someone with fangs in the opening credits and then not a glimpse of a vampire until near the end. >:(

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover - Visually stunning, great score. Michael Gambon is evil incarnate and the ending is almost unbelievable. I was slightly distracted by the little man in the corner doing sign language, though! :)

Your Opinions and Comments

10 / 10
I love reading this every week. This is most definitely blog material.

Last night I surprised myself by watching Sahara!

That was fine action adventure that was easy on the brain, much like the boy's own adventures that used to be made in the eighties, with the bad guys getting their moustache twirling comeuppances, and the good guys wise-cracking their way to bombastic success.

Also after Raise The Titanic, I never considered that I would actually enjoy a Dirk Pitt movie.
posted by Jitendar Canth on 7/4/2008 11:39
I'm not sure what's going to happen next week when I 'attach something to this item', hopefully the new post will appear at the top, moving this week's down. It'd be interesting to have some way of seeing how many times it's been read. It's something that I'd wondered about when there had been none or only a few replies and was curious as to how many people just read it.
posted by David Beckett on 7/4/2008 13:23
This week I have mainly been watching:

VINCENT PRICE BOX SET (R1 IMPORT - 4 x flipper discs / 7 movies & one documentary disc) - Great stuff! From the Corman camp of of Poe adaptations, 'Tales of Terror' and 'Twice Told Tales' (with a great Peter Lorre performance), to the sixties surrealism of the two Dr. Phibes movies, to the delicious black comedy of 'Theatre of Blood' and the classic 'WItchfinder General', this Price fest has been (wait for it) ....priceless! Fangtastic!!


Also - enjoyed the guilty pleasures of more 'I Dream of Jeannie', 'Hogans Heroes', 'Get Smart' and the cheesy 'Hart to Hart'...all thoroughly enjoyable!
posted by Stuart McLean on 8/4/2008 21:50
Definitely Blog territory. I'd do a separate one each week if I were you - dated in the title, so it winds up being an ongoing saga. ;)

This week I've been rewatching our current family favourite movie "Stardust" with Michelle Pfieffer and Robert DeNiro. There have been a lot of sniffy comments about the movie comparing it with The Princess Bride, but frankly I think Stardust wipes its ass on Princess Bride. It's bigger, funnier and more exciting than PB, and has some of the best visual moments of any movie this year. 5/5 and I'll be doing a bells and whistles review later in the week.

I've also been watching Disney's answer to Stardust - "Enchanted". I was hoping it would be at least half as good as Stardust and it's easily on a par. Okay, the humour in it is a little more basic, but it has the same knowing sense of humour and tweaks magnificently at the whole Disney Princess milieu. When I first saw the trailers for the movie, I thought it looked good for a live action Disney picture. Disney live action has a tendency to look a little uncared-about, like it was shot for television. Enchanted looks big - 2.35:1, Pirates Of The Caribbean big. Turns out Barry Sonnenfeld is one of the producers and the effects and makeup teams include the Rick Baker studio and Weta Digital. The titles only confirmed the conclusion I'd come to watching the film - that Disney has become as serious about live action as it is about animation and it's producing material that could have come out of any of the big studios like Fox, Sony or Columbia rather than palming punters off with stuff made to run on the Disney Channel.

I've also rewatched the magnificent Howard Hawks comedy His Girl Friday with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell - a triumph of fast, snappy dialogue; and Disney's not so magnificent but very fondly remembered 1976 offering One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing with Peter Ustinov and Clive Revill doing toe-curling oriental impressions and Helen Hayes, Joan Sims and Natasha Pyne playing nannies.

And it's only Wednesday night...

Since then, I've watched one of the remakes of His Girl Friday - Switching Channels with Kathleen Turner, Burt Reynolds and Christopher Reeve. Although a slightly disappointing non-anamorphic transfer from ITVDVD, the movie itself is a riot with Christopher Reeve turning in one of his best performances, certainly his best comedy performance, as Turner's fiance.

Filling out the evening, I ran two episodes of the finest show ITC produced - The Persuaders - starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. The episodes in question were The Gold Napoleons with Susan George, and Five Miles to Midnight with Joan Collins. Both were brilliant "buddy movie" shows with Moore and Curtis on top comic form. It's a crying shame they can't make light, fun shows like this anymore.
posted by Mark Oates on 9/4/2008 23:53