Secret Ninja Movie Club (aka what have you watched lately)

[Pedro Sánchez]

Brokeback Mountain X Badboys is a good summary of this.

[deadly_habit]

also fucked up.

music by daft punk too. :-p

both great films, both great scores, both incredibly depressing.

[deadly_habit]

Tom Cruise tend to work with terrible directors but when you have someone like Kubric it's another plane altogether. Think of how good horrible DiCaprio or Samuel jackson was in Django compared with their last 10 films or so.

Tom Cruise is a great actor and he praised Morgan Freeman loads in the last interview I saw him do.
I think he works with terrible directors as he wants to do new things, and also based on scripts for roles he finds challenging or new rather than paying attention to who is directing.
It shows in most of his poorly directed movies that he is the focal point, and that's a credit to his trade.

[deadly_habit]

Pretty shitty.
My main draw to it was Fangoria presents, so it did have some good traditional FX which is mainly what I wanted to see.

[hubb]

Exactly DH


@Muncey

I'm right though, an actor only gets to act when they act in accordance with what is going on and what is going is up to the direction. Otherwise it plays against the premise.
You have to catch the actor actually lowering her brow or catch the tear running down his cheeks and for that to happen, the director needs to plan it with direction and camera movement. Or an actor can be a bad actor and act great, like in lynch films, where the director creates a situation that benefits from having weird 'characters' that would be characters outside of the film aswell, into a scene. Similarly when actual untrained normal people have their reactions to a fully planned situation filmed without having much laid out for them, like in Shane Meadows films.
Usually the more influence an actor has on a film, the worse it gets. Except when they get to direct, like Sean Penn, Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson.

[deadly_habit]

Exactly DH


@Muncey

I'm right though, an actor only gets to act when they act in accordance with what is going on and what is going is up to the direction. Otherwise it plays against the premise.
You have to catch the actor actually lowering her brow or catch the tear running down his cheeks and for that to happen, the director needs to plan it with direction and camera movement. Or an actor can be a bad actor and act great, like in lynch films, where the director creates a situation that benefits from having weird 'characters' that would be characters outside of the film aswell, into a scene. Similarly when actual untrained normal people have their reactions to a fully planned situation filmed without having much laid out for them, like in Shane Meadows films.
Usually the more influence an actor has on a film, the worse it gets. Except when they get to direct, like Sean Penn, Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson.

Can you imagine how soul crushing it would be becoming a character actor?
It's like whoring yourself out to the masses or becoming a pop sellout.

BTW curious as you seem to dig film, what do you think of Ryan Gosling and his latest film The Place Beyond the Pines?

[Words]

An actor is only as good as the direction he gets.

Wrong. Good actors don't need directing.

this is true but i dont think its in disagreement with what hes saying either. recognizing that you're working with actors that don't need directing and giving them room to improvise would be good direction in itself

[deadly_habit]

An actor is only as good as the direction he gets.

Wrong. Good actors don't need directing.

this is true but i dont think its in disagreement with what hes saying either. recognizing that you're working with actors that don't need directing and giving them room to improvise would be good direction in itself

Film in general is a chaotic process, same with AAA video games.
Takes a village to say the least along with finance people.

[Muncey]

An actor is only as good as the direction he gets.

Wrong. Good actors don't need directing.

this is true but i dont think its in disagreement with what hes saying either. recognizing that you're working with actors that don't need directing and giving them room to improvise would be good direction in itself

Yeah I think I misunderstood what he meant.. so I'd agree to a certain extent however letting actors have creative freedom and picking actors that can fall into the character you're aiming for is surely directing 101 lol.

[TopManLurka]

also fucked up.

music by daft punk too. :-p

both great films, both great scores, both incredibly depressing.

was gonna watch 'irreversible' right after 'lilja-4ever'. someone on imdb recommended not to though so will watch 'irreversible' tonight instead.

: )

[DRTY]

Irreversible is brilliantly done. But its a horrendous watch

Felt like I'd been assaulted after watching that.

[Dutchstep]

I cried.

[hubb]

Can you imagine how soul crushing it would be becoming a character actor?
It's like whoring yourself out to the masses or becoming a pop sellout. BTW curious as you seem to dig film, what do you think of Ryan Gosling and his latest film The Place Beyond the Pines?

Oooh looking forward to watching it definitely, aswell as only god forgives- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1602613/
He's great even in that shitty date film with Steve Carell.
Refn the director of drive and ^ is seriously one took look out for if you haven't watched his films. the Pusher trilogy is great. I think most actors are probably a little nuts but I'm sure every director is crazy. Just like football coaches.

this is true but i dont think its in disagreement with what hes saying either. recognizing that you're working with actors that don't need directing and giving them room to improvise would be good direction in itself


Yeah I think I misunderstood what he meant.. so I'd agree to a certain extent however letting actors have creative freedom and picking actors that can fall into the character you're aiming for is surely directing 101 lol.

Yeah it's not necessarily contradictory.
I don't mean fall into character - I mean actually weird people that have character doing maybe slightly exaggerated versions of themselves like in Lynchs' films. Like they were furniture with lines. That's something a control freak can work with .
I'm only trying to point out the misconception that actors have a lot, if any influence on if it becomes a good film or not. Because even when they act horribly, the blame should fall on the direction.

[Laszlo]

Irreversible is the only film I have not been able to sit through in it's entirety.

You know the bit I mean.

[cloquet]

I've been meaning to re-watch Irreversible for a while. I watched it a few years ago and thought it was pretty poor; came off as two scenes of extreme violence and a shed load of filler. Supposedly Noe went into filming with a three page draft of a script; I think it kinda shows. Visually & sonically (love the use of infrasound) stunning though; Noe's a great director in that sense.

I thought Enter The Void had similar issues; incredible from an aesthetic point of view but lacking in other areas. I'm a big fan of non-linear narrative & the dismantling of traditional structures but I find with his films there is some sort of traditional narrative (even if it is in reverse), it just isn't very good.

This might be a bit tenuous but at times I feel like what he does comes off like a flawed version of what Tarkovsky did or what Kubrick did with 2001; achingly beautiful scenes of very little happening and a focus on the visual side of things rather than the narrative (obviously there is a narrative in both instances but it's fairly simple & takes more of a backseat) only they managed to keep some momentum, keep the story going & keep the audience's attention, Noe's films tend to have an incredibly thin plot that never really goes anywhere and doesn't quite hold everything together.

Having said that, it might be unfair to compare a director who may not yet have reached his peak with two of the great masters of cinema.

As for films I've watched recently I recently watched Taxi Driver and Chinatown for the nth time. Both of them just get better & better; especially Chinatown.

[incnic]

tonights viewing.

[deadly_habit]

I cried.

great film. the directors other work is awesome as well.

[incnic]

not feeling teh cover
wotn watch
looks bro'd out

[deadly_habit]

not feeling teh cover
wotn watch
looks bro'd out

[Forum]

Not as good as i thought i remembered from the first time i saw it about 10 years ago