Being Kind…
After reviewing the films available between March and April 2008 at my local cinema, I decided to use the free tickets I won recently to go see the Jack Black comedy Be Kind Rewind. As is usual for me, I went in the off-time while schools and college were still in class, and unsurprisingly at 14:00 my brother and I were the only two people in the Screen 2 auditorium – though this is a tiny room anyway, usually used for the last viewings of movies.
Ticketmaster!
Overall, I enjoyed the movie, it had a good blend of feel good sentimentality and a blend of very natural humour. The actual timing of the movie, with it’s ‘homemade’ versions of films, ties in nicely with the ever growing YouTube productions, where you can often find peoples puppets or animation recreating scenes from movies. Because of this timing, in my view it actually helps the audience assosciate with the movie a little better and appreciate the humour of the situation.
The ‘sweded’ movies, as they call them in the movies, are only slightly different from the likes of Bunny Re-enactments or the old French and Saunders skits, but because they are handled in a low budget and realisticly basic fashion, there is an element of accomplishment that is shared when viewing it.
One of the problems I had wit the movie was the jumping around of background stories that never really felt resolved or to have taken off of the ground. At times it felt that perhaps the studio couldn’t decide on the background story, so used multiple ones to move the tide along. The threat of the energy plant was used early on in the movie, but then ended up ignored once it had paid its very minimal gag part. The threat of the copyright legal notice was unresolved. The demolition order was left hanging. Any sort of romantic interest was hinted, but never followed through.
None of these are vital to making the movie any more or less enjoyable, but the resolution of something at the end of the movie could have made it a bit more satisfying. The Fats Waller movie being interspersed and then summed up was about the only resolution available, and then it seemed slightly disjointed from the rest of the movie.
I can definately agree with Dan on one of his recent entries regarding ambiguous endings and the seemingly prevalent trend to use this trope. I can understand that perhaps the makers of Be Kind Rewind already had their sentimental moment and didn’t want to spoil it with either a cliche of everything working out just fine or a more realistic ending where it actually doesn’t work out at all, but there was a need for at least one resolution to something.
As I commented to Dan:
I think the ambiguous ending worked well for Cloverfield because it’s really the only satisfying way to end the movie. If they’d blatantly shown either a safe escape happy ending or total tragedy, it would likely have had people complaining. The actual only part of Cloverfield that to me seemed out of place was the landing in Central Park and the sudden sneak entrance of the monster, I’d actually have preferred that to be missing. Just didn’t gel with me.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the original version of The Italian Job, but that has one of my favourite ambiguous endings ever, and it’s the most fitting way to end the movie.
The use of an ambiguous ending shouldn’t be just because you can’t think of a suitable one though, it’s got to be fitting to the story.
As for movie lengths, I half agree on this one as I think it’s more a case that as long as I’m satisfied with what I’ve seen, then the length is irrelevent. If the story flows well, isn’t too rushed, doesn’t have many plotholes and doesn’t leave me hanging then it can be around the hour mark. I’d prefer an hour and a half of entertainment, but I’d rather have an hour of good solid entertainment that a drawn out movie that could just have been a tv show.
In most regards the clips from the movies make good viewing on their own and the background stories themselves could each have made amusing stories, by taking the film apart you could have multiple films. The movie only really stands because it puts all the elements together and passes you from one point of caring about the story to the other. As far as characters, although I was amused by the cast, I only felt an emotional attachment to Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover) as the only character with much depth.
This may seem harsh, but I actually enjoyed the movie and found it highly amusing. I just felt it missed something in the delivery.
I agree, but someone told me that Gondry is notorious for “subtlety” and loose ends are common for his movies. Never seen any of his others though.
I liked Mos Def’s mousey character, it was a difference from his role as Ford from Hitchhiker’s. And no matter what he does, I love Jack Black. XD Any man who wrote a song called “Fuck Her Gently” is great by me.
I dunno, but besides Alma, the old lady at the cleaners, and maybe Alma’s sis, all the other women were complete bitches. Maybe that was just me.
Mos Def was good, but the character seemed rather flat – his best moments were within the first half before the accident, after that the character tended to be rather stagnant.
Gotta love the D, too.
Alma’s sis, I was sure that she was going to have a bigger part as a character rather than a bouncing point. Notice how quickly Alma went from sweaty, nose-wiper to vixen though?
Helps to have guys notice you, of course. No one noticed Alma until they did. Friendship does wonderful things! XD
The Carrie thing was hilarious. “You said it would be Kool-Aid!”
This was one that looked interesting to me but I neverhad the chance to see before it left mainstream theaters. I guess I’ll have to wait for it to come to Netflix before I can check it out. From the sounds of it, it may be worth just a rental anyway.
Just rent it. Its not some life affirming movie, but it is a fun one. I wouldn’t suggest pirating it. Seems….like a paradox to do so. XD
Wanna see Persepolis though.
Yeah, for the price of rental it’s a good watch. If you have a day with spare time on your hands, I’d recommend it.
Like many movies, you won’t have to wait long nowadays. Be Kind’ll be out on DVD soon. At the risk of moving the movie convos here, I know I’m waiting with baited breath for the summer line-up.
Oh, oh, oh…that’s what peeved me off about the bloody Odeon cinema. The movie started at 14:00, they didn’t open the building until about 13:55! I only got the chance to see the trailer for Meet the Spartans! I want to watch freakin’ trailers!
That’s ridiculous. Most of our theaters have trailers when the movie is supposed to start, so you can be 5 minutes late and only miss the first trailer. Most of the time; once the movie started at the time on the ticket, and I missed 10 minutes of Howl’s Moving Castle. T_T
It was bitterly cold on the day too, so I was really annoyed that they weren’t open. However, we probably had near the entire building to ourselves at that time.
This one does look pretty funny and I love the premise. Any movie that uses a significant amount of time to recreate Ghostbusters has something going for it. The only thing is, and I know I’ll get stoned to death for saying this, but I’m just about sick of Jack Black. I think his whole schtick was funny for a couple of movies but he’s just obnoxious at this point. He was good in High Fidelity though. Maybe that’s just cause I love that movie anyway. I think this one will be a rental for me, but I am looking forward to it. And yeah, what’s with movies going sooooo quick to DVD these days? No Country For Old Men is on DVD now, and I swear there are still some theatres around here that are showing it.
Got kind of an odd question. I’m not too savy on my internet lingo and whatnot, so I don’t know what all this stuff means sometimes. So, what the heck is this thing?…T_T. You’ve got 2 “T”s there and and underscore in the middle. What’s going on there? Actually, that’s not the only one. I see people throw stuff on the ends of their sentences all the time and I swear it’s like they just had a finger spasm on the keyboard-just throwing a bunch of random symbols and shit in there. Some of them get kind of long too, with a bunch of squiggly marks and shit in there and I have no idea what the hell’s going on. It’s like a whole other language.
DJ D if your gonna get stoned for saying that then I’ll be right there with you. The last movie I liked Jack Black in was Saving SIlverman. He looked funny in this one but from the sounds of it I’m glad I didn’t dish out the $9 to see it. As for the T_T and things like that, they’re supposed to be like the emoticons. Some of them took me a bit to figure out too. At least I hope that’s what they are.
Dan: Yeah, ticket prices are getting way out of hand these days. I tend to be much pickier now about what I’ll be willing to shell out my $8 or $9 for. It’s usually something horror, sci-fi, or action related, or otherwise dramatic or epic. Comedies and lighter movies are relegated to rental status. I figure if I gotta shell out a ton of money to go to the movies, it’s going to be something that really takes advantage of the big screen and sound–something with lots of explosions, noise, and atmosphere.
As far as the symbols and everything goes, yeah I knew they were supposed to be like emoticons and they represent something, I just have no idea what they’re supposed to represent. It’s just nonsense to me. Maybe I just don’t understand you young whippersnappers and your newfangled technology.
Heh, I don’t think either of you are likely to get stoned from an opinion on an actor. I hope not anyway.
Personally, I’ve only seen a few things he’s been in, and the character doesn’t change that much for him in the majority of them, but I tend to mostly not get to involved in who plays what as long as I enjoy a film.
As for DVD releases, No Country For Old Men was only released like last week or so here.
The emoticons are kao-moji, japanese style emotes that don’t need to be rotated. T.T is usually showing tears, the horizontal line being the closed eyes, the vertical being the tear stream. Also, see this basic list.
Thanks, Guise. That’s……well, that’s just odd. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Japanese people are just weird. I mean, they’ve got their own brand of weird.
That helped thanks Guise.
And I don’t know that I’d consider myself a “young whippersnapper” by any means, I just passed the 35 year mark in January.
Ha, weird only because it’s different. By contrast, we have our own emotes that we have to turn our heads to see!
I learnt how to read the emotes because a friend used to use the “O.O” shocked emote or the boggled “o.O” emote. But then, I play/played a mud with emotes like ::noses:: (for rubbing noses like an eskimo kiss), ::cough:: (a nervous cough), ::whistle:: (whistling innocently). It is so very difficult not to use them at times because they may not be understood.
I’m still 26 and I’ve been breaking out in bloody pimples this week. Regardless, I feel 50 at times.
I hate to say it, but I never considered T_T japanese since I once discovered it on my own while typing something, then realized other ppl used it. ^^;; is sweatdropping, that is to say “I said something that might be sheepish on my end”. ^_^ happy, O_O omg, <(^.^<) dancing kirby.
Well, now I feel young again. Thanks guys! ^^;;;;;;;
I rarely watch Jack Black movies, and the precious few, I love. I’m more a fan of his Tenacious D stuff. That and I respect anyone who hosts the Kids Choice Awards. Which is to say, I kinda respect Justin Timberlake. He seems fun to hang out with now. I agree with not being concerned with who’s in what film, which leads me to my dismay at marketing Horton Hears a Who solely by the talent in it rather than the story. I like Jim Carry, but I really don’t fucking care WHO plays WHO (lol, Dr. Seuss joke) as long as the movie doesn’t SUCK BALLS. *coughcoughCatintheHat*hackcoughGrinchcoughcough*
Does it dismay you when you hear people ssay they haven’t read those books? A little piece of me dies when I hear about someone who’s never read even the most basic of DR. Seuss or Mr Men books. Or Sweet Pickles, but that’s a lil more obscure.
At least Horton is CGI so they look like the characters they are supposed to be. I didn’t watch Cat because well it just looked like it sucked.
I do agree it’s a little dismaying that more people don’t put emphasis on reading these days. I grew up in a house full of voracious readers and it carried over to me, my bedroom looks like a library! One of my favs to his day is Green Eggs and Ham.
Yeah, the things they’ve done with the Dr. Seuss movies is pretty sad. There’s so much potential there, but they insist on turning them into these ridiculous, overblown piece of crap movies. I say, just keep it simple, understated, and surreal–just like the books. I think they work so much better as cartoons than live action. There’s just no way to reproduce his world in a live action movie in a convincing manner.
As for reading, yeah, I feel sorry for people who grew up in households where reading wasn’t a common thing. I was lucky enough to have 2 parents that read to me just about every night before bed and now I’m a hardcore reader (Guise, insert the porn joke of your choice here). I’ve got my nose buried in a book all the time, albeit half the time it’s a comic book, but I think that still counts. If anything there’s just TOO much I want to read, and not enough time for it all. I usually have the next 5 or so novels planned ahead of time before I get round to them. Lately, it’s taking forever to get round to them though. I’m spending all my free time on comic books these days….and God help me when I finally get that PS3 I’ve got my eye on this summer. God help us all.
As a whole, I think reading is one of the most vital things to get children involved in from a young age, but also I’d like to see more parents trying to get kids in to things like writing stories or just telling stories.
Though, I’d probably go from reading my kids – should some ever be foolish enough to procreate with me – Mr Men and Dr Seuss, followed by Terry Pratchett and the Worst Case Scenario series.
Dio, I’m going to dismay you…until I was about 15 I’d never read a Dr Seuss book, though I grew up on Mr Men and the Grinch cartoon.
I don’t know if it’s just a British thing or not, but I’ve never heard of Mr. Men. What’s that all about?
Probably easiest to show you this as there are so many: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Men
Pretty much every kid in the UK has probably read or watched Mr Men at some point. Personally, I miss the Janet and John and Roger Red Hat books.
Also, I saw no DP, DJ…well, that’s not true, but god, the DP I saw should not have involved Smurfs…
Cartoon Network now has a Mr. Men cartoon on during the daytime rotation if your curious about it DJ D.
And I’ll never be able to look at Smurfette again! Papa and Greedy with Brainy riding shotgun! That’s an image no eye bleach will ever get outta my head!
Dan…it was when Gargamel got involved. Seriously, some things just shouldn’t be filmed and released on the internet. They even whistled the bloody smurf theme.
Yeah I could have done without that too, the theme song was a little over the top. In all the times I watched the Smurfs when I was younger I never knew that Gargamel was that…well I don’t want to say it here, it still disturbs me.
I only skimmed this post until now because I knew I was going to see it tonight. I love Mos Def and worship Jables and the D so I’m not really an impartial judge, but I liked the movie a lot. I was laughing hysterically for a good chunk of it. I did think that Mos and JB were doing some weird affected acting at the beginning of the movie, but I feel like it was an intentional directorial choice. WHY make that choice, I’m not totally sure, but I think it was on purpose.
Squee, that’s one of the things I wondered, whether I didn’t completely get the full enjoyment of the movie because there was a level that I wasn’t able to get. Maybe the things that struck me as weird were intended to hold more meaning that my, rather simple, mind didn’t quite cotton on to.
I got a good laugh out of it and appreciated the sentimentality, but I still think there’s stuff that perhaps I’m missing something with. I was hoping to blame it on Britishness and cultural differences.
Oh, and you are the third person I’ve seen that meme about writing outside of comfort zone, I’ve been tempted but damn it if I can even think what might be out of my comfort zone! What the heck haven’t I disturbed everyone with. Maybe I’ll post it later…hm
I’ve heard Gondry is notorious for having odd directional choices, but I haven’t seen ay of his previous movies. I was going to blame my ignorance on watching too many Asian drama films. I did like the video distortion at the beginning. Neat 4th wall thing.
Ooh, yeah…I forgot about that bit. I actually turned to my brother in the cinema and said how nifty that was, slight ripple that is affected by distance and the buzzing. That was damn cool.