Hard to believe the Academy Award went to "A Separation" for foreign language picture? I thought the Academy wouldn't know what a great film was?

I have a friend who swears Project Greenlight stole his script.

I don't believe that awards should be given to movies. If they are, there should be years where no film or performance should be recognized because none merit recognition. The Oscar award show is nothing more than the movie industry masturbating in public.

This goes back to the question I asked earlier about whether Hollywood can make movies that would be considered art. Many great artists go unappreciated in their own time. If this is true of writing fiction or painting, it seems that it would be true of cinema as well.

The difference with cinema is the enormous amount of money required for a theatrical release. Movies are pehaps too "dumbed down" in order to make investments pay off by attracting the greatest number of viewers. This is antithetical to the making of meaningful art.

It was a big surprise to me! An Iranian film winning in the U.S. in this day and age? It's one of the best things the Academy has ever done- voting for quality over politics.

That's weird, about two years ago, there was this waiter I used to work with that said the same thing! 

I read an article a number of years ago about a screenwriter who was offered $10,000 dollars for a script by Mel Brooks. This was well below the going rate for that sort of thing, so the screenwriter objected. Brooks said that they could easily fuck him (his word) use the script and pay him nothing. I'm sure this sort of theft goes on all the time.

Actually, that waiter I worked with claimed that it happened to quite a few people. These stories by him, I've never verified.

Yay, a movie thread! :) Here's a couple of my all time favorites, although I could add many more to that list.

Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) Just plain beauty...

Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain

Blade Runner

Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue) pretty cheesy but I'm an old diver and it really spoke to me

The Shawshank Redemption

The Matrix

O Brother Where Art Thou

The Abyss

Lord of the Rings

Star Wars (the first 3 made)

And... Dr Strangelove, Das Boot, Gladiator, most Monty Python movies, Snatch, The Big Lebowski, Million Dollar Baby, Twelve Monkeys, The Princess Bride, Magnolia, Schindler's List, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Goodfellas, Leon, American Beauty, Terminator 2, Pineapple Express (probably only funny for weedheads), the Alien movies, The Pianist, Shine, Fargo, Donnie Darko, Gandhi, El Laberinto del Fauno, The Illusionist, Fight Club, American History X, Transformers 1 and 3 (I'm a geek, waddaya expect?), The Last Of The Mohicans, Sex, Lies and Videotape, Being There, The Piano.

Recently watched Warrior too, great movie

I actually enjoy understanding history. With this knowledge, I have discovered it tends to have some degree of repetition. There is some fiction I find appealing, but much of it I don't. I don't care for much of philosophy. If I don't agree with it, why try to enjoy story lines that are based on something I think is foolishness to begin with?

I tend to think there isn't much new under the sun. I realize new things are being discovered daily, but in reality, they are old things that are just now being discovered.

If you try to put a new paint job on an old car, it might look better than it did before the paint job, but not as good as it did when the car itself was new.

I don't care much for things I can figure out in the first few minutes. It ruins it for me. If it's based on history and a compelling story, I can overlook it as part of the learning experience.

If I sound like a dried up old prune...join the club...

I like a lot of your choices quite well!

You should watch, "A Separation". In the right hands, everyday life is filled with compelling stories.

I am willing to give it a glimpse or two. Where can I find it? What is it?

Cool, I could add hundreds to that list.... Really a movie buff. Is that the right word, "buff"? Sounds like someone who spend too much time at a gym (non native English here).

If you haven't seen it, I would strongly recommend Der Himmel über Berlin.

I've been reading quite a bit in this thread and there are some interesting discussions. There seems to be a strong opinion against mainstream Hollywood productions and although I can perfectly understand why, I'm a bit divided on the topic, as the way I see it a movie can be so many different things. I can watch a movie like Transformers 1 and really enjoy it because it's just such a ride. It's full of cliches, but some cliches I'm ok with. They become like stories you don't mind hearing again. Then there are of course many that I would pay twice the ticket price just to never hear again. Or at least not for another 10 years. US army saving the world, the universe, humanity and a kitten on the way being one of them, although I enjoyed Battle Los Angeles despite its plethora of the above. Avatar was another cliche-ridden movie that really got to me. What can I say? I like sci-fi and I like blue

The one movie I ever walked out on, after 15 minutes only, was Star Wars The Phantom Menace. Dear god... Watching Liam Neeson in such a farse was painful and Jar Jar Binks I would prefer to have shot on sight. Mi sa... BAM! No more rendering for you, you dirty polygon actor piece of bad writing/drawing/modeling/spawn of Lucas worst moments.

Howard the Duck was mentioned earlier as a disaster. I actually kinda liked that one, but I was very young, I think, and probably stoned. Point being, even though I would say that I normally have rather high demands for a movie in terms of script, originality and cinematography can still watch what I know is garbage and enjoy it. Go figure. And I don't even like McDonalds. There are of course a great deal of mainstream stuff that I couldn't bare 10 minutes of, like Twilight, that I tried to watch as I like vampire stuff (or used to, it's been done to death now). That was about as painful as I can imagine Chinese water torture to be. How that movie ended up at the top of the lists is completely beyond me.

By the way, I watched the Phoenix Lights documentary, fascinating indeed. I agree on the cheesy production, but felt there were enough interview material to forget about it. Good tip!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1832382/

Thanks....

It's truly a great film. Enjoy