Rambling Film

What do you think? Can dubbing a film from a foreign language into your native language hurt the quality of the picture? Recently I watched the original Oldboy on Netflix. It's an English dub, not the subtitled version I was hoping for. As a personal preference, I like to watch foreign films in their respective languages. I just think it feels a little more natural, but I've never experienced anything quite like the Oldboy dub. It was fucking horrible. Needless to say, it was so horrible that I think it hurt the quality of the film for me. This film is very interesting and very violent, yet I found myself distracted by the fact that the lead character's speaking voice and his narrating voice sounded totally different. None of the other voices seemed to fit their characters, and it was an overall disappointment on a film I was really looking forward to. Not all dubs are bad. Life is Beautiful is a film that I've watched the dub more times than the Italian version...

Christopher Mintz-Plasse keeping it real in This Is The End, and Michael Cera making it go wrong. I caught an episode of the cancelled too soon Chapelle's Show the other day, and it inspired this list. SPOILER ALERT 1) Detective David Mills in Se7en: Mills and Somerset have a murderer out in the middle of the open, and suddenly a mystery box gets delivered to him. Somerset opens it, looks towards David, and says that John Doe has the upper hand. David is trying to keep it real, but when he starts yelling "What's in the fucking box?!" and proceeds to lose his shit and John Doe in the head. This is a perfect example of when keeping it real goes wrong. 2) Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest: In the middle of the night, Joan decides to go for a little stroll in her sleeping kids' closet. She finds one of her daughter's nice dresses on a wire hanger. We know that wire hangers aren't that great for fabric. Joan tries to keep it real, but the she t...

Plus a few things we learned from The Newsroom episode 2.3: Willie Pete   there is no reason for this gif other than the fact that Stannis is the man.      True Blood started off with Eric escaping the vamp camp with Nora, and telling Willa to warn Pam about the Hep-V tainted Tru Blood. Pam tells Willa to only tell Tara and Jessica, if all of the vampires refuse the Tru Blood, they'll know something is up.   Eric brings Nora to Bill's house, and sincerely asks Bill to heal her since he's "God" now. I felt really bad for Eric here, Alexander Skarsgard was killing it. Bill confides in Eric that he's been using Warlow's blood to walk in the sun. He tells him about his vision of the white room, and that they need Warlow's blood to help stop it.   Cut to Warlow and Sookie lying naked in Faery graveyard land. Warlow thinks that because Sookie slept with him that she accepted his marriage proposal. Sookie's like "LOL This is 2...

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime   I love French movies. This is one I've been meaning to watch for awhile. I've read reviews by many of my fellow bloggers. I also remember Roger Ebert making a big deal out of Kristin Scott Thomas not getting an Oscar nomination for this. This is a peculiar film. I loved it, up until the very end. The last 5 minutes of the film made me go "wait a minute.." but they didn't ruin the movie for me. I'm going to explain why at the end of my review. I'll use a spoiler warning.   Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) has just gotten out of prison. She served 15 years for killing her 6 year old son. She's moved in with her younger sister Lea (Elsa Zlyberstein) who was only a child herself when Juliette was sent away. She has a hard time adjusting, but Lea's family is kind for the most part. We see her navigate her way through her new found freedom and eventually learn the truth about why she killed her precious chil...

When 3D suddenly makes your film worse.   I'm not really sure how they talked Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell into reprising their roles. Or how they managed to get someone like Carrie-Anne Moss. This film was littered with problems and you probably already know how this review is going to go.   Harry (Sean Bean) and his daughter Heather (Adelaide Clemens) have just moved to another town. They've done this quite often, trying to escape their past. She makes one new friend at her high school, Vincent (Kit Harington) who seems to somewhat understand her. She's been plagued by visions of a place called Silent Hill since her childhood. When her father is suddenly taken, she's forced to go there to save him.   Let's be real here. There is no fucking way Clemens or Harington are in high school. They're both in their mid twenties and they look it. Putting them in a high school setting was just embarrassing. The thing that made the original Silent Hill so da...

Is Nicolas Winding Refn the next M. Night Shyamalan?   Julian (Ryan Gosling) is a drug dealer hiding behind the guise of a boxing club. His older brother is murdered. Julian knows why, and lets the man who did it go. Well Julian's peach of a mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) shows up, creeps on her son and demands she give him her older son's murderer's head.   This film is littered with long takes and stunning lighting. As a film fan, I can appreciate that..to a point. Cinematography one of the most important parts of film. It helps enhance the story and makes us feel like we're really there. But here's the thing, when you are being to obvious about it, you're not enhancing it, you're being pretentious. I know some will interpret that differently, but here's my stance on it: When you wade into some Lars Von Trier douche territory and start filming certain things "just because they look arty." It's overkill. Gus Van Sant perfected th...

Plus things we learned from The Newsroom ep 2.1 The Genoa Tip "Sookie! The only man you should be with is Eric. Then maybe Sam! What are you thinking?"     Well, I've got to hand it to the writers of True Blood. They sure know how to stir up the pot. I'll get to that in a minute.   We pick up right where we left off with possessed Lafayette drowning Sookie. Bill sensed it, and sent Warlow off to rescue her. He blasts Lala with his faery light to get Sookie's father's spirit out of him. Sookie essentially tells her dad to fuck off. He cries and leaves. That actually made me feel really bad! Bill is trying to summon Warlow, so Sookie takes him to the safe faery version of Bom Temps' graveyard. Because apparently she can go there willingly, and not just by accident now. (I'm a little slow on the fact checking, but she never did that on her own before, right?)   Bill makes that professor he kidnapped drain his blood so he goes comatose t...