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What movies did you watch this weekend?
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deej
Tol Eressea


Feb 4 2013, 3:51pm

Post #1 of 52 (595 views)
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What movies did you watch this weekend? Can't Post

Tell us about them here!

"The Hobbits bowed low. 'Most gracious host', said Frodo, 'It was said to me by Elrond Half-Elven that I should find friendship upon the way, secret and unlooked for. Certainly I have found no such friendship as you have shown. To have found it turns evil to great good."


imin
Valinor


Feb 4 2013, 5:41pm

Post #2 of 52 (376 views)
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6 nations rugby championship first weekend [In reply to] Can't Post

Not a film but if you are someone like myself who likes rugby and has some interest in the teams playing - I'm English, then it is just as if not more exciting!

What a cracker the first weekend was as well! 3 brilliant games with every team i wanted to win doing so!

I have quite a few Scottish friends, coming from where i do in England so it was great to get another win over them and start the championship brightly. I thought both Scotland and England played well just with England being better at taking their chances.

Did anyone else catch any of the three matches or am i alone on this? Unsure


silneldor
Half-elven


Feb 4 2013, 5:44pm

Post #3 of 52 (407 views)
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Stagecoach -1986 version [In reply to] Can't Post

With an all-star cast, and not primarily actors either. It was fun seeing them all:

Willie Nelson
Johnny Cash
Kris Kristofferson
Waylon Jennings
John Schneider
June & John Carter Cash
Elizabeth Ashley
David Allen Coe
Anthony Newley
Jessi Colter















Annael
Immortal


Feb 4 2013, 6:44pm

Post #4 of 52 (374 views)
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Star Trek; Wasabi; Heaven [In reply to] Can't Post

Was visiting friends & brought "Star Trek" & "Wasabi" along because they hadn't seen either ."Star Trek" meaning the recent JJ Abrams reboot; "Wasabi" is an old Jean Reno movie - he plays a French detective who was stationed in Japan years ago and is summoned back because he's the only legatee in the will of his former lover. Turns out that her property includes a daughter he never knew about. Very funny, very touching at times, and yet has plenty of action scenes (the violence is cartoonish).

My friends had gotten "Heaven" from Netflix, so we also watched that. it was made in Italy & stars Giovanni Ribisi and Cate Blanchett. I cannot begin to describe the plot without spoiling it, but suffice it to say it has some of the most beautiful cinematography I've seen (we were reminded of the care taken to frame shots in "Girl with a Pearl Earring"), the acting is excellent, the movie NEVER goes where you think it's going to go next, and we could not stop thinking about it afterwards.

The way we imagine our lives is the way we are going to go on living our lives.

- James Hillman, Healing Fiction

* * * * * * * * * *

NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967


Ataahua
Forum Admin / Moderator


Feb 4 2013, 6:46pm

Post #5 of 52 (370 views)
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I didn't catch any of the games [In reply to] Can't Post

but I heard Italy beat France! What a cracking win for them.

Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."

"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.


Ataahua's stories


FaeLyra
Registered User


Feb 4 2013, 6:47pm

Post #6 of 52 (369 views)
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Watched "We Need to Talk About Kevin" [In reply to] Can't Post

Starring:
Tilda Swinton
John C. Reilly
Ezra Miller

It was very good. The performances were fantastic and I think really carried the film's emotional weight very well.
I recommend it!

I swear at that moment, we lost the ponies.


Ataahua
Forum Admin / Moderator


Feb 4 2013, 6:48pm

Post #7 of 52 (381 views)
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The Impossible. [In reply to] Can't Post

This has Naomi Watts and Ewen McGregor as parents of three young boys who are holidaying in Thailand and are caught in the Boxing Day tsunami. Such a heart-breaking movie, and the acting from both Watts and McGregor is amazing. It's worth seeing, just to get a first-hand POV of what it was like during the tsunami and in the terrible aftermath when you're in shock and trying to keep your children safe.

Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."

"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.


Ataahua's stories


Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven


Feb 4 2013, 8:14pm

Post #8 of 52 (374 views)
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Downton Abbey (vague spoilers) [In reply to] Can't Post

This one seemed like a bit of a place-holder after the traumas of the last couple of episodes, although I was very glad that Violet engineered a reconciliation between Cora and Robert. But my goodness, Robert is becoming more of a stuffed shirt! And don't you just want to hit Carson with a cream pie for his self-righteous attitude about Ethel? Thank goodness both the upstairs and the downstairs women have made their own decision.

I was delighted to see the previews for next week include a shot of Bates returning "home". At last! That sub-plot played out ages ago.

What will O'Brien's manipulation of James and Thomas lead to? I realize she's trying to get back at Thomas for his dirty tricks regarding Alfred, but still---just when he's humanized by his grief for Sybil.




Alassëa Eruvande
Valinor


Feb 4 2013, 8:39pm

Post #9 of 52 (374 views)
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Carson [In reply to] Can't Post

is the biggest snob at Downton! Laugh

Yes, O'Brien is certainly leading Thomas down the primrose path. Oh, those two! But James keeps making comments that Thomas seems bound to misinterpret. Such as the "she's not my type" comment about the new cook's helper. But it seems O'Brien's dirty trick is going to be much worse for Thomas than Thomas's dirty trick was to Alfred. Such a soap opera! But I can't turn it off! Laugh



I am SMAUG! I kill when I wish! I am strong, strong, STRONG!
My armor is like tenfold shields! My teeth like swords! My claws, spears!
The shock of my tail, a thunderbolt! My wings, a hurricane! And my breath, death!


Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven


Feb 4 2013, 8:44pm

Post #10 of 52 (374 views)
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Yes [In reply to] Can't Post

James is playing into O'Brien's hands. He has a pretty good idea what Thomas is up to, but he has no clue what she's up to! (So does James have his eye on Daisy, do you think?)

I almost ended my post with "what a soap opera!" Great minds, etc. Laugh




CuriousG
Half-elven


Feb 4 2013, 10:22pm

Post #11 of 52 (358 views)
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My favorite Downton lines of the week [In reply to] Can't Post

"I want you to tell Lord and Lady Grantham what you've almost admitted to me... Lie is such an unmusical word."
-Violet to Dr. Clarkson

"Anyone who has use of their limbs can make a salmon mousse."
-Mrs Pattmore to Ethel


Magpie
Immortal


Feb 4 2013, 10:29pm

Post #12 of 52 (358 views)
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I have to say, this episode is one I finally liked! [In reply to] Can't Post

lol... or maybe I'm just finally letting myself like it.

What I think I needed that this episode gave me was a sense that the writers want us to see a range of thoughts and attitudes.

Up till now, I felt - in terms of the upstairs - was a lot of stuffiness and not a *ton* of pushing back. Now we see that sense of entitlement from some characters and other characters are standing up to them or calling them on it. Up till now, I kind of felt we were supposed to look at that hoity-toity attitude and think it was cool. That that's what the 'allure' of the show was rooted in.

With a wider ranges of attitudes being presented, it's more interesting to me.


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CuriousG
Half-elven


Feb 4 2013, 10:39pm

Post #13 of 52 (360 views)
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You sound like an Irish radical; is Tom lurking here? lol/ [In reply to] Can't Post

 


Magpie
Immortal


Feb 4 2013, 10:57pm

Post #14 of 52 (346 views)
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well... [In reply to] Can't Post

I'm not an Irish radical but I came of age in the 60s and I've been known to have some radical thoughts and opinions.

I think my husband still has his old SDS button somewhere around.

:-)


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squire
Half-elven


Feb 4 2013, 11:12pm

Post #15 of 52 (382 views)
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Zero Dark-Thirty [In reply to] Can't Post

Nothing about this film surprised me. I had seen the trailer and read the reviews. I saw "The Hurt Locker", the director's earlier exploration of America's war in Southwest Asia. If I wanted to be flip, I could stop now with this closer: "Remember that super-competent, alienated loner hero in The Hurt Locker? Well, he gave up bomb disposal and got a gender change operation, red hair, and a job as an analyst with the CIA. All the emotion is still locked up in that hurt locker, though."

And yet. The film has stayed with me. Parts of it keep replaying in my head, primarily some of the scenes where Maya, the heroine, figuratively beats her head against yet another wall between her and her prey. And some of the footage of those burly Seals, dressed as the SWAT Team from Hell, slowly but noisily breaking their way into Bin Laden's fortress, is more gripping than it ought to be, given that everyone in the world already knows what the outcome will be.

It's really two movies, then. The first one is long and slow and only occasionally violent; brightly lit in a stark desert world of detainee prisons and CIA cubicles; focused on the uses of the mind and wits to solve an almost unsolvable puzzle. The second one is much shorter, moves more quickly, takes place in the dark, and focuses on the uses of brute force to see if the puzzle solution is correct. The first is eerily feminine, improbably so except that the analyst hero was in fact a woman; the second is reliably masculine -- traditional war movie stuff -- but joltingly so after two hours of girl power seemingly getting whatever it wants in a man's world.

Yet both movies are, as I began realizing on writing this up above, about breaking down barriers by harnessing the will and suppressing the feelings. As part two begins, Maya stands back and retreats from the stinging dust of the stealthy helicopters taking off at zero dark-thirty. She can do nothing to help these men, who've made it brutally clear to her that they are prepared to die for the sake of her theoretical certainty that she has found the elusive "UBL". Only at the end, when they return with their prize and she identifies the corpse, does she regain her position as the heroine. And only at the very end, in a place of literal solitude and military machinery that reflects the solitude and all-male world in which she's lived for the past ten years, does she finally - well, it's not a break-down, but it'll have to do. It's all she will ever give us.

The torture scenes get all the publicity, but I don't even think they were needed for the film to work. I suspect they were put in for political reasons, that is, entirely to engage the audience with the images of Americans as expert torturers and to pose the question of the effectiveness of torture as an interrogation method. When they finally do get information that drives the investigation forward, it's not clear just how much a part the actual torture played at that point.

And except for one brief interchange during the torture, we never even meet the enemy or hear his point of view. The bad guys are out there, to be sure; at several places they even strike back at Maya's team, giving us a tantalizing sense of uncertainty about the survival of the heroes. But mostly they remain a collection of anonymous bearded faces and quickly rattled-off Arabic names; the film makes it clear that for all her undeniable passion to find and kill UBL, Maya's real enemy is bureaucratic inertia, Agency politics, and the changing status of the War on Terror back in Washington. And that too is unspecific: the film makes no comment about whether or not, as has been claimed elsewhere, the hunt for UBL (like the original war in Afghanistan) was sidelined by the Bush administration's war in Iraq, or whether the Obama administration put more effort into finding UBL than the Bush group did. There are a few passing references to the CIA's loss of credibility after the WMD fiasco, but those are merely there to drive the drama of Maya's certainty that she's right, without any hard evidence to point to.

The scenes of life in Pakistan were fascinating, and one of the best scenes is a cell-phone hunt through the streets of a typical Punjab city. I was reminded rather forcibly by the images that our wars in this region have definitely begun to take on a "movie look", equivalent to the looks we now immediately associate with films set in the Cold War against the USSR, the Vietnam War, and even World War II. I've seen Argo, The Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down, and now this one, and I believe there are at least as many more that I've missed. All have that desert scenery, those boxy plaster houses and rundown streets, those grim but baffled soldiers in hyped-up armor, canvas boots, and camouflaged helmets, the helicopters, the yellow skies, and always the mysterious, darkly-exotic, Islamic extras in the background.



squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd (and NOW the 4th too!) TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary


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CuriousG
Half-elven


Feb 5 2013, 12:11am

Post #16 of 52 (345 views)
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Thanks for the review [In reply to] Can't Post

I read No Easy Day, and thought this movie might be redundant. But it seems to fill in the holes left by the book. The book was good enough on its own, especially the step-by-step details of the raid, but the author seemed rather arrogant, particularly when it came to the CIA people, who appeared as mere appliances to him and the SEALS, so it will be good to get another perspective.


Magpie
Immortal


Feb 5 2013, 12:29am

Post #17 of 52 (342 views)
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thanks [In reply to] Can't Post

I'm on the fence about seeing this, mostly because I'm not sure how I'll react to the torture scenes.

I appreciate the thorough review.


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imin
Valinor


Feb 5 2013, 12:32am

Post #18 of 52 (338 views)
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Yeah it was a great game :) [In reply to] Can't Post

I am really pleased they won, they definitely deserve to win more matches than they do - always getting better, it really opens up the championship and leads to a very interesting game next weekend between Wales and France (both losing).


Annael
Immortal


Feb 5 2013, 1:05am

Post #19 of 52 (341 views)
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I really liked [In reply to] Can't Post

how the women supported Ethel (most of them).

Love the Dowager more each episode.

I was also glad to see Mary stop siding always with her father and instead take on a mediator role to help him deal with how everything is changing. She's the only one who can do that.

The way we imagine our lives is the way we are going to go on living our lives.

- James Hillman, Healing Fiction

* * * * * * * * * *

NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967


silneldor
Half-elven


Feb 5 2013, 2:05am

Post #20 of 52 (332 views)
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I really enjoyed [In reply to] Can't Post

and got a lot out of your review squire. I see so few movies out in the theaters, but i do like to understand a bit where a film stands if i can.
Thank you.















sevilodorf
Tol Eressea


Feb 5 2013, 2:07am

Post #21 of 52 (330 views)
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The Guilt Trip [In reply to] Can't Post

not like any road trip I've ever taken with my mother. She said we obviously don't visit the right places. I offered to drive her to Texas and find her a restaurant that served three pound steaks, but she wouldn't go for it.

Fourth Age Adventures at the Inn of the Burping Troll http://burpingtroll.com





zarabia
Tol Eressea


Feb 5 2013, 3:10am

Post #22 of 52 (334 views)
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I agree for the most part [In reply to] Can't Post

I've enjoyed all along though I've often felt frustrated for the same reasons you gave for not liking it: the attitude that the aristocracy really were better and that the servants were good and worthy only if they "knew their place" and were properly deferential. This attitude seemed to become more and more obvious later in season one and most of season two. When I first got hooked at beginning of the first season, Mrs. Crowley was great; stood right up, politely, to the Granthams and called them on their antiquated notions. Then the romance and intrigue took over on the show which was okay at first because I was invested in the characters. But in season two they made Mrs. Crowley out to be a ridiculous, interfering busybody, and the general tone seemed to follow suit. They had Sybil become a nurse and Edith took to driving and being helpful, but it was the aristocracy deigning to pitch in in hard times rather than the "commoners" standing up for themselves and challenging the "upstairs" crowd to do their part. This season seems to finally be getting back to some of what I loved in season one.

I'm really loving Mrs. Hughs. I've always liked her, but she's really showing some backbone now. And of course, I'm so glad to see the Mrs. Crowley that I admired in season one returning. They still don't have her being the great foil to Cousin Violet she was in season one, but she's getting some of her mojo back. Smile

"The question isn't where, Constable, but when." - Inspector Spacetime


CuriousG
Half-elven


Feb 5 2013, 3:15am

Post #23 of 52 (331 views)
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Did you think it was realistic, though? [In reply to] Can't Post

It was good to see Ethel get all the support; only Robert and Carson were strongly aghast about her. But does it seem realistic? I have trouble believing that many people in the 1920s would find "a fallen women" socially acceptable. Even now, I don't think most people would mix too readily with ex-prostitutes. But maybe it's all due to the fact that they knew her before it all, so she's not "another prostitute," but an acquaintance. Kinda funny that she has more friends now than she did as a housemaid, but that was her fault back then.


Starling
Half-elven


Feb 5 2013, 5:04am

Post #24 of 52 (320 views)
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I thought I wanted to see this, but now I'm not so sure [In reply to] Can't Post

When I saw the preview at another movie, the earthquake / tsunami scenes (particularly the sound) put me into some sort of bad earthquake memory zone. I might need to give it a miss. Unsure


Starling
Half-elven


Feb 5 2013, 5:13am

Post #25 of 52 (315 views)
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Rain of the Children [In reply to] Can't Post

I can't believe it's taken me so long to get around to seeing this one. I found it deeply moving, and a riveting story. Vincent Ward (NZ film maker) made a documentary about a family a long time ago. In Rain of the Children, he goes back many years later to try and make sense of the story, and finds out so much more, which helps him make more sense of what he observed originally. It's an amazing story of love and loss, with some incredible NZ history woven in. It's as much a personal journey for Vincent Ward as it is a story about the people in the the documentary.
If you have any interest in New Zealand history and the richness of Maori culture, this is a must see. But anyone who has experienced loss will relate to this story.

Here's a link for more info.

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