Iron Man (MARVEL MOVIE TRAILER)

Iron Man - The best video clips are right here
This looks good!

Dutch Angle: What is it?

Dutch Angle:

This is the process where a camera is angled so that the horizontal frame line is not parallel to the horizon. (Production)

According to Wiki: A Dutch tilt, Dutch angle, oblique angle, German angle, canted angle or Batman Angle is a cinematic tactic often used to portray the psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed. A Dutch angle is achieved by tilting the camera off to the side so that the shot is composed with the horizon at an angle to the bottom of the frame. Many Dutch angles are static shots at an obscure angle, but in a moving Dutch angle shot the camera can pivot, pan or track along the director/cinematographer's established diagonal axis for the shot.

Q&A: Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined (WIRED)

By Ted Greenwald

Photo: Robert Maxwell Feature

Fresh off his second successful movie, an up-and-coming director takes a chance on a dark tale of a 21st-century cop who hunts humanlike androids. But he runs over budget, and the financiers take control, forcing him to add a ham-fisted voice-over and an absurdly cheery ending. The public doesn't buy it. The director's masterpiece plays to near-empty theaters, ultimately retreating to the art-house circuit as a cult oddity.

That's where we left Ridley Scott's future-noir epic in 1982. But a funny thing happened over the next 25 years. Blade Runner's audience quietly multiplied. An accidental public showing of a rough-cut work print created surprise demand for a re-release, so in 1992 Scott issued his director's cut. He silenced the narration, axed the ending, and added a twist — a dream sequence suggesting that Rick Deckard, the film's protagonist, is an android, just like those he was hired to dispatch.

But the director didn't stop there. As the millennium turned, he continued polishing: erasing stray f/x wires, trimming shots originally extended to accommodate the voice-over, even rebuilding a scene in which the stunt double was obvious. Now he's ready to release Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which will hit theaters in Los Angeles and New York in October, with a DVD to follow in December.

At age 69, Ridley Scott is finally satisfied with his most challenging film. He's still turning out movies at a furious pace — American Gangster, with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, is due in November — building on an extraordinary oeuvre that includes Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down. But he seems ready to accept Blade Runner as his crowning achievement. In his northern English accent, he describes its genesis and lasting influence. And, inevitably, he returns to the darkness that pervades his view of the future — the shadows that shield Deckard from a reality that may be too disturbing to face.

For the Q&A interview, click here.
NVDL: I recently watched Blade Runner on VCD and credit to this flick, it is still edgy decades later. The climate change effect and overpopulated city images ring truer than ever.

NYT: A Glut of Cinema This October

Did somebody blow a whistle and decide that mid-October should be some kind of ad hoc, free-floating film fest? Not really. Current movie-business dynamics are at work, along with some long-held superstitions.

By DAVID CARR
In certain circles of New York life, cultural cachet does not hinge on possession of the latest gadget or juicy piece of gossip. Instead, when the Saturday dinner party in Williamsburg or on the Upper West Side turns to films, the dedicated savant who has managed to see the just-opened movie gem owns the conversation.

“Control,” at Film Forum, is just one of many fall options for the dedicated cinephile.
This weekend, if you are one of those people — there are worse vices — you will simply have to go see “Lars and the Real Girl,” the comedy starring Ryan Gosling and a blowup doll that was the talk of the Toronto International Film Festival. And then you better drink a few lattes, because “Control,” the black-and-white biopic about the leader of the rock group Joy Division, also opened this week. And start early, because “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” is taking a bow, with Cate Blanchett under all the ferocious makeup again.

Don’t make plans for Saturday, because you’ll need that matinee time to take in Kenneth Branagh’s remake of “Sleuth,” featuring the acting chops of Michael Caine and Jude Law and a screenplay by Harold Pinter. And even after all those wind sprints between theaters, you’ll need a clone to take in James Gray’s New York narco-drama “We Own the Night,” or any of the other 10 new movies that open this week in the city.

Maybe you can bluff your way through the “Have you seen ‘X’?” conversation this weekend and catch a few films in the days following, but next week the onslaught continues. “Gone Baby Gone,” Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, based on a Dennis Lehane novel, piles in. So do “Rendition,” “Reservation Road,” “Things We Lost in the Fire” and “Wristcutters: A Love Story,” all must-sees for dedicated consumers of specialty film. And that’s not even including smaller but still notable projects that will have been released in little more than a week, like “Out of the Blue,” “Terror’s Advocate,” “Black White + Gray” and “King Corn.”

Did somebody blow a whistle and decide that mid-October should be some kind of ad hoc, free-floating film fest? Not really. Current movie-business dynamics are at work, along with some long-held superstitions.

For the rest of this article click here.

Regurgitating Rice Crispies

Soundbites from The Breakfast Club

Bender: Remember how you said your parents use you to get back at each other?
Claire Standish: [nods]
Bender: Wouldn't I be OUTSTANDING in that capacity?

Allison Reynolds: You have problems.
Andrew Clark: Oh, I have problems?
Allison Reynolds: You do everything everyone tells you to do and that is a problem.

Allison Reynolds: I'll do anything sexual. I don't need a million dollars to do it either.
Claire Standish: You're lying.
Allison Reynolds: I already have. I've done just about everything there is except a few things that are illegal. I'm a nymphomaniac.
Claire Standish: Lie.
Brian Johnson: Are your parents aware of this?
Allison Reynolds: The only person I told was my shrink.
Andrew Clark: And what did he do when you told him?
Allison Reynolds: He nailed me.
Claire Standish: Very nice.
Allison Reynolds: I don't think that from a legal standpoint what he did can be construed as rape, since I paid him.
Claire Standish: He's an adult.
Allison Reynolds: Yeah, he's married too.
Claire Standish: Do you have any idea how completely gross that is?
Allison Reynolds: Well, the first few times...
Claire Standish: The first few times? You mean you did it more than once?
Allison Reynolds: Sure.
Claire Standish: Are you crazy?
Brian Johnson: Obviously she's crazy if she's screwing a shrink.

Allison Reynolds: Have you ever done it?
Claire Standish: I don't even have a psychiatrist.
Allison Reynolds: Have you ever done it with a normal person?
Claire Standish: Didn't we already cover this?
John Bender: You never answered the question.
Claire Standish: Look, I'm not going to discuss my private life with total strangers.
Allison Reynolds: It's kind of a double edged sword isn't it?
Claire Standish: A what?
Allison Reynolds: Well, if you say you haven't, you're a prude. If you say you have you're a slut. It's a trap. You want to but you can't, and when you do you wish you didn't, right?
Claire Standish: Wrong.
Allison Reynolds: Or are you a tease?
Andrew Clark: She's a tease.
Claire Standish: I'm sure. Why don't you just forget it.
Andrew Clark: Oh, you're a tease and you know it. All girls are teases.

John Bender: She's only a tease if what she does gets you hot.
Claire Standish: I don't do anything.
Allison Reynolds: That's why you're a tease.
Claire Standish: OK, let me ask you a few questions.
Allison Reynolds: I already told you everything.
Claire Standish: No. Doesn't it bother you to sleep around without being in love. I mean, don't you want any respect?
Allison Reynolds: I don't screw to get respect. That's the difference between you and me.
Claire Standish: It's not the only difference I hope.
John Bender: Face it, you're a tease.
Claire Standish: I'm NOT a tease.
John Bender: Sure you are. Sex is your weapon. You said it yourself. You use it to get respect.
Claire Standish: No, I never said that she twisted my words around.
John Bender: What do you use it for then?
Claire Standish: I don't use it period.
John Bender: Oh, are you medically frigid or is it psychological?
Claire Standish: I didn't mean it that way. You guys are putting words into my mouth.
John Bender: Well, if you'd just answer the question.
Brian Johnson: Why don't you just answer the question?
Andrew Clark: Be honest.
John Bender: No big deal.
Brian Johnson: Yeah answer it.
Andrew Clark: Answer the question, Claire.
John Bender: Talk to us.
Everyone: C'mon, answer the question. Come on. Answer it.
John Bender: C'mon, it's easy. It's only one question.
Claire Standish: NO I NEVER DID IT.
Allison Reynolds: I never did it either. I'm not a nymphomaniac. I'm a compulsive liar.

[John Bender is absently tearing up books]
Andrew Clark: That's real intelligent.
John Bender: You're right. It's wrong to destroy literature. It's such fun to read. And
[examines title]
John Bender: Moe-Lay really pumps my nads.
Claire Standish: Moliere.

Claire Standish: What's your name?
John Bender: What's yours?
Claire Standish: Claire.
John Bender: Claire?
Claire Standish: Claire. It's a family name.
John Bender: Oh, it's a fat girl's name.
Claire Standish: Oh, thank you.
John Bender: You're welcome.
Claire Standish: I'm not fat.
John Bender: Well not at present, but I can see you really pushing maximum density. See I'm not sure if you know this, but there are two kinds of fat people: there's fat people that were born to be fat, and there's fat people that were once thin but became fat... so when you look at 'em you can sorta see that thin person inside. You see, you're gonna get married, you're gonna squeeze out a few puppies and then, uh...

John Bender: What's in there?
Claire Standish: Guess? Where's your lunch?
John Bender: You're wearing it.
Claire Standish: You're nauseating.
John Bender: [pointing to Claire's lunch] What's that?
Claire Standish: Sushi.
John Bender: Sushi?
Claire Standish: Rice, raw fish, and seaweed.
John Bender: You won't accept a guy's tongue in your mouth, and you're going to eat that?
Claire Standish: Can I eat?
John Bender: I don't know. Give it a try.

John Bender: Sporto.
Andrew Clark: What?
John Bender: You get along with your parents?
Andrew Clark: Well, if I say yes I'm an idiot, right?
John Bender: You're an idiot anyway. But if you say you get along with your parents, well, you're a liar too.


Brian Johnson: Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...
Andrew Clark: ...and an athlete...
Allison Reynolds: ...and a basket case...
Claire Standish: ...a princess...
John Bender: ...and a criminal...
Brian Johnson: Does that answer your question?... Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

From IMDB.com
Click here for a review.

The Simpsons Movie

Click on the title of this post to link to a clip with Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. One of the funniest snips is where a naked Bart flies through the air and lands - buglike - on a restaurant window. Meanwhile, where Bart's willy should be is a finger of someone (we also know) in the restaurant. Classic!

Thor and Mjolnir*

I am a huge fan of DC Comics characters and as a small boy I thought after the first Superman movie we'd see something like what we're only seeing today. It's taken a long time for the Batman, Spiderman, X-men franchises to emerge. What about the Flash, and Green Lantern, Wonderwoman, Shazam, Thor etc etc. I still don't understand why the majority of movies aren't based on comic books (eg action with superheroes). Wasn't Spiderman 2 the most successful movie of all time? Doesn't that say something?
Instead we've had pretend comic characters like James Bond (super spy), recently XXX and Jason Bourne (super spies), and on TV, Knight Rider (super car) and Airwolf (super helicopter).

It's an old trick when introducing the genre that you save the best for last. In other words, you introduce the alien or the new character in the last 3rd of the movie.

Problem is in this film (Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer) you hardly ever see the Silver Surfer. The character himself is amazing, but unfortunately most of the time in this movie is spent preparing for a wedding. Yawn.... I've give this movie a 6, but if you're a tweeny, you might think it's worth a slightly more fantastic score.

*From Wiki.com: In Norse mythology, Mjolnir (also spelled Mjölnir, Mjöllnir, Mjollner, Mjølnir, Mjølner, or Mjölner) (IPA pronunciation: [mjolnər]) is the hammer of Thor, the god of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain.

"Mjolnir" simply means "mealer" referring to its pulverizing effect. It is related to words such as the Icelandic verbs mölva (to crush) and mala (to grind), but similar words, all stemming from the Proto-Indo-European root melə can be found in almost all European languages, e.g. the Slavic melvo (grain to be ground) and molotu (hammer), the Dutch meel (meal), the Russian Молот (molot - hammer), the Greek μύλος (mylos - mill) and the Latin malleus (hammer) as well as the Latin mola (mill).

The English meal, mill and maul are direct relatives, while mallet and molar arrived via Latin. It has been suggested that although the name reflects Mjolnir's awesome powers it might also allude to Thor's agricultural nature, as he was primarily worshipped by farmers. An alternative theory suggests that Mjolnir might be related to the Russian word молния (molniya) and the Welsh word mellt (both words being translated as "lightning"). This second theory parallels with the idea that Thor, being a god of thunder, therefore might have used lightning as his weapon.[1]


Overview
Mjolnir is the most fearsome weapon in the arsenal of the Norse pantheon and is used to slay any challengers to Æsir supremacy. While referred to as a club, an axe, and a hammer, Mjolnir was thought to be capable of toppling giants and entire mountains with a single blow.[2] Legend surrounding the war hammer’s origins vary: some relate that "The Black Elves" (that live under the ground where the roots of Yggdrasil begin to form, in Svartalfheimr; svartalf being a dwarf or "black elf"), Sindri and Brokk made it at the behest of the calculating Loki; other tales contend that it descended to earth as a meteorite. Consequently, many Norse pagans believed that lightning strikes were a manifestation of Mjolnir on earth.

Mjolnir is often represented with a bent handle (see the myth below). The rune Tiwaz, usually thought to be a symbol of the god Tyr, is thought by some to represent Thor's hammer. Mjolnir may also mean fertility, the phallus that impregnates the earth.

Sometimes Thor's Hammer is like a "boomerang". Usually, it is used as normal war hammer. There may be a connection between Thor's throwing hammer and the francisca throwing axes of the Franks.

House of Flying Daggers

Watched this last night on DVD...

Movie Review: Venus

It’s the end of an old man’s life, but the human heartstrings hum with the very last and best of this life’s beauty, humor and meaning

Peter O’Toole plays a veteran actor who although famous, respected and well liked, knows his life is coming to an end. It is a courageous role, perhaps not so far from the truth, but moments of austerity are tempered by moments of exquisiteness, subtlety, wit and funniness. Above all, this is an intelligent and evocative flick.

If you are reluctant to see a film about an old timer, don’t be. O’ Toole, who 3 years ago received an honorary Oscar (basically a lifetime achievement award), famously declared that he wasn’t done; that he had a lot of acting left in him. Well, here is the proof of the pudding.

It is a powerful film simply because you really do believe the old man doesn’t have long to live. And there is entropy setting in. In an early scene he is sitting on a bed, alone, in the quiet of his room. Then one is startled by Maurice, this elegant old man violently slapping his own face and bellowing, growling to himself: “GET UP OLD MAN.”
Will we grow old with a similar resistance to our own slowing down; will we resist our own systematic decay and giving up with such passion and vigor?

While some elements will deplore the subject matter of this flick – a very old man becoming obsessed, even falling in love with a young woman more than half a century younger, who moves in with his sometimes crotchety best friend – more discerning movie goers will realize that a much deeper message is conveyed. Values such as friendship, consideration and appreciation of fellow human beings are portrayed in an unusual setting: the gray and drab of London.

This flick is an important lesson, even a reality check. After all, everyone will get old and lose their attractiveness, but is anyone ever too old to be attracted to youth and beauty? In a sense we see the tremendous courage of an old man, who woos the young girl somewhat tongue in cheek (by offering to pay for her dress in an exclusive store by proffering a clipping of his friend’s toenail). We’re amused at his attempts to make some extra money (both for himself and for her). The old man is sometimes helplessly charmed, other times pathetically manipulated. One of the funniest scenes is him falling off a bucket (rather than kicking it) and into a room filled with painters and easels.

The scene where the old man waits for her on the pier is particularly poignant; we have all done that. Waited desperately for someone, even long after it is obvious that they are not going to arrive.

One aspect that irked me a little was his calling his muse (played by Jodie Whittaker) Venus. But having ruminated on this for a while, it not seems that it would hardly have the same effect if he called her by some other name. Perhaps the adoption of the name, and her acceptance of it, could have been done better. It’s arguable, because somehow the clever script may have made us intentionally uncomfortable with such a quick deification of what at first appears to be an ordinary-on-the-surface, obnoxious, always hungry, pretty but cocky young lady. Thus it is with artful flourishes that we see her transform into Venus, not only outwardly in the final scene, but we’re privy to powerful inward changes that reach out and touch, in delicate strokes, the empty spaces in us that most films never probe.

It’s regrettable that some people have dubbed this an ‘art’ film. Possibly, some young parents might not like the idea (having not seen the film) of their young daughters hanging around with the stereotypical ‘dirty old man’. But every man is the old man (or will be some day), and every woman is the beautiful young girl (at some stage). Although Venus may seem somewhat sinister, it’s really about the metaphor that this young woman represents. After all, Ian (Leslie Phillips) the old man she looks after (and Maurice’s best friend) cannot stand her, and yet the other old man sees so much, everything in her, and is desperate just to be in her company. And it is interesting to see how she responds to someone so mature, whom she can talk to about important and unimportant things.

Loneliness is an almost certain fate for old people, even if they have their spouses with them. Venus represents youth at its most pristine, beauty as a fragile source of tremendous power, yet she is introduced with her rough-around-the-edges charm, in a world similar imperfect, but also wonderful. It is this world that the old man, Maurice, must leave behind. But flaws are also charming, especially once we see how much a thing, a person, that is loved and cared for, can transform itself from what it is not, and into what it truly is.

Inside all of us is a lover, an athlete, a dancer, a poet, a teacher, a romantic, a husband or a wife, a fighter, a friend, a victim, a worker, and then, also, a dreamer. The film seems to suggest that it is the dreams of love that we must pursue, and the dreams of life we must set out to live while we are alive and strong. When the long years of our lives have gone, will we have the vigor to confidently acknowledge the beauty we see, that tugs as powerfully and as painfully as it ever did, and will we still act on it knowing how little life left is left in our bodies?

It’s likely that many who see this film will find themselves grateful for the beauty and power of their own youth, and pausing the next time they kiss a loved one, or touch another’s hands, or walk barefoot into the cold foam of a beach.

Released by Miramax, directed by Roger Michell; written by Hanif Kureishi,

Cast:
Maurice - Peter O'Toole
Ian - Leslie Phillips
Valerie - Vanessa Redgrave
Donald - Richard Griffiths
Jessie - Jodie Whittaker
Jillian - Cathryn Bradshaw
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.
MPAA rating: R, for language, some sexual content and brief nudity

Movie review: 'Venus'
By Michael Wilmington
Tribune movie critic

O'Toole achieves poignancy not by groping for our heartstrings but by honestly revealing Maurice's weakness and lost stature, by showing the raging charmer beneath the aging flesh.

Maurice, by contrast, is stooped and delicate, with a sneaky, crumbling little smile. He looks weak, weary. But this is a performance. We have only to recall last year's "Lassie," where O'Toole was the more robust and commanding Duke of Rudling, to realize he's playing fragility rather than succumbing to it on screen.

Movie Review: World Trade Centre

Movie Review By Peter Travers

Oliver Stone has made a cautious, earnestly factual and emotionally unassailable film about two Port Authority cops, Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) and John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage), who were among the last of the twenty survivors pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11. What he has not made is an Oliver Stone movie.

Good news for those opposed to seeing an inspiring true story in the hands of a nut-job conspiracy theorist (JFK, Nixon). But for those of us who recognize the rigorous talent in Stone (Platoon, Salvador) as well as his reckless abuse of it (Natural Born Killers, Alexander), there's little joy in seeing him morph into Ron Howard to play it safe at the box office.

Much has already been made of the fact that Paramount, the studio releasing World Trade Center, has hired Creative Response Concepts to curry favor for the film among conservatives and the Christian right. It seems to be working. Bad boy Stone is earning raves from right-wing pundits who once would have merrily burned him at the stake.

Is Stone going soft to revive his flagging career? Only in the sense that there's no politics in World Trade Center, except for the marketing, and that the trapped cops never curse their fates, and every American on view behaves honorably.

Though Stone has cleaned up his act, there is still a fire in him to italicize the profound significance of this intimate story. In one of the film's rare showoff shots, Stone and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (The Hours) have the camera rise from the rubble to take in the Manhattan skyline and then up and up till it reaches a satellite beaming the news that will shake the world.

Still, it's in the smaller moments that the film shines. Stone's focus on the men in the rubble is characteristically intense. And the actors perform beyond the call of duty. Cage is riveting and resonant as Sgt. McLoughlin , a veteran cop who has spent a dozen years patrolling the towers, though nothing, not even the 1993 bombing, has prepped him for this. He and his team of four volunteers, including Jimeno -- Pena delivers on his breakthrough in Crash with a performance of grit and grace -- are there to help. But how?

The question becomes moot when both are trapped under an avalanche of concrete and steel, barely able to move in a confined space. Lesser actors would be daunted by the task of conveying emotional nuance in the dark, immobile and covered with ash. But Cage and Pena rise to the challenge as McLoughlin and Jimeno keep themselves awake -- sleep could lead to coma and death -- by trading stories even as the hope of rescue fades. Jimeno, who has visions of Jesus, tells of wanting to be a cop since he was a kid watching Starsky and Hutch on the tube. Later, both men hum the show's jaunty theme to break the tension. The telling details -- McLoughlin's tardiness in building a kitchen for his wife, Donna (a quietly devastating Maria Bello), Jimeno arguing about baby names with his pregnant wife, Allison (a tightly wound Maggie Gyllenhaal) -- become a lifeline.

Stone cuts from the men to their families at home, waiting for news, any news.
This material could have played like a by-the-numbers docudrama. But the script, by newcomer Andrea Berloff, who worked with both couples to get the details right, has the sting of reality to work against any sugarcoating. For the rescue (the set was built in Playa Vista, California), Stone used medics and firefighters who were actually on the scene.

Among the actors, Stephen Dorff scores as EMS officer Scott Strauss. And Michael Shannon is indelible in the incredible role of Staff Sgt. David Karnes, a former Marine who quits his accounting job on a call from God to head for Ground Zero.

If Stone overdoes the rah-rah, it's hard to blame him. The film is a salute to heroes who could have easily walked away. Unlike Paul Greengrass' piercing United 93, which detailed the events of 9/11 with potent provocation, World Trade Center takes the point of view of two men with no clear idea of what's going on. "What happened to the buildings?" asks Jimeno when his rescuers lift him out of the hole. The deeper implications of those words raise hot-button issues that Stone has tabled for now. His film is undeniably affecting, but you leave it wanting more.
PETER TRAVERS

The most successful classic children’s author of all time