Whatever you do, avoid Fellini Satyricon. Unless you're in the mood to watch a guy squat and take a dump, or endless shots of fat bare-breasted women wearing hideous make-up. I'd guess not many people are, but I'm not one to judge.

So you want to watch a small, thoughtful film about people coming to terms with emotions too difficult to explore? I sure didn't, so I watched Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. First, you got your Mickey Rourke as Harley Davidson, a macho hard-ass who drinks, brawls, and womanizes, and yet his one truly distinctive character trait is that he doesn't know how to shoot a gun. Yes, every time he fires a gun in the film, he closes his eyes and misses wildly. As far as superpowers go, it's not exactly bending the space-time continuum. And if Rourke's performance is strangely low-key, as if he's somehow ashamed to be in a film of this caliber (I shit you not!), then he's easily balanced by Don Johnson as the Marlboro Man, whose over-the-top swaggering, leering, and sneering make him seem as if he's in a completely different movie that's being shot simultaneously 3 or 4 miles away. Throw in a bizarre hodgepodge of a supporting cast (Tia Carrere? Daniel Baldwin? Tom Sizemore? Vanessa Williams????), all fighting over a drug that's simultaneously addictive and lethal with one dose, which makes it worthless as a drug, I'd say, but then I'm not a filmmaker. Then again, neither was anyone else involved in this.

Oh, and I can't forget the best line in the film: Mickey Rourke in a philosophical moment, uttering, "If there is a Heaven, and a God, hey, I'd like to meet the Dude, you know I'd like to go up there and hang out with Him." William Shakespeare, in his current state, could not have written that any better.

The final scene of this film is one of my favourite's in movie history. So subtly sad and haunting.

I grew up watching a lot of Italian films and Fellini was highly adored. If you want to watch more of his films here are a few suggestions.
You should watch Le Notti di Cabiria. (Sweet Charity was based on this)
Luci del varietà is interesting because he co-directed it in 1950 so while the film isn't completely his you definitely see the advent of what he was going to become as a writer and director. Roma doesn't have a linnear storyline but it is interesting to watch. It is gaudy, raw, sexy and crazy. E la nave va is unusual because it is completely sung and kind of stagey looking and there are all these visual metaphors for things that represent culture and Europe on the brink of World War I.

I wonder how the director managed to coax THOSE performances out of Daniel Baldwin and Tom Sizemore? [/sarcasm]

Harley Davidson and the Man was a little too pretentious and smug in its existentialism. I much prefer The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, which is a snappy frothy breeze.

We watched Children of Men last night. It was very good but oh my sweet jesus that was intense to watch. (Maybe it was because I was holding my son while watching the movie that made me so anxious)

Clone Wars volumes I & II just went back to Netflix. Each disc was just an hour, which makes me wonder why they couldn't have a super-special edition with both volumes on one DVD. And possibly some retouched scenes.

Anyway. I can see why this series won Emmies. It combined traditional hand drawn animation with 3D toon shaded animation seamlessly. The story was well-done, even churned out in such tiny segments, and it documents the growing friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin in such a way that their comraderie in RotS makes more sense.

YES, this was my reaction, too. I was cringing every time he opened his mouth, seriously. Distracting, is what it was.

Volume 1 was released on DVD just before series 2 premiered on Cartoon Network, which didn't come out on DVD until a month or so later. So they might still do that, but at the time, Volume 1 was a "in case you missed it last year" catch up sort of deal.

Despite my vow not to watch anything intellectual or serious this summer, I wound up watching Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring after my boyfriend recommended it. Excellently done, but oh my, not uplifting in the sligh-*test*-('"). I can't describe the plot without giving away an important part of the story, so I'll just say that it takes place in medieval Sweden during a time when pagans were converting to Christians. What I liked best about the film was seeing the newly converted, devoted Christians, struggle to put their pagan past behind them. Some are...less successful than others. It's black and white, which may be a turnoff, but it's also short, barely reaching 90 minutes.

Watch The Gingerbread Man you can pile the pitfall of a bad southern accent on his already horrible American accent.

I watched Ghost Rider with my friends last night. They may never forgive me. Full of cliches and with main players who cannot act. We were sad when the cute "teenaged" boy turned into Nicholas Cage. At least Sam Elliot was fun.

I watched The Fountain.

Was it supposed to make sense? All I could figure out was that Hugh Jackman looks best when he is unshaven with shorter hair. He did rock the full beard and long hair as well, but the bald thing was just weird. And Rachel Weiz is really, really pretty. If there was more to the movie it was lost on me.

I don't know if there was more to it, but it sure was pretty.


Nah, I actually got More out of it, and I liked it... but linear and sense making, it was not.

Basically Hugh Jackman is on a journey to enlightenment. He keeps trying to cheat pain, to cheat death, when along all he has to do is let go and accept. It's a Buddhism thing, really. Hugh's character discovers the secret to extended life so that he can go find Izzy in the nebula, only to discover that to be with her again all he has to do is let go, rejoin the cosmos, begin again. Die, basically. All his kicking and screaming, sturm and drang, it's all unnecessary. At least, that's what I got out of it.