Anyone seen a good movie lately?

[Diomedes]

It was about fake people.

[General_Failure]

Well, duh. All movies are about fake people.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Social Network was good.

Not great. Not superb. Not awesome. Not any other superlative you can think of.

[MDS]

what about sufficient

[rjs246]

Went out and watched True Grit last night. So goddamned good. I have to say that the commercials and previews didn't really have me all that excited about seeing it, but it was farging amazing. Coen brothers make me moist.

[ice grillin you]

The Social Network Network wasn't about smart people?   

What??

it isnt....this is a movie about smart people...or i suppose it could double as a documentary about russell and his freinds early life experiences

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118665/

[MMH]

Went out and watched True Grit last night. So goddamned good. I have to say that the commercials and previews didn't really have me all that excited about seeing it, but it was farging amazing. Coen brothers make me moist.

Assuming you've seen it, how does it compare to original, regarding tone?  My understanding is the perspective is more from the girl's view than Cogburn's.

[rjs246]

this is a movie about smart people...or i suppose it could double as a documentary about russell and his freinds early life experiences

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118665/

Only my friends are geniuses. I don't really come close to their level of intelligence. But yes, that movie sums them up almost perfectly. They're currently suing for unauthorized use of their likenesses.

Went out and watched True Grit last night. So goddamned good. I have to say that the commercials and previews didn't really have me all that excited about seeing it, but it was farging amazing. Coen brothers make me moist.

Assuming you've seen it, how does it compare to original, regarding tone?  My understanding is the perspective is more from the girl's view than Cogburn's.

It actually happened to be on last night when I got home from watching the remake so I watched it. At the risk of going all IGY on my review, John Wayne westerns are pretty much unwatchable to me. He was a bloated cartoon of an actor that appealed to a misguided sense of 50s and 60s manhood in America and had little else going for him. The best part about the original was easily Robert Duval. The rest of the acting was pretty wooden and, especially after seeing three amazingly good performances in the remake (Damon completely holds his own with Bridges and the girl), laughably subpar.

The tone of the original was much lighter than the remake, but that's almost certainly a sign of the times rather than a conscious decision by the original film maker. The original was probably gritty or dark by the typical John Wayne movie standards, but the Coen version is just so much smarter and more visceral. What's amazing is that the dialog in certain scenes is almost identical. Word for word. But in the original the dialog comes across as filler while the delivery and context in the new version has depth.

Blah blah blah words words words.

[SD]

It actually happened to be on last night when I got home from watching the remake so I watched it. At the risk of going all IGY on my review, John Wayne westerns are pretty much unwatchable to me. He was a bloated cartoon of an actor that appealed to a misguided sense of 50s and 60s manhood in America and had little else going for him. The best part about the original was easily Robert Duval.

I didn't see the remake yet but I tried watching the original a few times but this is spot on. I thought I was the only person who felt this way about John Wayne.

[ice grillin you]

motherfarg him AND john wayne

[MDS]

here he comes, here comes john wayne. im not gonna cry about my pa, gonna build an airport, put my name on it. why michael? so you can fly away from your feelings?

[SD]

motherfarg him AND john wayne

most of my heroes don't appear on no stamp

[rjs246]

I watched the first half of The Social Network last night. It was well directed and well acted but I don't see what all of the hoopla is about. It seems to just be a character study of a collection of brilliant people and their difficulties in interacting with each other/the world. That simplistic description could be applied to the lives of the majority of my closest friends.

I went to a high school full of geniuses. Not like, "Oh I get As and Bs on my report card" people (although that was the category I fell in to). I'm talking about kids who took quantum physics as 14 year old freshman and had to to take their math classes on local college campuses because the school, which was designed to accommodate for geniuses, couldn't accommodate for their level of genius. My company writes incredibly complex investment software and has a development army of several dozen people. Two of my closest friends write software by themselves identical to my company's software for hedge funds on proprietary platforms. Another worked for Microsoft and Google and recently started his own company because he wasn't being challenged. Another was named top student at Brandeis Business school and now works for MIT modling complex systems to predict and prepare for future socio-political and socio-economic events. And these are just my close friends that I'm rattling off. There were six kids in my class alone who scored a 1600 on their SAT.

The point to all of this is that I think people love The Social Network because Mark Zuckerberg is so fascinating to them. But he isn't that fascinating to me. He reminds me of the kinds I went to high school with. I was surrounded by Mark Zuckerbergs. The difference is that he got lucky enough to parlay his brilliance into a social phenomenon that made him disgustingly wealthy. I guess there's something interesting about that, and I guess that this might be premature and that the second half of the movie may peak my interest a little more, but so far it just isn't anything all that amazing to me. Good movie, but I'm not in the oh-my-god-The-Social-Network crowd so far.

Finished it. It was good in the ways I said it was good. Snappy dialog, well acted, well directed. I still don't get the outpouring of love for this movie. I guess if you really care about how a website got started or really find Zuckerberg and other smarties to be uniquely interesting, than this is the movie for you. If you're like me and could not possibly give less of a shtein about the story of Facebook and already know what it's like to be surrounded by nerds (and to be one yourself) I don't see what this movie does to blow anyone away.

Good. Not great or anything approximating great.

[phattymatty]

ATTENTION:

Mega Python vs Gatoroid is on SyFy tonight, starring Tiffany and Debbie Gibson.

[Diomedes]

re: True Grit.

I actually saw the Coen brothers' version.  I have not seen the John Wayne iteration, and I have not read the book/short story or whatever the source material is. 

The girl character bugged me.  She was for the most part unbelievable.  Her mastery of grown men, indeed of everyone around her, kept reminding me I was watching a movie.  This 14 year old girl, who has struck out on her own in an essentially lawless land, handles bums and bankers like chumps, speaks high society English but understands drunken gutter mumble.  She can roll cigarettes and she can negotiate contracts with businessmen.  She is pitiless, relentless, competent.  And she's not trading funhole for what she wants.  The few times she was shown to be frightened, playful, or powerless were not enough to make the idea of a 14 year old girl running this revenge campaign in the least ways believable.

Without the coda, I could not have liked the film.  But when we see the girl grown into a harsh, commanding old maid, the character became possible:  a preternaturally capable and pitiless 14 year old would grow up to become an extremely disciplined bolt of self-righteousness-- "stay seated, trash"-- but she's not only lost an arm, she's alone.

When the credits rolled, I was satisfied.  Damn fine movie.