The Film Thread

Just watched the Barbie trailer. #wtf???

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Wow, now this looks good. Granted I’ll be watching all of Sharpe in advance :wink:

Now the actors have agreed to strike. I think the terms of the disagreement with writers were a bit harder to understand unless you’re in the weed on how the industry works, but the position the studios are taking on the ownership of actors’ likeness is so indefensible that I cannot imagine too many people having sympathy with the position of the studios. It is literally Joan is Awful

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https://twitter.com/writerNMD/status/1679628571269292032?s=20

only time I watched that, about 26 years ago. I was given pot brownies for my birthday. what a fucked up movie to watch on pot brownies.

Ugh, where to start.

Only a trailer, but can already see a number of mistakes. I know a film is something different to a book or documentary, so it isn’t historically precise, but still.

Phoenix is too old for this role. Napoleon became second lieutenant at 16, general at 24, Emperor at 30 and he was dead by 51. And in the movie, it seems like he’s about 40-50 all the time. Had to check and yeah, Phoenix is 48. That is clear immediately, no technology can hide that.

Even if you can lean a bit on the argument that Napoleon was often described in his youth and as adolescent by other people as serious for his age, skinny, pale, sick, moody, etc.

Josephine was 6 years older than Napoleon and in the movie it looks like she could be his daughter. She looks more like an actress you’d have playing Pauline Bonaparte (although no one can copy Claudia Cardinale doing that!), certainly not Josephine from her era with Napoleon.

The battle of the Pyramids was only named as such because of Napoleon’s propaganda, to glorify the victory. It took place about 10 miles away from the pyramids. They never fired at them and couldn’t even reach that far even if they wanted, from the position in the trailer.

Napoleon charging on a horse with a sabre in his hand… happened very, very rarely. Even in his early days. He was much more involved, closer to his men than his opponent generals and kings, but certainly not to portray him as almost a part-time cavalry man. His speciality was artillery.

We’ll see when the full movie comes out, but I already feel the quality of this is lower than it will cost or be announced as. I don’t know, it’s hard to find quality historical movies these days. I think it can all look nice (and sometimes too nice!) and sound nice, but the most important parts aren’t great. I call it PVC history. But Netflix masses might like it, as a more casual, relaxed watch.

And I’m not saying the topic is easy, to make a quality Napoleon movie (always a battle with time) is easy, it certainly isn’t. Kubrick himself spent ages working on a proper Napoleon (and the detailing he managed to gather was outstanding), but the project was too expensive and Waterloo (a good movie, but didn’t enjoy success) came out before in 1970.

Will be interesting to see what Spielberg does with Kubrick’s material. Last he said a few months ago that there might be an HBO series.

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While living in a time when everything seems to be turning a bit fascistic, this seems like a weird film to me for the time we’re in, at least given it’s seemingly celebratory spin the film seems to have based on its “he came from nothing. He conquered everything” tag line.

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I loved this film

https://twitter.com/sjmay92/status/1680115976879185921?s=20

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Jarmusch is bloody genius, I couldn’t pick a favourite film of his.

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He has been good in all his films…

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MI time, hello popcorn extortion. Is 10:30 too early to drink in the cinema?

You’ve already seen it then to pass judgement?

Even sadly (only because I watched it) in Taken 3…

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It’s actually got better. Just finished watching them all.

Kinda cracks me up, considering the type of discussions around other movies these days, that they do a Napoleon film with practically zero French involvement, shot in England and Malta, and no one seems to care.

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Kind of like those Samsung mobiles made in Bangladesh :bangladesh:

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Sir Ridley seems to have lost his mojo since…actually I can’t recall when I thoroughly enjoyed one of his movies. Alien Prometheus perhaps. I think he desperately wants to get back to a Gladiator type success, but keeps striking out. Master and Commander was good tbf, but we’re going back years now.

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The Martian was OK and I did enjoy The Last Dual although it was a flop at the box office - probably because it came out in the middle of the Covid pandemic whilst aiming at an older audience.

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In fairness you could film just about anywhere in Europe and would have some sort of historically accurate link to Napolean.

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Scott disappoints me more than he delivers, but I am interested seeing that plans for Gladiator 2 are already well advanced

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