i was writing you a long reply to this early this morning but something got nuked when i switched screens and i lost it. i'll try to reconstruct but now it will not be the same

the main thing about it was that 2001 was more revolutionary but due to its reliance on effects it also has aged more than solaris which remains beautiful and timeless. i'll add more details later but just wanted to leave that for now as im on a schedule

I have no idea what could be wrong with Soderbergh's SOLARIS. It's different enough from the original to justify its existence and to be judged on its own terms. He's made a few duds, but I never considered this one of them. For one thing, the acting is outrageously good. Plus, Clooney's butt.

@thedom

another thing i was saying earlier is that i've never been able to watch eraserhead in a single stretch. i've pieced it together from the bits i catch between falling asleep repeatedly and without mercy. i do like the images a lot though. but as a sequence of moving images in time, it's a bit like watching flies fuck. same thing with his empire of the whatever zzzzz but that one has worse images.

and with sleep in mind a double feature of solaris and 2001 would be waaay too much for me to handle. i love both movies, they're beautiful, i've seen them repeatedly, but they're also super slow and ponderous -- and to have my ass parked on a movie seat for however many hours it would take for completion would require sedatives and a straitjacket.

one or the other yes. together? with a major intermission of like 1/2 a day maybe.

but anyway i was thinking earlier that solaris survives its age better. 2001 did for movies what hadn't been done before, but the effects today look a bit shit-- thinking particularly of going into the my god is full of stars thing, those color bars, look clunky today. BUT they look clunky today BECAUSE he opened the door to make it look clunky. but still looks clunky. so there's teh paradox-- it's diminished because it was so great.

solaris, being more of a "thought" movie than a visual spectacle (it is nevertheless so fucking beautiful) relied on the similarities to earth rather than pricey gizmo, and for that you can watch it today like in its day pretty much. a tree is still a tree. a cabin is still a cabin. and it has more poetry.

the other thing is that in 2001 there are 2 stories and one only really gets one. i mean in 2001 the battle against IBM-1 is the great climactic moment and the most remembered thing about that movie, but... the part about the transformation/birth of the starchild is kind of obscured for me. and that was sort of the point of the movie that gets lost in there. the whole next step in evolution thing. in the book version i read, he nukes the earth ha ha ha.

I love the russian solaris. It is like constant head space, no action.

I agree with you,and I'm a much bigger Tarkovsky fan than I am a Kubrick one. I find with Tarkovsky there's a point in all of his films where they either grab me or they don't. Mirror grabbed me, Stalker, Rublev, but not Solaris. No bearing on anything but I've read that Tarkovsky didn't like it either.


I'm with you. I think there's a snobbery that Hollywood simply can't/mustn't compete with the 'Great European masters'. Soderbergh's Solaris is no masterpiece, but nor is Tarkovsky's. I enjoyed Soderbergh's more though.

5 deadly venoms.

Watched this again last night instead of going to the arcade. Was dope.

Haven't seen it yet, but MANIFESTO seems pretty dope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9mTP9wr3u8

Cate Blanchett plays 13 different roles. Shot in 11 days. Sign me up.

Escape From LA

I like this film but there's something deeply crappy about it. Nothing about it really works and lots of it falls completely flat. It's basically a mess but I do always sort of enjoy it every time I watch it, which is probably more times than it deserves.

Weird. My wife and I had the " nothing better than 2001" convo last night.

Tiny Furniture, because why not.

Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads :D

Still a classic and I'll fight anyone that says it's not a movie.

Watched the original Terminator last night. It's both better and worse than I'd remembered. I'd forgotten how bad some of the acting is (you know you're in trouble when Arnie's the most convincing character) and the silly dialogue, but I'd also forgotten just how brutal the action scenes were. It's classic Cameron: great when he's dealing with action but hopeless with the other, more 'human' stuff. The biggest frustration is he always insists on shoehorning in that side of things side when it really isn't necessary (think of Newt in Aliens) and he just makes a pigs ear of it anyway. He's like those stand up comedians who insist on ending each show with a song.

the terminator was a great corman/b movie tho

watched it last year again and the shit that threw me off the most was that lady's terrible dog-like haircut. i mean...




i think that more than anything is probably what got in their way of her acting.

the cocker spaniel look.

but yeah that's not a movie one watches for the human element, izzit? the fact that his most famous and enduring character is a machine is very telling.

eta: he's no sodherberg ha ha ha ha

--

speaking of soderbergh, he's good with characters but never blown my mind or anything. sure sex lies and videotape heralded the indie movie era, but i'm looking at his list of 40 directed projects on imdb and none comes across to me as a "must watch" title.

che was very good though.

I'm gonna say it knowing that people may scoff, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is actually a really under-rated actor. Put it this way, there's no one who could do action films like he could. Could he do a Shakespeare like Olivier? No. But the flip side is he couldn't do the films like Arnie did.

Soderberg is great for a number of reasons, one of which is his greatness is unassuming.

Although he can get experimental, I mostly think of him as making genre films which are several notches above average. Haywire, for example, isn't a masterpiece, but it's certainly much better than one of Angelina Jolie's action films.

Schizopolis, The Limey, and Full Frontal are probably my favs, but I like his admirable failures too, like Girlfriend Experience and Good German. I've watched all these several times.

Plus he shoots and cuts everything himself. He's a good dude who makes solid entertainments.

And unless you're having an emergency and you need a youtube video to help you solve it, I'm not sure what a "must watch" is.

Anyway, he's better than Kevin Smith. Hell, he's funnier than Kevin Smith.

haaa haaa haaaa. poor kevin smith!

yes soderbergh is better than kevin smith in the solid entertainment department. also has a much better level of craft.

as for "must watch" i meant films of significant historical or cultural value. the kind of shit that gets preserved for posterity. "great stuff" and so forth. 2001. raging bull. goodfellas. or just shit i like a lot like cronenberg, ha ha ha (a better berg than soder)

i'd say more but gotta run back to work. the pomodoro technique is killing my internet action.

will fill in more later.

Don't Blink, this was fantastic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yZAzXzS47E

I have lots of respect for Soderbergh and would say I at least like pretty much everything I've seen by him. But I am still waiting for the wow moment.

I know what you mean, but he isn't really that sort of director.

Coppola has Godfather I, II and Apocalypse, but who really cares about the other ones?

Soderbergh doesn't have a Godfather I, II or Apocalypse, but he does have a respectable list of perfectly fine films which I personally find satisfying, even if I agree none really blow my mind and alter the way I view the world of cinema.

I hadn't really thought about Soderbergh in awhile, but this conversation made me review his body of work and I'm more impressed than ever. Ocean's 13 sucked, but that's his only real dud. He's kind of like Woody Allen in that he seems more interested in pumping out a lot of films rather than laboring over some grand statement.

No one thinks TRAFFIC is a modern classic?

traffic was alright. nothing new about it. well, there was the glorious zeta of course which makes everything better. but i agree w/ demoño that while the guy is solid there's no masterpiece there (yet).

watch che tho. pretty pretty good...