Films! good, bad, recomendations, and general film talk

[Plexi Ken]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Loved it, excellent murder mystery Swedish language film. A soon-to-be-imprisoned journalist teams up with a damaged hacker to solve a family secret. I highly recommend it to those how haven't seen it.

[Philly Q]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Loved it, excellent murder mystery Swedish language film. A soon-to-be-imprisoned journalist teams up with a damaged hacker to solve a family secret. I highly recommend it to those how haven't seen it.

Can't wait for the US remake.



Not.



Although to be fair, with David Fincher directing it'll probably be OK.  Just unnecessary.

[Mr. Air]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Loved it, excellent murder mystery Swedish language film. A soon-to-be-imprisoned journalist teams up with a damaged hacker to solve a family secret. I highly recommend it to those how haven't seen it.

Read the books and get all the fun  :D

[Ted 'N' Leo]

I'm so, so late with this, but I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey last night. Really enjoyed it even though I wasn't originally in the mood for a slow/weird film! The effects and camera work are really good, can't figure out how some of it was done still so I'm gonna have to have a rewatch some time. I have no idea what it was really about though.

Alien super-power seeds the universe with Monoliths which identify biological traits that can lead to intelligence and enhance them, guiding animal life toward spacefaring civilisation.

The ones the apes at the start discovered prompted their advancement into humans, the one on the moon was a development marker that showed a species had developed spaceflight and the ability to find it when buried and the one near saturn/jupiter (depending whether its the book or film) was to accelerate humans to some next step in assisted evolution.

HAL went nuts because of some cliched 'does not compute' contradiction between being programmed to be honest, but follow instructions, but then being ordered to withold all the information behind the Discovery mission from the crew ('he' was the only 'crew member' that knew everything about it with the discovery on the moon and the signal (noise the monolith made) to saturn/jupiter). The only way out that was allowed to him with all that was to kill the crew, apparently.

Needless to say, the book/s are better, despite the film being as good as it is. If you know whats going on its all there to figure out, but theres more depth and discussion in the books.

Thanks for that, i've never been able to figure out that film!

[_tom_]

+1, I don't think the film gives any real clues to that storyline at all :lol:

[dave_mc]

Can't wait for the US remake.



Not.



Although to be fair, with David Fincher directing it'll probably be OK.  Just unnecessary.

yeah, i mean what's the point?

[Philly Q]

Can't wait for the US remake.



Not.



Although to be fair, with David Fincher directing it'll probably be OK.  Just unnecessary.

yeah, i mean what's the point?

The real answer, sadly, is that most cinema-goers aren't willing to read subtitles.  :(

[MDV]

No bother Ted and tom - the biggest clue to the monoliths purpose is the intro; the apes start using bones as tools (insofar as weapons are tools), and the connection in imagery between the bone thrown in the air and the spacecraft in the next scene; its not just a nice blend, its saying 'this led to that'. This gives the clue that the monoliths are development accelerators and therefore explains the ending.

I believe the first one, with the apes, was planted there when the aliens visited earth for the second time - the first being before multicellular life arose (obviously that detail isnt in the film, and I'm not certain its in the first book either, but I think it is) and they recognised the potential for intelligence in the apes.

Then the one on the moon is just to check that we've made it that far. It sends a signal to the one round jupiter to activate, and so invites us to follow the signal. Its a series of qualifications; make it this far and you've proved youre ready for the next step. That one takes a bit of adding up from just the film I'll grant you - I didnt see that till I read it, but it is there to be seen/inferred.

Then when they get to jupiter (saturn in the book) the final big monolith makes the last crewman into a non-coporeal super-being (still well less advanced than the aliens are by then though, as the books reveal). Him looking like a fetus is kubric trying to signify all of his new alien nature, his rebirth and the vast amount of advancement still to go with one image.

The biggest clue to how/why HAL went crazy is that he sabotages the com array first - it was earth that was giving him his instructions to lie about the nature of the mission and that was his attempt to sever himself from the thing that was putting him in a position contracictorty to his programming.

Anywho, there are books, 4 of them, and one other (comparatively poor) film based on the second book that explains a lot about the first one. 2001, 2010, 2061, 3001. 3001 reveals by far the most - the fella that drifted off into space is found and revived and the monoliths try to destroy us.

[WezV]

I believe the first one, with the apes, was planted there when the aliens visited earth for the second time - the first being before multicellular life arose (obviously that detail isnt in the film, and I'm not certain its in the first book either, but I think it is) and they recognised the potential for intelligence in the apes.

Then the one on the moon is just to check that we've made it that far. It sends a signal to the one round jupiter to activate, and so invites us to follow the signal. Its a series of qualifications; make it this far and you've proved youre ready for the next step. That one takes a bit of adding up from just the film I'll grant you - I didnt see that till I read it, but it is there to be seen/inferred.

i have not read the books, but i clearly remember watching the film as a rather young child.   It stayed with me for a while in dreams and got mixed up with other stuff like it does when you see stuff young- but the monoliths as markers, or even catalysts of development always seemed clear.

it probably was not till i was 17 or 18 that i watched it again, and seen it a few times since

[MDV]

I believe the first one, with the apes, was planted there when the aliens visited earth for the second time - the first being before multicellular life arose (obviously that detail isnt in the film, and I'm not certain its in the first book either, but I think it is) and they recognised the potential for intelligence in the apes.

Then the one on the moon is just to check that we've made it that far. It sends a signal to the one round jupiter to activate, and so invites us to follow the signal. Its a series of qualifications; make it this far and you've proved youre ready for the next step. That one takes a bit of adding up from just the film I'll grant you - I didnt see that till I read it, but it is there to be seen/inferred.

i have not read the books, but i clearly remember watching the film as a rather young child.   It stayed with me for a while in dreams and got mixed up with other stuff like it does when you see stuff young- but the monoliths as markers, or even catalysts of development always seemed clear.

it probably was not till i was 17 or 18 that i watched it again, and seen it a few times since

Yeah, I saw it as a small child as well, and it was obvious that the monoliths were evolutionary steriods. I got that the monolith on the moon was a checkpoint, but didnt grasp its role as bait for the big one out at jupiter till after I read the book, mainly because I didnt know what the nose was about because I was too busy thinking 'but theres no air on the moon!'.

The main thing thats much more clear in the books is HALs behaviour.

I read the books when I was about 13 or 14, and it all made perfect sense after that. You can see the backstory, which is explicit in the books, implicitly in the sequence of events and imagery of the film. When I saw the film again, must've been my early 20s, I could see pages and pages of text in a single shot - its very much a film of 'a picture speaks a thousand words'.

There are still some big omissions, but I shant spoil those for anyone inclined to read it rather than watch. Lets just say that the how low the story places us on the intelligence/civilisational pay grade is much more explicit, and the whole story has a vastly greater sense of cosmic majesty.

[_tom_]

I must just be thick/inattentive then becuase I never really made the connection between the monoliths and evolution :lol: :oops:

[dave_mc]

The real answer, sadly, is that most cinema-goers aren't willing to read subtitles.  :(

yeah it sucks. I mean I'm interested in languages anyway, so i like it, but not willing to read? lolwut?

which reminds me, what can be quite fun is going to see an english-language film in a non-english-speaking country which is subtitled. You always get to laugh a couple of seconds before the rest of the audience. Makes you feel superior :lol: well either that or you get punched for spoiling it for everyone else :lol:

[Philly Q]

The real answer, sadly, is that most cinema-goers aren't willing to read subtitles.  :(

yeah it sucks. I mean I'm interested in languages anyway, so i like it, but not willing to read? lolwut?

which reminds me, what can be quite fun is going to see an english-language film in a non-english-speaking country which is subtitled. You always get to laugh a couple of seconds before the rest of the audience. Makes you feel superior :lol: well either that or you get punched for spoiling it for everyone else :lol:

I find it's almost the opposite - I read the subs fast so I'm laughing before the actors have finished speaking.

Which reminds me, I just saw a poster for Let Me In, the pointless US remake of Let The Right One In.  Must be coming soon....  :?

[dave_mc]

ah yeah that sometimes happens too. just depends on how the subtitling is done :lol:

[Philly Q]

Just watched Gamer.



.............................words fail me.  :|