movie: Pan's Labyrinth

[meganbmoore]

So, Pan's Labyrinth.  One of the more acclaimed recent movies, the one everyone was recently up in arms over not winning the Oscar's(or was it the Acandemy Awards?  I keep little track of such things but remember  a fair bit of talk on it at the time.)  This is a movie that I thought I'd love, that I expected to love, that everything I'd heard

Comments

[southerndave]

"the Oscar's(or was it the Academy Awards?"

I'm not particularly clued up on the movies, but isn't it that the Oscars are the Academy Awards?

[meganbmoore]

As I pay little attention to those awards shows as most movies that end up there seem to be made to try to win the award, as opposed to tell stories, it's entirely possible I got the second name wrong. There are 2, though, and one is the Oscars.

[wistfulmemory]

The Academy Awards is the official name of the award ceremony. The Oscars is the nickname of the statue that is given to the winners and is used as a second name for the ceremony.

[meganbmoore]

*bows down to the one with greater knowledge*

So, what's ther other awards show? I'm positive there are 2...

I knew there was a reason I should pay attention to such things.

[lesbiassparrow]

I really liked this film myself. I just found the fantasy world so clever and interesting and terrifying. and I thought the girl who was the lead was an astounding actress. The one thing that really astounded me was the level of violence - I wasn't expecting it even though I knew the plot details.

[meganbmoore]

It was well acted overall, really. Though I often though Vidal was channeling Jason Isaacs from The Patriot. Which kinda made the violence less surprising once I'd done the mental comparison.

It's just that all the themes and plot elements were things I'd seen many times before, but it wasn't (to me) approached as something well known and loved being recounted, and so it didn't work. While the fantasy world reminded me somewhat of an earthier Mirrormask(also? I SWEAR that faun fondled himself at one point) I think I would have liked the movie more if it'd focused more on that and less on the war.

[magicnoire]

We share the same brain.

[meganbmoore]

Thought there was someone on my list who didn't like this but couldn't remember who. The sad thing is that I can point at oh-so-many things as being something that, hed they changed to focus on that or played differently, i would have liked it more.

Our of curiosity, have you seen The Illusionist and The Prestige.

[magicnoire]

I have, and I also prefer The Illusionist more.

[meganbmoore]

YAY! I'm not alone in this!

The thing about the Illusionist is that it has its twists, and while they add to it, they aren't what's important. It's not important if she's alive or dead, or if he knows it or not. What matters is that he came back to destroy the other guy and that was what he did. You weren't watching to see if he would, or to see if he got the girl, you were eatching to see how he got there. The Prestige was more about what the truth was, and I figured it out way to early(with Bale I suspected with the memory loss and then something I forget soon after cemented it. With Jackman ir was the lightbulbs or the hats, whichever came first)

[chomiji]

I heard that Pan's Labyrinth was simply incredibly grim, and so I wasn't planning to watch it at all. What's your take on that? You don't mention that aspect of it, so maybe it's all in the eye of the beholder ... .

[meganbmoore]

Hmm...it was grim, yes, but a lot of it felt forced to me. More telling than showing. Since I saw it all coming, I didn't notice it as much and, aside from one or two visuals, it didn't concern me, and even that was just "ew, don't look."

[alexandral]

I loved the movie but mostly for it's visuals, proverbiness (is this a valid word :D) and very interesting interpretation of many Christian themes. I don't think the twists were supposed to be really "twisty", it was more about the internal then about external..

This to say the movie that won this year's foreign language Oscar (German "The lives of others") is truly one of the best films of all times and one of the movies that IMHO will be never forgotten..

[meganbmoore]

I liked the visuals quite a bit-they reminded me of an earthier Mirrormask(a movie all about the visuals that never pretends to be otherwise). Most of the rest, though, I'd simply seen far, far too many times to be properly impressed by. As I mentioned in an above comment, I figure out the ending in the first 5 minutes...there were a number of small twists, but I saw them all as they were coming. I just knew what would happen plot point by plot point too well to ever really be impressed, sadly.

But I can see why it's so popular, it just didn't work for me.