OFF: summer films

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On tis 4 aug 1998 11.56 +0000 "Ted Jackson jr. s2h2"
<tojackso at LIBRARY.SYR.EDU> wrote:
>> Heard that Armaggedon is too noisy,
>
> Better to see Deep Impact.  Armageddon's just plain boring, and
> dialog's embarassingly awful.

     Gee, and I heard the problem with DI was you had to sit
through ages of people having relationships before the film
got down to brass tacks and started obliterating bits of the
planet!  I was assured Arma was going to avoid the pretense of
a plot and stick flashy stuff.  But perhaps not?

     Heck, with a film like this, I'm not there to see people
have emotions, I'm there to see the planet get whacked by
enormous rocks :)

> Didn't see it, for obvious reasons:  Monster looks like a gay TRex
> from Lost World, and snub of BOC's song...

     It managed to alter what Godzilla should be without any
accompanying improvement.  And was very schizophreniac about it.
Well, I didn't expect much when I saw it with my student discount,
so I wasn't really _disappointed_, per se ...

>> Saving
>> Private Ryan too bloody.
>
> Yeah, leave the kids home for this one.  Horrific, realistic wartime
> violence shockingly portrayed.  Reminds me of the violence in
> Braveheart, albeit moved up a couple hundred years...A great film,
> that would be even better if Spielberg would ever bother to develop a
> character.  He seems steadfastly against giving any of his characters
> any motivation. Must've skipped that class at film school

     ;)  I've heard good things about this, but I'm a WWII hobbyist
from way back--particularly on European ground war stuff.  Gimme a
nice muddy tank over some flashy aeroplane any day :)  I've been
told they've been pretty accuarate on gear, uniforms, etc., so I'm
looking forward to it

     IMO, the violence in Braveheart was a bit "comic book".  Sure,
medieval weapons are messy, but sometimes the folks in that film
were utilizing them is such ridiculous ways ... the realism was
belied by the "heroic" attitude;  John Woo goes to medieval
Scotland ;)  No bad thing in a story, but I'd be surprised if the
violence in Private Ryan was portrayed in quite that way :)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/