The Cell (2000)

February 7th, 2010 by femmefatale

I’ve fancy thought that modern obscure isn’t visual ample supply. I’m often very excited whenever anyproject comes to the majuscule wall promising to do something really interesting with its visual style. I judgement this stems from a country love of sheer fantasy in movies, which is essentially what we expectfrom films; to be taken to another arrange. The Cell is arguably the most visually daringproject mainstream cinema has launched since The Fifth Foundations. When a film over augmentsitself with elaborate and irrational visual label, this is a good thing; when a film is sort of keptafloat by the visuals, that’s a bad thing. In scads respects, The Cell fits into the lattercategory.

The film introduces us to child psychologist Catharine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) who is taking partin an speculative medical program. The program uses a complex technology that allowssomeone to enter the position of another person. Deane is using it to help a child who is in aself-induced coma, trying to interact with his subliminal facade. Meanwhile, a serial killer, CarlStargher (Vincent D’Onofrio), goes everywhere drowning women reversed a sealed, barometer cell and thenbleaching their bodies. He starts to get unkempt and the FBI begins to close in on him. AgentPeter Novak (Vince Vaughn) leads the team vexing to corral him and eventually they upon out who and where Carl Stargher is: unfortunately when they find him he has gone into acoma from a oppressive mental illness. The FBI eventually seeks the help of Catharine and her teamto go inside Carl’s attitude in order to find out where his latest gull is located, formerly she isdrowned by the automated lorgnette cell. Deane agrees, but discovers a twisted and complex worldinside the head of the triggerman that she has to maneuver in, in order to draw forth the information.

The basic business that extraordinarily stands alibi in The Cell is the visual style. Cinematography issuperb, with the global tone and design of the film applied in a very striking way. That’s actuallyjust the basic film; the trips into Stargher’s attend to push the envelope unbiased further. In the dreamsequences, elaborate sets, costumes, and lighting schemes were utilized to create vivid if notdisturbing worlds. These sequences are really cast nothing that conventional cinema has quite yetexperienced until minute, but at the changeless time they’re from A to Z too short and staged, and perhapshere is the core fault of the film.

Watching movies online have become popular with people who spend a lot of time online nowadays. These sites make it possible to watch full-length feature movies, and even streaming television shows right on your computer screen using a technology known as ?streaming-video.? On some of these sites you can even play interactive games in HD with 3D graphics. There are numerous websites offering these services, some free and others requiring paid memberships. The best free full movies site is watch-funny-movies.com

The movie relies far too much on the delusion sequences to propel it, yet these portionsare surprisingly tongue-lash compared to what the film builds up to. Though the serial Bluebeard patch is fairlywell written, it also succumbs to awful clichés. Jennifer Lopez really isn’t at all convincing as someone who’s had any well-meaning of forensic training in psychology. Much of the sphere is style of half-assed and not they chose not to make it an stem, but uncountable of the ’scientists’ in the film spout troublesome explanationsfor a lot of what goes on in the bent of Stargher and it solely sounds fake. He’s a psychopathickiller, I think we can accept the really his mind would be pretty twisted.

TheCell makes tons, uncomfortable jumps out of the dream sequences as spectacularly. Once Lopezgoes secret Stargher, we sort of expect her to stay there, at least appropriate for a enthusiastic serving of the vapour.That fall down, we’re totally immersed in this radical world. Instead, there are many breach cuts to realworld activities which constantly break the mood and sign of the film. So, I guess I’d haveto estimate that despite all the lavish visuals, I was disappointed with how narrow-minded they’re actually employed incontinuous shots. For all the money and effects spent on these sequences, they comprise asurprising minority of the film.

Underneath the requisite flaws, The Chamber at least never commits the sin of being boring. It’s certainly an entertaining layer, it just relies too much on a awfully likely and stiff plot to getto the expiration. If anything, the visual flair is well worth the consequence of admission. I’d love to see awhole silver screen done SOLELY in this conjure up-style. The movie also boasts a substantial and effectivemusical hordes by composer Howard Shore collaborating with The Master Musicians of Joujoka, one of the best things down the movie. The Cell is unmatched, it simply isn’t terriblyrefined.

The Face Behind the Mask (1941)

February 5th, 2010 by femmefatale
“The film is a horror story
in that it offers a vision of the American Dream turning ugly and wrong.”

Download full mp3 songs, download free wallpapers and much more. Listen to Juanes online for free.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Peter Lorre is superb as the skilled craftsman Hungarian immigrant
newly arrived in America, Janos Szabo, in this first-rate and rather classy
low-budget B-film horror/gangster tale that back in the 1960s had a cult
following among film buffs. It’s directed with flair by the prolific Parisian
born Robert Florey (”The Cocoanuts”/”Murders in the Rue Morgue”/”The Beast
With Five Fingers”) and adapted from the story by Arthur Levinson that’s
based on a radio play by Thomas Edward O’Connell. The adequate screenplay
(the dialogue is not so hot) is by Allen Vincent and Paul Jarrico. Florey
shot it in only 12 days, and was saddled with working with the alcoholic
Lorre who would drink Pernod for a long breakfast and by the afternoon
was too drunk to act.

The plotline has Janos’ ocean liner approaching the Statue of Liberty
and he is bubbling over with enthusiasm for his new country, hoping to
land work as a watchmaker and raise enough bread to bring over his fiancée.
In the street, while asking for directions for a boarding house, he befriends
Lt. O’Hara (Don Beddoe) who directs him to a fleabag hotel run by his acquaintance
Finnegan. The first night that Janos sleeps there, the hotel burns down
and he’s facially disfigured with third degree burns. Looking like a monster,
he can’t get work and no one talks to him because he looks so repulsive.
Contemplating suicide on the waterfront, he meets petty thief Dinky (George
E. Stone) who talks him out of it and as the first person to act friendly
since the accident the two become pals. Dinky introduces Janos to his gangster
pals and Janos gets talked into using his mechanical skills to break into
bank vaults and the like, and soon is so gifted a thief he becomes the
mastermind of the gang. He reasons if he gets enough dough he can have
the plastic surgeon give him a new face. Instead he has to settle for an
expensive expressionless rubber-like mask, as the plastic surgeon tells
him he lost too much muscle tissue and it would take grafts every six months
for 15 years to do the complete facial job (Lorre simulated a mask by coating
his face with heavy white makeup and drawing back his skin toward the hairline
with gauze strips glued to his cheeks). Just when Janos is giving up all
hope in living, he bumps into a bubbly sweet blind girl, Helen (Evelyn
Keyes), and becomes romantically involved with her, and will eventually
quit the gang and live with the optimistic gal in the country. But the
vicious gang leader, Jeff Jeffries (James Seay), pulls a diamond heist
without Janos and in the process brings about unwanted publicity when they
also murder someone during the robbery. At the same time, Jeff finds a
letter with money in it from a guilt-ridden Lt. O’Hara in Janos’ pocket
and erroneously believe the masked man is quitting the gang with the purpose
of selling them out to the police. This causes the gang, except for the
always loyal Dinky, to turn against Janos; but their plot for revenge backfires,
as they plant a bomb in Janos’ car and accidentally kill Helen instead.
Then Janos plans his revenge on the gang as they attempt to escape to Mexico
by plane and it turns into a disaster for all, as Janos surprises them
as the pilot and they all meet their maker (ala Greed) in the remote Arizona
desert where Janos landed the plane without fuel. 

The film is a horror story in that it offers a vision of the American
Dream turning ugly and wrong. It proved to be a big box-office hit, and
a film that deserves more attention as it’s still under the radar of most
discerning viewers.

Deep Impact (1998)

February 4th, 2010 by femmefatale

The season’s cardinal comet-targets-Earth special effects extravaganza is spectacular enough in its cataclysmic scenes of the planet being devastated by an unstoppable fireball, but proves far from thrilling in the down time after time pooped with a largely uninspiring assortment of troubled merciful beings. Hitting the trade in eight weeks before the reputedly more high-tech, outer set out-oriented “Armageddon,” “Deep Impact” order score some powerhouse B.O. as the at the outset circumstance picture of the summer, even as it leaves audiences enthusiastic for something even bigger and better.

Boasting a pedigree from two studios as well as the combined expertise of exec producer Steven Spielberg and his “Jaws” producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, this comes as close to a universal, all-encompassing disaster picture as has ever been made, in that all life on Earth is threatened with extinction by the onrushing astral interloper. And yet, the choices of characters made by scenarists Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin are mostly odd and uninvolving, with perhaps only one or two of them expressing any lust for life, a burning awareness of the preciousness of time, or a philosophical framework through which to view the threatened holocaust.

With director Mimi Leder working in the same hyperventilated, would-be realistic style she applied to “The Peacemaker,” the characters all frantically scurry about keeping appointments and fighting deadlines, with all of them facing, of course, the biggest deadline of all. But the impact they create is shallow and scattershot, leaving one to wait impatiently for the major moments that, fortunately, do arrive.

An unaccountable amount of time, especially in the early-going, is given over to Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni), a rising MSNBC reporter who, while investigating some high-level Washington shenanigans, stumbles onto traces of a very big story indeed. A year before, amateur teenage astronomer Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) and an observatory technician (Charles Martin Smith) independently identified a new comet that is now certified as being on a collision course with Earth.

With impact looming in a year, U.S. President Beck (a solemn Morgan Freeman) announces the news to the world. The government hasn’t been asleep at the wheel, however; a giant spaceship called Messiah will blast off in two months’ time, the president informs, so that astronauts can plant eight nukes on the comet in the hope of blowing it to smithereens and thus eradicate the threat.

The mission, which concludes precisely halfway through the picture, proves a dismal failure, succeeding only in splitting the comet in two unequal pieces, each of which strike the planet. The smaller portion, it is eventually determined, will hit just off the North American eastern seaboard, causing a 350-foot tidal wave that will destroy New York and Washington, among other cities, and travel 650 miles inland. The larger rock will land in Canada and trigger what is called an E.L.E., or Extinction Level Event, complete with Earth-enshrouding dust clouds that will block out the sun and almost certainly wipe out all life.

The logistics and repercussions stemming from this announcement take up the film’s second half. Declaring martial law, President Beck reveals that a network of caves is being built to accommodate 1 million Americans, some of whom have already been selected but most of whom will be chosen by “The Ark National Lottery”; other nations, he says, will decide for themselves what to do.

The trauma created by the who-will-live/who-will-die edict is explicitly dramatized through Leo Biederman’s story. By virtue of his having co-discovered the comet, he and his family get to go underground. His girlfriend Sarah (Leelee Sobieski) and her parents are not so lucky, however. To enable Sarah to join Leo, the seriously underage couple marry, but even then there is much melodramatic toing-and-froing as to whether she will accompany him or remain with her folks. Potentially heart-tugging, this subplot is played out in the hokiest, most predictable manner, one that panders directly to the teen audience.

The adults are no more interesting. Although she has the looks for a plausible TV anchor, Tea Leoni’s Jenny seems so stiff and uncomfortable during her broadcasts that she wouldn’t last a weekend on the air. Furthermore, her character is stuck in a forlorn funk; her mother (a classy Vanessa Redgrave) commits suicide after the older woman’s ex (Maximilian Schell) marries a much younger woman, and Jenny spends a good deal of time dealing — not very effectively — with her errant dad. Leoni’s eyes seem on the verge of tears almost throughout, and her sad, brittle demeanor is an odd object of focus for such a high-powered picture.

In a different way, the team of astronauts isn’t very compelling either. Robert Duvall’s lead pilot, described as the last man to walk on the moon and a veteran of six shuttle flights, would normally be expected to have a certain weight and to command respect. Instead, the younger flyers (Ron Eldard, Mary McCormack, Blair Underwood, Jon Favreau and Alexander Baluev) treat him dismissively as a dinosaur, almost a liability. Duvall, possibly not wanting to repeat himself by playing yet another military tough guy, makes his character somewhat defensive, as if he had something to prove. It’s one way to go, but not all that convincing.

But none of this matters terribly when the first big rock hits the water and sends the world’s biggest tidal wave breaking over the Statue of Liberty and all of Manhattan (a hilariously incongruous shot shows one man in Washington Square not even looking at the wave as it approaches, his mug obliviously buried in a newspaper). The water effects are just the slightest bit phony looking, but they still register dramatically, as do glimpses of the ocean making its way up through the valleys and over the mountains of the eastern states.

But, for all its destructiveness, this is just the appetizer: the Big One has yet to hit. Although the population is resigned to its fate, Duvall’s flight commander has a final idea that might just save the day, a kamikaze mission that will nonetheless require the agreement of the entire crew. Once again, the result is spectacular, something sci-fi and effects freaks will relish. Concluding sequence conveys hope for humanity in a very square, windy manner.

Tech contributions are souped up to the max, resulting in occasional overkill, particularly on the soundtrack, which is almost unbearably noisy at times. Cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann delivered sharp, agile work, and pic is dedicated to him, as he died shortly after lensing was completed.

54 (1998)

February 2nd, 2010 by femmefatale

Shane O’Shea (Ryan Phillippe) is 19 and bored by the local nightlife in New Jersey. He
ends up standing outside Studio 54, worrisome to get in. The club’s owner, Steve Rubell (Mike
Myers), is taken by the young man’s credible looks and waves him through. Soon Shane joins the
ranks of bare-chested busboys working under the strobe lights. He makes friends with a
coworker, Greg (Brecklin Meyer), who is married to a coat-check a depart girl and would-be singer,
Anita (Salma Hayek). In the meantime, Shane’s proclivity by Rubell and a prominent socialite
(Sela Ward) puts him on the fast track. It’s not long more willingly than he is promoted from busboy to
bartender, and gets all the women and drugs he wants. He has set his sights on a soap
opera actress, Julie Black (Neve Campbell), whom he has long admired from afar.

Free Music Search engine gives you an opportunity to find lots of mp3. Placebo free mp3 download music. Explore large collection of free music.

Henry “Dutch” Holland (Alec Gu…

January 31st, 2010 by femmefatale

Henry “Dutch” Holland (Alec Guinness) is a demulcent-mannered bank clerk responsible notwithstanding supervising the transportation of gold bullion from London’s bullion smelter to the bank. Dreaming of his own life with a morsel of legal tender, Holland, along with his new trusted acquaintance Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), devise a cunning plan to steal a million pounds worth of gold and freight it to Europe to sell it on the black trade in and make their fortuity. With the employees of local thieves Lackery (Sid James) and Shorty (Alfie Bass), the gang discovers difficulty after catch, realising that the course of committing the superb offence does not always run smoothly.

The Lady In Question is Charles Busch review

January 29th, 2010 by femmefatale

This affectionately observed, nimbly edited (and perhaps a mite overly
reverent) documentary, framed by a clever pseudo-newsreel format, traces
Busch’s “strange sort of career as a leading lady” from an “actress-crazy”
troubled kid obsessed with opera and vintage movies to East Village fringe
theater impresario to Broadway playwright (”The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife”),
novelist (”Whores of Lost Atlantis”) and movie star. Busch’s “Die, Mommie,
Die!” opened the 2003 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
at the Castro Theatre; his next film, “A Very Serious Person,” written,
directed and starring Busch as — gasp! a male nurse — premieres at the
Tribeca Film Festival on April 28.

A San Francisco favorite, the conventionally uncastable Busch became a
playwright by necessity to accommodate his romantic sensibility and uniquely
outsize talents and, in the best parts of “Lady in Question,” we watch him
develop his solo work at San Francisco’s Theatre Rhinoceros through his rise
during the mid-’80s (concurrent with the crux of the AIDS crisis, which
informed his work and affected his Lost-in-Limbo troupe members) through the
five-year run of his breakthrough show, “Vampire Lesbians.” More than just your
garden-variety gender-blending genius, Busch in his heyday was a master of
pastiche, hybridizing the almost-forgotten genres such as historical pageants,
anti-Nazi melodramas and ’60s beach movies.

Though the film feels too long by about 30 minutes, veering into Lifetime
network melodrama and padded with celebrity accolades (Kathleen Turner, Paul
Rudnick, B.D. Wong and an embarrassing encounter with Rosie O’Donnell), it
thrills nonetheless with priceless footage of mid-’80s stage performances and
rare offstage glimpses of the gentle and self-effacing Busch, who onstage
bursts into glorious flame as a draggin’ lady for the ages.

– Advisory: Contains gender humor and brief nudity.

– Joe Brown



‘Shakespeare Behind Bars’

POLITE APPLAUSE

Documentary. Written and directed
by Hank Rogerson. (Not rated. 93 minutes. At the Lumiere and Shattuck Cinemas
in Berkeley.)


Standing in what looks like an open field, a burly man with a shaved
head earnestly delivers a speech from “The Tempest” (”Our revels now are ended
…”). A moment later, we spot what is unmistakably a guard’s tower in the
background. The setting is a maximum-security prison in Kentucky, and the actor
rehearsing his lines is an inmate.

He’s among a group of prisoners at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex
who, for therapeutic and educational purposes, annually stage a Shakespeare
play. They’re serving hard time, but they’re lucky enough to be in a facility
where the man in charge “hates prisons” — those that exist only for
punishment. The warden believes that part of his mission is educational.

These inmates actually are doubly fortunate because they are also in the
good hands of Curt Tofteland, artistic director of the Kentucky Shakespeare
Festival, who volunteers his services as facilitator.

This affecting documentary focuses on their 2004 production, a play whose
themes of forgiveness and redemption certainly ought to have some resonance for
the inmates. And the men — Hal, Red, Big G and the others — are amazed at
how accurately “The Tempest” speaks to their situation.

Filmmaker Hank Rogerson’s strategy is to allow us to get to know the men
before we learn about their crimes, which are some of the worst imaginable:
multiple murder, serial child molesting, cop killing and the like. The men,
often in tears, tell their stories, by turns appalling and heartbreaking.

Inevitably, we wonder about the authenticity of their remorse. Are the
men, several of whom are coming up for parole, simply trying to con the
authorities (to say nothing of the filmmaker and the viewers)? Rogerson
declines to force a conclusion: The inmates present their stories, placing the
audience exactly in the position of a parole board, pondering how much the men
have really changed.

Most viewers will probably conclude that at least some of the inmates are
sincere. The film makes the case — one that always needs making — that,
despite what they’ve done, these men retain some shred of humanity.

In addition to lots of rehearsal snippets, Rogerson includes scenes of the
actual production, which is spirited and moving. As Tofteland points out, when
“The Tempest” was originally staged, actors were looked down upon as the dregs
of society. He thinks Shakespeare would approve of this production.

– Advisory: The film includes disturbing descriptions of real-life
crimes.

– Walter Addiego



‘Crossing Arizona’

POLITE APPLAUSE

Documentary. Directed and produced
by Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo. (Not rated. 96 minutes. At the Roxie.)


Filmmakers Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo probably had no idea that when
they were making “Crossing Arizona,” the issue of immigration reform, already a
hot-button topic, would fill urban streets with tens of thousands of protesters
and create chaos in Congress, but in their good luck, that is exactly the
situation as their movie opens at the Roxie today in its theatrical premiere.

The film, which premiered at Sundance in January, examines the immigration
problem along the Arizona-Sonora border. An estimated 3,000 Mexicans have died
there trying to cross into the United States since 1993, when government policy
mandated fencing off the border near urban areas, primarily San Diego and El
Paso, Texas, where illegal immigration had become problematic. Undocumented
immigrants are still trying to cross the border, into the more dangerous
Arizona desert, where water, food and medical assistance are as scarce as the
Border Patrol.

Mathew and DeVivo try to give all sides of this complex story. They talk
to activists who are both for and against illegal immigration, human rights
groups that provide water at checkpoints, law enforcement officials,
politicians, local ranchers, “coyotes” who traffic illegal immigrants across
the border and illegal immigrants themselves.

As Ray Borane, the mayor of Douglas, Ariz., points out, far-left liberals,
ultra-right-wing conservatives and everyone in between seem to agree that the
current U.S. policy is not working. It’s what to do about it that is in
contention.

No hour-and-a-half documentary can do much more than scratch the surface
of the issue, but Mathew and DeVivo provide an excellent primer and some human
faces on the front lines. Any solution will have to combine delicate diplomacy,
national security issues, economic concerns of both American employers and
workers, and a better, more sensible system of acquiring citizenship.

“Crossing Arizona” left me with some indelible images: The body of a
28-year-old pregnant woman in the desert, the exchange between a retired nurse
and an activist, and the rancher who said he has endured more than $1 million
in cattle losses and damage because of illegal immigrants crossing his land.

Most haunting was the meeting of an Indian providing water at various
checkpoints on a reservation and an undocumented immigrant who had paid about
$1,300 to be smuggled across the border so he could work to get enough money
for his wife’s surgery. The American lends a sympathetic ear and provides some
water and food but tells the Mexican he will not survive unless he turns
himself in to the Border Patrol.

The look on the Mexican’s face says it all.

Screenings will have bilingual subtitles. The filmmakers will be at
screenings today through Sunday.

– Advisory: Some graphic images of dead bodies.

– G. Allen Johnson




‘La Mujer de Mi Hermano’

SNOOZING VIEWER


Drama. Starring Bárbara Mori, Christian Meier and Manolo Cardona. Directed by
Ricardo de Montreuil. (R. 89 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)


Repressed desire! A sultry soap-opera star! Incest! Gay
politics! “La Mujer de Mi Hermano” has it all. Now if it only had a decent
plot.

Ricardo de Montreuil’s artfully filmed feature is a soap opera with
pretensions to art, but a soap opera nonetheless. The plot: Ten years of
marriage to the wealthy but sterile Ignacio (Christian Meier) — a guy so
repressed he wears boxers while skinny-dipping — have left Zoe (Bárbara
Mori) sexually starved and bored out of her mind. Enter Ignacio’s freeloading,
freethinking artist brother, Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona), who wants to paint Zoe’s
portrait and show her his etchings, so to speak.

The inevitable happens. The two become lovers, plunging Zoe into a
conundrum as old as melodrama: Should Zoe choose security over passion? Honor
before fulfillment? Some fresh revelations further complicate matters as Zoe,
suffering beautifully and showing a lot of leg, learns more about her husband
than she cared to know. Soon every member of the incestuous love triangle must
make big decisions. Whatever shall they do?

Viewers will probably guess most of the answers a third of the way through
and struggle to maintain interest for the remainder. More intriguing are the
questions that remain unanswered, such as how Zoe’s embalmed marriage lasted a
decade, or how anyone could manage a happily-ever-after scenario considering
some of the narrative’s tawdrier details. “La Mujer” tackles none of these. Not
surprising, considering the characters are the stuff templates are made of,
from Zoe the suffering nymph to Gonzalo the irresponsible rebel to Ignacio the
uptight husband with a secret. They yield predictably shallow results.

Signs that de Montreuil can do better can be found in the movie’s opening
sequence: a muted, microcosmic landscape of dead leaves and dying insects,
drifting like emotional flotsam in Ignacio’s swimming pool. If only the
director had followed through on these promising metaphors. Maybe next time. As
is, “La Mujer de Mi Hermano” is just titillation — and not terribly
interesting titillation at that.

– Advisory: Sexual situations and language.

– Neva Chonin

Mahogany review

January 26th, 2010 by femmefatale

The Film:
Mahogany came out in the theaters shortly in the future I turned six years-old. By that time I was already obsessed with film, and had made up my genius that when I grew up I somehow wanted be complicated in movies. I knew I had to recompense attention to everything I saw in every movie I watched, but Mahogany was the one of the victory films to teach me a valuable chiding about resilience.

Although I could not articulate it at the time, I was aware of the fact that part of the measure of a film was how an audience reacted to seeing it. If an audience laughed, I understood that what was on screen was supposed to be funny. If the audience cried, I understood that something sad had happened. But while watching Mahogany, I heard the audience do something I had never heard before. Approximately seven minutes into the film, Billy Dee Williams appeared on screen for the first time, and I heard a noise come from a majority of the audience, which happened to be women. I didn’t know what that sound was, but as I recall is was a combination of gasps, sighs and moans. It wasn’t until years later that I would come to understand that that sound was a collective chorus a female sexual desire. This sound, that was emanating from nearly every row in every corner of the movie theater in Norwalk, Connecticut, was the sound of women wanting. And because of that and another key life lesson I learned from Mahogany, I will always have a place in my heart for that film.

Unfortunately, even though Mahogany helped educate me in ways of the world, it is not what I consider a good film. I saw it in the theater and was more entertained by the sounds being made by the women in the theater (although there were a few men making similar sounds–another lesson learned courtesy of Mahogany), and watched it one other time when it was on television. But it was never a film that I felt compelled to revisit in my adult life.

Following the phenomenal success of Lady Sings the Blues, which marked the screen debut of Diana Ross, and paired her with the ultra smoove Billy Dee Willams, some sort of follow-up was inevitable. Ross stars as Tracy Chambers, an aspiring fashion designer who works at Chicago department store. Williams is Brian Walker, an idealistic lawyer who wants to change the world for poor people. Tracy and Brian are an unlikely couple when they first meet, and the fact that Ross and Williams fail to generate any heat or chemistry the way they did in Lady Sings the Blues, means that even as the relationship intensifies, it never becomes more compelling to watch.

When Tracy meets famed fashion photographer Sean McAvoy (Anthony Perkins), he is instantly taken by the chocolate goddess and must have her. Even though she has no interest in being a model, Tracy decides to take Sean up on his offer, seeing it as a means to launch her career as a fashion designer. This doesn’t sit well with Brian, but his feelings have little bearing as Tracy jets of to Rome, where in a relatively short time she becomes the most popular model in the world. Rechristened Mahogany by Sean–he has a thing for naming woman after inanimate objects–she begins a meteoric rise to superstardom. Meanwhile she must cope with Sean’s sexual advances, and even though she gives in to them, he is impotent. Eventually, Tracy decides to get her own fashion line going, which Sean tries to sabotage, only to be thwarted by Italian tycoon Christian Rosetti (Jean-Pierre Aumont) who wants to get Tracy in the sack. And while all this is going on, Brian shows in Rome to reclaim his woman, leading to a showdown with Tracy.

Mahogany is a poorly written film overflowing with sappy melodrama with a lead character at its axis that is lacking in charisma, not to mention just plain likeable qualities. As she is written in the script, Tracy is one step above being a whore. She reluctantly gives herself sexually to both Sean and Christian, and it is only because Sean can’t get it up and Christian senses her repulsion that she doesn’t have to have sex with either of them. Ultimately, this creates the illusion that Tracy has some sort of virtue that in reality she doesn’t possess. The truth is she was going to have sex with both men, but because of a poorly written script, and more likely than not the demands of director Berry Gordy, she dodges both bullets. But that never makes her likeable.

By and large, Mahogany never quite works as an overall film. The film is at its best for a few brief scenes when Brian arrives in Rome to profess his love to Tracy. First he has a tense confrontation with Sean, where the often pondered question of who would win in a fight, Lando Calrissian or Norman Bates, is finally answered. Then, sensing that his woman has degenerated into a booze-soaked tramp with no sense of morality, Brian decides to boogie out of Rome, but not before a final confrontation with Tracy. It was in this scene that I learned another great lesson from Mahogany about how to be a man. When your woman is drunk and out of control, and she pours a glass of champagne over your head and fucks up your process, you need to grab that broad by the shoulder, squeezing so hard she writhes in pain, raise your other hand like your going to knock the taste of her mouth, and then with your jaw clenched in anger, you smoovely say, “Let me tell you something and don’t you ever forget it. Success is NOTHING without someone you love to share it with.” Then you leave your woman to inhale the cloud of dust you kick up as you split the scene, and wait patiently for her to get her shit back together and come crawling back to you.

Despite the valuable things Mahogany taught me, there’s no denying the fact that the film simply isn’t that good. Owing its existence to the popularity and success of Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany comes across like nothing more than a failed vanity attempt. Motown impresario Berry Gordy, who produced Lady Sings the Blues, takes over the director’s reigns, in what feels like a sad attempt to have Diana Ross give Barbara Streisand a run for her box office money. In fact, more often than not, Mahogany feels like a film that Streisand passed on when it was called something like Ivory or Crystal, only to have it land on Ross’ lap.

Veer movie

January 25th, 2010 by femmefatale

SMR Overall Review: Comely good an eye to a bollywood movie. In the grand scheme of things, all it has is info about the movie, but hey, if you're interested in this bollywood flick, visiting the site is very likely merit it to learn more about the movie!
Cinema Synopses: Veer is "an epic love story nearby a warrior". It is about the bravest of the Pindaris named Veer who goes to in conflict to save his solid ground but finds himself facing the strife his loves, the princess Yashodhara.
br>
Best Movie Website!

Movie website featured: Veer


Obsolescent of theater launch: January 22, 2009

Veer

Duck.fm Free Music Search engine gives you an opportunity to find lots of free mp3. The Offspring free full mp3 download. Explore large collection of free music.

Gloria review

January 23rd, 2010 by femmefatale

Columbia/Tri Star’s DVD release of Gloria marks my introduction to the warm up of love it/hate it cinema-verité president John Cassavetes. To turn I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. Based on reviews of his films, I expected a to a great extent un-commercial, talky, artsy experience (in fact, the film opens with a montage of paintings completely unrelated to the storyline). Instead, the 1980 dramedy is an accessibly quirky, magnificently photographed effort anyone doesn’t exigency to be a film observer to appreciate.

Gena Rowlands stars in the title role as an ex-gangster’s moll who without warning finds herself inheriting a curly-topped tyke (John Adames) whose Bronx-based class justifiable got wiped over by the mob. Before the bullets flew, young Phil received a swart order from his father (Buck Henry) chock full of secrets obtained while working as an accountant into the ally. Knowing her former cronies hand down stop at nothing to finish substandard the kid and retrieve the exposé, Gloria puts aside her disdain in requital for children to play bodyguard.

Mere minutes after eluding the scene of the work out, she returns the favor by gunning down a quartet of associates. Scarcely breaking a sweat, Harry Callahan would be proud. Declaration Gloria’s actions just as reprehensible as those who did away with his loved ones, Phil is all but cash to strike out on his own. But between his nauseate and her gall, a slow-building poignant bond is growing.

It’s this interplay between the burned peripheral exhausted former showgirl and the appealingly bratty youngster that makes Gloria such a success. Although Fred Schuler’s gritty, documentary-strain photography and Cassavetes’ captaincy are phenomenal, pretty pictures can only be entertaining for so long without purport. To with a shaky script, Rowland’s commanding performance is nothing gruff of fantastic: A female Dirty Harry in high heels. Deftly balancing the dramatic with moments of starless comedy, she doesn’t miss a note; Rowland’s Oscar® be mistaken for this skin was beyond meritorious.

Letters From Iwo Jima review

January 20th, 2010 by femmefatale

More than 60 years after the battle on Iwo Jima, Japanese historians view a buried sack of letters written by the Japanese soldiers on the ait, which were never sent. Among the soldiers are Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker with a children wife and unexplored baby at dwelling-place; Baron Nishi (Tsuyshi Ihara), the Olympic equestrian; Shimizu (Ryo Kase) a former military policeman; and Lt Ito (Shidou Nakamura), who would rather suicide than surrender. Their leader is Lt. Catholic Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), a traveled and knowledgeable man, who is mistrusted by some of the officers around him. But his strategy makes it much harder for the massive US war tool to capture the island, and amidst the unsympathetic battles, the soldiers pen their letters for home in faith.

Almost all fee-based streaming video movie sites warn that non-paid streaming video services can only offer you low quality movies with annoying resolutions that hinder your online movie streaming experience, it is totally] true. enought of bandwidth for comfortable viewing, or quality links to the streaming movies you want to watch? These important considerations that will have the greatest effect on the quality of your relaxation is what you will choose : download movie sites or watching site. Download movie sites offers a great quality , so you can watch your favorite movies in hd quality anytime. Download movie divx