What Movies are you Watching?

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched Interview With the Vampire.

[GrubbTheFragger]

I have been watching alot of straight to dvd horror movies recently. Lets see, Laid to Rest, Splinter, Midnight Movie, Audition, Let the right one in. And i saw Drag me to H-E double hockey sticks lol

[Danderson]

few weeks ago, watched The Dark Knight for the first time.....Thought it was very well done, and I knew it was going to be dark but there were a lot of parts I wasn't expecting that really threw me for a loop.....the conclusion left me awake for most of the night till I figured out what it all meant.....

[Shiningmonk_e]

I just saw Night at the Museum 2 and Wolverine. Both were very good movies and Night at the Museum 2 had an absolutely hilarious 300 reference.

[GhostontheNet]

I just finished watching East of Eden.

[the_wolfs_howl]

I watched Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith with my sisters. I was a little nervous at first over whether they'd be able to handle it, as it is rated PG-13 and they're only ten and twelve, but I should've known they'd be okay. I watched my first PG-13 movie when I was ten, and my first R movie when I was thirteen or fourteen, and they're made of the same stock. As long as it's just violence, it's fine. Their only complaint was that it was sad, since that's the one where Anakin turns into Darth Vader.

[Htom Sirveaux]

I watched Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith with my sisters. I was a little nervous at first over whether they'd be able to handle it, as it is rated PG-13 and they're only ten and twelve, but I should've known they'd be okay. I watched my first PG-13 movie when I was ten, and my first R movie when I was thirteen or fourteen, and they're made of the same stock. As long as it's just violence, it's fine. Their only complaint was that it was sad, since that's the one where [SIZE="7"]Anakin turns into Darth Vader[/SIZE].

Spoiler alert!

[GhostontheNet]

Earlier today I watched Frankenstein and I just watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

[KeybladeWarrior]

Last Friday I saw Pixar's Up.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched The Grudge.

[GhostontheNet]

I just finished watching Let the Right One In.

[GrubbTheFragger]

I just finished watching Let the Right One In.

I watched that a couple of weeks ago. I was a bit disappointed by it. What did you think?

[GhostontheNet]

I watched that a couple of weeks ago. I was a bit disappointed by it. What did you think?

Can't say why you were disappointed by it, it's number five on my list of top five favorite movies. Being a Swedish movie with good dubbing for the children and deliberately ridiculous dubbing for the adults (their lives are like a bad movie anyway), have you tried watching it in Swedish?

[Doubleshadow]

I've been wanting to see Let the Right One In. Maybe was it the quality that was poor, or just not what you expected?

Watched 30 Days of Night.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I've been wanting to see Let the Right One In. Maybe was it the quality that was poor, or just not what you expected?

By no means would you call Let the Right One In a poor quality movie. The formal elements of the film are well constructed. The shots are immaculate and beautiful. The performances of the children are very touching, and display great sensitivity. The imagery and symbolism have very powerful resonance. And while I can't speak for GrubbTheFragger as to the reasons for his disappointment, what I have noticed is that as a film dealing with themes of bullying, abjection, and gender identity issues, Let the Right One In tends to either resonate with you deeply, or leave you cold. So while it's not a movie for everybody, its reputation is well deserved, and I highly recommend it.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched The Seventh Seal and Hitch.

[Tsukuyomi]

Season's Call by HYDE <33

[ich1990]

Equilibrium

Finally decided to watch it after running across the nth amv for it. It was surprisingly good, given that it doesn't have much of a reputation. It had excellent aesthetics and gun fights and, of course, the dystopian setting didn't hurt it at all. Its is almost a cross between The Matrix and 1984. Definitely recommended if you can handle some overly long artistic scenes.

[Bobtheduck]

Forgot to say: Saw Star Trek on Sunday afternoon. It was ok, but some of the character reveals were the ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING kind of stupid. As was kirk's climb up the snow he crashed into, though not as much as the reveals...

[Amzi Live]

Saw Star Treck today!
Awesome!
I'll be following the new ST as long as they keep up the good work.
I think they did a great job. It's sequel time!

[the_wolfs_howl]

I watched Kung Fu Panda with my family last week. I was pleasantly surprised at how funny it was; none of the jokes came across to me as stupid - but then, I like corny jokes, so.... The animation was really good, and I liked Po and Master Shifu's characters (the others seemed woefully underdeveloped). Great voice acting, too. I was rather disappointed they didn't have a better message than the generic "listen to your heart/be yourself" stuff, but hey, this wasn't Pixar, so I shouldn't have got my hopes up.

An enjoyable movie, much better than some of Dreamworks's stuff, but it's got nothing on Bolt

[GeneD]

Watched the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" this past weekend and "17 Again" on Tuesday. Neither was spectacular, but was fine for just-relax-candy-floss-and-popcorn movies.

[Radical Dreamer]

Just got back from seeing Star Trek; what a BLAST! XD I loved it!

[GrubbTheFragger]

I've been wanting to see Let the Right One In. Maybe was it the quality that was poor, or just not what you expected?

Watched 30 Days of Night.

Well i guess it was just the overall slowness and mood of the movie. I mean the story was very heartbreaking and touching at the same time. As i think about it, i like it more and more. I was also a bit shocked by the content that quickly flashed on the screen. *shrugs* But it was a very well made movie.

[GhostontheNet]

This weekend I watched Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Sleepy Hollow

Well i guess it was just the overall slowness and mood of the movie. I mean the story was very heartbreaking and touching at the same time. As i think about it, i like it more and more. I was also a bit shocked by the content that quickly flashed on the screen. *shrugs* But it was a very well made movie.

Right, it's not supposed to be an edge of your seat horror movie, but a poignant tragic comedy. That being said, the pacing is well matched to the content of the movie. As far as that somewhat voyeuristic shot that you allude to goes, there's a very specific reason for it in the movie. In John Adjive Linqvist's original novel Let the Right One In, it turns out that Eli was originally a boy, but a sadistic vampire noble castrated her and turned her into another vampire. Owing to vampirism's symbolic ties in this story to the menstrual cycle and the mythic archetype of serrated female genatalia (which is often displaced to her mouth, and effectively makes her a castrator), as well as the fact that transformation is fair game in fairy tales, I think it makes more sense to identify Eli with the feminine than with the masculine, though she herself is very confused. So too, the clever reader or viewer will note the strong parallelism between Oskar and Eli to the point that she comes to look like a mirror image of Oskar through the looking glass of his subconscious. By facing bullying and abjection that effectively severs him from the phallocentric symbolic order he lives in, Oskar too has been symbolically castrated, resulting in a gender crisis for which he fantasizes murdering his rivals to reassert his place in the symbolic order.

To make matters more complicated, being a boy who mostly takes after his mother (his father is divorced, very distant, and a very bad role model), but is now going through the stage of abjection of the maternal to form his own subjectivity, Oskar is now at grave risk of misogyny and violence against women. Living at this very delicate stage, if he comes blame his own crisis of gender identity on his mother, and then project it onto women in general (our ideas of gender are, after all, based in no small part upon the model of our parents), then he could grow up to become very very dangerous if no one intervenes. In the film, this is implied in a deleted scene in which Oskar has Eli pinned down and slaps her, but then sorely regrets it and begs for her forgiveness. In this respect, Oskar's encounter with the monstrous feminine in the person of Eli allows him to both resolve his gender crisis, and to understand that femininity is neither weak nor passive in the face of adversity, but can be a powerful help in times of distress. Here Let the Right One In links to the old mythic archetype noted by Joseph Campbell where a hero figure tames the frighteningly serrated woman, but with the added twist that now it is she who tames him out of the male monster to become the hero, and that instead of making each other the mere object of desire, they humanize each other to allow one another to move from abject to subject.

So what's with the somewhat voyeuristic shot of Eli? Well, for one thing, it both resolves her gender and calls it into question. The careful observer will, after all, observe telltale genital scarring suggestive of her previous castration. In interviews, Thomas Alferdson says this was exactly the reason for the shot, allowing this theme to be dealt with without making the audience squirm in their seats too badly. In the original script, it was planned for there to be a flashback scene dealing with Eli's castration in surreal fairy tale imagery (fancy that, a fairy tale transformation scene), but this idea fell through. Also, in the original novel, Linqvist deflates most of the comfortable myths and mental barriers by which we imagine that we are a lot different from those who commit pedophilia and other forms of sexual abuse on minors. Eventually we learn that Eli's slave/caretaker Hakan is an ex-pedophile rehabilitated by Eli, but ever teetering on the verge of a relapse, and the careful reader will note a strong parallel to the novel Lolita. Being a Christian who takes seriously Thomas Merton's notion that the pleasure of sin comes from its capacity both to reveal and to distort the good, Linqvist's novel implicitly argues that pedophilia is a distortion of the Christlike love of children (although it is a sin that places one at grave risk for Jesus' warning about a millstones and being cast into the sea). In terms of cinematic technique, then, by making a shot that does not meet the classic definition of pornography, but skirts close enough to make the audience realize just how close they are to descending into it, this is a very effective way of addressing this theme of the novel in addition.

[Scarecrow]

I saw Star Trek last night... It was good. Maybe not best movie of the year good but fairly entertaining and never boring. Pacing was very good IMO. Just had some problems that took me "out of the movie" so to speak. Like people getting dropped on edges and managing to hang on. Or skydiving through the atmosphere. Being able to hold on when you're shoot is fully opened and trying to blow away (and they didn't even have a spare backup chute. That's like the first rule in sky diving. Always carry 1 more parachute than you plan to use. I couldn't believe in the future where it's so far advanced they were all jumping with only one chute). I could go on. I mean I have no problem with suspension of disbelief but when something breaks the laws of physics and such, it kind of breaks the illusion.

But ya good movie.

[Blitzkrieg1701]

The last (non-anime) movie I watched was Jigoku, (aka "Hell") an Japanese horror film where a fellow's life becomes utterly screwed up, he and everyone around him dies, and they all go to The Bad Place. The End. It's... unique.

[GrubbTheFragger]

Thanks Ghost for the explanation it helped alot. I was just kinda like uhhh... when the scene happened. I didn't view it as pornographic or anything just unexpected. It now actually makes alot of sense to have that scene in the movie.

Anyways last movie i watched was Wrong Turn 2 : Dead End. .............it is in my top ten worst horror films. The acting was so bad !

[ich1990]

The Tale of Despereaux

An extremely weird kids movie. Includes rats attempting to strip the flesh off of a young girl. Also, magical soup.

[Makachop^^128]

hunt for the red October ^^