The last movie I saw was The Orphanage. Which was great -- very intelligent story. It makes me curious about Pans Labrynth which Siskel and Ebert have been RAVING about and I have yet to see.Hmm. Quick IMDB visit. For some reason I thought the two were from the same director, but I guess not.
Wow. Humbling. People are watching Hitchcock.
Pan's Labyrinth was directed by Guillermo del Toro. After that his name got so big they started advertising movies, he had only produced, with it.
Did I misread the Hitchcock reference? Sorry.I also realize that I said Siskel and Ebert and I meant Ebert and Roeper. I guess I’m showing my age. Sad.
Oh, so... did GDT produce The Orphanage? I've been scouring IMDb, trying to figure that out.Anyway, thanks.
I thought you were surprised by the fact that people actually watch Hitchcock, and that surprised me.
V For Vendetta - 6-7/10 I wouldn't have a problem with the movie's anti-totalitarian stance, if that's all there was to it (I love the line "People shouldn't be afraid of their government - the government should be afraid of their people"). But more than that, the movie's political commentary is at best sophomoric anarchism.
Alan Moore, however, distanced himself from the film, as he has with every screen adaptation of his works to date. He ended cooperation with his publisher, DC Comics, after its corporate parent, Warner Bros., failed to retract statements about Moore's supposed endorsement of the movie.[9] After reading the script, Moore remarked:"[The movie] has been "turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives—which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England."[10]He later adds that if the Wachowskis had wanted to protest what was going on in the United States, then they should have used a political narrative that spoke directly at the USA's issues, similar to what Moore had done before with Britain. The film changes the original message by arguably having changed "V" into a freedom fighter instead of an anarchist. An interview with producer Joel Silver suggests that the change may not have been conscious; he identifies the V of the graphic novel as a clear-cut "superhero… a masked avenger who pretty much saves the world," a simplification that goes against Moore's own statements about V's role in the story.[11]
I’m curious, Groggy, if you’ve read any of the graphic novels. You didn’t make any comparisons to them, so I’m going to assume you haven’t. (I haven’t either.) I’m curious if the comic itself is more expansive on the political statements you feel come off as “sophomoric” in the Hollywood adaptation. Maybe the original writer made a clearer case against British consumerism, tolerence and apathy. OR maybe the “repressive regime” is just a modern day backdrop for a Quasimodo love story. So the statement might not be a statement at all. Do you see what I mean?