Well, I took the Xmen plunge last night (in chronological order) and watched X-Men First Class. Overall I liked it, got a little silly in the 2nd half but it was pretty entertaining nonetheless.
DS2 talked me into going to see La La Land this afternoon.
Looking forward to your review!
I listened to a podcast today in which La La Land was reviewed. All three participants loved it, so I’m starting to get what I call sushi effect (I’m the only person I know who doesn’t eat sushi–it’s a texture thing–and I hate missing out on something everyone else loves ). In any case, one reviewer felt that the protagonists’ lack of singing and dancing ability was part of the film’s charm in that it made the characters more relatable. Personally, I could have related just fine to some great singing and sophisticated choreography.
- I posted a while back that I also was disappointed in La La Land. But now as I think back on it, I actually like it better now then when I was sitting through it. And some of the tunes keep popping into my head. I did find it charming. Can’t say I think it is best film of the year, but for some reason I have a higher opinion of it now then I did last week
Well, I am still crying about La La Land. I started crying early, when he said jazz is dying. I LOVED this film. It helped that I had low expectations going in. I agree with the above comment that I wouldn’t have wanted the most perfect voices or slickest dancers. They’re actors who can sing and dance in an above-average way, and that was fine with me.
I think it affected me so greatly because ds2 is about to graduate and hoping to enter an arts-related field, and I know that, personally, I couldn’t handle all the rejection. I thought the depiction of two struggling artists was great, but I can’t help but see my kid and worry about his path. I also really liked the ending.
I cried too, more than once! Loved the singing, the acting, the ending. I can see that it would not be for everyone. The singing was certainly not perfect I would imagine for anyone that will be focused on the technical aspects. But, I loved it.
As I understand it, that’s exactly what Washington is doing. He’s going to film all of Wilson’s Pittsburgh plays. Fences was first, and is the only one for which a theatrical release was definitely planned. (It’s also the most famous, and often considered the best.) The others may be straight to PBS, or straight to HBO or Amazon, I’m not sure which, although if Fences is very successful that may change. But I think Washington is committed to produce the whole cycle. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/denzel-washington-august-wilson-hbo/
@JHS, that’s awesome. Thanks for posting this information.
One of my few New Year’s Resolutions is to see more movies with people of color. I figure that’s the best way to prevent Oscars so white. It seems like this year there are a lot of great movies to see that fit the bill.
On a plane this week I watched Florence Foster Jenkins starring Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, and a guy from the Big Bang Theory. It is a true story about a terrible opera singer. I hadn’t read about it in advance but I really liked it.
@JHS, that’s fantastic news! Thanks for posting it.
It is exactly what I was thinking of, similar to the BBC doing all of Shakespeare’s major plays years ago. In Wilson’s case, no reason not to do the entire cycle. I am so psyched, I really can’t wait to see them. Good for Denzel!
While I’m on the subject of the Divine Denzel :x , I was impressed by his 2012 movie Flight, in which he played an airline pilot with addiction issues. Well worth seeing. It may be on Netflix.
ETA: Many years ago H and I took his B and (now ex)SIL to see Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in NYC. H and I loved it. They sat there kind of stunned. Afterwards, SIL said hesitantly that when we said a Broadway show she was expecting something more like Annie. 
I saw Hidden Figures today. I liked it but did feel it was long and tried a little too hard to be flip about racial issues.
In the movie they used Selectric typewriters and I just didn’t think they’d have them. When I came home I looked it up and the first Selectrics were sold in 1961, same year as the movie, but IBM underestimated how many would sell and they were short in supply. I worked for the government and we rarely, rarely, had the latest and greatest equipment, so I just don’t think NASA had it either the second it was on the market. That really bothered me.
Also, no one smoked in the movie. I’ve seen Apollo 13 a hundred times and they all smoked.
If you want to see smoking people then watch The Crown. I watched all 10 episodes in 2 days.
Jackie may well set records for smoking, too. When she is not in public in the movie, she rarely fails to have a cigarette going. At one point, she asks a reporter to read back to her how he will write about what she just told him, and he reads a lovely, very sympathetic paragraph that describes her (accurately) as lighting a cigarette as she spoke. Her only comment is a deadpan, “I don’t smoke.” She doesn’t put out the cigarette as she says it.
There’s a flashback scene on Air Force One. Everyone is smoking.
If the NASA scene was going to be true to life, a lot of people would be smoking, you can bet on that, even when I started working in the mid 80’s out of college there were still a lot of people smoking in the office (this was just about the time that NYC issued the first rules on smoking in the office). I have heard people comment on shows like mad men or movies that show things like doctor’s smoking in the office, people smoking in hospitals, and in complete disbelief that that ever happened, yet that was very common through the 1970’s, too.
I saw an interview with I think is the last surviving woman of the group portrayed in the movie, and she was very grateful the movie was made but it was kind of cute,she said she was embarassed that the movie made such a big deal out of her role:)
La La Land is enchanting. Overhyped? A tad maybe, simply because they don’t make movies like that anymore and people get nostalgic. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are not the best singers or dancers, but they have chemistry and that’s important when people want to be whisked away in a fantasy. The score is old fashioned wonderful.
I haven’t read through this whole thread, just the last few pages so maybe this was talked about when it was released but we just watched “Kubo and the two strings” over the holidays. It’s a wonderful movie, visually stunning, just wish I had seen it on a big screen.
I really liked “Flight” also when I saw it a few years ago.
Hoping to see “La la land” soon!
Denzel Washington in Flight gave a very compelling performance. Great movie.
“In the movie they used Selectric typewriters and I just didn’t think they’d have them. When I came home I looked it up and the first Selectrics were sold in 1961…”
That is so me. I met someone once who asked me what I thought of the latest Spike Lee film and after talking about what I enjoyed, I made note of how a brand of potato chips featured on store shelves would not have been on the shelves at that time, but a few years later, with the shelves actually being filled with a more nationally known brand during the time in the film. He bristled.
Turns out he was the property master for the film, in charge of making sure all of the props used were correct to the time period.
The next time I had such a moment, while standing in line at a theater, I remarked at the incredible amount of voice work that Dick Cavett did, and how his voice is both perfectly unobtrusive, yet so well-received. I did not care for Cavett’s voice, but had learned that one never knows who one is speaking to. Turns out one of Cavett’s managers was in the line behind the person I was talking to, and readily jumped in at that point, appreciative of my comments regarding Cavett. We had a pleasant talk.