Holy crap, a trade actually went down! Is that the first and only so far?
Why wouldn't I trade a late round pick for a blockbuster like Jurassic Park. It's the reason the Toronto basketball franchise is called the Raptors. It scared the bejesus out of many a film goer. I still remember the lineups around the old, now torn down, North Hill theater.
The crazy thing is that the special effects still stand up to what's being produced.
Plus it's Spielberg. If you don't have one of his movies on your list... FAIL!
^^Never even heard of that one before, it's going on my list now.
You should check out the special edition, titled: restored to Orson Welles' vision. Being the temperamental person that Welles was, he delivered only a rough cut of the movie to the studio who then re-edited and re-shot some parts, making a crappy version of the movie for release. Touch of Evil was finally re-edited in 1998 by Walter Murch, who followed the notes written by Welles in a 58 page memo that he wrote after watching the theatrical release.
You should check out the special edition, titled: restored to Orson Welles' vision. Being the temperamental person that Welles was, he delivered only a rough cut of the movie to the studio who then re-edited and re-shot some parts, making a crappy version of the movie for release. Touch of Evil was finally re-edited in 1998 by Walter Murch, who followed the notes written by Welles in a 58 page memo that he wrote after watching the theatrical release.
Hell of a pick, sadora! I'm a huge noir fan, and I ended up with Sunset Blvd. instead for various reasons. I seriously considered ToE and I'm glad someone grabbed it.
Didn't know about the re-edited version. I'll have to check it out.
__________________
Eberle said, "It was one of the more special ones I've had. You don't score your first NHL goal too many times."
Hell of a pick, sadora! I'm a huge noir fan, and I ended up with Sunset Blvd. instead for various reasons. I seriously considered ToE and I'm glad someone grabbed it.
Didn't know about the re-edited version. I'll have to check it out.
It was between this pick or another, more recent film noir. In the end I had to go with this one. Orson Welles really was ahead of his time, especially in his camera work. I love that opening crane shot.
Yeah, great pick. I've still got my pre-60 and my black and white to pick, because there were so many good films not picked; but this one was near the top of my list in either category.
TEAM Wishwedidaporndraft is happy to select into Wildcard #2 category, THE FUGITIVE.
Backed by some great action and great performances, including an Oscar for Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive is one of the best cat and mouse movies of all time.
For my next pick, team Hot Buttery Topping selects in the first Wildcard category, the movie that made Tom Cruise a star, Risky Business.
Cruise plays Joel, a Chicago high school student with aspirations of attending Princeton, but the grades to attend the University of Illinois.
Joel's parents go on vacation, leaving him alone in the big house, with a booming stereo system and a Porsche in the garage.
Joel's friend Miles (Curtis Armstrong) calls and orders an "escort" to Joel's house one night. The escort is not what Joel had in mind, but "she" knows someone who's just "what every white boy off the lake wants." Lana (the super-hot Rebecca De Mornay) comes to Joel's house, they have sex, and a string of misadventures begins...leading to Joel needed to raise a lot of money to pay for significant repairs to his father's Porsche, while avoiding physical harm at the hands of Lana's pimp, Guido (Joe Pantoliano).
The solution to Joel's problem is to get Joel's friends together with Lana's friends, essentially turning his parents suburban home into a high school brothel for the night.
The movie is probably most famous for one of the most parodied/imitated scenes in movie history...
As I said, this is the movie that made the 21 year-old Cruise a star. His on-screen charisma turned this movie from a standard high school "gotta get laid" movie into one of the quintessential films of the 1980s.
__________________
Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
The MacGuffins select, after much deliberation (so many great movies still unpicked!), with their pick in the 17th round, for entry in the Wildcard #3 slot:
Rashomon
It's human to lie. Most of the time we can't even be honest with ourselves.
I was first introduced to Kurosawa's films while living in Kelowna, BC. I went to school there for one year, and during that time there was a local video store that had all the classics and tons of foreign films went out of business. The university library bought a huge number of VHS tapes and DVDs from the store, and made them available to students. So in my downtime in between classes, I retreated into the library a couple times per week and watched all the Hitchcock/Welles/Bergman/Fellini/etc. I possibly could.
Rashomon was the first Kurosawa movie I watched, and I immediately went on a binge fest of his movies because I enjoyed it so much. It helped open my eyes to the fact that some of the quirky cinematic storytelling techniques employed by contemporary directors like Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino were in fact not new and revolutionary, but had been pioneered by master directors like Kurosawa years earlier. It also helped me to elevate "foreign" (ie/ subtitled movies) to "equal" status in my mind; previously, I had occasionally avoided them because I didn't want to "read" a movie. But Rashomon was so good, and the "subititle/foreign factor" so insignificant to the experience, that I became much more exploratory within the realm of world cinema.
Rashomon is simple tale of a horrendous crime discvoered by a village commoner, and the complex unravelling of several different first-hand accounts of that crime, told in flashbacks by all the parties involved. Here is where the movie's brilliance takes shape- each of the accounts in decidedly different in its retelling of the events of the crime committed, yet each party claims to be the murderer, and it is therefore unlikely any of them are lying.
To borrow from Roger Ebert, who illustrates that point beautifully:
Quote:
The genius of Rashomon is that all of the flashbacks are both true and false. True, in that they present an accurate portrait of what each witness thinks happened. False, because as Kurosawa observes in his autobiography, "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."
The wonder of Rashomon is that while the shadowplay of truth and memory is going on, we are absorbed by what we trust is an unfolding story. The film's engine is our faith that we'll get to the bottom of things--even though the woodcutter tells us at the outset he doesn't understand, and if an eyewitness who has heard the testimony of the other three participants doesn't understand, why should we expect to?
What a devastating blow to a moviegoer- to come to the understanding that the viewer cannot fully trust what the camera presents to him! This is Rashomon's gift to the world of cimema, the revelation that the camera reflects only a single point of view, and that that certain depiction of specific events may be manipulated, lied about, embellished, and/or distorted. In fact, like the phrase "Catch-22," the word "Rashomon" has come to represent in modern times the very situation depicted in the film, because it is such a unique phenomenon.
I mentioned earlier that I was not distracted by the subtitles one bit while watching this film, despite not having much experience with foreign films at that point. I must credit a great deal of that to the acting and visual style of the film, as it conveys a universal feel in its almost "silent-film" approach. The acting style is over-emphasized and heightened by the dramatic gestures and posture of the actors, the rain thunders to the ground, non-verbal cues by the actors are presented with great detail and attention, the shadows are accentuated, the point of view shots are made overtly obvious. It all fits seamlessly with the content of the film, and ironically, stands in direct contrast to the cloudiness surrounding the accuracy of the events told in the flashbacks. Of note is the performance by Kurosawa favorite Toshiro Mifune, who is simply mesmerizing.
Rashomon made Kurosawa an instant star, introduced millions to foreign and specifically Japanese cinema, laid the foundation for films like The Usual Suspects and Memento with its stylish gifts to the world of film, and has stood the test of time as one of the greatest films ever made. Although there isn't a finite conclusion regarding just exactly what happened in the forest, there is some resolution thematically and philosophically, specifically regarding the subjective nature of "truth" and "reality," and the very shortcomings of the human condition on the whole. Powerful stuff from a flawless film. The MacGuffins had plenty of more recent options in this spot, but couldn't pass up this work of art and time-tested masterpiece!
Damn, Ro! That is an awesome pick. I have lots to say about it, but I'll wait til you do your writeup first. But I will say I give it my highest recommendations to anyone who hasn't seen it.
BTW, ResAlien is up next but he hasn't logged in since last Thursday. Should MattyC go ahead? I say yes.
__________________
Eberle said, "It was one of the more special ones I've had. You don't score your first NHL goal too many times."
No argument there. Windom's is a much better clip, and it just reiterated my point that it's one of the most parodied scenes in movie history (and a much better example than Kobe et al).
Also, looking at them side by side, it's amazing how well they recreated the living room for the Guitar Hero commercials.
__________________
Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
I'm a huge noir fan, and I ended up with Sunset Blvd. instead for various reasons. I seriously considered ToE and I'm glad someone grabbed it.
