Monday, November 10, 2008

Three movies for a fever weekend

My ass got thoroughly kicked by fever this weekend, so what better to do than to watch some movies? Starting with:

Monster's Ball
Halle Berry raked in an Oscar for her performance in this 2001 movie, and I remember it was all the rage back then. We bought this movie for 39 NOK, and I doubt we'll ever watch it again. The movie was bizarre, to say the least. Imagine "Deliverance" merged with a PBS after school special about interracial and intercultural understanding in the deep South, mixed in with gratuitous sex scenes often involving the village prostitute, neither of which seem to have anything to do with the plot. There's also some "deep thoughts" about capital punishment which definitely don't resonate with me, a suicide and a hit&run resulting in vehicular manslaughter of a kid. The only way I can understand why this thing won an Oscar would be if there were fewer movies made than there were Oscar statues available that year, but I think we know that's not true. By the way; Heath Ledger should've at least ditched his Australian accent when portraying an inbred Georgia prison guard. Oh freakin' well.

Must Love Dogs
Romantic comedy from 2005 starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. A divorced, 40-something pre-school teacher (Lane) is introduced to internet dating after her sister puts her profile on a dating site. Through this ad, she has to sift through numerous losers before she finds "The One", via several complications, natch. Pretty good rom com, and an overall feelgood movie. If ya liked "Sleepless In Seattle", "You've Got M@il" and "It Could Happen To You", then you'll like this one.

Grease
The 1978 classic with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John as Danny Zuko and Sandra Olsson, respectively. I'm not sure if I've ever seen the entire movie before, and I know that I've mixed up several scenes with "Footloose" in the past, but now I've seen the original high-school musical, and I have to admit it was really good. The music - composed by Barry Gibb - really fits, and one can really see where many more recent high school movies have based their main set on Rydell High. Checketh it out if ya haven't seen it.

21 comments:

Unknown said...

If ya liked "Sleepless In Seattle", "You've Got M@il" and "It Could Happen To You", then you'll like this one.

Definitely not for me.

Anonymous said...

Grease? How much of a fever did you have?

Wilhelm said...

Definitely not for me.

Probably not. I didn't much like Monster Balls though, so you might fancy it

Grease? How much of a fever did you have?

LOL. The fever kicked my ass for sure, but I still would've enjoyed it sans fever. Then again, I think "Sleepless In Seattle" and "City Of Angels" rock, I like shopping, and I can't stand watching most sports, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.

Anonymous said...

"City of Angels"? Have we not discussed this movie before? What was it about? Or am I confusing it with "Bridges of Madison county" now?

Wilhelm said...

City Of Angels is the one with Nick Cage and Meg Ryan where N to da C plays an angel who gives up immortality to be with Meg Ryan, only to get hit by a truck and die once they've found each other.

Oh yeah; spoiler alert above :-)

Anonymous said...

I remember myself laughing loudly when the truck hit Nick Cage. For some reason I was yelled at for that.

Wilhelm said...

Damn - youse is one cold mofo :-)

Unknown said...

City of Angels is a remake of a german movie (from Wim Wenders) wayyyyyyyyy better than the american one.

Unknown said...

and no Wilhelm , Miou Miou is not on that one.

Wilhelm said...

...she was sick the day they made that one? Or double-booked?

Anonymous said...

Have the Germans made any movies besides porn?

Wilhelm said...

With my limited knowledge of all things directing and producing in movies, the only German director/produced/filmmaker I can think of is Leni Riefenstahl, but that's not what you were thinking of, was it?

Anonymous said...

Never heard of that one.

Wilhelm said...

........Hitler's filmmaker who then went on to decry his crimes and claim that "she had to work for him" after the German war machine sorta' went bust....she got away with it too, despite overwhelming evidence of her being a massive Hitler nuthugger since before his rise to power

Anders said...

'come on, Wilhelm. You've heard of Wim Wenders, the dude who Pigeon mentions? You know, the dude who produced the Buena Vista Social Club (yeah, the Cooder record made it into a movive).

Wilhelm said...

Ah; the "Ry Cooder v. various unionized US musicians" case? :-)

Anders said...

I knew you loved that movie...
;-)

Wilhelm said...

...if I wanted to see an old white guy rip off a bunch of old Cuban musicians, I'd go to Miami, broski :-)

Anders said...

Anyway, we it seems like everybody has said their piece, it's time to summarize.

Me and pigeon like a wide variety of German movies like Wim Wenders Bueno Vista Social Club, Wings of Desire, Soul Of A Man and Paris, Texas. Wilhelm is more into documentaries like Triumph des Willens - Das Dokument vom Reichsparteitag 1934 and Josef Thorak, Werkstatt und Werk. And t-bombz experience with german movie industry is limited to, uh, eh, movies with a strong bias to the visual elements.

;-)

Wilhelm said...

...way to give an impartial and unbiased summary of the statements from the parties involved, Anders.

Did you by any chance intern for Hillary Clinton at some point?

Anders said...

...way to give an impartial and unbiased summary of the statements from the parties involved, Anders.

That's the kind of guy I am, you know.
;-)

Did you by any chance intern for Hillary Clinton at some point?

LOL