Babel

aaharvel

I was anticipating The Departed or The Queen to come away with the award for best pic at The Golden Globes monday night, and this one just came out of nowhere. Literally.

Honestly, I've never even heard of this film- has anyone? According to the official site, it came out in theaters October 27 of LAST YEAR.

After noticing this enigma, ironically after it won Best Picture, I searched for the trailer- frankly it's f--king awesome.

Where's the marketing?!? This reminds me of Crash from last year, except Crash was at least somewhat known before the awards

Trailer in QTime:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/babel/trailer1/

Mike682

I heard about it, wanted to see it, but never actually went. Friends who saw it said it was a great movie.

aaharvel

Money Quote: (Wikipedia)

According to Genesis 11:1-9, mankind, after the deluge, traveled from the mountain where the Ark Of The Covenant had rested, and settled in 'a plain in the land of Shinar.' Here, they attempted to build a great city and a tower whose top might reach unto Heaven, the Tower of Babel.

The attempt to build the Tower of Babel had angered God who, in his anger, made each person involved speak a different language which ultimately halted the project and scattered and disconnected the people across the planet.

The name of Babel is etymologized by association with the Hebrew verb balal, "to confuse or confound." The word "bab-el" can also be seen to mean "gate of god" (from bab "gate" + el "god").

aaharvel

according to boxofficemojo.com- it's set to be re-released nationally this coming Friday to coincide with it's Golden Globes victory. If it's playing anywhere in Gtown, I'm not missing this one.

hearingimpared

I gotta see this!!! Great trailer.

aaharvel

Cancel the 2007 Academy Awards. The contest is over.

Yep. My suspicions were right on, and my expectations were exceeded. And then some. Babel is a masterpiece. Take Traffic and Crash, dump them both into your grandmothers Osterizer, hit Frappe and the end result is one serious treat of Extraordinary.

Sorry Scorsese. Better luck next year.

Early B.

Saw it last night. It sucked.






*****SPOILER ALERT******

The Latina woman and two kids sleeping, then wandering in the desert? C'mon, that was ridiculous. How hard could it be to find the freakin' highway?

The deaf-mute chick should have kept her clothes on. Urggghhh. She suffered from noassatall.

And WTF did her note say?

SLOCOOKN

Early B. wrote:

And WTF did her note say?

If you are reading this the director is laughing at you for still being in the theater.:p

Early B.

SLOCOOKN wrote:

If you are reading this the director is laughing at you for still being in the theater.:p

Huh?
Not sure the director would be laughing at me for posting on this forum for the whole world to see that I thought his movie sucked **** big time.

SLOCOOKN

Early B. wrote:

Huh?
Not sure the director would be laughing at me for posting on this forum for the whole world to see that I thought his movie sucked **** big time.

Sorry you busted twenty on a sh^tty movie. Better luck next time.

AndyGwis

I heard it was just okay from several people. Guess I need to watch it for myself to know for sure.

bobman1235

Early B. wrote:

Saw it last night. It sucked.

Early, not to be a dick, but seriously, why do you even bother reviewing movies publicly any more? Some of the most critically and publicly renowned movies you not only don't like, but say "sucked". You have absolutely no credibility when it comes to taste in movies.

To say this and the Departed, two of the biggest and most WIDELY acclaimed movies of the year, "suck", is just retarded.

Rotten Tomatoes is a website which averages movie critic reactions to a movie, where IMDb is a pretty good average of user opinions of movies.

The Departed, which you also said - quote - "sucked", got 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, which means 93% of critics thought it was good, and an average of 8.4/10 from users on IMDb (out of 64,000 voteS).

Babel, which you said - quote -"sucked", wasn't nearly as acclaimed (68% and 7.8 on IMDb), but was obviously at least a decent movie.

hearingimpared

Early B. wrote:

Huh?
Not sure the director would be laughing at me for posting on this forum for the whole world to see that I thought his movie sucked **** big time.

REALLY??? I heard great things about it from a few people including Andrew.

Was it really suck ****???

polkatese

I bought this blindly this afternoon, well, since Blockbuster ran out of copies to rent. Hope it is worthy of owning...

Early B.

bobman1235 wrote:

Early, not to be a dick, but seriously, why do you even bother reviewing movies publicly any more? Some of the most critically and publicly renowned movies you not only don't like, but say "sucked". You have absolutely no credibility when it comes to taste in movies.

To say this and the Departed, two of the biggest and most WIDELY acclaimed movies of the year, "suck", is just retarded.

Rotten Tomatoes is a website which averages movie critic reactions to a movie, where IMDb is a pretty good average of user opinions of movies.

The Departed, which you also said - quote - "sucked", got 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, which means 93% of critics thought it was good, and an average of 8.4/10 from users on IMDb (out of 64,000 voteS).

Babel, which you said - quote -"sucked", wasn't nearly as acclaimed (68% and 7.8 on IMDb), but was obviously at least a decent movie.

It's called an opinion. I didn't like it (i.e. it sucked). Period. In fact, I didn't like anything about it. IMO, the Departed sucked, too. You got a problem with that?

Strong Bad

I didn't see Babel, so no opinion.

I did see Departed and absolutely loved it! I'll be owning that one soon on DVD.

Early, no sweat here from your negative reviews. We're all entitled to our own opinions.


John

Lsi9

I thought the Departed was just O.K. and I think that is the general concensus of it. Scorcese will get an oscar for it though mainly because the Academy will feel it is his time more than on the merits of the movie itself.

riglehart

I saw this movie a couple weeks ago. It's garbage. Nothing profound about it. Just a bunch of dumb/unbeleivable unrelated stories that in the end come together to an even dumber ending.

I've never seen a movie with so much pointless garbage (why do they have to show an arab kid masturbating, an asian chicks crotch, GP pissing her pants, etc...) that contributed NOTHING to an extremely thin and unbeleivable plot.

After my wife explained some things to me (I'm pretty dumb, you know) I could see that the stuff that I said "Now that's totally implausible" was actually bashing Westerner's. I guess that appeals to some people.

millerman 3732

Early B. wrote:

Saw it last night. It sucked.

My OPINION as well, I'm glad I didn't find it early or I would have bought it, Thank goodness no one released it early here where I live. I rented it Monday night and almost didn't finsh it, but I tuffed it out.

scottvamp

An easy pass for me! I thought Departed was dam good. I am surprized the "critics" liked it.

bobman1235

Early B. wrote:

It's called an opinion. I didn't like it (i.e. it sucked). Period. In fact, I didn't like anything about it. IMO, the Departed sucked, too. You got a problem with that?

:rolleyes: No need to flex your muscles, tough guy. You're entitled to your opinion; my opinion is that your opinion is comically bad, that's all.

Tour2ma

Saw Babel last week. I liked it quite a bit. It exercised the grey matter like few movies I know.

I can understand those who did not like it. It certainly is not entertaining...

BTW, it wasn't GP wetting herself. It was CB.

riglehart

Tour2ma wrote:

It exercised the grey matter like few movies I know.

I gotta disagree. I thought that was Gwenyth Paltrow through the whole movie.

Or is that statement an oxymoron?

mrbigbluelight

That was Cate Blanchett, who also played "Galadriel" in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

A little trivia for "Babel":

-Brad Pitt gave up one of the starring roles in The Departed (2006) (a film he co-produced) in order to participate in this film, as he's a longtime fan of Alejandro Gonz

Ern Dog

I just saw this over the weekend and gave it 2 thumbs up.

It took a long time before the connection to the shooting in Morroco and the family in Asia was revealed. I kept asking myself "WTF does this have to do with the rest of the movie?" I thought the acting was excellent.

BaggedLancer

netflix has this listed as short wait for me, can't wait to see it

mrbigbluelight

"What was in the note ?".
That question was raised on an IMDB Babel forum chat.

One poster posted some links for some screenshots for the note and asked if anyone could read it:

Not the most readable script I've ever seen, but I don't read Japanese.

The discussion/debate/argument was over whether the note was the mom's suicide note, the girl's suicide note, or some reference to what some posters saw as an incestuous relationship between the girl and her widowed father.

A poster named Yannick, who reads Japanese, offered some insightful views, along with a limited interpretation of what he could read from the note:


OK, and now about her note. I did get the feeling that anyway, once the cop learns the truth about Chieko's mother, then the movie's authors wants us spectators to think that at the very moment the cop learns that, she's on the verge of jumping - thus the suspense towards the end, where the camera lingers on the face of her father, and not on what he is actually seeing.
So I think she did intend suicide if the cop didn't accept her for sex. For her, it would mean the ultimate confirmation that she's a monster, that she cannot be like the other girls. The cop refuses, but a few things are important in this scene as well:
- He is not repelled by her. He goes towards her. Even though he refuses to have sex, he visibly considers her as a normal girl, albeit very much in need of help.
- He tells her "It's wrong. You're just a kid". He refuses because it's wrong morally, because he's an honorable person. And he also says she's a kid - maybe to her it means, a normal kid. SO he makes his reasons clear. He doesn't refuse to have sex because she's mute. Or because she's a monster. But because she is not a monster, because she's a kid.
- Finally, unlike the dentist, he understands her. He stays with her, he worries for her. He hugs her. He makes her feel human. And for me, this is why she doesn't commit suicide.

OK still about the note, from the screenshots given by another person (I can speak and read Japanese), I cannot make out much, it's too blurred and too small. Here is, in order, the few words I can make out:
"ima kara" -> from now on. Not too sure about "now".
next line: "mitsuketa" -> I found (might be "mistukena[unreadable]" which would change the meaning).
next line: "haha kara no messeji" -> a/the message from my mom. I cannot be sure about the "mom" part but it sure looks like it, and it would make sense.
next line: "haha kara" -> from mom. Again I'm not sure about the "mom" part.

That's all I can decipher for now, and unless I'm mistaken, this *does* make a link with her mom's suicide, and nothing that I could see about her dad.

Well those were my two cents.

Cheers you all

Yannick


Again, this movie is excellent.

mrbigbluelight

Another poster on IMDB.com, Tatsuru-1 (whom I assume is Japanese)
posted the following:

The memo actually is unreadable. Only the fragments of sentences can be caught, which goes something like that:

...connected to it with something...
...I don't know but have to find out...
...message from my mother...
...wasn't (or was??) loved with my mother...

What I’m 100% sure abut it is it is typical school girl's writing, not adult women's.

mrbigbluelight

One final note on the note:

"the note curiously was written in Hiragana, not kanji which would be impossible to make out"

bobman1235

YOu can see a brief blurry shot of the note.... you're obviously not supposed to know what it says, but leave it up to interpretation. I'd be surprised if what you you can read from the brief screenshot is even what the filmmaker wanted the note to say.

ND13

I was very disappointed. Not a BAD movie, but definitely not Oscar nominee worthy.

I put it in the same realm as "Magnolia". Very depressing. I doubt very seriously this movie would have gotten the recognition it received if Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchet were not the stars.

6 out of 10. Glad I Netflixed the HD DVD instead of purchasing it.

I thought "Departed" was much better.