I think it was sunday night that i saw them, but I saw a very excellent documentry about Terry Gilliam called Lost in La Mancha which i bet some people have already seen. Excellent documentry. I also saw this weird one called The American Movie,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181288/ , and boy was it strange.
At first i thought it was a spoof documentry, since everyone in are hilariously stupid rednecks. This guys best friend sound like... well remember that episode of South Park where Timmy is in a band, and there's that other rocker who gets jealous, well he sounds like that other band member who has a really high pitch voice "hey you guys, stop fighting"... its amazing
The filmmaker just talks and talks, and talks, spilling this utter bollocks about movies and 'vision' when you can tell he doesn't have much of one (cruel as that might sound). He's on the bottom rung in terms of society, they really are all renecks... it really is a good documentry. I don't know quite how to put it.
Yet "American Movie" is brutally honest in its treatment of Mark. While it allows his dreams of making "the great American film" to fly free on film, it also captures a life filled with lower-class constraints and realities. Despite all of Mark's desire, his motivation is frequently lost in a life gush with alcohol. Hence, the making of Borchadt's film, "Coven", goes from 6 months to 3 years and the movie suffers a bit from being drawn out.
You hear the central filmmaker blurting out this 'dream' mumbo jumbo about him making his movie, and all the effects he'll be using, but at the same time, you can tell he's really got a shit life, he has to deal with all of this crap, he's badly in debt, he has several kids but is desperately single, all the actors on the film are really amateur.
and once again i have to really wonder if its real or not, its so hard to believe it is actually real. Seems i'm not the only one that struggled to believe it wasn't staged:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181288/board/nest/15232429
So that was Sunday. I then watched The Nightmare Before Xmas, since i wanted to see how you actually should make a childrens film after seeing star wars episode 3.
Last night i made the mistake of watching 'The Long Kiss Goodnight', i knew i was in trouble when it said "A Renny Harlin presentation". Took me a second to recall the name and i thought 'ffs', and he lived up to his crummy name. The script and acting is awful, geena davis is hilarious, and the films scenes are stale and don't fit well at all. The only reason the film was made was because of the action sequences, and at least they were okay i guess.
The movie i watched after it was Hard Boiled. Had forgotten how immense that film is!
Whilst i still think its a bit of a sloppy edit, and the scenes, like a lot of chinese films and low budget films don't seem as though they are cut together right, particularly when it suddenly cuts to someone on a boat for no real reason and lingers trying to show 'emotion'. The scenes don't fit and were obviously filmed as 'mop up scenes' just to splice in. But this hardly degenerates the film, when the action starts is amazing, everyone dies, from the bad guys who are being hunted, to the scores of civilians that just happen to be in the way, from the cops shooting other cops by accident, to the hospital patients getting the crap blown out of them. I mean the only people that don't die are the babies, and i get the impression that's only because john woe wasn't allowed to put squibs on them.. doesn't help the scores of people holding the babies.