You're listing mostly "corporate Hollywood" movies which I don't care to
watch let alone buy a ticket for. I would go see Scorsese's latest if
it wasn't three hours long. Did he make it for India? Who wants to sit
in a theater for three hours where you can't find the pause button. :-D
On 12/30/2013 08:35 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:
*/We call it "screener season." It's the end of the year, and both
films and TV are jockeying for nominations from the various members of
the nominating bodies. So, because the rules often say that you cannot
actually vote for a film or a TV show unless you have seen it, they
arrange private, elite screenings in the best theaters in town. But
still, many of the members are as jaded as the rest of us, and have
better "screening rooms" in their homes than exist in the theaters. So
the producers send them "screeners," either as DVDs or Blurays, so
they can watch them at home.
The people sending out these screeners encrypt them and insert special
visible codes into them so that if any of them "leak" and become
available on the Internet, they can know who "leaked" them, and cut
them out of the loop next year. That's the theory, anyway. The theory
is just so much bullshit. Any screener released to the Academy or the
Golden Globes voters ends up in the pirate verse within days, all of
its encryption and hidden codes gone. The media companies hate it. We
pirates love it. No more "CAM jobs" created by taking a cheap video
camera into a theater and pointing it at the screen. Nope, these are
pristine copies, and on a good TV and sound system like mine, pretty
close to the "theater experience."
Anyway, this is the season for them to appear, and they've started to.
I currently have in my "To Watch" pile pristine copies of the new "The
Hobbit" movie, "The Butler," "All Is Lost," "Blue Is The Warmest
Color," "Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom," and the one I'm looking
forward to the most ("Her" not being available yet), "American Hustle."
For some reason, however, this Monday-off-work afternoon, I decided to
start with something light. It's a Ron Howard film, and he's iffy, but
I thought I'd give classic macho a chance. I was not disappointed by
the opening lines, "25 drivers start every season in Formula One, and
each year, two of us die. What kind of person does a job like this?
Rebels, lunatics, dreamers. People who are desperate to make a mark,
and willing to die trying."
I'm watching this one first because today IS a kinda light, happy day
for me, and I'm not up for the heaviness of some of the other
offerings. And also because I actually saw Niki Lauda and James Hunt
race against each other, and it was fascinating, even from the stands.
If you've never been behind the wheel of a racing car (I have been
lucky enough to have done so), it's a more macho sport than almost
anything else you can imagine.
The movie is called "Rush," and it's about the last era of F1 racing I
followed, having grown up on earlier eras that featured even more
flamboyent drivers like Stirling Moss and Graham Hill. But don't get
your hopes up. This is *not* a great movie, and not even a great
racing movie, even if you're a guy. There have been better.
But it was perfect for this afternoon, and I don't regret having
watched it, or skimmed through it, which is more accurate. If you love
cars, and remember the great open-wheel racing cars of the 70s, you
might like it, too. Those who have never seen the wrong side of 150
mph on their speedometers...or even wanted to...might want to skip it.
/*
