Cinemascope

What's the name of the new book on AG?

I'd just add that oddly enough some of the movies that have never come out on DVD here have long ben available in R2 DVDs... such as The African Queen. Sometimes a multi-region DVD player does come in handy!

I have a few titles I'd love to see... let's just say I'm hoping for the best but expecting the worst... although the "worst" is better than nothing! Will RW be part of the Musical set or a FA set?

I like to read Roger Ebert's columns.....he loves film and that means a lot. But critics' reviews don't play a large part in whether I see the movie. It's just their opinion.... He's one I've enjoyed on a semi-regular basis usually. Now in some cases, it can be just an opinion. Sometimes it can offer a bit more than just that. There are some that are very enjoyable reads, either before or after the movie.

But for the most part, Ebert withstanding, few critics today write with that passion for film. You don't have to agree with Kael and Ebert but at least it was thought provoking reading. I can think of a few critics that write with passion. But, in a larger way, many publications have had to adjust to smaller budgets and heavier workloads for each person... maybe some publications have to make do with fewer critics than they did in the past.

In the past I read many reviews of films from James Agee to Pauline Kael to David Thomson's quirky books. Now, I tend to think that most film reviewers, while a few genuinely love film, see almost too many movies for their critical health. It becomes an exercise in self-referential idolatry or elitism that I don't care for at all. I don't know I could be wrong, but I think the number of assignments may be outside their control to a large extent. Of course, some may want to go to the movies on their time off! Btw, I like that idea expressed by Klondike and others: contribute to a discussion but not dominate. We need to think about what each other says more carefully. Responding heatedly and quickly isn't always constructive or essential, imho. I see it as a matter of personal preference. I don't believe in self-appointed moderators.

One can hope! Hey, Hollis, did you that "queen" is another term for a female cat? Prob'ly a nicer word to use than the other term for a female dog! Animal terminology can be quite fascinating huh? Well you know what they say...

No, but you could explain it a bit further if you liked. And there's no offense taken because what might seem to you a "70's look" is actually timeless in a lot of ways.

Well it's the Oscar!

I'm not sure if I know what you mean. The look of Spartacus is very different from that of Lolita or Barry Lyndon.

There were a few shots in the movie when he looked a bit like Schwarzenegger, I thought (the facial expression).

Oddly enough, the problem in places like the Castro isn't even talking during the movie, but laughing in the wrong places and for the wrong reasons... like the reader who wrote the letter about people laughing hysterically because someone in a movie referred to the U.S. having 48 states... even though the U.S. did have only 48 states when the movie had been made!

Well, for what it's worth, Godfather lenser Gordon Willis is widely considered the most influential cinematographer in America during the 70's, and was called "the prince of darkness" by some colleagues for the way he used underexposure for artistic purposes. Perhaps because his style has so often been copied since then, it may not seem so radical to a lot of people these days.

No clue. Maybe they are now expecting old movies to be digitally updated to make everything up to date with 2007? Really, it boggles the mind.

Why, thank you

Well first of all visually it has a very unique look, thanks to Gordon Willis cinematography, which I guess has been copied often enough since then, but which at the time I believe was something people hadn't seen before.... Nino Rota's music is very memorable and moving... the performances are also very memorable. But most important, Coppola managed to give a theme to the movie that arguably wasn't there in the novel. And even more breathtakingly, Coppola repeated the theme in Godfather, Part II which is a counterpoint and criticism of the earlier theme. At its heart, a lot of people would tell you that The Godfather isn't about gangsters, but about the most extreme effects of capitalism on families... which is why the sequel is, in many people's opinion, a far superior movie than the first one. It offers both a main premise and a direct counter-point.

Well I didn't get all the details, but it sounds to me someone's been misinformed!

I don't know if this would help at all, but before The Godfather was released, most gangster movies were, well, very different... like Scarface (1932), Public Enemy, Little Caesar, that kind of stuff... So Coppola's style was different from what people had grown used to, and was very different both in its look and its music. Again, not sure if you can imagine how different and fresh this movie seemed to most people when first released, in ways that many felt rose above the somewhat trashy pulp novel Puzo originally wrote....

Just edited the last post to include a link to Roger Ebert's 4-star review of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I won't post a link to his review of Clockwork Orange because he didn't like it, so you won't want to read that, I guess. It does, however, show that the same critic may respond favorably to one Kubrick movie and negatively to another one, made just a few years later.

Sometimes it's natural for one person not to "care for" a movie that either has earned a lot of critical praise or that is hugely popular. The Godfather happens to be the #1 movie in people's votes on imdb.com. Does that mean you're wrong and everybody else is right? No, it just means different people react differently to some movies. There's also critics who have given very positive reviews to most of Kubrick's movies. Wanna read some of them? I can post some links.... Here's a 4-star review of 2001: A Space Odyssey http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19680412/REVIEWS/804120301/1023

Perhaps because of the way you worded it. Instead of giving your opinion of Kael or not responding to Dewey's post at all, you chose to point out to him that she is an awful critic who may be an interesting writer. Dewey gave one opinion, other people have different opinions. Where's the attack? That's right, there's no "attack" -- no reason to get offended!

Dewey -- nothing that I said in my post that soooooo offended you was an attack against you... it was just an opinion that was different than yours. Why should it bother you soooo much if someone happens to disagree with you? And aren't you hijacking the thread by starting all of these personal attacks, when I never attacked you -- simply disagreed with you?

Every single film fan that I have ever met. Maybe I am talking more about people that I have met rather than film critics because like I said, I don't read reviews. Well, we were discussing critics rather than just ordinary word-of-mouth. Most critics would actually probably have good things to say about the movies you say people say bad things about.

But who's... "people"??? No clue, but highly doubtful they were critics!

I didn't speak of anything "witty", I spoke about things meant to be catchy, or "quoteable"...