The cinema thread

[Jonn]

I just watched the latest Ghibli production Ponyo on the cliff. The movie is childish in a good way i guess, with awesome animation(as usual). It's not the serious kind of movie like Princess Mononoke. Howl was a let down..i wonder when they will make something like Spirited away again.

[Servo2000]

visitor Q - wtf. not what i expected and i'm not sure if i'm going to bother to finish it. i just wanted to check out some takashi miike films to see if i was missing anything from those type of japanese filmmakers. i guess these guys aren't my type of thing.

Visitor Q is, at least from what I've seen, one of the more extreme Miike films at the very least and I've heard considered one of the strangest (which is saying a lot considering Miike's work). I'm not extremely familiar with the lot of it but I'm sure there are better "introductions" to his work.

[mass]

i agree visitor q is one of his best... along with the black society trilogy. my personal favorite is dead or alive 2 though...

i think gozu is a lot stranger than izo, and much more tolerable (:

[sam_tem]

thanks for the recommendations guys. i'll be getting "bird people in china" next. are there any Kiyoshi Kurosawa films that people would recommend or his work generally inferior to takashi's? i've heard that "the cure" is worth watching.

[mass]

can't really compare the 2... cure is really good, and pulse is okay... i don't think it's aged well (there's a us remake of this). the rest of his stuff is pretty subpar imo.

btw just thought that i'd add bird people of china is a really good start, and if you want a yakuza movie of miike's i'd recommend deadly outlaw: rekka which is fairly conventional but still has a lot of his quirks, and is a lot of fun.

[huskiesonice]

Do people really like Slumdog? If it was any more disposable it would be made of recyclable plastic.

Gomorra on the other hand is something else. I have checked out Matteo Garrone's other films and both are pretty good. Primo Amore (First Love) is interesting but Imbalsalmatore (The Embalmer) is really great - definitely worth seeing.

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

Jamon Jamon dir. Bigas Luna(1992)

[Diego]

recently:

Lang's Die Nibelungen
Pasolini's Arabian nights
Song's spider forest
Palfi's Taxidermia (amazing!!... Thanks Maldoror)

[huskiesonice]

Taxidermia looks interesting - thanks for recommending.

[maldoror]

glad you finally got around to seeing it Diego!

even though I've seen a lot of really good movies since my first viewing of taxidermia (e.g. adrift in tokyo, the wrestler) there's no doubt in my mind that taxidermia was the last truly great one.

[doldrums]

Wow - just reading taxidermia brings alot of images to my mind that I was hoping were permanently expunged...a good film but one I wished I hadn't seen. If that makes sense.

I'm getting old.

[Jorge Hache]

Saw taxidermia yesteday (thanx Diego for the recommedation and thanx to a fellow student whom i borrow the dvd)

A great surprise, one of the most interestesting (and crazy/bizarre/surreal/intelligent/disgusting/brave) movie i've seen in a long time, in some way remind me of Dušan Makavejev and Emir Kusturica's movies because the surreal atmosphere, corrosive political critics and dark humour histories.

[maldoror]

^good call on the makavejev. watching taxidermia for the first time reminded me above all of stumbling upon sweet movie in 7th grade and having absolutely no idea how to mentally process it. that was the same year I discovered dead alive and santa sangre. truly a watershed moment in my mental development.

[Diego]

^dead alive and santa sangre.

... fando & lis on my tv right now.

[doldrums]

Just saw Waltz with Bashir - excellent. I had no expectations coming in but its definitely one of the noteworthy things recent-ish releases.