Sometimes I forget how powerful good movies can be.
Tonight I watched A Separation, a 2011 Oscar-winning film hailed as “a landmark of Iranian cinema.”
It is the story of an Iranian divorce. Within its unique cultural context there are pieces of universal truth. A woman who wants out of an oppressive lifestyle. A man caring for his senile father. A daughter caught in the middle.
The style is realism. Gripping, sympathetic, thoughtful, and heartbreaking.
It deserved the Oscar.
It’s a favorite of mine. The script is very intelligently written, free of cliches, and full of details. It gives a look into a society that works differently from my own, both legally and culturally. A Separation is director Asghar Farhadi’s best movie, which is saying a lot.
Rewatched Spaceballs. Much as I enjoy Mel Brooks’ films, the ones without Gene Wilder tend to be really quite hamhanded with the jokes. They’re good jokes by and large, but you can usually see them coming and when they arrive it’s with a big neon sign saying “THIS IS THE JOKE”.
I did laugh at the fact that Brooks’ character Yogurt (the Yoda parody) mentions in the film that they’ll all meet again in Spaceballs 2: The Quest For More Money.
The problem with Spaceballs is that I get the feeling that Brooks wasn’t really a fan of Star Wars or science fiction in general, not the way he was a fan of westerns or Hitchcock films or silent movies. You don’t really get his love of the genre shining through, like you do with other movies he made.
Big spoiler:
In the latest season of The Witcher..
It comes to a satisfying end with the heads of the Rats floating in a barrel. That’s why the movie needed to be a prequel.
For the Tuesday Night Classic, we watched A Christmas Story. Of the 3000 times I watched it, I believe this was the first on the big screen. Maybe when it was new, but I’m not sure anymore.
Still great, of course. I actually noticed a few things in the background I hadn’t before.
Next week is It’s A Wonderful Life.
Here is a bizarre one that is more about the situation than the movie. I’m re-watching the very good Korean movie called The Wailing.
But: I am actually watching it with A.I. voiced English translation. This is a new thing from Amazon and I do agree that watching a movie in its original language is best, but I sometimes re-watch foreign films with an English dub to see if I missed anything.
Now, the A.I. dub: Well, it’s not really bad. It’s not perfect. I notice they did not, as far as I can tell, just have a computer voice the English subtitles. It feels to be a “new” translation…which seems unnecessary as the subtitles were excellent.
Voices? Pretty solid. There is intonation, they are mixed into the sound-mix(not just laid on top), and they are distinct enough, age appropriate for each character, and generally are unnoticeable(a good thing).
I could see in the future many foreign films automatically applying A.I. dubs into foreign languages in order to:
I’m only inclined to watch any films this way if the DO NOT already have an English dub. Wailing does not have a proper one, so this is a neat experiment and might even help a good movie reach more people.
Has anyone else seen this or any other A.I. dubs?
So spoilered because not everyone may care for the book/TV comparison chatter, but I watched a book/video game super-fan review of season 4. Not surprisingly it is extremely critical, though he liked a couple of minor things (Leo Bonhart, mostly). Personally I haven’t bothered with the season and I don’t think I will. His issue with the Rats in the show, which he agrees were the worst part of that particular book:
In the books they are murderous thugs that are despicable because they enjoy killing and end up hardening a naive Ciri. In the show they are annoying Robin Hood-style cardboard-cutout characters that have been softened beyond recognition. But in either case it is satisfying to see them die. In the books because they’re annoyingly nasty trash, in the show because they’re annoying cartoon characters.
Are the dubs in the voices of the actors they are dubbing? Seems like it should definitely be possible. If AI can dub the actual actors voices into different languages, that would be next level awesome. I might even watch a dub instead of original audio with subtitles. (Probably still not, though.)
I’ll tentatively say “no”. I have no idea, though. I did see it in Korean, but converting their same voices to Korean seems like something AI would not yet do.
I watched The Green Mile, which I haven’t seen in quite a long time. It’s one of my favorite Stephen King adaptations, with a stellar cast, especially Michael Clark Duncan, Doug Hutchison (Percy) and Sam Rockwell, who was convincingly manic as “Wild Bill”.
I was part of a test screening for several clips of films/shorts that used AI to change the mouth movements of foreign actors to match the English dub and it was horrible. Not sure if that’s what you saw or just the voices were AI, but the mouth movements just seemed wrong. I would never watch a film that uses that technique.
No, just the dialogue. Mouths remained the same.
Blackhawk Down- Extended cut 2001 very large cast, see the imdb link
I watched Black Hawk Down: The Untold Story on Prime first. It’s a series of interviews with the veterans of the battle. I found the high-ranking officers stories very interesting. They had to improvise the rescue and manage the crisis while it unfolded.
I watched the movie because Quentin Tarantino ranked it number 1 of the Top films in the 21st Century.
I agree it is an excellent film. The sacrifices of the battle’s veterans is incredible. They stirred up a hornets nest and fought large mobs of armed people. 18 killed and 84 wounded Americans.
I still remember the horrifying scenes on the national news of nude American bodies being carried through the streets by the Somali mobs. The shock hit home hard after the success of Desert Storm.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter, based on a list compiled by @Mahaloth (link).
I’m not sure what to think of this movie. The non-linear storytelling was confusing, and the overall direction and writing was rather pretentious, IMO. Wife liked it. But I couldn’t wait for it to end.