/\/\icah ([info]zeade) wrote,
@ 2004-03-03 19:00:00
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Current music:iPod shuffle

Ye olde movie rental list
Sometimes working at SemiMegaCorp has it's perks. Fer instance, they've started this service with DVD Station where an employee can rent DVDs for $3 for 5 days. You select what DVDs you want via wall-mounted touchscreens that display, obviously along with the movie title name, the box art, trailers, synopsis, cast, reviews, etc. You can search on movie titles, actors, genre, and so on. Swipe a credit card, enter a password, then pick up the movie at the employee mini-mart counter (which is 2 feet away). The touchscreens are located in the central building on campus, next to the cafetorium, so I can drop off and pick up new movies as I come into work any day. And the selection is quite decent with a definite skew towards artsy/loved-by-nerds titles (hello all episodes of "Buffy" EVAR). It blows the normal movie rental model straight out of the water. While NetFlix has been tempting, I never was sure if I'd really take that much advantage of it, and I didn't like not being able to choose what I wanted when I wanted it. This rental service is just perfect for me.

I've begun consuming DVDs at a voracious rate. Four movies in the last two weeks! Someone stop the mania. I have so many backlogged movies I've wanted to see (mostly those I missed in theaters) I've made a list. I'm posting it here, and will be updating as I can.

Coming soon to my DVD player:

  • Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
  • Intolerable Cruelty
  • Brotherhood of the Wolf
  • Orange County
  • Old School
  • Bad Santa
  • Matchstick Men
  • Cowboy Bebop
  • Swimming Pool
  • Love Actually
  • Requiem for a Dream
  • Spellbound
  • Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
  • The Professional
  • Grave of Fireflies
  • Band of Brothers
  • Winged Migration
  • The Triplets of Bellville
  • The Godfather

  • Beavis & Butthead: Do America
  • Pitch Black
  • Citizen Kane
  • Unbreakable
  • Jackass
  • 25th Hour
Last updated: Mar 5, 2004

(13 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]zeade
2004-03-03 04:22 pm UTC (link)
Years ahead of its time. It uses shots and lighting that put most modern directors to shame. The story is told in disjointed flashbacks, following a reporter who is looking for the truth behind Kane's dying words. While the surface of the plot is laid bare in a newsreel at the beginning of the movie, the presentation of the story is so well done I wasn't really ever feeling antsy for the next segment. I find myself a little alienated by films that predate me by at least a decade, with anachronisms and acting styles that took their last breath before I took my first, but along with Hitchcock, CK is one of those films that feels so alive and modern as if it had premiered just last week.

I give it ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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Jackass
[info]zeade
2004-03-03 06:19 pm UTC (link)
I originally had no desire at all to see Jackass, but too many people whom I considered to not be entirely fucked in the head said it was a must see. While I can not claim a virginally chaste stance to doing the Stupid Thing, I can't help but think that movies like this, more than the super violent video games or the XXX porn at every turn, do more to sway people towards fuknarditude than anything else in society. Look, here are self-described jackasses, having the time of their life beating the shit out of eachother and living to end up on TV and the big screen to revel in their micro-fame, if you're self-destructive enough you might be just so lucky. It's social degeneration, but it's funny social degeneration. As with most pain that doesn't involve people dying, it's funny when it happens to not-you. Some of the stunts were certainly not my bag, but when a guy voluntarily tries out a device called the Bungee Wedgie, nothing but a laff-riot can follow.

I give it ♣ ♣

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Re: Jackass
[info]cheesetruck
2004-03-04 02:10 am UTC (link)
A friend of mine thought it would be a good idea to show this to me.

45 minutes in he decided that it was time for us to stop watching. He'd never seen me so violently opposed to what I was viewing. Ever. And he didn't think it was a good thing at all.

Since then, there have been no more "surprize" movie things. Mind you, some were decent (decent. I didn't say enjoyable. 'Xanadu' was interesting from the Gene Kelly's last movie, and obviously outclassing EVERYONE in it, well, ok, not Olivia, but he was obviously able to carry the movie by himself and pretty much did. Except for Olivia. And I also remember all the songs being on the top 40. Which, today, would just about not even ever happen. ever.)

Anyway. Jackass. I give it -800 stars. For "If you like this please, try the stunts at home."

(Reply to this) (Parent)
25th Hour
[info]zeade
2004-03-03 07:01 pm UTC (link)
Spike Lee wanted to make a movie that tapped into the "real" feelings of New Yorkers after 9-11, and out of it came 25th Hour. A beat-up dog is just a dog who wants to fight even harder for what he has, even if all that he has is his scrappy life. While NYC isn't exactly the perfect allegory for a dog run over by a car, it didn't bother me so much. I may have been a bit maudlin thanks to the wine, but I thought Lee was fairly adept at conveying the various levels of anger the terrorist attack created in the characters, although it's not central to the story at all. In particular, where a mirror-self of Edward Norton is telling the entire world to go fuck itself was simultaneously enraging and weepy. Unfortunately, not much else about the movie worked for me. Norton's girlfriend in the movie, while extremely hot, is not much of an actress. But she's extremely hot. Moving on. The supporting friends characters were well done, but their sub-plots were distracting and ultimately meant nothing. The Spike™ Lee™ style of camera work was subdued, lacking much of the jankiness you see in his other flicks (I guess this wasn't so bad for me). The movie rambles and stumbles along, confused if it's trying to wring emotion or tell a story. The end is where the movie really fell down for me, though. The movie could have easily ended long before it did with a better result. I think it was just another symptom of Lee overreaching for something he's not used to peddling: schmaltz. He definitely got it right in some places, but not enough in others.

I give it ♠ ♠ and a half

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Unbreakable
[info]zeade
2004-03-03 07:12 pm UTC (link)
I already spewed some thoughts on Unbreakable elsewhere. Thanks to the power of copy-n-paste I don't have to make the extra effort to rethink my stance (...SPOILERS...):

As much as I wanted to like Unbreakable, I didn't really. I thought the overall plot was ok, and I even enjoyed Ye Olde Plot Twist at the end, but the script was just lousy. Maybe even worser than Signs. M. Night Shyamalan should have hired a writer. I know he loves putting the pint-sized innocents-who-know-all in his flicks, but the kid in this one was just a distraction. Shyamalan failed to make the required and tricky leaps from his comics-make-reality motif to the actualdialogue. He spent too much time getting to the "I'm a hero" part and spent practically no time at all on it. I didn't mind the non-explosive ending, although ending with the text freeze frames was way cheeze. Other minuses: himself as Indian drug peddler (muuuuh), water as "weakness" (buuuuh), comics portraying an instinctive knowledge of protectors amongst us (pbblphbhpfffthpt), and ploppy plodding pacing.
Pluses: Samuel L. Jacksons coat.

I give it ♦ ♦

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Re: Unbreakable
[info]cheesetruck
2004-03-04 02:13 am UTC (link)
Film would have been good in 15 minutes.

Period.

The 10 hour version I saw was oh my god boring. At least, I assume it was 10 hours, because I fell asleep about 20 minutes into it and woke up and it was still going, and it wasn't Tuesday anymore.

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[info]mschlock
2004-03-03 09:08 pm UTC (link)
Sounds cool!

But maybe not as cool as 72 unwatched movies on an unreleased product...

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[info]zeade
2004-03-04 09:28 am UTC (link)
Um, wow. 72? Better start watching your amassed hoard of movies before they go all stale and bad. I hear bits can turn sour if not reshuffled every N days. Movie night at mschlock's!

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[info]cheesetruck
2004-03-04 02:14 am UTC (link)
After I saw Clerks, friends informed me I needed to see them in order.

Fully suggest doing so.

(Clerks, MallRats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.)

Also GET THE EXTENDED VERSIONS PERIOD cuz Kevin Smith puts about 90 years of stuff on the extended DVD.

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[info]zeade
2004-03-04 09:18 am UTC (link)
I've seen them all, in order, except for J&SBSB. I still like Clerks the most, with Dogma being a distant second.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Pitch Black
[info]zeade
2004-03-04 07:10 pm UTC (link)
Previously I've seen Vin Diesel in 'XXX' and 'Fast and the Furious' (I have no shame), and I guess 'Saving Private Ryan' (according to his film bio, but I don't remember who he was in that movie at all). I gotta say I liked him most of all in 'Pitch Black.' I loved this flick. The special effects and settings stole the show, but the acting was about as good as you get in semi-camp sci-fi suspense/horror. The beasties were awesome; their models, rendering, and sounds were tops. I'm now looking forward to 'The Chronicles of Riddick' coming this summer after watching 'Pitch Black'. The plot devices weren't terribly imaginative, but like all horror flicks, it's fun to see who would die next. (...SPOILERS...) I must say this film was bravely flaunting the "Black Man always dies first" horror movie tenet. He didn't even bite it! My bet was the blonde, the boy-turned-girl, and Riddick would be the ones making it off the planet. The only thing that smacked of retarded was making the merc a junkie. He's so pretty! We gotta make him some flavor of horrible so offing him doesn't cause people to get angry and say bad things about our film!

I give it ☺ ☺ ☺ and ¾

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Beavis & Butthead: Do America
[info]zeade
2004-03-05 04:49 pm UTC (link)
I liked Beavis & Butthead when I first saw them at Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival. 'Frog Baseball' will always have a special place in my heart. But B&B:DA stank like meat in a puddle of milk, left there from 1996. Maybe my sense of humor has matured (or gotten stodgy), maybe animated funniness has evolved so much as to eclipse the now-venerated Beavis & Butthead (e.g. Futurama, Family Guy, etc.), but B&B:DA was so unfunny as to be painful. All the lines and gags from the series were recycled and recycled and recycled until there was nothing but an unfunny pulp left behind on my screen. There were Moments, like the Starsky & Hutch intro. Or Beavis' hallucination in the desert, which was probably the best 60 seconds of the movie. The rest: I want my $3 back.

I give it ‡

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[info]ssp
2004-03-07 12:58 am UTC (link)
the seoul reason to see brotherhood of le loup is joost for it's sheer fucked up greusome-ness. and also i suppose for ******************. just so you're warned, it's essentially ***********************. and in franch! would've been (more?) awesome if i was drunk. on the $2-6 wine bottle range - and that's in new york, not SF where you often get lucky with $2-$6 bucks (in new york i pay nothing to get lucky)

as a past movie buddy i really want to know what you think of it once you see it.

* the last astrix on the lines of astrixi was a reference to this comment where i explain those very same lines of characters are a signifier that i'm leaving out anything that might spoil (or enhance? who really knows?!)the fun.

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