Comments on: Million Dollar Movie

By: Boatzilla

Boatzilla — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 05:13:03 +0000

[14] Sorry. Executive Producer.

By: cult of basebaal

cult of basebaal — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:46:29 +0000

Minority Report, War of the Worlds

Both are horrible dreck.

Insulting really.

But they’re really well filmed, maybe *that’s* what you were going for?

By: cult of basebaal

cult of basebaal — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:45:11 +0000

Senor Spielbergo is a hack who should take a huge % of the blame for the decline of great American cinema. I can’t stand the guy or his films. Blaechcchh!

Ignorant.

Canting.

Nonsense.

By: Matt Blankman

Matt Blankman — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:31:53 +0000

I actually quite like the stuff Spielberg did in the 00′s. You’d have to pay me to get me to watch his late 80s drek like Hook and Always, but Catch Me If You Can, Munich, Minority Report, War of the Worlds – I think it was his best stuff since the mid-late 70s.

I do need to see Empire of the Sun again. I recall being impressed, but its been ages. I know it has a pretty lofty reputation.

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:59:44 +0000

13) Used Cars was Zemeckis not Speilberg.

By: Boatzilla

Boatzilla — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:41:09 +0000

[12] And let’s not forget Used Cars. Of course, Schindler’s List. And IMHO, Jurassic Park is one of the best popcorn movies ever. Then there’s all the stuff he produced from Saving Private Ryan to the Band of Brothers series.

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 02:29:41 +0000

9) Hack? He can be accused of many things but he is a gifted director and has made some of the finest popular entertainments of our time–JAWS, RAIDERS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, E.T. Speilberg has a lot of failings but you can’t deny his technical mastery, or his gift for making great popcorn movies at his peak.

I often don’t like his stuff but I’d never think of him as a hack.

By: Boatzilla

Boatzilla — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 01:58:05 +0000

[9] A “hack”? Hmmmm, much of the universe disagrees….

By: Matt Blankman

Matt Blankman — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:14:42 +0000

[9] JAWS is a great friggin’ film.

By: Mr OK Jazz Tokyo

Mr OK Jazz Tokyo — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 23:36:51 +0000

Love McCabe & Mrs. Miller, MASH and The Long Goodbye. Altman was great, too much the maverick for what Hollywood became..

Senor Spielbergo is a hack who should take a huge % of the blame for the decline of great American cinema. I can’t stand the guy or his films. Blaechcchh!

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:39:07 +0000

7) Especially for a guy like Altman who handled sound in a special way.

By: Matt Blankman

Matt Blankman — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:25:31 +0000

[6] Excellent point. Some of the old home video releases of his flicks suffered from poor sound (and the antiquated audio of our old Zenith sets, right?). Home movie viewing has gotten SO much better in the last 20 years.

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:23:50 +0000

Yeah, and when you see some of the restored prints the sound is equally good and I’ve found that you pick up more of the background conversations that you do on some of the original VHS/DVD mixes.

By: Matt Blankman

Matt Blankman — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:21:21 +0000

[2] The Player is necessarily slick as it’s about slick, unctious people. I think Altman’s just being Altman there. It’s a bit gimmicky, if I recall. I need to see it again.

What a run the guy had from M*A*S*H through Nashville. McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split – some of the best and most challenging of all American movies. Even the misses, like Brewster McCloud, are worth watching.

By: Matt Blankman

Matt Blankman — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:18:12 +0000

That poster gives too much away, really.

I love Nashville, but I haven’t seen it in awhile. I recall watching it on VHS as a teenager and liking it, but then I saw a then-new print at Film Forum in college and it blew me away. I’d missed how funny parts of it are, and of course how devastating other parts are.

I don’t think you need to like the music a whit to enjoy the film, really. Music is really tangental to what’s going on.

By: Chyll Will

Chyll Will — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:09:17 +0000

The last paragraph of this post can be best exemplified by a film I saw a few months ago called Exit Through The Gift Shop by British underground street artist Banksy. Not only does it turn the idea of art as rebellion completely on its head, but also has you questioning what is the fundamental reality of our society and how we perceive events as intentionally programmed or primarily luck and how so easily we can be manipulated.

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:14:32 +0000

I liked it but didn’t love the music. Ha! The Player was too slick for me, but yeah, I’m a big fan of some of Altman’s movies. Hey, remember “Tanner ’88″? I wonder if that holds up.

By: RagingTartabull

RagingTartabull — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:44:48 +0000

I think it may be generational, but I just never really “got” Nashville. And it’s not that I don’t like Altman, I think M*A*S*H, The Player and Short Cuts are all amazing, but I don’t know…Nashville just kinda went right over my head.