Übertrieben. I agree.

Sergio Leone is one of my all time favorite directors. He only made a few movies, but his influence is still felt throughout the popular culture.

That said, I am not a big fan of Once upon a time in America which I found overly drawn out. I much preferred Once upon a time in the West and my personal favorite For a Few Dollars more which struck the right balance between crisp story telling and the Leone style.

Incidentally, much of Inglorious Basterds is structured as a spaghetti western, with much of the first chapter being a obvious homage to Once Upon a Time in the West. The first chapter of IG is even called Once Upon a Time in Nazi occupied France. :arrgh!:

On Sherlock Holmes: it is a studio film; the producer is Joel Silver who specializes in big budget action movies; it is a retread of an idea; it includes the obligatory action scenes to draw in the teenage/young adult crowd. It could easily have been your standard pablum fare.

Yet it is recognizably a Guy Ritchie film, albeit toned down from his normal British gangster flicks. Many of the plot elements, characters and even lines spoken by the actors are taken directly from the original novels, including the fact that Holmes was an expert in martial arts and engaged in bare knuckle boxing:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988045/trivia

Downey and Law were perfectly cast as Holmes and Watson. On the whole, it is a worthy successor to the old Jeremy Brett tv series which to me set the gold standard of what Sherlock Holmes should be.

ACK! One simply does not mention that movie. For the sake of our society, that movie (whose name shall never be said) needs to be quickly forgotten.

Concerning these "alternate universe" crap.. well in my universe the 2009 version of "that movie" simply does not and should not exist.

Sor-ry
Didn't think how important Sherlock Holmes would become in film history until I saw the response here. Me not being impressed with such a milestone film likely explains why I wasn't particularly impressed Inglorious Basterds, The Road, Avatar, Youth in Revolt, Titanic, Public enemies, Star Trek, Tron Legacy, Transformers, The Dark Knight.

I agree with cracks reasons why so many movies suck, Hollywood isn't making very many 'new' movies as the cookie-cutter formula works for the masses, thankfully the indy's still make some fresh movies, tho sometimes the big studios do make really good films (by accident)- Alice in wonderland, Up.

I'll be ripping 'Sucker punch' in a couple weeks if you want to check back.
;)

Yep that was a great movie :yeah: Good Fellas is another one.

On PBS' new Roger Ebert movie review show last week, he had a bit commenting on the differences between films now and films of the past in terms of writng. It compared the depth of writing, use of language and character development with films now; older films by Capra, etc. that glorified writing and language as opposed to films now that are all special effects and, particularly, explosions. It ended with a clip of the ols SCTV skit of the redneck movie reviewers who liked films because '"they blew up real good". In this vein, compare the big screen "Sherlock Holmes" with the recent BBC series "Sherlock". Sometimes you don't need to blow things up if you have great writing and film making.

To which, I offer:

12 Angry Men (the Original, starring Henry Fonda, EG Marshall, Jack Klugman, Lee Cobb)

Perhaps one of the greatest film-making masterpieces I've ever watched over and over and over again, filmed on three locations, with two of them appearing for a few moments and the third being a jury room set. The entire film is tightly written and beautifully directed.

I doubt Hollywood would be able to make such a movie these days. 12 angry men had a plot, good writing, and actors with talent.

Today's audience would be bored watching it.

Why do movies suck these days? Because the movie industry recognized that casting pearls before swine is economically non profitable. :D

I really wish I had some witty retort for this.

But there ain't, cause you're right. Thanks, Michael Bay and Uwe Boll.
:wah:

It's actually becoming regarded as the most true-to-the-books Homes movie made. If the keep the quality up, I can easily see this being a well done franchise, ala Bond.

Agreed, plus there are actors who just can not act. Hollywood loves to churn out big CGI, big bang crash wallop explosion films with poor story lines. :nope:

Not buying it, Avatar was all CGI, made a ton of money and set all kinds of attendance records, tho I wasn't particularly impressed with the story, the acting or the direction.

On the other hand The Watchmen had less CGI, a more imaginative story (IMHO), better acting, and the best direction I've seen in a long time, but wasn't a hit.

I'm more apt to believe it was too much movie for the simple minds looking for all those explosions found in Avatar. CGI didn't hurt District 9.

So true. I forgot to add that to my reasons in my earlier post. Many many names come to mind here. True again. Too wrapped up in attemtping to give that bang experience.

Another movie about Super Heroes. Hmm, i thought the acting was mediocre at the best of times.
Probably. Like i said in my previous post, times have changed, so have movie goers' expectations.
The 'patience' factor has gone, people want action action action, i think most don't give a rat's about story line anymore.
Could you imagine Once upon a time in America being redone?
The movie was looong, but one of the best movies i've ever seen.
And with today's yuppies, hip teenie boppers and pimply-faced gum-chewing crowd they'd throw rotten eggs at it.

Avatar was just a technology show piece for Cameron to show off his new toy, the live CGI rendering program. He was able to move the camera's around the actors doing their motion control bits, and it was instantly rendered (lite version of course) on a monitor so he could change the shot's as he needed to make them work better. Brilliant idea really, in the future it will allow for more meshing of real action and CGI. BUt I'm not really sure how the movie did so well. It was visually stunning, but after that, it was just fluff. Meh script, Meh acting.

Avatar was Aliens with Stockholm Syndrome.

Dam him, there's 2 hrs approx that i will never ever get back in my life.
Go 'practice' somewhere else :O:

I liked the film and the downy jnr/law leads, a little grudgingly it must be said, as I too have a great affection for Messrs Brett and Hardwicke.


Another film that appears to have taken an age to come to fruition: Solomon Kane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Kane_%28film%29
Being familiar with the R E Howard character, it was at least as pleasing as Conan the Barbarian in it's reproduction of the original concept. Hopefully there will be two more SK instalments. With any luck they will be better than the two conan the barbarian sequels: conan the destroyer, and red sonja :x

More human than superheros, with human problems. 1 character with real superpowers, 1 other with the gift of intelligence and speed, the rest were cops wearing masks. Could you imagine the outrage if Superman said
"I'm tired of the Earth, these people, and the entanglements of their lives" like Dr. Manhattan said ?

I was making a little joke, Avatar didn't have 'actors'. They had bodies wearing little reflectors and the computer did the rest, voices added later.

Yes, I'm sure it will be redone, updated, and called better tho we who've seen the original will laugh. Remakes and updates drive the industry's money making machine, they'll keep remaking the 'classics' to appeal to newest generation who believes that a film 5 years or older can't be any good. Eventually Blade Runner, Apocalypse now, the Godfather will all be redone and updated, it's the way of hollywood.

Actually, that was the tech showpiece. The actors were mapped in realtime and they could make adjustments to their performance to better fit the CGi output. And they used the voices as they acted. The behind the scenes stuff for that movie is pretty amazing, cooler than the movie itself IMO. Yes, of course they used voice overs later, as all movies do.