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Sagrilarus wrote: Has anybody waded into Mulan yet? It's got a bit of an aroma to it and it's thirty buckazoids. There's a part of me that's going to feel like a creep if I watch it.
Thought it was dull and boring. Not even as good as the other Disney live action films which aren't great themselves.
After having not seen it in years, I re-watched The Hunt for Red October. Goddamn does this movie hold up! It's so good, and so full of great actors. There isn't a bad moment in it.
Currently on Showtime if you have it.
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THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER has one of the best language transitions I've ever seen in film. On the Russian sub, the movie opens with the Russians speaking Russian, as they would, being Russian. Not English-with-a-British-accent, not Ynglish-wyith-uh-Roooshyin-axsient, but Russian. With subtitles. Then, it's English. The actors have accents, sure, it's Sean Connery, I mean. But Russians have accents. Maybe he's from Smolensk, I don't know. We can assume the Russians know, and can convey that if it matters (in this film, it does not matter). I just loved this.
The book I'm reading has many polyglot characters and it takes pains to draw out when they are not as savvy in a shared language and struggle to communicate with another. When they have a common tongue, it's all well-structured English for the benefit of the reader. We don't need actors to try on these ridiculous accents if they don't actually convey information beyond how good a Polish accent Meryl can pull off. What is it adding to the story?
Saw TENET, and the dialogue is already hard to hear due to bombastic music and near unending gunplay, but add in russian and indian accents and a lot of plot is easily missed. Still a visually fantastic film and a nice palate cleanser from overly CGI superhero stuff.
I haven't seen it since it first came out, but I really liked the language transition in The Thirteenth Warrior. It was rather overt as the Arab character learns to understand his Norse companions -- they're sitting around a fire, speaking in a foreign tongue (the main character silently observing), and slowly transition to English.
It's not a "great" movie, but under-rated I think -- I'll have to re-watch it and see if it holds up.
I liked The Thirteenth Warrior, though I didn't love it. The language transition is neat, but there are elements about the movie that require a certain amount of buy-in from the viewer. I would like to see it again at some point. One of my Facebook friends just mentioned it today, so I suspect it must be trending on Amazon Prime or Netflix or something similar.
There is a good double feature movie night with 13th Warrior and that mo-cap Beowulf film with Angelina Jolie.
I do like Creighton's interpretation of the saga into somewhat real world events. I'd like to see it extended to Beowulf fighting a migrating salt water crocodile or whatever passed for a dragon back in the day.
Creighton is just wrong more than a bit too much for my liking. As with all things he writes pop-history (at best) and attempts to immunize himself from negative feedback by saying "I'm just an amateur" at the beginning of each book. To his credit, he didn't do that when he testified before Congress, speaking on Global Climate Change, declaring it a hoax. Apparently he was deemed an expert for some reason. One of his last public appearances, so he'll get to own that one in perpetuity.
13th warrior is trope-based, so it's hard to take seriously. I suppose it's a good story.
It's 'Crichton'. And there is a hyphen in anal-retentive.
Anyway, I'm kind of with Sag on this. As Crichton got older, he started letting his freak flag fly.
And while we're kicking him around, WTF is Ian Malcom doing in Jurassic Park? We'll just set the "cool mathematician" aside for a moment, and wonder what a mathematician is doing on this trip in the first place? "We'll need the approval of a couple of paleontologists, and what else? An evolutionary biologist? An ecologist maybe? I know, a mathematician!" What, were all the cosmologists busy that day?
Crichton and/or his producers were fond of using whatever the latest "thing" was to tack on to his projects. Thus, chaos theory in a story about genetic manipulation and "virtual reality" in a story about sexual harassment and corporate politics (Disclosure.) It was the 90s equivalent of clickbait.
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Sagrilarus wrote: 13th warrior is trope-based, so it's hard to take seriously. I suppose it's a good story.
Banderas' character is based on Ibn Fadlan, a real person who traveled to Rus and wrote a famous book about it.
I had read parts of his account in uni before seeing the movie, which wasn't helping.
Internet says John McTiernan made the whole thing and Cringeton was only brought in to reshoot, cut everything to pieces and rebuild when it failed at screenings. I so wish I could see the original version.
But Chrighton wrote the book first, right? His earlier directorial efforts were pretty good. Maybe not Mctiernan good but then again mctiernan did "Medicine Man" so he isn't infallible