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BlackFlagg

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Everything posted by BlackFlagg

  1. BlackFlagg

    The O.C.

    the ball dropping line was great, as was Sandy with the Seth-esque three-way comment
  2. BlackFlagg

    The O.C.

    Wasn't on last week hence the lack of talk in this thread
  3. BlackFlagg

    The One And Only 24 Season 3 Thread

    Wondering about that too...and the guy who was saying that to David, anyone else thinking it's there father?
  4. BlackFlagg

    The One And Only 24 Season 3 Thread

    I'm sure Mandy will be involved somewhere...but like said above the look on Jack's face says otherwise...but then again for all we know they fooled us in the teaser and the look on Jack's face isn't from the identity of the buyer but something else, wouldn't put it past em.
  5. BlackFlagg

    The One And Only 24 Season 3 Thread

    If it is I hope we find out what the heck Jack whispered to her in season 2....it's still driving me nuts, heh
  6. BlackFlagg

    The One And Only 24 Season 3 Thread

    another set of buyers....can you say Nina and her German pals?
  7. BlackFlagg

    "Dead Like Me" on DVD

    Cool, got hooked on this show right away....will be nice to actually view it on a television though, heh
  8. BlackFlagg

    Recent purchases

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5
  9. BlackFlagg

    DVD Releases

    Escape From New York SE? dang, guess this is gonna be another double dip for me, heh
  10. taken from rollingstone.com 1 Mystic River Directed by Clint Eastwood Why have I chosen Mystic River as the best movie of the year? Isn't The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King -- its closest rival -- more ambitious? Not really. Both films deal with souls damaged by the past, by greed, by sins of commission and omission. The difference? Nothing that pins you to your seat in Mystic River is generated by a computer. The main characters are three working stiffs from Boston, friends since childhood who have been scarred by an incident from that childhood. Now, as adults, Jimmy (Sean Penn) is trying to find out who murdered his daughter; Sean (Kevin Bacon) is the cop assigned to the case; and Dave (Tim Robbins) is the prime suspect. Brian Helgeland's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel becomes a blueprint for director Clint Eastwood to plunge deeper into the darkness of human nature that he probed so memorably in Unforgiven. All the actors do Eastwood proud, and in a just world Penn and Robbins will both win Oscars. Eastwood, showing a classical directing style worthy of comparison to John Ford, isn't interested in spectacle but in the moral warfare raging in the eyes of three men who are taking their own trip to Mount Doom, seeking redemption and finding only ruin. Eastwood, in the directing coup of 2003, shows how violence is hard-wired into the American character. Not a popular subject these days. Eastwood refused to soften his film's harsh reality for box- office gain. That's another reason Mystic River stakes a claim on greatness. It's that rare film that is truly uncompromised. 2 The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Directed by Peter Jackson After the Matrix sequels imploded, you may have feared big-time for the final chapter of Rings. No worries. It's now official: Peter Jackson has created the mack daddy of all movie fantasies, and Return of the King brings the film version of Tolkien's trilogy to a combustibly exciting close. Prepare to be wowed by the giant spider, the charging Mumakil, the Army of the Dead and the battle of Pelennor Fields. Prepare also to have your emotions wrung out as you watch the coronation of Aragorn (fiery Viggo Mortensen), consider the fate of Frodo (Elijah Wood) and the fellowship, and then get deeper into the character of Sam (Sean Astin comes into his own with this brave, questing performance). The dominance of effects-driven spectacles hasn't been a boon to film -- hello, Haunted Mansion -- but in the hands of a master like Jackson, who respects Tolkien's passion for action and character, it's an art form. Jackson hits a grand slam. 3 Lost in Translation Directed by Sofia Coppola Bill Murray as a Hollywood star adrift in Tokyo gives the performance of his career. And Scarlett Johansson, 19, matches him step for step as a Yale grad who finds something in him that's missing in her careerist husband. But the real star of this movie is Sofia Coppola, who wrote the year's best original screenplay and directed with a delicacy and precision that belie her thirty-two years. In only her second movie -- The Virgin Suicides was her first -- Coppola has found a unique voice. 4 Master and Commander Directed by Peter Weir It takes a director as dogged and brilliant as Peter Weir to persuade a studio to spend $135 million on a sea adventure that doesn't go in for Hollywood heroics or romantic mush. Russell Crowe as Capt. Jack Aubrey and Paul Bettany as ship surgeon Stephen Maturin power their roles with non-bogus gusto as the good ship Surprise takes to the high seas, circa 1807, to bring down the French and taste sweet victory. 5 Cold Mountain Directed by Anthony Minghella This is one stunner of a movie. Charles Frazier's lofty novel -- it's really The Odyssey set during the Civil War -- could have been one of those dust-dry film versions of "great literature." (Remember the botch job on Snow Falling on Cedars?) But gifted director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley), who wrote the well-judged screenplay, gives the story a hot-blooded urgency. Cold Mountain has it all: love, war, humor, suspense and a probing sense of what it takes for a divided America to heal its wounds. It's a triumph for Minghella, who casts the film with a keen eye. Jude Law gives a breakthrough star performance as Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier so tormented by the fighting -- the opening battle scene is authentically harrowing -- that he heads home on foot to the woman he left behind. She is Ada, and as embodied and eroticized by Nicole Kidman she is someone well worth the hike to North Carolina. Kidman lights up the screen. She and Law fire up the love story at the heart of this intimate epic. A remarkable feat, because the movie, like the book, mostly keeps these two characters apart. Inman's travels, interacting with characters such as a lonely war widow (Natalie Portman) and a lecherous preacher (Philip Seymour Hoffman), are interspersed with Ada working the farm with Ruby, a rough-spoken hellraiser played by a roaringly comic Renee Zellweger, who steals every scene she's in. But even Ruby has secrets. The specter of war haunts Cold Mountain, but you remember it for the heat of its romantic yearning and the mysteries that wrap themselves around you until you're lost in another world. 6 American Splendor Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini Here's the kind of indie gem that falls between the cracks when audiences rush out to the high-profile epics. This one-of-a-kind biopic about comic-book writer Harvey Pekar, indelibly played by Paul Giamatti, does not deserve such a fate. Harvey's relationship with his third wife, Joyce Brabner (the criminally underrated Hope Davis), makes for a whacked-out love story of blending neuroses. The idea of having the real Harvey and Joyce step in to comment on the action, plus using animation to bring Harvey's comic ideas to life, is the brainchild of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, married documentarians (Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's) making the year's most promising debut in features. 7 Big Fish Directed by Tim Burton Arguably the most personal film Tim Burton has ever directed, this tall tale of a son (Billy Crudup) who wants to find the truth behind the yarns his dying father (a ferociously fine Albert Finney) tells him cuts to the way living in fantasy can hurt and heal. Ewan McGregor plays the father as a young man, a fantasist, like Burton, who finds comfort in a magical world of giants and freaks. There are bigger, more powerful films this year. There's none lovelier. 8 A Mighty Wind Directed by Christopher Guest Just looking at Mitch (Eugene Levy) and Mickey (Catherine O'Hara), a folk-singing duo split by Mitch's nervous breakdown, makes me remember all that's heartfelt and hysterically funny about Christopher Guest's wondrous satire of the Sixties folk world. Levy and O'Hara give the kind of tone-perfect performances that never get nominated for Oscars. That should be excuse enough to overhaul the whole corrupt system. Listen to them duet on "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," and let me know who else can make you crack a smile and shed a tear at the same time. Guest, who devised the story of a folk reunion concert with Levy -- the cast improvised the rest -- has shown talent for this game before in 1997's Waiting for Guffman and 2000's Best in Show. A Mighty Wind can take its place proudly in that classic company. It's the comedy of the year. 9 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Directed by Quentin Tarantino The balls! splitting your movie in half, releasing one part in October and then making us wait to pay for Vol. 2 in February. The thing of it is: Quentin Tarantino pulls it off, at least with Vol. 1. Uma Thurman rocks hard as a bride who avenges herself on her former colleagues (all part of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) for killing her groom and leaving her for dead on her wedding day. The bride's battles with Bill (the mostly unseen David Carradine), the mace-swinging Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) and the lethal O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) belong in a time capsule. Tarantino turns his mad love for grind-house kung-fu into movie poetry. 10 Angels in America Directed by Mike Nichols This altogether astonishing adaptation of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play isn't a legit movie at all. It's on HBO, starting this month, and is therefore ineligible for a movie ten-best list. Says you. Kushner, adapting his own play, and director Mike Nichols, working at the top of his game, have created a transfixing masterpiece, and I'm not about to ignore it on technical grounds. Running more than six hours, this fiercely funny, poetic and moving meditation on AIDS, politics, religion and hypocrisy during the Reagan years in Manhattan is a true movie event. Al Pacino is a mesmerizing monster (meaning he earns our reluctant compassion) as Roy Cohn, a lawyer with AIDS who won't admit he's anything as weak as a homosexual. Other major names lend their support to the project, including Emma Thompson as the angel you see in the ads and Meryl Streep, shining in several roles, including a bearded rabbi. But the film belongs to lesser names: Justin Kirk as Prior Walter, deserted by his lover (the excellent Ben Shenkman), who can't live with the ravages of Prior's disease. The revelatory performance comes from Patrick Wilson as Joe Pitt, a Mormon lawyer who arrives in New York with his wife, Harper (Mary Louise Parker). Joe blinds himself to corruption, his attraction to men and the fact that history, in Kushner's words, is "about to crack wide open." The film offers a view of the Twin Towers to remind us of what we were like in the mid-1980s as the millennium approached. Kushner was there to watch, and what he gives us in language, alive with beauty and terror, is a legacy for our time. This is what I call a real movie.
  11. I like season one, I think they did good considering what they had to work with and only 12 episodes to get everything out in...it served it's purpse well.
  12. http://movies.yahoo.com/dvd/news/df/200210...3530240000.html Been wanting QL and Sliders on DVD for so long <does happy dance>
  13. BlackFlagg

    Kill Bill V.1

    no idea...but I'm holding off on this one because if they release it seperately from Vol. 2 then ya know they're gonna end up doing some special edition release with both parts
  14. BlackFlagg

    The O.C.

    Ok, since yesterday I've watched every episode and all I can say is...uncle, I give! I'm hooked, I have come over to the darkside
  15. BlackFlagg

    Who has DVD releases for Dec. 9th??

    All I know and all I need to know is Buffy season 5 comes out
  16. BlackFlagg

    The One And Only 24 Season 3 Thread

    Did they send Chappelle to an anger management seminar or has he upped his medication...he was less of an asshole than usual, and what about that hug he gave Michelle? Talk about an uncomfortable moment... So much for Kim not getting into something...
  17. BlackFlagg

    Boy Meets World on DVD!

    Sweet! Where'd you see this?
  18. BlackFlagg

    The One And Only 24 Season 3 Thread

    Figured it was time to get this back up, just over 30 minutes until we see Jack in another jam
  19. BlackFlagg

    Looks like Indiana Jones 4 is a go.

    Well Harrison isn't going into it without preperation, ever since wrapping Hollywood Homicide he's been getting in proper shape to once again wear the hat and whip
  20. BlackFlagg

    The One and Only Angel Season 5 Thread

    Drew Carey is doing both "The Drew Carey Show" and "Who's Line is it Anyway" Once the show "Angel" started David was only making a few appearances on Buffy every once and awhile. In which case you can say the same about Ryan Stiles<sp?>
  21. BlackFlagg

    The New OAO Buffy Thread

    I loved Caleb but I think it was a good way to show just how powerful the Scythe<sp?> was.
  22. BlackFlagg

    The New OAO Buffy Thread

    Just finished season 2, still get a bit misty at the end everytime Time to start on season 3...I'm preparing for the release of season 5 next week
  23. BlackFlagg

    The New OAO Buffy Thread

    Yeah, OMWF is an amazing episode....I know so many expected it to be just a filler piece with some singing and stuff but in typical Joss greatness it managed to take care of many plot points that would have been tough to do otherwise. Spoiler (Highlight to Read): especially Buffy having been in heaven, would have been tough to get that out in another way...they would have been able to of course but I don't think it would have been as big an impact. Only other ways I could really see it coming out would have been one of the scoobies overhearing Buffy talking to Spike or Spike just getting pissed and blurting it out.
  24. BlackFlagg

    The New OAO Buffy Thread

    Just watched Passion, still one of my absolute favs...just utterly amazing.
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