Now Watching, Films/ movies discussion Options

[Olen]

We have a music discussion thread but seem to lack a film (movie if you're from that bit of the world) discussion. The idea's pretty self-evident: what films have you seen recently, what did you think of them? Fairly similar to another thread really...

To start, I watched Gomorrah (2008) for the second time last night. It's a really good bit of Italian film-making and centres arouind the problems faced by Naples throught the stories of a few people whose paths cross with the organised crime there. It certainly doesn't pull punches in terms of the gritty reality from the first scene and a fairly grim ending.
Some of the settings are brilliant too, there are scenes shot in some buildings which look seriously run down in Naples which leads to a good degree of accuracy.

Overall I'd give it 8/10.


So what's anyone else watching?

[SubRosa]

I have been watching a lot of nature documentaries lately. Eye of the Leopard was an excellent one that followed a leopard for three years, starting from her birth. You really begin to feel a bond with Lagadema (the leopard), as she discovers her world, faces some very fearsome trials (such as nearly being killed by a pack of baboons), steps up to game to make an amazing kill of a baboon in the middle of their group, and even takes an infant baboon under her wing and tries to protect it. I highly recommend renting it.

Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure was another good one that followed Dolly, a Dolichorhynchops living in the late Cretaceous. It follows her life from start to finish, and is punctuated with a little bit of science from paleontologists. The main target is children, so it is not heavy on facts. Still, it is a delightful animal tale. If you look at it as a short film about an animal it is a lot of fun.

Super Croc is another. Just hearing Sam Neill's narration is worth the price of renting it. Even cooler is not only the palentology involved, but the studies of modern day crocodiles. Truly fantastic stuff. The bite force of these animals is just astounding. Seeing the final, reconstructed Super Croc is just awe-inspiring in its size.

Prehistoric Predators was so-so. It is a three part series that examines the Saber-Tooth Cat, the Dire Wolf, and the Short-Faced Bear. The Dire Wolf episode was my favorite. The facts that come out in the shows are very interesting, such as that the Short Faced Bear was built specifically for scavenging and it tremendous size was meant for intimidating other predators away from kills. The animation was a bit sub-par though, even for a nature show where you do not expect ILM quality work to begin with. Also it got repetitive at times, as scenes and information is recyled between episodes.

Now I am watching a pile of shark documentaries, starting with Shark Week 2009. The first episode in the series was just jaw dropping. It is a dramatization of the New Jersey shark attacks of 1916, and at two hours in length, it is a movie in its own right. It is shot as if a documentary of that period, with a reporter interviewing a scientist from the New York Museum of Natural History who was one of the closest things to a shark expert at that time, and breaking away from that to show the actual events. Very cool.

The rest of the first disc has been fascinating. There is one episode that details half-a-dozen shark attacks upon people. Thankfully in these all the people survived (it would not be much fun to watch if they had not), and often you wonder how they managed. You just cannot help but to feel empathy for those poor souls, who were happy campers one moment, then looked down to see a great white clamped onto their leg. In some of the cases, bystanders were truly heroic in swimming out to rescue the victims, risking death themselves, bringing them into shore before they could bleed to death.

I just finished watching one that tested a shark suit (mail armor) which is effective protection against most sharks. This test was against a great white however. The shark bit the mail right in half. In the past measurements of shark bite force were thought to be comparatively weak. Pound for pound, they were found to not be much stronger than dogs. However, the people making these studies overlooked the tremendous size of some of these sharks, which more than makes up for the relative weakness of their bites compared to their overall mass. A great white's bite force measures 4,000 pounds. So when those jaws clamp shut, it would take a crane to pull them apart.

Really astounding to watch are the great white's polaris breaches. They are the result of their style of attack. Cruising in deep water, then rocketing straight up at full speed (25mph) to hit the prey animal from underneath. They have video of sharks going completely out of the water while making these attacks. Seeing an animal that huge make those tremendous leaps is just breathtaking. Some amazing pics here and video here.

One thing I have noticed when watching all these great whites, is that all of them seem to be heavily scarred around their heads. My guess is that is from their favorite prey, seals. It sounds hard to believe, but they are supposed to be ferocious fighters. That explains the reason for the great white's tactics. Where other sharks tend to like to slowly close in to figure out if their prey might be a threat, the white makes one sudden attack from ambush, with the idea being to instantly immobilize the target.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 28 2010, 02:49 AM