The Movie Thread
- Thread starter hcour
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Delta, you've got the wrong movie.
The movie you're thinking of is Internal Affairs w/Gere and Garcia.
The movie The Departed was "based" on is Infernal Affairs, which was out of Hong Kong.
Anyway, I thought the Gere/Garcia movie was pretty good. Gere played a terrific slime ball and Garcia was at his smoldering best.
RE: Tarantino. I've never had any problem w/filmmakers "stealing" from other directors, as long as they put their own stamp upon it. Directors have been doing this since the beginning of movies. No good or great film, or even bad, exists in a vacuum, they are all part of an ongoing evolutionary process and all films carry the influence of the great films that went before them. And great directors will be the first to admit they steal. In Peckinpah's classic "The Wild Bunch", the scene w/the children tormenting the scorpion w/ants is practically lifted verbatim from Cluzot's "Wages of Fear", yet I don't recall any film critics trashing Peckinpah as a "rip-off", the way they have Tarantino. And of course, great directors like Scorcese and Coppola and countless action directors like John Woo have "stolen" from Peckinpah. Altman's masterpiece "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" takes part of its plot directly from "High Noon". For yrs professional critics trashed Brian DePalma as a Hitchcock "wannabe", w/o acknowledging how he had his own unique vision. Pauline Kael, one of the few critics I respect, was one of the first to recognize DePalma as a great filmmaker in his own right.
Tarantino may have "ripped-off" the Hannah character from another film, but the point where Thurman plucks out her other eye was a complete surprise for me, it was uttlerly perfect, and that character's mad flailing about in the bathroom in uncontrolled rage afterwards was absolutely hilarious.
Tarantino is part of the long history of great filmmakers who borrow/steal/pay-homage, whatever you want to call it, from other filmmakers, while putting his own brilliant, unique stamp upon that work. And they themselves become the imitated, just as Eisenstein, Chaplin, Wells, Ford, Kubrick, Peckinpah, Scorcese, and on and on, have been imitated. I believe the term "Tarantino-esque" has been used by several critics more than once in the last few yrs. I don't see how anyone could possibly watch "Kill Bill", or any of his four films, and not acknowledge his incredible talent and imagination as a filmmaker.
Harold
Tarantino may have "ripped-off" the Hannah character from another film, but the point where Thurman plucks out her other eye was a complete surprise for me, it was uttlerly perfect, and that character's mad flailing about in the bathroom in uncontrolled rage afterwards was absolutely hilarious.
Tarantino is part of the long history of great filmmakers who borrow/steal/pay-homage, whatever you want to call it, from other filmmakers, while putting his own brilliant, unique stamp upon that work. And they themselves become the imitated, just as Eisenstein, Chaplin, Wells, Ford, Kubrick, Peckinpah, Scorcese, and on and on, have been imitated. I believe the term "Tarantino-esque" has been used by several critics more than once in the last few yrs. I don't see how anyone could possibly watch "Kill Bill", or any of his four films, and not acknowledge his incredible talent and imagination as a filmmaker.
Harold
"The Hustler"
Never tire of watching it...
http://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1147/Mptv/1147/10712-0001.jpg.html?path=gallery&path_key=0054997
What a cast. What a script:
http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=551
Favorite scene:
...
BERT
Oh, wait a minute, Miss Packard.
SARAH
We're neighbors now. You can call me Sarah.
He comes to the door, holding it open.
BERT
I want to talk to you.
SARAH
Do we need words?
BERT
Yeah, I think we do. We could try to cut each
other up. But that would be bad for everybody.
Bad for me, bad for you. And worst of all, be
bad for Eddie.
SARAH
You know what's good for him?
BERT
To win.
SARAH
For whom and for what?
BERT
For what makes the world go round. For money,
and for glory.
SARAH
You didn't answer my first question. For whom?
BERT
All right. Today for me, tomorrow for himself.
SARAH
No, there's no tomorrow. Not with you. You own
all the tomorrows because you buy them today,
and you buy cheap.
...
nitro
Never tire of watching it...
http://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1147/Mptv/1147/10712-0001.jpg.html?path=gallery&path_key=0054997
What a cast. What a script:
http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=551
Favorite scene:
...
BERT
Oh, wait a minute, Miss Packard.
SARAH
We're neighbors now. You can call me Sarah.
He comes to the door, holding it open.
BERT
I want to talk to you.
SARAH
Do we need words?
BERT
Yeah, I think we do. We could try to cut each
other up. But that would be bad for everybody.
Bad for me, bad for you. And worst of all, be
bad for Eddie.
SARAH
You know what's good for him?
BERT
To win.
SARAH
For whom and for what?
BERT
For what makes the world go round. For money,
and for glory.
SARAH
You didn't answer my first question. For whom?
BERT
All right. Today for me, tomorrow for himself.
SARAH
No, there's no tomorrow. Not with you. You own
all the tomorrows because you buy them today,
and you buy cheap.
...
nitro
Good answer, but it's film criticism, not literature.
Her "body of work" is her opinion. You either share her views or you don't. If you get talked into liking a movie because of what a reviewer writes, your mind just might be "too" open.
Kubrick and DePalma are pretty much on opposite ends of several axes, fans of one tend not to be fans of the other.
Criticism is itself an art and I would argue that her body of work is indeed "literature". A good critic should also be a good writer and Kael was great at both. I'm certainly not alone in that opinion, she's probably the most-praised film critic of her generation, Ebert's Pulitzer non-withstanding.
Of course her writings are her "opinion", that's what criticism is. Some of her views I share, some I don't. Just because I have an open mind doesn't mean I don't have my own mind.
Not sure what to make of your Kubrick vs DePalma comment, that's a pretty generalized, sweeping statement and I cannot imagine why liking one would somehow mean disliking the other. I like them both, I'm sure plenty of people do. I like all styles and genres of film, as did Kael. While "The Earrings of Madame De..." and "Rules of the Game" may have been among her very favorites, she also championed B-movies like "The Re-animator" and "The Stepfather" and enjoyed silliness like "Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn" and "The Empire Strikes Back". She also didn't hesitate to trash films that were considered "sacred", such as "The Sound of Music" (that review got her fired from her first magazine job) and "West Side Story".
H
Of course her writings are her "opinion", that's what criticism is. Some of her views I share, some I don't. Just because I have an open mind doesn't mean I don't have my own mind.
Not sure what to make of your Kubrick vs DePalma comment, that's a pretty generalized, sweeping statement and I cannot imagine why liking one would somehow mean disliking the other. I like them both, I'm sure plenty of people do. I like all styles and genres of film, as did Kael. While "The Earrings of Madame De..." and "Rules of the Game" may have been among her very favorites, she also championed B-movies like "The Re-animator" and "The Stepfather" and enjoyed silliness like "Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn" and "The Empire Strikes Back". She also didn't hesitate to trash films that were considered "sacred", such as "The Sound of Music" (that review got her fired from her first magazine job) and "West Side Story".
H
