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The Worst That Can Happen, And Something Better 96

Posted by JonKatz from the -misfire-of-the-month-and-animation-run-amok dept.
What's The Worst That Could Happen? Maybe shelling out nine bucks for this turkey of a movie. With Danny DeVito and Martin Lawrence, it had a good shot at being funny. It isn't. So I headed across the megaplex for Moulin Rouge, which is 90 percent computer animation, visually stunning and unique, and way over the top. You won't see a weirder movie than this one, at times brilliant and frustrating. Plots are discussed, but not endings. (Read more.)

In theory, Martin Lawrence (here playing good-hearted thief Kevin Caffery) should have made a great John Dortmunder, the sleazy but sweet hero of Donald Westlake's book, also played by Robert Redford in l972's Hot Rock, an earlier adaptation of the novel What's The Worst That Can Happen?.

Do not waste your money on this movie. Hardly a single thing about it works. It isn't funny. DeVito and Lawrence are wooden, predictable and uncomfortable together, and the supporting cast is better but strangely off kilter, with the notable exception of comedian Bernie Mac (Uncle Jack), who steals the movie, or what's left of it.

Westlake has always specialized in the petty, low-stakes sleaziness that ought to be perfect for DeVito and Lawrence. Lawrence plays an incompetent professional thief who becomes obsessed with a billionnaire, Max Fairbanks (DeVito). Fairbanks catches Caffery burglarizing his Massachusetts mansion, calls the cops and steals the thief's good luck ring, recently given him by the new love of his life (Carmen Ejogo playing Amber Bellhaven). The superstitious Fairbanks decides the ring is magical, and decides to keep it at all costs. Caffery initially wants the ring back because of Amber, but, like Fairbanks, ends up wanting it back mostly because he can't stand the thought of the other besting him. So the two set off robbing, pursuing and setting traps for one another as their lives spiral out of control.

Both major actors are playing to their specialty -- DeVito as the obnoxious, insecure, braying short guy proving that he's tough, Lawrence as the nicer but bungling protagonist. But what worked in Get Shorty or even, to some degree in Big Momma's House doesn't work here. Both actors seem to be phoning it in, perhaps repelled by this clunky script and overwhelmed by the funnier but bizarre supporting cast. Mac is great as Caffery's fence. The West Wing's sad-eyed Richard Schiff play's Max's eye-rolling lawyer, and William Fichtner does a funny but distracting turn as a wildly flamboyant Boston police detective.

On the other side of the cinematic spectrum is Moulin Rouge, from the people who brought you Romeo and Juliet. This is a feverish, psychedelic love/story musical set in Bohemian Paris and done almost entirely via spectacular computer animation, apart from the acting performances of Ewan MacGregor and Nicole Kidman (he's great, she's not). It's way too long, and completely unpredictable.

There would really be no point in describing the plot. The movie veers from loopy to moving to strikingly original to undisciplined -- definitely worth a look, though, especially if you want to keep up with animation.
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Review: Worst That Could Happen? More

Review: Worst That Could Happen?

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  • What the Hell is Moulin Rouge? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm confused. Which movie are you reviewing here? If you are to review Moulin Rouge, then please review it. Ok, it is a "psychedelic love/story musical set in Bohemian Paris and done almost entirely via spectacular computer animation,"
    ... And???

  • Re:Nit Nit Nit Nit (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you're going to post information, get it right or expect to be corrected. If you're going to prattle on about inflections in french then you better expect that someone is going to call you on it when you miss a big fact. And you're the one getting snippy about the whole business.

    The song is "Lady Marmalade"

    Yes, it is, but if you want to get a copy off Napster you will have much better success searching for the first line than the title, because most people don't know the title. Oh wait, it's probably filtered now anyway.

    And this changes the fact that it was actually titled "Lady Marmalade" how?
  • Yeah, I was going to comment on the fact that it used to be that movies were only reviewed if they were "geek" movies. And then it slowly degraded into this. I say "Stop the insanity! And stop paying for Katz's movie tickets!"
  • Am I the only one who finds that Martin Lawrence's attempts at being funny fails miserably each and every time?
  • Wouldn't Jennifer Lopez have been so much better
    in Moulin Rouge? She would have brought some sassy, hip-hop attitude to the role, and infused it with more contemporary urban street cred, complementing the MTV-esque visual style.
  • You want to make Slashdot better? You write the review. If you can write a better one, eventually you will be in the spot instead of Katz.

    Regardless of whatever you think of his specific relevancy to Slashdot, he's one of the best writers submitting to them. Good writing is hard. If you think you can do better, go for it.

    But do something to make Slashdot better. If you can't produce better reviews, then shut up about it.
  • Dunno about Kidman, but I've heard McGregor sing in other movies and he's got good pipes.
  • > Too bad the movie isn't out on video. It was shot at least partially on Long Island. The jailbreak was filmed at the Nassau County Jail in Mineola.

    There were also some great helicopter shots of Manhattan including the World Trade Center towers during their construction. I haven't seen all the movies made from Dortmunder novels but this is the best of the ones I've seen.

    Apparently it is not out on video because obert Redford owns the video rights and refuses to allow it released.
  • >> In theory, Martin Lawrence (here playing good-hearted thief Kevin Caffery) should have made a great John Dortmunder, the sleazy but sweet hero of Donald Westlake's book, also played by Robert Redford in l972's Hot Rock, an earlier adaptation of the novel What's The Worst That Can Happen?.

    The Hot Rock was the first Dortmunder novel, WTWTCH was the seventh I think. I find it surprising that Katz thinks Martin Lawrence would make a great Dortmunder. The word that comes to mind when describing Dortmunder is "morose," not a word I would ever apply to Lawrence. Dortmunder's capers never come off right, and his gang of compentent but unlucky sidekicks don't help things. I would recommend these novels as fun light reading. I always love the little asides by the regulars in the O.J. Bar and Grill. The one about the "unwritten law" is particularly funny.
    There will never be a Dormunder on flim who is like the one in the books. No one would write a script for a comedy with a morose, cynical, beaten down by the world main character. I would love to see that Dortmunder because I think it would make a better movie.
  • No if he was gay he'd marry her and they could have a sham relationship for 10 years until his Co$ handlers told him to....

    Wait, maybe I'm thinking of someone else.... ;)

    =tkk
  • Thank you -- with at least 75,000,000 native French speakers in the world by my guestimate, it is sad really that we wouldn't have a true Francophone making the translations but honestly I appreciate anyone trying. Anyway, I'll explain Vous, Toi and tu. First, let's transpose the meanings in English for the first person, that is I -> you = tu; me -> you = toi; to me -> to you = à toi; myself -> yourself = toi-même (genetive) or te (reflexive). And yes, I:We as Tu:Vous and as you point out, Vous is also an address of politess. But to understand this more clearly let's visit a bit of a Chausserian age of English, when You, Ye and Thou were in much more common parlance -- King James Bible should do by example. Back in the days of yore, we had no less than THREE words for 'you' in the nominative (I is nominative, me is accutisive, [to] me is dative and myself is genetive). Many other cultures consider our lack of a formal address to be a sign of familiarity, but ironically it is the formal (VOUS) form that all English speakers are using, not the 'tu' form, which for a single person was Thou (God always refers to his flock in the informal in the Bible as a sign of both intamacy and superiority.) and multiple friends were 'ye'. Ye was actually much like 'You' in the same way Vous would mean both 'You' formal and 'You' plural when used as an object (not subject) of a sentance, since ye, you, you, yourself congugated similar to you, you, you, yourself. In French you have vous, vous, vous, vous-même (Genetive) / vous (reflexive). Anyway, so Tu clearly equals thou in english, and toi is thee, and of course there is thyself or toi-même / te. Since English is a Germanic language, this is actually based on and more similar to German, Dutch, Danish and other Germanic language grammars, and clearly in Dutch where "U" is the Dutch word for "Sie" or "You" in the old sense of Formality, there is an exact parellel to what I describe.

    Unfortunately, without ye and thou, the difference between tu and vous would be lost on most Anglophones. But the point is, saying tu and toi are masculine and feminine is like saying "I" is masculine and "Me" is feminine, or visa-verse. Oh, well, c'est amusent. Anyway, let me parse Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir:

    Literally, this is:

    >

    Keep in mind that in old English, inversion of subject and verb formed a question the same way it does in French and German and most Indo-European languages (anyone want to tell me how it is said in Farci or Urdu to prove me wrong?? :) However, most Americans, and athough heard it is more common in the U.K. and elsewhere to use the question form:

    >

    This actually has a different meaning in French as well, namely:

    >

    Literally: >

    Okay, that takes care of Voulez-vous, now on to coucher. Coucher means "To go to bed" and is typically reflexive:

    Je me couche = I put myself to bed.

    Just as "to go to bed" and "to sleep" have slightly different meanings in English, so do "coucher" and "dormir" in French. Dormir means to sleep and actually I don't see it used as frequently to mean "sex" as "coucher" unlike in English where "to sleep with " almost always means sex. More often, the transitive (state-changing) verb "to go to bed" is used in place of the intransitive (state-describing) verb "to sleep", just as we think of "sex" as an action, not a state. Thus in fact coucher makes more sense when referring to sex than does dormir, but that's just my personal view.

    Anyway, so normally se coucher, "to put oneself to bed", is how coucher is used. However, here it is used non-reflexively as simply coucher, or "to go to bed". This allows for another person to be involved in the action of "going to bed", as otherwise "Voulons-nous nous coucher ce soir" would be "Do we want to put ourselves to bed tonight" would not be the desired meaning. Specifically by saying "with me" (avec moi) we are inserting ourselves into the action of "going to bed" and thus the dynamic changes from the simple action of retiring for the evening to the steamy, passionate act of the most intimate of intercourse. Also note that "Voulez-vous vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" would mean "Do you want to put yourself to bed with me this evening?" or more figuratively "Do you need my help in getting ready for bed this evening?" Not sexual.

    Of course, "avec moi ce soir" is easy to translate since it means the same thing in English. Also note here is one of your gender differences: "Voulez-vour coucher avec moi celle journée?" or "Do you want to sleep with me today?" uses "celle" and not "ce" because "soir" is Masculine and "Journée" is feminine. Of course, there are a LOT of other examples of Masculine and Feminine forms, especially with "a", "the" and posessive", but also with adjectives and even some past participals when used in the adjectival form: "Il est arrivé; elle est arrivée" ("He has arrived; she has arrived" or literally "He is arrived; she is arrived").

    Also, keep in mind that "Voudrez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir" means "Would you want [like] to sleep with me this evening?" which if I recall how how a merchant might address a client would be the more common turn of phrase of temptation.

    And finally, if you are with your wife/husband, you are more likely to hear: "veux-tu coucher avec moi ce soir." or simply "veux-tu coucher" (non-reflexive) since your spouse would be informally addressed.

    Be Seeing You,

    Jeffrey.

    This post presented entirely for the enjoyment of others -- and facts here-in mis-representing, mis-leading or even mis-spelling of words of any language is purely accidental and thus it should be taken with a grain of salt.

  • Do you know, it would be just like /. to convert all my <<>> to nothing even when selecting "Plain Old Text" and thus delete all my lovely quoted samples. Sorry folks, no backups but I hope the text at least gives the post meaning and y'all can probably figure out what each quote said by the context, n'est-ce pas?

    Be Seeing You,

    Jeffrey.

  • Here are the missing bits from that last post. I am only providing the lines missing and context to save bandwidth so if this offends, sorry.

    [...]

    Literally, this is:

    <<Want you to go to bed with me this evening?>>

    [...]

    <<Do you want to go to bed with me tonight?>>

    This actually has a different meaning in French as well, namely:

    <<Est-ce que vous voulez coucher avec moi ce soir?>>

    Literally: <<Is it that you want to go to bed with me this evening?>>

    [...] unlike in English where "to sleep with <someone>" almost always means sex. [...]

    Be Seeing You,

    Jeffrey.

  • Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi means:
    Do you want to fuck me?

    Althouth coucher does mean sleep, it carries a having sex connotation. Dormir means sleep(as in nap, not sex). Just a minor nitpick really
  • Well, how about you just block Katz so that you don't see his reviews.

  • Excuse me, but the English word "sleep" also has these connotations. If I say "Do you want to sleep with me?" that does NOT mean would you like to carry out the act of sleeping while in the same bed as me. Translating it the way you did just sounds silly.
  • Well, at least they got the "hip" part right. She's definitely big in that respect..
  • Nothing about AICN's "reviews" have ever come across as professional.

    Oh, wait, you said "professional quality." Much like "bacony taste," it's a false hint at the real. Harry's a wanna-be hack with zero integrity. Ah well.
    Pope

  • Wrong. (Score:2)

    by Pope ( 17780 )
    The song is "Lady Marmalade" by the group Labelle, not Patti's later solo project.

  • Re:Neuromancer... (Score:3)

    by Pope ( 17780 ) on Sunday June 03, 2001 @09:18AM (#180229)
    Chris Cunningham (video director) was supposed to me making it, but the site's [cyberpunkproject.org] down.
    HTH

    Pope
  • Moulin Rouge has hardly any computer animation at all.

    I can't figure out why Katz wrote that unless he hadn't seen the movie.

    Still very much worth seeing the film though.

    --

  • Think back, there actually is hardly any computer wankery evident on screen ... sure there were a few impressive scenes (like the green absinthe fairy) but most of it was just wacky sets, great angles, lightning fast editing and filters. Just like Romeo and Juliet.

    This is a long way from "done almost entirely via spectacular computer animation".

    --

  • Computer animation? (Score:4)

    by Rewd ( 18053 ) on Sunday June 03, 2001 @08:55AM (#180232) Homepage Journal
    Moulin Rouge done almost entirely via computer animation?

    Can he be serious?

    What is Katz on?

    Shrek and Final Fantasy - THAT is computer animation.

    Mouline Rouge is very much live action in sets and models with plenty of touchups and some fancy editing.

    --

  • I know that in your writing you tend to play the cynic for a good many writings, however I am curious how the media gets a good review from JohnKatz.Especially in the movie review role - do you have a special amount of criteria that must be met?

    Again, just curious.


  • I read that Ewan Mcgregor and Nicole Kidman's voices were digitally pitch corrected because they can't actually sing very well.
  • It's a shame that Bernie Mac is wasting his talent in this movie and other...he's a very funny guy. I can't wait when he stops playing secondary roles and starts getting real, lead acting roles.
  • New Rose Hotel (also by Gibson) was low-tek and low-budget, but it was a decent movie to watch. It is a touch on the depressing side though...

  • Re:Neuromancer... (Score:3)

    by Hadean ( 32319 ) <hadean.dragon+sl ... g m a i l . c om> on Sunday June 03, 2001 @01:36PM (#180238)
    The site wasn't an official site (sanctioned by Seven Arts)... Check out Director File [director-file.com] for more information on the movie...

  • Re:Neuromancer... (Score:3)

    by Hadean ( 32319 ) <hadean.dragon+sl ... g m a i l . c om> on Sunday June 03, 2001 @01:38PM (#180239)
    Luckily, the movie is still supposed to come out... Check here [director-file.com] and especially here [corona.bc.ca] for more information on it...

    Going through some bumps, though...
  • Yep, the Hot Rock was based on the book (oh, dare I say it?) _The Hot Rock_. The book and the movie went well together. The book was better simply because the book usually *is* better because it can go into more detail. For example, the movie never mentioned the submarine.

    Too bad the movie isn't out on video. It was shot at least partially on Long Island. The jailbreak was filmed at the Nassau County Jail in Mineola.
    -russ
  • did you not notice that there is a movie review here every sunday? he even mentioned that it was going to be a regular feature....

    if there isnt a computer/geek related movie out, he has to review something, give the guy a fucking break, moron

  • Moulin Rouge, from the people who brought you Romeo and Juliet..... And which tale of the bard is this based on?

  • Re:Computer animation? (Score:3)

    by drudd ( 43032 ) on Sunday June 03, 2001 @01:12PM (#180243)
    All of the outside->inside transition shots were very obviously computer done... in fact I'm pretty confident most of the outside scenery was completely cg. Nearly every scene had pieces which were clearly removed/altered in post production (the singing scene in the elephant!).

    Doug
  • Shrek and Final Fantasy - THAT is computer animation.

    Speaking of which... remember the story that /. ran on using Linux to do more and more rendering in modern movies? (I have to ask because the collective memory of /. lasts about six stories.)

    When Shreak enters Duloc (which looks suspiciously like Kings Island) and interrupts Lord F's speech opening the tourney, all the knights turn around in surprise. There's a brief shot of one knight with a penguin on his breastplate.

    Aside from that, you just gotta love any movie that can spoof all the fairy tales we ever heard as kids, plus The Matrix, The Lord of the Dance, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Princess Bride, and the WWF. :-)

  • ...apart from the acting performances of Ewan MacGregor and Nicole Kidman (he's great, she's not).
    Ok, it's official. Katz is gay.
    (attempt at humor here, folks).
  • Do it as an anime, perhaps a mini- or regular series, for completeness of story. Maybe hit up the people at Manga for it. I mean, look at "Ghost in the Shell"... I just picked that up this weekend and it fairly reeks of a Gibson influence. And it was well-done, I thought. I think the same group could pull off a Neuromancer anime...
  • Obviously it's a Katz imposter. Proof?

    o less than ten thousand words
    o total lack of angst-ridden hatred of success
    o support of a commercial product
  • I just hope that the Chris Cunningham directed Neuromancer movie is actually released. Anyone who has seen any of his music videos for Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, or Leftfield can attest to the fact that he has an amazing and unique style which would fit Neuromancer like a glove. And if William Gibson has full confidence in him, which he does, I have no doubts as to the fact that he can pull it off. My only concern is that the film may never be completed, as it seems to be in limbo much like previous attempts.
  • This is the same director who brought us "Strictly Ballroom". Same theme (love and freedom win over money and power), similar plots...but amazing animation and action in Moulin Rouge. I believe the writer/director Baz Luhrmann has invented a new form of the movie musical. Take popular love songs over the last 50 years and string sections of them together into a plot. Add video, action and voila...you've got some real entertainment.
  • Actually there is a lot of computer work but the fact it is not obvious shows how good it is.
    It may not be computer animation, in the sense of Disney/Anime animation but it is a lot of computer grpahics techniques. The better the computer work, the less you can tell.
  • Harry at AICN waxes effusive and gushingly positive

    Wow! Stop the presses!

    Harry gives almost every movie a "gushingly positive" review. Otherwise, the studios wouldn't continue to let him see movies before they are released. As it is, they sometimes forbid him to say anything unless they are sure he is going to say something positive (his preview [aintitcool.com] of the last year's Grinch movie is one case in point -- he admits Ron Howard & company only gave him permission to "go public" with a review of an early rough cut after they were sure it was going to be a positive review).

    The guy was incoporated into the Hollywood hype machine long ago. He's nothing but an amateur PR-man. The best part (at least as far as the studios are concerned) is that he works for peanuts. No big salary and cushy office. Just some graft. You know, a few trips out to see screenings, a few free video copies of movies, a few little souveniers here and there. That's all it takes. He's cheap.

  • He'd make a good politician, I suppose.

    I'd vote for him. Dumb politicians are entertaining enough when they don't mean to be - one who was TRYING to be entertaining would probably keep me laughing for days at a time.

  • I've been giving this some thought as well. The whole book certainly wouldn't fit in a two hour movie. MAYBE three, put that's pushing it. (You'd probably have to shelve alot of Armitage and Riviera and 3Jane and Maelcum, and keep the focus on Case and Molly and the runs.)

    Visually, it'd be pretty nice. Cyberspace, to me, could have been done around the TRON era, though. The mimetic polycarbon suits are clearly T2 tech, and we've had zero-g in movies since what? 2001:A Space Odyssey? So it's not they'd be pushing new tech.

    The story would be good, of course, but it all depends on which parts they want to focus on. Do they focus on the Case-Molly relationship? The struggles of the AI against Turing? The entire immoratility motif behind Neuromancer? There are alot of sub-themes, and if they try to do them all, they will all come out like crap.

    Personally, I'm just waiting until technology gets to the point where we can each make our own little Neuromancer movies and then post them somewhere so we can all watch each other's. I'd give it about another ten years or so. (Bet Gibson didn't see THAT one coming!)

  • Three separate reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com] called Moulin Rouge "weird" and "compelling", so I figured they must be on to something. (OK, one of them said "bizarre" instead of "weird", but close enough.)

    Now, I know weird, but I don't know compelling. So I did a quick web search, which revealed:

    • Computer-generated movies are not compelling.
    • Medical thrillers are compelling.
    • Medical dramas are compelling.
    • Sharon Stone holding a cigarette is sexually compelling.
    Therefore, without even seeing the movie, I know that Moulin Rouge is not computer-generated, has a medical aspect, and may involve cigarettes. But what kind of review is that? Today's movie fans demand absolute certainty.. so I dug a little deeper.

    I realized I'd been concentrating too much on "compelling". I had to look at the whole picture, and that meant bringing "weird" back into focus. X-Files is weird. It's also live-action (which means compelling), and a major character smokes a lot of cigarettes.

    In fact, I have seen Moulin Rouge, because Moulin Rouge is X-Files. Now that I've seen it, I can give a proper review:

    Moulin Rouge has been through its ups and downs. It was starting to degenerate into silliness, but the addition of Agent T-1000 has spiced it up a little. I'd have to say that my favorite Moulin Rouge was the one where the guy turned himself invisible, got hit by a truck, and became an invisible corpse.

    The verdict: **** (4/5 stars)

    ]$`};L(;/proc);[I(;];<C{;};1S[;`\/while=1E1L[`\p roc{>=

  • Read this article [suck.com] at Suck to find out more about what its like to work with Martin Lawrence on the set of this movie.
    Among some highlights are
    • The 4+ trailers for he and his posse
    • The firing of production assistants for mistakes he made
    • His temper tantrums, storming off the set, and general bad behavior

    After reading that story last year, I had to dig it back up when I saw the first commercials for WTWTCH. I must say, it only confirmed my hearty desire to avoid it like the plague.
  • Moulin Rouge's story is a retelling of the story of Orpheus. In short, the man is an amazing musician who goes down in to the underworld to bring his dead wife back in to the living. No one else was ever able to do this, but Orpheus is able to succeed by his musical talents. There is more to the story, as I'm sure many people know, but that's why it's predictable: you've heard the story itself a billion times before in different forms.

    But it doesn't matter because Baz Luhrmann manages to retell the story in his own way that is very charming and funny and psychotic all at once. Everyone who's seen Strictly Ballroom or his version of Romeo and Juliet (the DiCaprio and Danes one) knows that his style is very fast paced and crazy, but visually stunning. That works perfectly in this film, which isn't meant to be taken as reality but as a depiction of a supernatural place, like in the tale of Orpheus. The plot is sappy, but it doesn't matter because it's told with humor and seriousness all at once, in a way that is so amazing visually that you won't believe your eyes.

    The familarity of the plot is what allows you to handle the appearances, and the crazy appearances breathe new life in to an old tale. That's what makes this movie great and well worth seeing.

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."
  • Yeah, that's what we need. Another MTV-esque braindead bit of movie crap.

    ChodaBoy
  • I can't see it happening, at least not done right. Every time Hollywood tries to do a "hacker" movie, it comes out so mindbogglingly stupid (eg. Hackers or the botched William Gibson movie, Johnny Mnemonic) that no real fan of the genre would see it.

    The closest I've seen to a Gibsonesque movie was The Matrix and it had its faults too. But perhaps the Wachowski brothers should give Neuromancer a try, they're the closest ones to actually pulling it off.

    ChodaBoy

  • Much has been made of Moulin Rouge in this country for obvious reasons. Nicole Kidman and Baz Luhrmann (director, vision et al) are Australian. But onto some real thoughts.

    It's a difficult film. Some people will love the soundtrack. Personally, I found it alternatingly despicable and admirable. For those of you who don't know, it's all modern music by other people. One problem: none of it's new. The music he used for Romeo & Juliet worked so well because it was new and largely unheard. And it wasn't commercial pap, but largely 'alternative' fare. The music in Moulin Rouge is clearly made up of "Baz's road trip compilation tape." Its mostly made of modern classics like "Heroes" by David Bowie, "Roxanne" by the Police (I think!) and "Diamonds are a girl's best friend".

    Being largely bent on electronic music, but with a good knowledge of recent musical history, this was a collection of music I really loved. Some part of me thinks that if every track had been interpreted in some new and interesting way, it would have been worth seeing. Indeed, one highlights of the film were the second or third rendition of "Diamonds are a girl's best friend" at the beginning of the third act. This is a brilliantly disguised version of the original, well worth hearing. Similarly, the version of Roxanne sung by a Spaniard well on his way to throat cancer is worthy of the original in the same way Cake's version of "I Will Survive" (not in the film) managed to put a new spin on emotional pain through it's understated, sinister approach. But most of the music falls well short of this, simply being sung in the wrong key by Kidman and MacGregor, with their flat, untrained voices. Part of me thought "This could be so great!" While the other part thought "How dare he steal the emotions of other songwriters and put it to such tawdry use."

    Major flaw: these songs are old. They have established places in the hearts of the populace, and they remind us of certain evenings, certain times. It's impossible to resign that and let it take on new meaning for most people. Disguising them with good intent is interesting. Simply playing the riff of a nineties guitar anthem isn't very.

    It took balls to do what he did. But what it really needed was music, not balls. To me, he just managed to rob a great number of terrific songs of meaning and place them in the wrong context. With the voice of Tom Jones and interpretation of a brilliant musician, this might have worked. But he had a couple of flat voices with accents and no genius.

  • The whole article fits on my screen.
    --
    Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
    Delenda est Windoze
  • Katz' pontificating is obnoxious enough when he sticks to subjects relevant to Slashdot. What are reviews of those two movies doing on here? Did Katz actually get paid for that column? Can *I* write short movie summaries culled from other news sites and get on the Slashdot payroll?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Comment removed (Score:5)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday June 03, 2001 @09:25AM (#180264)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Well I find it hard to imagine that there has ever been a bigger tool than Carson Daily.

    Well ok John Travolta comes damn close.
  • I just want a movie based on neuromancer, with all the computer graphics and power and quality of the animators, I'm sure they would make the cyberspace and effects look freakin crazy, and god, for once we might have a decent story on the screen...

    citizen for a free matrix :)
  • And note the subtle meaning difference between the reflexive and non-reflexive forms of the verb "coucher"
  • And note the subtle meaning difference between the reflexive and non-reflexive forms of the verb "coucher"! :-)

  • OW!!!!

    NO!

    It's Avec qui voulez-vous couchez ce soir? or Avec qui est-ce vous voulez coucher ce soir? The phrase Voulez-vous coucher avec qui....etc. is perhaps not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than splitting the preposition from its object, which is a major ouch... (Yes, I do realise my ...etc. took up more room than ce soir. What's you point?)

  • Actually, se coucher means simply to go to bed, to sleep, in all innocence.

    Coucher, non reflexive, means... Well, actually, there's a pretty good English analogue, in terms of origin: Do you want to sleep with me? (As in the obvious/)

  • I have been places where they speak French, I sort of live in one, though I admit my grasp of colloquialisms is probably limited. So you have a point, (I hadn't seen the comment where it was pointed out that we were dealing in slang.)

    However, things end up like $#% anything in slang, so it's not much of a defence, or a good form to follow in text. And splitting a preposition from its object is bad form in three of the languages I know, and downright illegal in two -- so I think it's fair of me to guess that this is one of the more broken examples of slang.

    Of course, no meaning is lost, so of course you can say this in slang.... It just doesn't strike me as very pretty. I thought I refrained from "major ouch", though... :-)

  • Besides which, I was responding to someone attacking Voulez-vous coucher avec qui ce soir? as illegal, and advocating replacing it with qui...avec..., which is even worse, I am quite sure.

  • I think you're talking about Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir. Avec qui means with whom, and avec moi means with me. The song was "with me".

    I wonder why I know these things at all...
    ------------
  • Er, what? No..

    "Tu" and "Toi" have nothing to do with gender, when addressing a person in french you don't have gender, if you're referring to a person, or things that belong to them, etc, that's different.

    For example, "Allo, toi", "Hey, you". That'd be for either a female or a male.

    "Toi" is like "You", "Tu" is used in questions and stuff like that ("Qui es-tu?").

    Also, "vous" is plural, as you said, but it's also used as a more formal way to address a single person as well (ie: authority figure, elders, etc), "Qui est-vous?".

  • Decent!? I think not. It was a travesty, an unadulterated piece of shit.

    The most depressing part was having watch the damn thing!

  • Obviously Katz has not yet figured out the way the Hollywood reviewer spoils system works. He could be sticking his snout in the trough like the rest of them if he'd just get with the program and say something 1. nice 2. terse 3. followed by an exclamation mark.

    Examples: Fresh! Outrageous! Scintillating! Achingly Funny! This Summer's [fill in movie name]!

    If you still pick your movies based on what reviewers say (or worse yet, excerpted quotations), then check out this story.

    http://www.msnbc.com/news/581770.asp [msnbc.com]

  • How about tying up Jon Katz on every weekend so that he doesnt go out, watch any movies, and end up ruining our movie weekends for us.

    Just a thought. I got lotsa other ideas too.
  • The you in Do you is vous, which is the formal form of address used to address authority figures or strangers. Lovers, friends, or parents talking to children would use tu or toi.

    Actually vous is plural and tu/toi is singular. Also, french has grammatical ways of distinguishing between male and female. If I remember correctly the difference between tu and toi is that tu means male and toi means female. So if you were speaking to a guy you would say voulez-tu and a female voulez-toi (it's been a while so I could have this backwards). So my point is that when somewhen says voulez-vous they are speaking to more than one person. Not an authority figure.

    However I was taught the Canadian version of French. I know there are differences between the Canadian and France versions. So maybe you're correct when speaking about the France version (which is where Moulin Rouge takes place).

    --
    Garett

  • Am I the only one...

    Nope. I've seen only Blue Streak. That was enough to convince me.

    Plonk

  • Moulin Rouge - Art vs Practicality (Score:4)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Sunday June 03, 2001 @04:17PM (#180281)
    I came out of Moulin Rouge absolutely loving it, the two people I went in with absolutely hated it. We ended up trying to figure out what it was that caused such complete opposite views, here's pretty much what we came up with:

    In day to day life, day to day entertainment, you want something which performs pretty well across the board. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be pretty good and not let you down. Occasionally, you want something that's absolutely perfect, or stunningly original, and you're more than happy to put up with flaws in many of its aspects in exchange for it being truly great in a couple.

    Take graphical arts for example. Day to day: we want nice clean layouts; realistic portrayals; easy to find information; smooth shading; whatever makes life easy and comfortable for us in our web layouts, our billboards, our posters. Every so often we go looking for 'art'. In our art we're happy that Van Gough never shades anything smoothly - the effect of his overloaded oils, while by no means realistic, are far more powerful than any airbrushing. In the classic posters of 20s France, the art work on the Can-Can dancers is by no means near-photographic but it is powerful and evocative.

    Take the SATs. Someone who gets 700 in each is pretty smart and the kind of person the average company wants to employ. The mathmatics genius who gets 800 in one and 400 in the other probably has none of the social skills, none of the business skills, none of the adaptability we want in the majority of the world, yet having a few of these people is what gives us our geniuses.

    Finally, in slashdot terms, take Windows vs Linux. Windows makes every day stuff easy for everyone. Linux makes more stuff possible for a few. Most of the time, most people want Windows but accept it'd be a poorer world without Linux.

    That's really what it all comes to. 'Art' generally requires you to accept that you're going to have to work through a lot of the poorer aspects in exchange for some truly incredible ones. Different people have different thresholds - some want the nice safe world and never consider 'art', others like a balance and a few look down at the 'safe' options and only ever consider 'art', even though it's more work for them.

    Modern cinema's much the same. Hollywood churns out nice predictable blockbusters - there'll be good SFX, a good sound track, a bunch of photogenic, quite good actors, a quite good story and it'll last a comfortable 90 minutes. They successfully please most of the people, most of the time, which makes them their money and keeps them happy. Occasionally a film has an exceptional story, exceptional acting or exceptional SFX. As a result of all of the work going in to those aspects, it usually falls down everywhere else. To some people that movie's unwatchable for all its failings - they want the nice safe 90 minute hollywood experience. To others it's wonderful, full of discoveries that make the cinema worth going to again and, while it's full of flaws elsewhere, they can overlook them for the exceptional parts.

    Moulin Rouge captures the feel of grainy 20s postcards wonderfully, of the cardboard cutout theatre toys children of the era played with. It has intelligent reworkings of just about every piece of modern music (sure, most of it's blasphemous, especially Smells Like Teen Spirit to a Can-Can, but it's also incredibly intelligently done to fit so many different songs in to consistent rhythms and melodies), it has incredible costumes, incredible sets and captures the insanity of the bohemian era. Pretty much everything else is badly done, overblown and under-thought-out.

    If you're prepared to forgive a lot of dire points in exchange for a whole set of truly excelent ones, you'll love the movie. If you're the kind of person who wants everything to be nice, safe, and consistently pretty-good, you'll hate it.

  • C'mon now, you don't have to be gay to see that Nicole Kidman ain't all that great.

  • Worse than Battlefield Earth??
  • I'm not sure how much credibility should be accorded that article. Though lots of other stars probably are down-to-earth, it is quite common for others to have their own entourages and to demand special treatment and to just otherwise be horse's asses. I'm not sure how out-of-line Lawrence's behavior is but I am willing to bet there are others who are far worse than him. Sounds like sour grapes on the part of the anonymous source (maybe he got chewed out by Lawrence or his entourage).

    I also had to laugh at the following quote from the anonymous source: At about 15-to-25 thousand dollars per minute to have a crew in oneplace and a set all up. Using the lower end of this rate would mean it costs nearly a MILLION dollars per hour to have a set up with crew. That seems impossible.

  • Ahh the joys of digital video and having much time on your hands due to the suckiness of the Ontario high school system... i'm going to have an ~hour-long documentary on my friends and my experiences at the Summit of the Americas a-la "this is what democracy looks like"

    tons o'fun.

    it was made on about a 100$ budget (including tapes, transportation, and lodging in QC)..
    i wonder what kind of resources it would take to actually make a movie, as opposed to a documentary, if it was all done on a volunteer basis...and fully digitally of course
  • If this helps:

    it's like Usted/Ustedes in Spanish.

  • Make sure none of these posts are by David Manning!

  • I don't know squat about Moulin Rouge the movie but I do now it spawned a truly awful remake of Patti LaBelle's classic disco tune Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi which, for the linguistically and culturally challenged, is French for "Do you want to sleep with me tonight?" The original was one of the better examples of music made back when actual singing and skilled play of musical instruments were involved. LaBelle leered and teased her way through lyrics that said just enough and a tune that alternated between excitement and dark sleaze.

    The new version, wherein down in old New Orleans becomes down in old Moulin Rouge, doesn't work. You don't get the feeling that the singers know the meanings of the words they are singing. (All right, I know it's French but it's not that hard to figure out.) The inflections are all wrong. Patti LaBelle managed to sound like a hooker making a come-on when it was appropriate; the new version sounds more like it's trying to sound different from the old one than like it's supposed to make any sense.

    This remake also led to one of the most absolutely unbelievable moments in interview history, wherein Patti LaBelle herself claimed that she didn't know what the song's title meant when she recorded it. Uh-huh. Ri-ight.

    I was gonna skip this one just because of how they raped the theme song, but now I might have to catch it to see the CGI. Damn.

  • The song is "Lady Marmalade"

    Yes, it is, but if you want to get a copy off Napster you will have much better success searching for the first line than the title, because most people don't know the title. Oh wait, it's probably filtered now anyway.

    by the group Labelle, not Patti's later solo project.

    And this changes the fact that it was actually sung by Patti Labelle how?

    Maybe it's an effect Katz has on people. Sheesh.

  • I think you're talking about Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir.

    Of course, you'll see in the post that I correctly quote the first line of Lady Marmalade. I changed the French me (moi) to who (qui).

    The line is also interesting for something that can't be done in English. The you in Do you is vous, which is the formal form of address used to address authority figures or strangers. Lovers, friends, or parents talking to children would use tu or toi. Of course a prostitute soliciting business would use vous but coucher, which does imply you will be doing a bit more than sleeping, is exactly the kind of activity you'd normally hear associated with tu. It's probably not even subtle to someone born speaking French but after taking the language in high school I always thought it was a really neat juxtaposition.

  • I meant it to translate "Do you want to sleep with whom tonight?" and I think I got it right, though I admit it's been 20 years since I studied the language and can barely get out je ne parle pas le francais today.
  • I think he meant that like 90% of the shots seemed to have some computer wankery behind them. Either adding shit into the background or fancy tricks. The actors weren't animated, and even Katz isn't dumb enough to think otherwise.
  • Did you use punctuation? I think the capital letters might cause it to treat the sentence as single words, losing proper word ordering when translated into English.

  • Moderate spoilers, no endings (Score:4)

    by Salieri ( 308060 ) on Sunday June 03, 2001 @11:11AM (#180294)
    Katz didn't go much into Moulin Rouge, which I saw last week at the Ziegfeld (in NYC limited release). It was definitely worth the admission, but be warned that you will have to see the movie on its own terms. Back in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, once you accepted a world where people can jump and fly at will, you could immerse yourself in it and really enjoy yourself. Here, you have to resign yourself to a portrayal of the famous 1900 Paris nightclub Moulin Rouge that is laden with music from the rest of the 20th century -- everything from Kidman trying to upstage Marilyn Monroe's Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend to The Sound of Music and pop hits from the 70s and 80s. Some of the tie-ins -- like when the manager of the night club sings Like a Virgin to explain to the evil investor why starlet Satine (Kidman) won't sleep with him -- seem a bit contrived. But elsewhere, the fusion works, and some scenes had me laughing harder than I've ever laughed in a theater in my life (literally).

    Satine falls in love with Ewan MacGregor's character (the force must be with him) as his bohemian team writes and produces a theatrical production for the nightclub. Obvious parallels are drawn between the Kidman-MacGregor relationship and the one within the play, and I sometimes felt the movie borrowed too liberally from Shakespeare in Love. But if enjoyed that movie and are in the mood for an unusual, decade-hopping circus of a film, look no further.

    However, do not see this movie if you want to keep up with the progress of computer animation. I have no clue what Katz meant when he said Moulin Rouge is 90% CG -- it isn't even close. Many of the master shots of Paris are CG, or at least models motion-blurred by CG, but definitely see Shrek instead for that kind of volume. Maybe he left after the effects-laden opening. But the best thing I can say along those lines is that the effects here serve the plot and the style. They are a tool for the director (Baz Luhrmann), who uses them when he needs them, and not for the sake of using them.

    Moulin Rouge is dazzling fun, but you may want to bring some dramamaine.

    --------------------------------
  • Damn Gena.

    --
  • The amount of "right" you have to bash a service is directly proportional to the amount you pay for it
  • Jennifer Lopez is hip-hop? Sorry I beg to differ
  • According to babelfish [altavista.com], Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi translates to: Please Sleep You With Me

    But Voulez-vous coucher avec moi translates to: Want you to sleep with me

    I letters captial Guess difference Makes a...
    -----------------------
  • Actually, speed-zooming and dollying around inside a sepiatone photo counts as CG, i think. But otherwise, you're completely right.
  • She's much hotter. (Sorry, but it's true, and that sort of thing does matter when selling movies.)

  • You know, I've seen so much staffer bashing on Slashdot (especially of reviews) that it's getting irritating. People, Katz, Taco, et al have their opinions, and you have yours. In case you hadn't guessed, that's why Slashdot exists - so that people can actually discuss new articles. But saying a staffer is stupid or gay or whatever is childish, and disrespectful. These articles - especially the reviews - require a good deal of time and effort. Slashdot is a free service, and the people who run it (even though they are paid) deserve our respect, or at least courtesy.

  • The music is about the only reason I went to see this film; woke up one morning to find my stereo on and 'El Tango de Roxanne' (an excellent remake of the Sting classic) on the airwaves. Inspired, off I went the next day, and was dazzled by the whole shebang.

    Granted, a lot of the tunes are somewhat insipid (I've consistently berated the remake of Lady Marmalade, and Ewan McGregor's version of Your Song is just frightening. But 'Roxanne' is beauty - reminiscent for some reason of Bond stuff. Wide in scope, with lots of harmony and contrast; if you've not seen the film, you should - if only for this tune... and, of course, Ms Kidman, and the crazy Bohemians, and the 'Diamond Dogs' sequence, and the 'Like A Virgin' scene, and the fact that Satine lives in an elephant (flashbacks to Les Mis...), and all that.

    Apologies for the rambling, unpleasant, and poorly structured nonsense above.
  • MTV-esque? Well, in my opinion MTV has gone down the hole. Instead of it representing teen rebellion and fun it now represents corporate BS. (Or did it always?) Anyway, I prefer movies with a little more class...
    ---
  • well, all i can say is that the music used to be better... i don't think i actually remember what MTV was like...
    ---
  • Two things. 1. It is NOT computer animated. Only the backgrounds of the rooftop scenes are computer animated. 2. To the person who said Jennifer Lopez would be better then Nicole Kidman in this role, you forgot that Jennifer Lopez cant act, or sing. Both of which were required for this role.

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