Movie Thread

[flatsixes]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

It would have made sitting through that thing almost worthwhile.

But first, I'd enjoy nice rare steak.

[vienna]

Kurosawa's inabilty to get funding in his later years ultimately led to a suicide attempt and that act caught the attention of the rest of the world outside Japan. The outpouring of concern was immense and resulted in the many offers of assistance from other filmakers and industry people.

His inability to get funding was partly due to his filming style. He took way more time to film than was estimated and he spent way more than budgeted. For example, for his film "Throne of Blood", he had an entire medieval samural castle built. The studio balked at the expense but gave in with the expectation the castle could be used in other productions. Imagine the studio's shock when Kurosawa destroyed the castle filming the final battle scenes. It may be OK for John Wayne to build a duplicate Alamo in the desert and destroy it (U.S. studios weren't as concerned about the expense), but when Kurosawa did essentially the same thing, he was labelled as a wasteful spendthrift.

[Feuer Frei!]

I'm planning to watch 'Hobo with a Shotgun' shortly!
I mean with a title like that it's going to be dam cool
And it has Rutger Hauer in it, as the Hobo.

great rating on imdb:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1640459/


Storyline:
A vigilante homeless man pulls into a new city and finds himself trapped in urban chaos, a city where crime rules and where the city's crime boss reigns. Seeing an urban landscape filled with armed robbers, corrupt cops, abused prostitutes and even a pedophile Santa, the Hobo goes about bringing justice to the city the best way he knows how - with a 20-gauge shotgun. Mayhem ensues when he tries to make things better for the future generation.
Street justice will indeed prevail.

[Dowly]

Saw When the Last Sword is Drawn the other day, most excellent movie and I'd recommend anyone who haven't seen it yet, to try and find a copy and check it out.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0359692/

[Hottentot]

I just watched В бой идут одни "старики" from 1973. I think the English title is Only "Old Men" Are Going to Battle. Anyway, it's about Soviet pilots in WW 2 and I thought it was very good. I was prepared for annoying patriotism but instead got a nice film that had genuinely good acting, amusing humor, yet also moving scenes too. The part where a mechanic laconically tells his new pilot "you're my fifth one" still sends shivers down my spine.

As far as war movies goes, this was different in a good way. I think it managed to capture the grim nature of war and paid respect to the men doing their dangerous work but without overdone glorification like in some other movies. In a way it reminded me of Das Boot in this sense. The settings were also very good, though I at first had trouble recognizing some German planes as such, because obviously they couldn't use real Bf-109s and FW-190s in the film. It didn't bother me too much, though, because there are very few scenes where the props are used. In the fight scenes (there are not many of those) I think they used real gun-camera footage too, so it might just be that I'm bad at plane recognition.

The plot was easy enough to follow even with my limited Russian, though in the end I got little confused when it seemed that people just started dying without explanation offscreen. The ending also left me with a feeling that there should have been something more, it was very simplistic. But overall I would still recommend this.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070861/