sex
sex in a different position
sex in public
sex in a threesome
girls in the shower room scenes
Whoo-hoo! what do i win???
Sorry, Jackass: The Movie wasn’t up for a Golden Globe this year.
Man, jumping off cliffs with skis is pretty cool, now that I think about it. Especially if the fella doing it shot a few people on the way down, and did a nice midair flip. And violence is one of the best ways of moving plot and developing a character, you really find out what someone’s made of when they’re faced with brutality. And what about regular sports, that’s a contest, that drives character development and plot too. You need conflict in a movie, or else how are characters supposed to grow, and how do you define their objectives?
But I’ll come up with some things to do I’d like to see in a movie that don’t involve those things…
- Grifting
- Drinking
- Cross-examining witnesses
- Mad Passionate Sex
- Travelling cross-country on a horse and/or snowmobile
- Confronting pacifist zombies
- Entering a hotdog eating contest
- Landing a Piper Cub in a wheatfield without landing gear
- Gambling
- Hacking into the FBI computer system
See, there’s 10 things. But really, without some sort of conflict, where’s the movie? What is the protagonist trying to accomplish, who’s in his way, how will he deal with the obstacles before him? How will he hold up under extreme pressure, does he keep true to his objectives when he faces adversity, or does he abandon them to seek safety? Without all that, how do we know anything about the character? Without all that, everything he says isn’t worth jack, because it could all just be a bunch of talk. Anybody can talk big, I wanna see someone put his balls on the line, hopefully in an exciting and clever way. It’s someone’s actions that define them, not their words. The words are important, but on their own tell us nothing.
Calling Chicago a Moulin Rouge clone is like saying The Lord Of The Rings ripped off of Harry Potter.
Well, how about all the Disney dreck that comes out every year? And is Shreck a musical?
Evita, well yes. But before that? Hair, Fame? Making the singing part of the storyline and using an original screen play (not a Broadway show). Me thinks it’s been a long time since a musical, in the classic sense - think Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly - was made.
as for the OP:
So, I gathered a lot of people didn’t like Moulin Rouge. I found it to be brilliant. As I did with Luhrman’s Romeo+Juliet.
But wait - it’s starring Nicole Kidman. And IIRC, there’s been quite a lot of vitriol going her way, since her career took off again, after her break-up with the Narcisistic-Big-Nosed-Dwarf. And Kidman was in Moulin Rouge. One of those things that make me go hmmm.
As for the GG. It’s always been an award given by the forreign film critics in L.A. So what. It wasn’t a big deal until someone figured out that the award was a good indicator about the Academy Awards, and started the buzz. It’s all part of the marketing ploy to hype certain movies, now when the voting has started for the big awards. Who cares really?
You don’t like The Hours. Don’t see it. You don’t like the decision-making for the GG? Why care? It’s not as if there are no other movies to see. And Hollywood’s been corrupt for almost all of its history. So why bother?
This is the same debate we had, re: Shakespeare in Love and Gwynneth. If somethings rubs you the wrong way to that extent, just let it go.
Oh, and I found Memento to be technically brilliant, but totally void of anything remotely interesting, by way of story or plot.
I just want to make it clear that, as a guy, I think edgy penises are a bad idea. I think the women in here will back me up on that.
So, you haven’t even seen the movie, but you already know enough about it to dismiss it as boring chick-flick crap? Great. Nothing like an informed opinion, is there?
Yep. You had to leave the theatre humming the tunes, because you couldn’t repeat the lyrics out loud in public. 
I thought Moulin Rouge was brilliant. The hell with the plot: anyone who can combine Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend and Smells Like Teen Spirit that convincingly gets my vote everytime.
I haven’t seen Chicago yet, and am torn between seeing it on stage or on film. Any suggestions?
“I suppose that, in theory, a movie with female protagonists could be edgy and smart.”
In fact, too.
Silence of the Lambs
Contact
Aliens
and there might be one or two more that you might like… :rolleyes:
That was an animated film, not a musical. Animated films are expected to have songs in them (The Disney Effect) – so much so that ones with no songs seem to confuse viewers so they stay away (e.g., “Iron Giant,” “Princess Monomoke”).
Musicals were due for a revival; they were a major genre throughout most of film history. But Moulin Rouge was the first successful musical in years (there have been some good ones Evita and Everyone Says I Love You, but all have flopped because an audience that’s used to seeing rocket ships making loud noises in space doesn’t think musicals are “realistic”).
See both.
I’ve seen it on stage, but not the movie. The advantage of the film is that it’s easier to see and costs less for a ticket. But if you have a chance to see it on stage (by a professional company), take it.
I believe he said female.
You haven’t even SEEN The Hours and you don’t think it should have won an award?
Oh and Chicago has numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 9 from your list.
Yeah, I’ll give you Alien (but not the sequel.) The original was very edgy in its look, utilizing the Giger designs, and one of the greatest suspense/horror/scifi films of all time. That said, the protagonist is not very female. I’d go so far as to say that gender is pretty much irrelevant to that character, which is to say that her gender does not affect the plot or story in any significant way. Contrast with your other example, Silence of the Lambs, in which there is a sexual component of the relationship between Jodie Foster’s character and Anthony Hopkins’ that depends in part on gender.
And I reject the assertion by some that I can’t judge the nature of The Hours without having seen it. Kidman and Julianne Moore quite clearly explained exactly what it was about in a full hour on Larry King Live with accompanying video clips. Now the clips alone might not tell the whole story, but I think one can make a pretty decent conclusion about the theme and style of a film from the actors opinions on it, especially two experienced actors, one of whom is somewhat talented.\
And South Park most definitely was a musical, though the subject matter was a little unorthodox for the genre. Many of the songs actually advanced the plot, and the main themes were woven into the score throughout. It’s alot different from just some animated flick with songs in it, like say Tarzan, which is just a movie occasionally tossing in a Phil Collins piece.
::spits out tea::
WTF??? That movie was 100% horse crap. The alien is her daddy, who didn’t see that coming a mile away? and why was she crying every ten seconds? And why didn’t anyone check the length of the tape’s static until the very end of the movie? it is the first thing i thought of. So what if Sagan wrote it, whopdecrap. That Buffy guy wrote Alien Ressurection and Titan AE, didn’t stop them from being so terrible people’s souls were sucked into the movie and they became walking pacifist zombies who enter hot dog eating contests, who encountered RexDart’s ficticious protagionist mentioned above.
Run Lola Run
The Others
All About My Mother
come to mind as well.
well someone said that contact was bad…the book is much better. much, much better. and the alien is NOT her dad, they project themselves as the person you most want to see. the guy covered up the fact that the tape was the right length because he wanted no more funding for seti.
anyway… i personally did not like chicago. i felt that there were no characters, just action. and while it wasn’t cross-country-trip-on-a-snowblower kind of action, it was things happening. and yes, my grammer above is just atrocious.
i did like moulin rouge. i enjoy baz lurhmann’s work, and i love films where the makers take chances and experiment and try new things. while i wouldn’t want to rent memento to unwind on a lazy friday night, i do appreciate it for its ability to pull off such a complex story and fool everyone. for that, i liked it.
if you like vin diesel, go watch xxx. if you like romantic comedies, go watch maid in manhattan. but neither of those movies is going to be winning any oscars because they are just more of the same stories in different locations. what win awards like golden globes and oscars are films that are different. but it’s up to the hollywood foreign press, or the academy of motion picture arts and sciences to decide who wins.
my favorite movies are those that combine a lot of different aspects and don’t rely on any one thing to get the story going. like the matrix or the lord of the rings. they combine action and fantasy and interpersonal problems and romance as the characters take their psychological journeys.
just because a movie stars girls does not mean it’s a chick flick. and just because there are no cars bursting into flames does not mean there’s not action. and just because you like a movie does not mean the people who vote for the awards will.
Well, this is nice. How lovely to see that all the chauvinistic pigs have come out to play.
Actually, Chicago is smart and edgy–especially when compared to Moulin Rogue, which was about as nuanced as a ton of bricks.
A movie about women “doing things”?
How about Thelma and Louise?
Oh, wait. The women kill a rapist. Can’t be a good movie with all them women going about doing violence to things.
:rolleyes:
“Thelma and Louise” was a bad movie, regardless of the gender of the actors.
There is nothing wrong with “chick flicks”. Some people love them, and that’s fine.
However, I don’t want to see DeNiro baking browines while lamenting the fact that he can’t find true love, nor do I want to see Jennifer Lopez wielding a pair of uzis while singlehandedly fighting the War on Terror.