I don't get this at all. Connery dominates the screen like very few.
WILD RIVER (1960) 6.5/10 ...Maybe 7/10 max.But ratings are just the beginning of a discuussion. I'd like to continuue this discussion about this fascinating movie: abouut its subject matter, politics, characters, performannces, CinemaCope ... Lots to discuss when i have the time. In the meatime, I'd like to hear what y'all have to say, then i share my opinions soon, when i have the time.
Whats to discuss? I agree with the 6.5 maybe 7 rating, its not a film that I would actively seek out again, I stumbled upon it on TCM.
INTERSTELLAR - 7,5/10Best Nolan appart from Memento. The good parts were really really good. The bad parts weren't as bad as I feared. Far too predictable though. Also, none of the Nolan brothers have enough imagination (yet) to properly deal with the topics they've tackled lately: the best dream they could come up with in Inception was a Russian base from a James Bond movie, and now their unknown planets are just as dull. Just talk with real scientists, they know far more interesting planets, constituted of ice so cold it's harder than most of our rocks, rains of mercury and under the surface oceans of liquid metal. We also know none circular satellites, which days vary in lengths and which gravity depends on where exactly you stand. That's better than a water world and a ice world and I got it from a radio interview a year ago.Still, Interstellar has a lot of stuff going for it: mostly good to great acting, top notch directing (not half as good as gravity but still very adult and somewhere between Spielberg and Terrence Malick... in a good way) and, most important, a true adventure feeling.I saw it in Houston, just after visiting the Space Center, which was cool. Today was space day. However, the IMAX screening was pointless (this movie is far too grainy for its own good, even without IMAX) and the IMAX theater of Houston has terrible screens.
20,000 Days on Earth (2014) - 8/10. 1080p. A fictional 20,001st day in the life of singer-songwriter-graphomaniac Nick Cave. Eschewing the typical approach to rock documentaries, we travel up close and personal as Cave goes about his business in and around Brighton, where, I was shocked to discover, the transplanted Australian lives. Interspersed with a few rehearsals and performances, the film is mostly made up of conversations he has with people: his shrink (or is that someone pretending to be his shrink?), Warren Ellis (his chief collaborator these days) the curators at the Nick Cave Archives (I kid you not). Cave spends a lot of time in his car, so the filmmakers add an interesting device of having people suddenly appearing in the vehicle to chat with Nick. He doesn't stop and pick them up, they're just suddenly there. First there's actor Ray Winstone (in the passenger's seat), then former band member Blixa Bargeld (in the passenger's seat) and finally Kylie Minogue (in the back seat). Does one have to be a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds fan to enjoy the film? Well, I'm not all that interested in the guy and I found it interesting. It helps, I suppose, to like the recent album (Push the Sky Away), because the soundtrack features a lot of material from it (especially "Jubilee Street").
According to IMDb, 20,000 Days on Earth was shot with the Arri Alexa, which is consistent with the film's appearance on Drafthouse Films' 1080p AVC-encoded Blu-ray. The credited cinematographer is Erik Wilson (Submarine, The Double). Perhaps as a counterpoint to the rough features and haunted eyes of the film's subject, the directors and cinematographer have opted for rich colors and a beautiful, smooth surface wherever possible. The image on Drafthouse's disc is as good as they come, sharp and clear without any digital edginess, free of noise or artifacts, and moving easily between the deep blacks of the nighttime closing shot on the beach at Brighton and the pastoral daytime scenes in the English countryside, along with everything in between. Fine detail is evident in Cave's distinctive wardrobe, in the stacks of books and photos on his desk, in the tiny handwriting that is legible in his archive, and in dozens of other small touches. 20,000 days is a tribute to the possibilities of digital photography. (For obvious reasons, footage taken from archival sources looks only as good as the original material will allow.)Although the film is only 98 minutes long, Drafthouse has placed it on a BD-50, allowing for an average bitrate of 30.98 Mbps. Most studios would have tried for much tighter compression, especially with digitally originated material. There is no way to be sure without access to the original uncompressed master, but perhaps the extra bandwidth is one of the reasons the Blu-ray looks so good.