Last movie watched...

[hoops]

Jonah Hex...£3 from Tesco and worth every penny 

[von Boom]

How did they pay you the £3?

[hoops]

Clubcard vouchers

[SmallBlueThing]

I paid a pound, a pound, a shiny pound for jonah hex- and as yet it remains unwatched.

SBT

[Mudcrab]

I paid a pound, a pound, a shiny pound for jonah hex- and as yet it remains unwatched.

SBT

Its probably worth that for the very shiny Megan Fox. Literally. I distinctly remember thinking "ooh, shiny" 

[I, Cosh]

Even allowing for it's dubious satiric or edgy intent, Ex Drummer was a thoroughly unpleasant and misogynistic watch. A successful writer in search of a new story hooks up with a set of inept punk clowns in their quest to win the local battle of the bands. Each of them has some unpleasant character trait or family strife which the writer mercilessly manipulates to ensure the worst possible outcome for everyone except himself. I kept watching in the hope that the Man Bites Dog undercurrent might spring to life but, an occasional bleak laugh aside it didn't.

Stylistically, it owes a significant debt to Trainspotting. Given the obvious low budget, what they manage to achieve is pretty impressive and that energy would maybe tempt me into watching another from the same people. Pretty good soundtrack too.

[Professor Bear]

I paid a pound, a pound, a shiny pound for jonah hex- and as yet it remains unwatched.

SBT

I will pay you a pound to never watch it ever.

Arrietty.  God but this is a depressing film, and it's not even like I'm deliberately overthinking it as a parable about a people who destroy their lives, the lives of their children, and eventually their own race and culture through isolationism and an inability to trust people from other cultures because one of the fucking characters comes right out and says just that in the bloody film, and this is in keeping with his character because he's gloomy because he'll die two days after the film ends.
The Borrowers are a doomed people and there's little chance that this subtext is accidental given that the only people who know of their existence are old people or dying kids, and that their numbers are so depressingly small that the family of urbane Borrowers do a Battlestar Galactica and abandon everything they own on the slim chance of being able to hang out with a whole three other people even though those three other people are cave-dwelling savages who grunt rather than speak and dress in rags and from what I can glean of the finale they use the barely-pubescent Arrietty as some sort of bargaining chip to get themselves a place to stay - very old world, if you ask me, but in keeping with the regressive worldview of the characters and relentless depression which isn't alleviated by Cecile Corbel's downbeat theme that centers entirely on conveying how lonely the main character is and how little friendship and free will matter in a cruel world buffeted by the whims of an angry God.
Kids, I imagine, will love it, especially all the wandering about nooks and crannies in the house during really well-done sequences that convey the sense of scale of the Borrowers compared to humans.

[shaolin_monkey]

My kids love Arrietty, and have watched it over and over and over.  I now officially hate it.  It's one of the few Studio Ghibli films I find to be a total drag.

[TordelBack]

It's one of the few Studio Ghibli films I find to be a total drag.

Faithful adaptation, so.  I read The Borrowers to my eldest last year and could not believe how depressing I found it.  Well written, mind.

[Professor Bear]

I have vague reccollections of the books being depressing affairs, but the makers of Arrietty clearly thought they weren't depressing enough, as the Boy is changed from someone recovering from a fever (in the books) to someone dying of congenital heart failure, and who has been abandoned by his mother mere days before he's to have an operation that will probably fail.  He speaks curtly about how fate is what it is and there's a passing flirtation with resolving to hope for the best, but tellingly no-one in the story ever defeats the machinations of fate and are merely slaves to the inevitable, with grand adventures having dire consequences and everyone seeming to live in a state of fear or resignation.
Basically I came away thinking Ghibli's next project should be The Diary of Anne Frank.

[judgefloyd]

Reading between the lines, Professor, I'd say your view of Arietty is less than completely and wholeheartedly positive.  I haven't seen Arietty myself, but I'll approach it with caution.  Ghibli don't always get it right, that's for sure. My favourites of theirs are Tottoro and Spirited Away.  I also really liked the Lupin III film that Miyazaki did.

I've  just finished 'Summer Heures',  a French flick in which almost nothing happens.  An old woman who used to be shacked up with a famous artist dies.  Her kids decide to sell her beautiful house.  One of the kids is upset about it.  ummm, that's about it.  It had moments where I thought 'how cool. How unhollywood of them to let things trail off like this', but a lot more moments that made me think 'how dull.  Wish I was watching 'Last Action Hero' or 'Buckaroo Banzai' instead.  It has the chick from 'Three Colours Blue' but is way less annoying.

[Daveycandlish]

Ah the Jonah Hex film is a stinker. I love the comic and Josh Brolin is well cast but the plot?.... Nah

[Professor Bear]

36th Chamber of Shaolin, Return to the 36th Chamber, Disciples of the 36th Chamber and American Shaolin.  The former three comprise a rough trilogy, though there's enough of a difference between the sequels and the original to justify their being made, particularly the move to comedy that occurs with Return and continues to new obnoxious heights with Disciples as the series tries to move away from the physical lessons of Fighting Buddhism to the spiritual ones, but muddies the water a little by having plots powered by pay disputes or cultural elitism from either side of the Mongul/Canton divide.  They're classic chop sockies, all the same, though if I had to pick I'd likely go for Return's knockabout scraps as helping form the most likable film of the three, although they do all suffer from slightly arrogant leads who basically turn into bullies in the final reel.
Flipping the script on that notion, American Shaolin seems at first a cash-in on the Shaolin brand for a US audience as a brash white kid insists centuries of tradition be changed to make his life easier so he can learn to beat up the guy who pantsed him (no, really, this is his actual motivation), and there's clearly a lot that's been drastically altered or omitted to make the Shaolin tradition more accomodating to the 3 act structure and western viewers, particularly the recasting of sifu as actual drill instructors, the omission of any mention of Buddhism, and all conversations relevant to the plot being held in English even when there's only Chinese people in the room, but with all that's wrong with it, I can't recall seeing a martial arts flick in years which has its heart in the right place in the way American Shaolin has, emphasising the learning of patience, discipline, sacrifice and loyalty over seeing dudes get kicked in the head by other dudes in sandals, although there's a ton of that and very impressive some of it is, too.
Rather than a love-letter to martial arts movies, the script is a love letter to martial arts themselves, and while there is plenty of fighting to gawk at, AS is essentially a movie about the journey rather than the destination, about learning as an end in itself rather than a means.  It won't win awards for cinematography, acting, or pretty much anything at all, but if you've ever been serious about martial arts, competitive sports or even just made friends through some daffy hobby you indulge, you'll recognise a lot of what is here once you get past the silly motivating factors and staple characters which I am retroactively realising may have been a commentary on the preconceptions about martial arts in general.  Also a ridiculously young Daniel Dae Kim is one of the lead actors, if such a thing interests you.

[TordelBack]

...as the Boy is changed from someone recovering from a fever (in the books) to someone dying of congenital heart failure, and who has been abandoned by his mother mere days before he's to have an operation that will probably fail....

Ay caramba. 

Eagerly awaiting Studio Ghibli's Nil By Mouth. 

[Colin YNWA]

Ah the Jonah Hex film is a stinker. I love the comic and Josh Brolin is well cast but the plot?.... Nah

Arh that film is just terrible. Both me and my wife love the comics. I think we got about 30 minutes in watching, exchanged a saddened glance, nodded and without out word stopped the film, put it straight back into its Lovefilm envelope and tried to pretend the whole sordid affair never happened.