I rented Notes on a Scandal, as well, and really enjoyed it just for waching Blanchett and Dench play off one another. I've been wondering
if Barbara was sexually obsessed with Sheba or if it was something else. My feeling is that it's more complicated than just sexual but I'd like other's opinions on the matter.

Just finished Marie Antoinette and Flags of Our Fathers.

For me, Marie Antoinette was all about the costume porn. I'm not sure why there was booing and hullabaloo, really. It wasn't awful OR particularly memorable.

As for FoOF, I'm underwhelmed. I really wish the movie'd been chronologically structured.. the flashing forward and back and up and down annoyed the crap out of me in the beginning, which made me hostile to the rest of the film.

The English Patient. Yes, I'd really never seen it. I was only about 13 when it won all those Oscars. I liked it a lot. I'm a sucker for scenic romances. It had gorgeous cinematography and a great sense of place, and the acting was wonderful. I've loved Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes forever, but this is the first thing I liked Kristin Scott-Thomas in. She usually has this air of arched intelligence & superiority about it, but in this one I got a sense of her vulnerability and her longing. It was interesting to see actors like Colin Firth and Naveen Andrews pop up in the supporting parts as well.

Oh! What's wrong with me? I don;t even get movies any more ;)!

That's how I felt about the book. It was very thrilling in the beginning and middle, but runs out of steam at the very end. I can't wait to watch the movie.

Anyway, I saw Match Point yesterday. For the first half of the movie, Scarlett Johannsen looked bored with the whole thing. Her character didn't have much of a personality until she gets pregnant. Her performance improved after that, although I wasn't really impressed with her work here.

*waits for someone to say "Scarlett always looks like that"* ;)

The movie itself was good. Peculiar, but good enough that I'd watch it a few more times.

For what it’s worth sallamandersam it was a bit more ambiguous in the book. My view was that >>Barbara was reacting to women sexually out of loneliness (or envy of youth); I think the movie suffered for magnifying a sexual angle<<. But I also found Barbara to be a far more sympathetic character than Sheba.

MaddyCat I really loved Come Early Morning also. Judd amazes me how good she can be in smaller stories; I thought Jeffrey Donovan gave a good performance as well. Highly recommended esp. for anyone who enjoyed Ruby in Paradise.

And despite another scathing review from The Dude, I must admit I’m kind of curious to see a car chase featuring an AMC Gremlin.

If the even less appealing AMC Matador and Hornet will suffice, just rent The Man With the Golden Gun.

I rented A Stolen Face, a 1950s Hammer film starring Lizbeth Scott and a depressed-looking (and not unreasonably so) Paul Henreid. The useful lesson you can learn from this film is that if you surgically alter a hideously-scarred ex-convict so she'll look like your ex-girlfriend, she won't miraculously become a brilliant concert pianist and it will end in tears.

Troy: I don't know what it is with the epic battlemovies, but they do kind of lend themselves to be snarked at. Achilles acted like such a teenager. Showing up late, mouthing off to authority figures, muttering "I hate him, he's not my king" under his breath. Plus he was such a famewhore. Paris was the spoiled brat. I bet, Hector wished he smacked him more when they were younger. God knows, I wanted to on his behalf. It was kind of cruel to cast Orlando Bloom opposite Eric Bana, just because it was so blatantly obvious that Bana can act circles around Bloom. The dialogue, as usual, was cringeworthy and Sean Bean wasted in this movie. But while I didn't care for Brad Pitt's haircolour in this, he sure was fine and hot with the temple babe and sleeping naked all the time.

The movie is on youtube. The chase scene is in the 8th part. Why a civilian would want to watch the whole thing is beyond me.

I think it's the actors spouting five dollars worth of dialogue (That's often too much for the writers or them) while wearing the most ridiculous (if not skimpy) outfit.

Nashville: I know this one is a sacred cow, but here goes.

On the commentary Altman says Minnie Pearl hated the movie. Which has to be the strangest sentence uttered in the history of the English Language. Minnie Pearl?! The fuck? I did hear Nashville got two thumbs up from Boxcar Willie and Hoyt Axton.

I can see their point as Nashville is an alternate universe where the cameos don’t come from actual country stars of the era, but Altman’s Hollywood friends (who have their name spoken at least five times just to make sure we know who it is.) Seems kind of a waste as there are so many better stories from the real Nashville than presented here… Johnny Cash burning the forest while high on mescaline… George Jones driving to the liquor store on his riding mower…

Can we burst another myth? Just because Altman jams every scene with his retinue of pet B-Listers doesn’t mean his management of an ensemble is a work of genius. In addition to being wafer thin cartoons he doesn’t manage his line up well. For instance in Nashville Timothy Brown is everywhere in the first third and disappears from then on with little explanation. The assassin gets so little development you have a hard time pinning down his motivation. Meanwhile the most obnoxious overbear the rest of the ensemble.

Altman fumbles with outsized characters, the notoriously breezy attitude about rehearsing makes the actors prone to indulging in every scenery chewing convention of their role. Thank god Altman’s collaboration with Rod Stieger was confined to a cameo in the player, his screen -*test*-('") for McCabe and Mrs. Miller set off the San Fernando earthquake.

Here Alan Garfield, Henry Gibson and Geraldine Chaplin are set upon the scenery like three Rottweilers thrown a steak.

Geraldine Chaplin’s “Opal of the BBC” is simply the Jar-Jar Binks of the 70’s. She was supposed to be revealed as a fraud. No shit. (If there were a punctuation mark for rolling one’s eyes and making the jerk off motion I would have just used it.)

Altman’s biographer went on about the violin case being subtlety presented which was a jaw dropper when David Hayward pulls out his pistol and assassinates Barbara Jean. Yeah if you’ve never seen a gangster movie or bugs Bunny Cartoon in your life. Quiet polite loaner; I’m sure he won’t snap. Altman is never that predictable with his characters!

The wardrobe hasn’t aged well, which is true of most of the decade, but you can’t take Michael Murphy in his sky blue leisure suit seriously, much less Jeff Goldblum’s Dumb Donald hat/Bootsy Collins glasses combo. Shelly Duvall’s disco look with a new wig every scene… it is unpleasant to look at. When she dons a white afro she looks like Oglethorpe’s glammed out sister.

When I’m beaten to death with a copy of Film Comment this will be the reason why.

I think it's unfair to blame the disco look and the wigs for an unpleasant look, in the case of Shelly Duvall.

It made things even worse.

Babel. It's very rare I dislike a movie with so many Oscar nominations (I find I can usually glean some common sense from the Academy's choices)... but I thought this was awful. Really really overlong, pretentious without actually conveying any sort of concrete message, depressing without actually being sad or making you care about any of the characters, since they were all far too stupid (although <<I did feel for the children wandering through the desert in Mexico because of the sheer ridiculousness of their situation>>), and also utterly boring. This movie actually angered me simply by existing. So in conclusion - hate.