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Des

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Everything posted by Des

  1. Des

    Kittie is absolutely awful IMHO. I'm familiar with some of the others on the list and they're alright, but I'm not really into any of them. Björk - There's More to Life Than This die in cries - Rapture Thing The Rolling Stones - Dear Doctor Rare Bird - Melanie Hanoi Rocks - Strange Boys Play Weird Openings Psysalia Psysalis Psyche - Midunburi Elvis Presley - Don't BOØWY - Plastic Ocean Jimi Hendrix - Crash Landing France Gall - Il neige
  2. Des

    Executive Decision (1996) Prime example of a mediocre 90's action/thriller film. Terrorists hijack a plane, special US soldier team comes to rescue, lots of fake suspense throughout the entire film, no characters, just puppets used for the plot. It has a few decent moments but honestly, it's still pretty bad. 3/10 King Kong (1933) The original iconic King Kong film is... not that great at all. Surely it had great stage props and action sequences back in the day and it must've been really exciting but this is one of those films that did not really stand up to the test of time. This film just has a couple of memorable moments everyone will instantly recognize even without having seen it, but it also has mediocre acting, a rather uninvolving plot (it's not dragging you inside of the film, you just keep watching it from a distance), some terrible dialogue and overall poor directing. It stands out in its ideas rather than the final results. There are plenty of 'monster' films that I liked more than this, unfortunately. King Kong is, just like those others, a cult film now. It is enjoyable surely but it won't offer anything when rewatching it. Watching it once is fun, but if you're anything like me then you'll probably pass when being offered to watch it again. 6/10
  3. Des

    Nothing bad can be said about Kurenai. Memorable song. Just by reading the title my mind goes on to play the intro, the chorus and the guitar solo... basically the whole song. I know some of those other bands but I'm not all that into them. Hatsune Miku seems to be the odd one out here, or does this happen to be a cover of a metal song? Coralie Clément - La mer opale Blondie - The Tide is High France Gall - Christiansen Marilyn Manson - They Said That Hell's Not Hot Blondie - I'm on E The Cranberries - Dying Inside Led Zeppelin - Dancing Days UFO - Time on My Hands Hako Yamasaki - Tenjo Loane - Adieau tristes sourires Loane, Hako Yamasaki and Coralie Clément made deciding a favorite song here difficult, but I went for that timeless "happy and sad at the same time" song by The Cranberries.
  4. Des

    Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958) An atmospheric and suspenseful French film with noir elements that hits all the right notes. Pun intended. Its soundtrack is breathtaking (almost all of the music is by Miles Davis), the acting performances are a little theatric yet very believable, exactly how I like it, and the plot is fantastic! Two people who happened to fall in love plan a murder on the woman's husband but it doesn't all go as planned. Some very unfortunate events take place and the film takes many unexpected twists and turns. One could have a few minor issues with the plot, most notably with the ending, but it doesn't harm the complete experience. I would recommend this beautiful film to everyone. It was released under several other titles worldwide, most famously as 'Elevator to the Gallows' in the USA. 9/10 Solaris (2002) The novel 'Solaris' was written in 1961, a tv-adaption was made in 1968 and in 1972 famous film maker Andrei Tarkovski made his film 'Solyaris' based on the same novel. I haven't seen any of these and neither have a read the novel so I can't make any comparisons. That being said, I thought this film was absolutely wonderful. Solaris takes its time and presents beautiful visuals with a heart. It's entirely sci-fi but feels like it takes place much closer to home. Director Soderbergh succeeded in making the completely unbelievable events that happen near the fictional planet Solaris believable while raising some borderline philosophical questions at that. It is a very intriguing, mysterious film. A little unorthodox, some people might even find this boring, but I was fascinated. 9/10 I have added the 1972 Solyaris to my watchlist immediately. If this version is indeed even better (most people on the internet seem to agree on this) then I'm in for a treat. Can't wait.
  5. Des

    cali≠gari, 9mm Parabellum Bullet and Asobi Seksu are all very nice. 筋肉少女帯 is cool too, but I'm not sure if I'm familiar with that particular song. I can remember artist names written in kanji, but song names... not so much. It seems to be a demo version of some sort... and I don't think I've ever heard any of their demo recordings. I've heard of The Radio Dept. but they haven't quite stuck with me and ONE OK ROCK is a completely forgettable group IMHO. I liked them once... quite some time ago. Not anymore. Golden Earring - Leather Pizzicato Five - If I Were a Groupie David Bowie - Valentine's Day Blondie - Accidents Never Happen T. Rex - Think Zinc Morita Doji - Lonely Clouds Cœur de Pirate - Corbeau PONTIACS - Grease Town Mazzy Star - Take Everything Alice Cooper - Triggerman
  6. Des

    A Good Year (2006) Nothing special, but has its moments. Slightly better than the average romantic comedy. The comedy part is sometimes silly, sometimes subtle and charming, but either way it works most of the time. The acting was alright. The plot wasn't very engaging though... and the way its being presented added to the predictability. I wouldn't highly recommend it but I wouldn't dismiss it either. 6/10 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) Yaaaaawn. Typical CGI driven family flick with an overload of violence. Would not recommend, not even to children. This film does not spark their imagination, but kills it instead. Its atmosphere is about as lively as fries from McDonalds: plastic all the way through. Just terrible. 2/10 À bout de souffle (1960) The small things in life that make you happy and the bigger, borderline philosophical, questions presented all in one film. It works perfectly: it's up close and yet far away. The film crosses genre boundaries and many of the rules of conventional cinema but it's still very much enjoyable for practically everyone! Belmondo and Seberg are one of the most memorable screen 'couples' I've ever seen. You might just get so dragged into their worlds that you would almost forget you're watching it on a screen, rather than living it yourself. The pacing is just right, the acting is excellent and every single scene is iconic by itself. I'm having a hard time trying to find anything about this film that I didn't like... even just a little bit. It's just so perfect to me. 10/10
  7. Des

    Awesome, looking forward to this! The bonus tracks are nice too. I would love to hear Zakuro and Lullaby in an acoustic version.
  8. Des

    I have heard music by all of those bands except グリーヴァ, but the only ones I like are Alice Nine and Nightmare... and I don't even listen to these two anymore. Never understood the appeal of LM.C by the way. Led Zeppelin - The Lemon Song Marianne Faithfull - Portland Town The Doors - End of the Night Tokyo Jihen - Shuraba (Adult Ver.) BOØWY - B-Blue The Doors - The Spy The Doors - The Changeling Ludovico Einaudi - Come un fiore Bat for Lashes - A Wall France Gall - Néfertiti It seems to be fond of The Doors this time around but I'll go with Tokyo Jihen for now.
  9. Des

    Of the above bunch I like the pillows most. Not all that special but it's quite relaxing music. The Rolling Stones - Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) Love - The Daily Planet Onmyouza - Samayoi Berry - Like a River BLANKEY JET CITY - Texas The Sisters of Mercy - Detonation Boulevard Rare Bird - Natures Fruit Hanoi Rocks - Million Miles Away EZO - Big Changes The Doors - L'america
  10. Des

    I'm going to see a Delain concert tomorrow. Besides the April Rain album I only know a handful of songs though. Haven't been to a concert in a while and this one's very close to where I live. I hope it's worth checking out. Blondie - A Shark in Jets Clothing Chantal Goya - Sois gentil Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - La javanaise Cœur de Pirate - Ava Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - Tossin' & Turnin' Golden Earring - Candy's Going Bad Led Zeppelin - Misty Mountain Hop France Gall - Le temps de la rentrée Siouxsie and the Banshees - Party's Fall DEAD END - Blind Boy Project
  11. Des

    I actually like Guns N' Roses, their early music is nice, especially that first album. Love Boris, BLANKEY JET CITY and The Who too. I could live without KoRn though. The others I'm not too familiar with. Onmyouza - Hiderigami Siouxsie and the Banshees - Halloween Marianne Faithfull - Greensleeves Françoise Hardy - Le temps des souvenirs Thin Lizzy - Waiting for an Alibi The Rolling Stones - Stray Cat Blues Marianne Faithfull - What Have I Done Wrong Led Zeppelin - In My Time of Dying Elvis Presley - (You're The) Devil in Disguise Led Zeppelin - Moby Dick By the way, wouldn't this thread fit better in the Toasted Waffles subforum?
  12. Des

    Haven't heard of anything except ACIDMAN. I really like that band though. Great music. My shuffle results: The Cranberries - I Really Hope Hanoi Rocks - Cheyenne The Kills - DNA Brigitte Bardot - Je reviendrai toujours vers toi Pizzicato Five - Holy Triangle Led Zeppelin - The Ocean Mazzy Star - Taste of Blood Françoise Hardy - Peut-être que je t'aime T. Rex - Precious Star Guns N' Roses - Mr. Brownstone
  13. Des

    The Master (2012) "A Naval veteran arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future - until he is tantalized by The Cause and its charismatic leader." Interesting to say the least. It differs from most films as in it doesn't have a standard narrative structure. At times the film is a breath of fresh air because it doesn't use cheap tricks on the audience that many other films do. The Master respects the audience as people who are capable of thinking on their own, without the need to make the storytelling unnecessarily difficult. I like this structure very much and it's very well done. However, at times the film feels a bit too distant because of this. A couple of scenes feel disconnected and dragged out. But it does manage to keep you interested all the way from the beginning to the end. The cinematography is great and it's very atmospheric. Love the use of colors in this. 8/10
  14. Des

    Baby Face (1933) Barbara Stanwyck (perhaps best known for playing the lead actress role in the later film Double Indemnity) plays a girl who has always been the object of lust in her father's bar and supposedly slept around with his customers and she feels dirty and used. One day her father dies and after being inspired by some philosophy of a Nietzsche book (yes, really!) she tries to build a career by starting to use men to her own advantage. Nietzsche didn't actually mean his words this way of course, but that's how she took the advice. What's next is her immoral journey of using sex to work her way up the 'rankings' which is cleverly shown with a camera panning across a skycraper from office to office (upwards of course) throughout the film. Eventually she wears the most expensive clothes and jewelry in the world, gets driven around by the greatest cars, etc, you get the idea. Apparently this was one of the films that led to a much stricter Hollywood code which prohibited many of the things happening in this picture. Besides the lack of interesting dialogue and somewhat predictable plot (of course they had to create an acceptable ending to this), it is a fun ride. It's interesting to see what was considered 'shocking' back then and I think that if this film was made today there would at least be some discussion about it as well. 6/10
  15. Des

    Argo (2012) Saw this last night just before the Academy Awards. It won several other awards so it caught my curiosity. Immediately after I watched it I wished it didn't win anything though. It's a very mediocre film. There isn't any suspense at all, unless you fall for every one of the dozen cheap tricks Affleck used. When you create a film where a hero has to rescue hostages, you would expect that these hostages would be worth saving. I didn't care for them a bit: there's nobody interesting and all they ever do is look around swiftly and being scared. The idea of creating a fake film to rescue the hostages is clever and promising, but the film fails to do anything with it. Apparently this won Best Picture and I can't understand why. This is one of those films loosely based on a historic event to create a suspenseful thriller except without the suspense. At this point I somehow feel like I'm a bit too harsh but I honestly can't discover anything special or outstanding about it. If I were to give it a rating... I wouldn't really know how to rate it. Perhaps a 6/10 if you can easily enjoy many films and are very susceptible to suspense tricks and don't care about character development or depth in any form. 3/10 if these things done badly (or "average-ly") do bother you and take away your enjoyment.
  16. Des

    Cul-de-sac (1966) This Polanski film has a few similarities to his earlier Knife in the Water with focus on things like gender differences and the older wealthy man/young beautiful woman relationship and with the film taking place mostly in a single location (the property of the couple). The black and white cinematography in this is beautifully done. In fact, I would rank some scenes in Cul-de-sac among the best black and white filmmaking I've seen so far. The plot is very amusing and strangely interesting. It also contains an incredible long one-take scene on a beach with an airplane flying over at one point which would've required precise timing. Very impressive! 8/10
  17. Des

    Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942) With Tyrone Power, George Sanders, Gene Tierney and Frances Farmer this film has a great cast, but the plot is predictable and never really engaging. It's a mediocre revenge film with a clear contrast of good vs. evil and a simple love story. Even though the music is great and the simple story is very charming at times, I still wouldn't recommend it. It's not really bad... in fact I can't really point out where it went wrong exactly but it's just not very memorable. 5/10 Annie Hall (1977) The character of Woody Allen isn't very likable. He says a few interesting things but there's even more nonsense coming out of his mouth. However, I do like the structure of the film very much. The fact that a character isn't likable is not necessarily a bad thing either. As long as the character is given enough depth and witty dialogue and all that, it's fine by me. But he's a bit too talkative for my liking. Mixed feelings about this one. 6/10
  18. Des

    Two films that I should've probably seen a long time ago... but then again there are so many films out there. No Country for Old Men (2007) Suspenseful and atmospheric. Javier Bardem plays the role of the bad guy much better here than he did in Skyfall. He really was this psycho to be very afraid of. However, not all is good. Tommy Lee Jones plays a decent role but his character got boring dialogue... really boring stuff. I know he was supposed to be an old man struggling with himself at some point but it didn't impress me. I thought this side-plot brought the film down a little. Overall it's still good though. 7/10 Trainspotting (1996) Slightly disappointed with this one. Never felt sympathy for the main character (Ewan McGregor) even though the filmmakers seemed to want this... I think. At some point in the film he experiences nightmarish hallucinations and these were actually very well done. There were several other scenes that I enjoyed very much. Some witty, some funny, some both. The main storyline failed to really grab me though. This leaves me with some very good parts inside of an uninteresting complete picture. 6/10
  19. Des

    Blue Velvet is nice indeed. Glad you enjoyed it. Flight was a very mediocre drama so it's definitely not just you. It's basically wasted potential with a truckload of cliches. Well, nobody could've guessed if you only post a film's title and nothing else Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) What a beautiful hidden gem this is. It's a fairly simple romantic story of a young woman who falls in love with a man thanks to his classic piano playing. Eventually they meet and have a good time, but only for a short while before he has to leave again. The film rarely gets sentimental and stays beautifully subtle most of the time. After a while I was a little afraid of cliches setting in but thankfully they didn't and the film got an appropriate ending. One of the greatest lovestories I've seen so far. 9/10 Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) This film is mostly famous for its incredibly misleading but awesome poster art that has been parodied many times. I've seen it quite a few times on a wall in someone's room in other films/television series as well. So, yeah, it's misleading because the film never gets even remotely close to what you would expect from the poster. At times it's funny because it looks like the filmmakers didn't want to make a serious film, but a rather silly one instead. At other times you start questioning their motives because it's just SO BAD and not silly enough to be entertaining. Not really worth your time, unless you want this poster on your wall and tell others that you've actually seen this film! I bet not many people have. 2/10
  20. This band was mesmerizing. Such dreamy and beautiful music... and what a voice. Love your choices for favorite songs too, Painted Bird and Arabian Knights are my favorites.
  21. Des

    Did you like it? It's one of my favorite films of this millenium. I recently watched Nolan's Batman trilogy. Turns out they're just children's films on anabolic steroids: Batman Begins (2005) The explanation of how Batman became Batman feels forced and is... just what it is. A dragged out explanation. I thought I was going to watch a film instead of a documentary of a fictional story. The film never gets interesting and towards the end I almost fell asleep. The action sequences were painful to watch. Boom, boom, slash, pew, pew... -PAUSE to insert a forced dialogue- ... boom, boom, slash, pew, pew. 3/10 The Dark Knight (2008) If it wasn't for the character The Joker, this would've been bad. I understand the praise this role is getting because honestly, it was good. However, this film is mostly just trying to trick the viewer into thinking it's 'deep' and really 'cool' while it is shallow and just a mediocre action packed blockbuster in the end. I did enjoy some of it, but it's not fantastic. If I'm really generous: 6/10 The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Dreadful! Could've been half the length if Nolan knew how to tell a story. Could've been twice as interesting if he didn't keep pausing the film to explain things. There was no atmosphere, there were no interesting characters. The plot 'twist' at the end was so incredibly stupid I honestly don't know why people think this was good. Generic action packed blockbuster. 2/10 The trilogy tries too hard to be edgy and cool and never really succeeds. The Dark Knight was the only one worth watching. Suspiria (1977) Recommended to me by Jigsaw on the chat and I loved it. Most horror relies on cheap tricks to scare viewers and plenty of blood and gore. This one however relies on atmosphere. The music is genuinely terrifying, the sets are colorful yet scary, the pace and timing of the events were spot on. The storyline wasn't all that interesting, the blood looks like paint, the dead bodies look like inflatable sex dolls and none of the characters gain any depth throughout the film, but this film drags you into their world from the very first taxi ride to the very end simply because it has a heart. I can see why this is a cult classic. 8/10
  22. Des

    I think age and time spent listening to (different) music affects one's ability to judge. Real knowledge of music grows in one's subconsious as they grow older and listen to more music.
  23. Usually I would say "okay, let's hear it!" but none of the songs in this selection beg for a remake. I honestly don't see what they could add/change to these songs to make them remake-worthy. Perhaps they'll surprise us. But I was really hoping for new original songs because I thought the style of Rinkaku was very nice.
  24. Des

    Saw many over the past week but I'm not going to write an essay on each one. Keeping it short this time, since that's what most people here do anyways. Frankenweenie (2012) Cute black and white animation by Tim Burton. Second half is more suited for children while the first half is enjoyable for all ages though. Still cute, but not the best animation I've seen. 6/10 Les yeux sans visage (1960) Some flaws in the logic of some character's actions. But surprisingly effective and at times quite disturbing. Rich atmosphere. Would recommend. 8/10 Django Unchained (2012) Tarantino needs to learn where his limitations lie, because this was inconsistent. Enjoyable and bizarre but at times the dialogue didn't hit the right notes and some of the soundtrack was downright terrible. If you liked Inglourious Basterds, you'll like this. It's a comedy above everything else so don't take it too seriously. 7/10 Flight (2012) Quite boring. Denzel Washington was good but the script was formulaic. Nothing really excites me about this film. 5/10 Silver Linings Playbook (2012) Cute but in the end it's just another predictable romantic comedy. Robert de Niro is superb in this. Jennifer Lawrence is pretty damn good as well. The plot could've used some tweaking though. 6/10 The Night of the Hunter (1955) Despite being labeled as unforgettable classic, I still enjoyed it but found it slightly disappointing. Many scenes are wonderfully shot, Robert Mitchum is masterful and Lillian Gish in a "talkie" is a rare sight and surely one to enjoy seeing (and hearing!), but the film lacks subtlety. The message is about as subtle as a smack in the face and the ending felt forced. 7/10
  25. Des

    Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) This could have been okay if the cameraman wasn't drunk during the entire filming process. What a way to ruin a film. Roughly 90 minutes of seasickness is what you can expect from watching this. I am not someone likely to place a taboo on something, but if there is just one thing I want to banish from this world it has to be the so-called "handheld camera technique". Burn it, bury it, destroy it! For me it symbolizes laziness and amateurism. There was no point to the shaky footage. One might argue that in a film like "Blair Witch Project" the handheld camera is functional, but in this film it certainly is not. I do not even want to describe the rest of the film other than "it could be okay" if they actually put effort into filming it decently. 2/10 Charade (1963) A true gem in classic cinema. Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant play together in a crime/mystery/comedy/drama picture full of beautifully crafted dialogue, wonderful plot twists, plenty of suspense and a magical atmosphere. You can not miss this one if you like films! From start to finish, this film has everything you could wish for. I need to get the Blu-ray release of this one. NEED. 9.5/10
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