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Post by roverpup on Sept 3, 2022 18:53:07 GMT
I'm so sorry I've been so thoughtless with my words QZ.
Please accept my sincerest apologies for crude behaviour.
The furthest thing from my mind was to make this truly upset you.
Again I'm very sorry.
I'll of course delete the offensive post.
I know it won't make it up in any way to you but at least it won't be around to upset you any further.
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Post by onebluestocking on Sept 4, 2022 5:51:18 GMT
I enjoyed it very much and thought Austin Butler was great. Elvis died when I was 10 or so, I was never a huge fan or knew much about him, although we did visit Graceland once on a trip to Memphis. It was fun to see it again onscreen. I did agree with a reviewer who thought that Tom Hanks sounded like an Austin Powers villain I will say, my teenager saw it in June and my younger son saw it in August, and the theatre was packed both times.
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Post by sgev1977 on Sept 4, 2022 22:13:58 GMT
I just saw it. It’s not a bad movie at all! It just too quick for me, especially at the beginning. Too energetic and over the top but that’s not odd considering it’s a Baz Luhrmann movie! I don’t think it’s a Colonel movie. He is the untrustworthy narrator and he is played by one of the biggest American Star ever (in a bizarre cartoonish make up!) but he is also an enigma: at the end this is explicitly said, you don’t know who he is, where he came from or anything about his family! He is just the bad guy claiming he isn’t bad! The star is Elvis but yeah, he is an abused, manipulated naive victim. Still, Austin Butler gives a very charismatic performance. There are a lot of films, probably better and with better actors playing supposedly charismatic figures and even when they are great, you just know they aren’t that in real life. I personally didn’t knew this young actor but he is indeed extremely charismatic and you easily believes people going crazy for him! I can see his winning the Oscar just because that. Probably, there isn’t too many layers or depth in his performance but you just can’t stop watching him and frequently that’s enough.
It’s a very entertaining movie. It’s not a masterpiece or anything and I’m sure it’s not very faithful to his real life but I can see it doing well during award season because its accessibility and the huge charisma of his star (and I’m not talking about Tom Hanks!)
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Post by queenzod on Sept 4, 2022 22:35:58 GMT
I watched it again last night and thought a bit better of it. There were some touching moments and it’s clear he did some research but then chose to twist the truth a little. I still think the movie was missing a soul, however. It was glitzy and glamorous and very Baz, and Butler was very good. Some of his mannerisms he got down perfectly, especially with his hands. I found that part very impressive.
In real life Col. Parker was an enigma. He left the Netherlands at age 20 under some weird circumstances (a murder in his neighborhood for which he may or may not have been a suspect), came to the US, adopted a fake name, and started promoting singers. That’s the reason he never wanted to leave the US on tour with Elvis. He had no passport and was worried his secret would be discovered. But that did hold Elvis’s career back.
He certainly wasn’t as bad as the movie portrayed him to be but there were a number of lawsuits after Elvis’s death and the general upshot was that he had been mismanaging and taking advantage of Elvis financially for a number of years.
The movie is very popular and well liked and I think I just need to get it through my head it’s not a documentary, lol. Filmmakers twist the truth all the time to tell their stories.
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Post by sgev1977 on Sept 4, 2022 22:49:43 GMT
I’m not a big fan of it neither but I can see why it’s so popular. It’s very easy and entertaining. For example,I watched Bringing Out the Dead yesterday again. I originally watched it on the big screen when it was released and watched it again a few times after that. I loved it and I genuinely think it’s one of the best Scorsese films but I read also yesterday on Wikipedia that audiences rated it with a C- Cinemascore rating! Lol I’m not sure why because again I loved it but it’s very sordid and ruminative and probably most people aren’t comfortable watching a film about someone dealing with death, depression, human denigration and madness. In other words, my taste on films isn’t necessarily aligned with general audiences but sometimes I can see why something is beloved.
About the Col. Parker, that’s why I don’t think he is the star of the film. It seems he indeed had a very interesting and amoral life but that’s only briefly suggested because nothing of that it’s in the film! He is the narrator but he only talks about Elvis!
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Post by queenzod on Sept 4, 2022 23:30:34 GMT
There was a lot of blame thrown around after Elvis’s death and a great deal of it landed on Parker. Although why you would kill off your cash cow is beyond me! That doesn’t make any sense, lol.
The “Memphis Mafia,” also came under some scrutiny for not stopping Elvis from taking so many pills for so long, but they said they tried and he just would not stop. They actually blamed the fans for not turning away from Elvis near the end, saying perhaps if they had done so Elvis would have gotten the message. Crazy!
The truth was Elvis was stuck in his addiction and just like so many other rich addicts, he was running lots of different doctors, would fire anyone who got in his way of procuring the drugs for him, and ran bunches of scams getting drugs under various peoples names. His fame and wealth made it impossible for anyone to help him, and the times were different back then anyway when it was considered more of a character defect than a health crisis.
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Post by roverpup on Sept 6, 2022 13:06:06 GMT
Dan and I saw "Elvis" the other night and Dan liked it more than me but not overwhelmingly so. Dan said he felt entertained by the movie but didn't think it was a great biopic - not like I Walk the Line or Coalminer's Daughter.
I was less entertained. I thought it was too loud, too stylised, too flashy and in a lot of ways it was creepy and very cynical (and yet at the same time parts of it were over idealised). It seemed like the director was trying to say something "significant" but that he thought this could be acheived by being frenzied with the colour and camera work. It didn't do anything for me.
The whole idea of making the "Colonel" the narrator of the piece was a very bad idea. He was unreliable as a narrator and it gave the whole confessional aspect of the movie an unstable basis. The movie really lacked focus. There were some very good musical sequences - I especially liked the Elvis comeback special (which I remember vividly from real life) and some of the early Elvis stuff was well done too. But whenever the "drama" portion of the move came along, the movie got boring really fast.
One really surprising treat was seeing Kodi Smit-McPhee in this movie! He was great! In fact, I think he was better in this one than in The Power of the Dog. It took me a long time to realise his character in Elvis was the same actor as Peter in TPOTD. His character was one of the truly genuine people in this film and I was found wanting to actually see more of him rather than the main stars!
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Post by mllemass on Sept 13, 2022 18:05:03 GMT
I just finished watching the movie I Came By on Netflix. It was fantastic! It was so nice to finally watch something good. It didn’t quite go the way I was hoping, but that just made it more surprising and exciting. It helped that Hugh Bonneville usually plays nice guys, and that’s not the case here!
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Post by roverpup on Sept 16, 2022 12:59:46 GMT
Dan and I just watch this on Netflix and really enjoyed it! Hugh B. was a wonderful villan and Kelly M. was also excellent in her role. Very suspenceful and although you knew who "done it" (as they say) the excruciating tension was all in the details! And the ending was PERFECT! Thanks for recommending it, mllemass!
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Post by mllemass on Sept 16, 2022 14:50:12 GMT
Dan and I just watch this on Netflix and really enjoyed it! Hugh B. was a wonderful villan and Kelly M. was also excellent in her role. Very suspenceful and although you knew who "done it" (as they say) the excruciating tension was all in the details! And the ending was PERFECT! Thanks for recommending it, mllemass! I was reading some reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and I couldn’t believe how they picked the movie apart. No, it’s not a masterpiece, but it was a lot of fun to watch. And it was much better than many Netflix movies!
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