Saw 'Holes' on Sunday morning, the latest of the free films that have been showing. It wasn't bad, it had a really good story behind it, but being Disney there was also a bit of sentimental gloop as well. Still worth seeing though.

Kill Bill next...

read the book. it's really good, one of my all-time favourites. apparently quentin tarrintino did an elaborate fight scene with everything and swords and stuff, the watched jackass, and changed it all.

oh dear.

i paid to watch bad boys 2 with the flatmates last nite. but after it was student nite, so they were showing films for free. so i saw topgun. can u imagine, on the big screen with the surround sound. wow. it was a boyhood dream. and even at 20 and not having watched it for a few years, i still knew most of the lines from it
(sad). it is the best film ever...ever!

alex

I haven't seen Top Gun. Or Dirty Dancing. What was I doing in the 80s?

Have you had your email to say if you've got the Kill Bill tickets yet? I've not heard anything so far but am hoping i got some - i registered early enough... <_<

Yep, got my e-mail today. One trip to Cardiff coming up...

Yeah got mine too - typically it came through about 5 minutes after i posted that message.

Can't wait now - assuming they post the tickets through ok before Sunday of course!

Wow! There's been mixed reviews for Kill Bill, i.e. mostly excellent but a couple of people didn't like it.

But I thought it was fantastic. Some said it was confusing but I thought it was the most straightforward one he has made... and after being cynical about the splitting into two parts, I now think it was a good thing after seeing how it worked. Then again, I saw this part free so I'll only be paying once at the most.

Roll on February...

By the way, did anyone get the free tickets for Intolerable Cruelty on Tuesday?

I saw Kill Bill last night, absolutely loved it. Best film I've seen this year and i'm definately gonna have to go see it again at some point.

Got the tickets for Intolerable Cruelty but probably won't go, don't finish work till 5pm and it'd be a nightmare getting over to notts during the rush hour. Was thinking about it but can't persuade anyone else to go as everyone else has work too so probably gonna give it a miss. Does look quite good though so might try and get there for it if i can.

But Kill Bill was superb - everyone go and see it first chance you get.

Saw 'In America' last Sunday, which I think is the last of the free films from The Times for now. It was pretty good, not normally my sort of thing but this one grew on me.

Still, there are other places you can get free previews - signing up on the Warner Village website allows you to book them every now and then...

Dang!? I didn't know anything about these free films....

Must visit Off Topic forum more often!

Finally saw Kill Bill last weekend (tho' I had to pay for it!) Thought it was very good, although extremely violent. As stylish as ever (especially liked the animated bit) but I did think Tarantino has lost some of his knack for dialogue.

My bro' watched Kill Bill this week and said it was pathetic. :S

The way Kill Bill split opinion, I expected it to be really dodgy, but I absolutely loved it. I won't be buying the DVD in February because a double-pack of the two parts is inevitable. One report I read suggested that the films will be stitched back together for the DVD release.

i went in really wanting to criticise it, but came out really impressed. i was determined it wouldnt be as good as the other tarantino films. but i think that it stands up great among the others. yeah there are faults, there are in any film, but there are some very clever moments. tarantine referencing himself:
the sword bruce willis takes down in pulp fiction in the store (after picking up various guns and chainsaws) is the same sword uma thurman uses. it has the same markings, those three gold stars. how clever/cool is that?

alex

or he used the same prop library.

How cheap/crud is that?

fair point, what a cheapskate.

alex

The free films have started again - The Times has had vouchers on each of the past three weeks. The easiest way is to go to http://www.thetimes.co.uk/filmfirst and register your e-mail address. The e-mail you receive on Friday will tell you if there will be a voucher in the Saturday paper.

I missed the first two - Freaky Friday looked crap and I was busy for the other, but finally caught one yesterday - Lost In Translation. What a great film... go see it when it opens properly on Friday.

Thanks Damian.

Do you know which cinema's are featured? It says only 25 nationwide...

I've signed up for the newsletter anyway.

Can't remember offhand. There's one in Bristol which I go to, and about four or five in London I think...

Another Sunday in work due to the mess we're in, but not before I saw another free film this morning which was called Open Range and stars Kevin Costner, who also directed it.

What can I say? If I could afford a good lawyer, I'd sue Kevin Costner to get two and a half hours of my life back.

Thought I'd resurrect this thread as The Times have started doing free films every Saturday again. There's also a much larger selection of cinemas this time so if you missed out before, you might be in luck now. This Sunday I'm seeing Collateral for nowt, but if you buy The Times this Saturday then you can see Hero (starring Jet Li) next weekend.

I've seen some ace films and some absolute stinkers (hello, Hidalgo) through this, but it's free so give it a pop... bung yourself on the mailing list and each Thursday you'll get an e-mail saying what film there's a voucher for that weekend.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,5361,00.html

Today's free film was Collateral. I highly recommend you see this one when it comes out next week. It was made by Michael Mann who produced Heat, and in spite of the dark subject matter there are a lot of bits where the whole audience laughed out loud for the right reasons.

Hopefully the free films will start improving again ... after seeing loads of good ones last year, this year we've had (as well as the aforementioned Hidalgo) Connie and Carla, Open Range, and other unspeakable ones I can't even remember the name of. Mind you, we got Lost In Translation as well.

Greedy... moi?

That was a cracker of a film, I have to say it's one of my favorites at the moment, which is odd, what with it being the first proper romantic film I've put up with.

Thought the ending worked really well too, which seems to be a sore point to many people.

I thought the ending was fantastic, though it was very nearly spoiled by the woman sitting next to me who loudly asked her friend "what did he say? I didn't hear!"

Grr... that was the point...

Next free film voucher in The Times tomorrow. This time to see Man On Fire starring Denzel Washington.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0328107/

Well, Hero was a beautiful film in every sense of the word, and you ought to see it.

Incidentally, I just got free preview tickets for the Hitchhiker's Guide film. I know the books have picked up the most horrendous geek reputation (and was Douglas Adams ever a boring interviewee), but I mention it because the film looks really good. And the reason I mention that it looks really good is that it was put together by Hammer and Tongs - i.e. the duo behind all of Silver Sun's videos. So in spite of the fact that I don't normally touch sci-fi with a bargepole, I'm looking forward to it...

Did you ever get round to going to see Man On Fire, Damian? I thought it was one of the dullest films I'd ever seen.

Until I saw Be Cool, which reached new heights/depths.

I quite liked it, especially once the revenge element kicked in!

Saw a preview of the Hitchhiker's Guide movie tonight. As expected, it looked fantastic (these are the same duo that made the Lava, Last Day, Golden Skin and I'll See You Around videos) and it was generally very entertaining, albeit a lot different from the book.

Also as expected, there were some rather, um, over-obsessed people there. Including someone who appeared to be in his twenties that actually brought a towel with him. If you know anything about the books, that's just scary.

Am sure you know this, but if not, this film is actually something like the ninth version of the story... none of the previous versions were identical (some really weren't very similar at all), so I'm sure the geeks and towel-bearers in the audience will see the differentness as an in-joke rather than a travesty. The book must have been the third or fourth version, cos there were the radio shows, then the records... then, um... ah, I'm not sad enough to remember.

There was a game as well. You can play it on the BBC Radio 4 website. It's ridiculously tough.

But this version is way different. Which will upset purists. Which I think is why I enjoyed it.

well, i'm off to see that tomorrow. at the cinema1 it's been sometime since i went to a cinema to see a film. Well, i'll let you know, but my expectation is that it will be great.

missed out on the free tix. walked all the way down there only to find theyd got rid of them. hmph. ahh well it'll be worth seeing. we also have a copy of sin city which looks amazing, though its not great quality and must be seen at the cinema.

alex

I'm off to see it on Sunday (taking my mum, who loved the books and radio show and is definitely not a geek! :lol:) and very much looking forward to it.

At the other end of the spectrum, I saw Downfall last night. Not exactly laugh-a-minute, but exceptionally good. The performances of the actors who played Hitler and Goebbels were chilling.

We went to see Hitchhiker this evening. I really enjoyed it (the Guide's graphics were lovely and I was glad to finally have an explanation for why Zaphod had two heads), but didn't you think that they'd toned down the comedy? Several times I was ready for a particular joke, and it didn't come, or it was more subdued than in the book/radio series.

I think they probably made it a little less 'English'. Douglas Adams's only request for the film was that Arthur Dent had to be played by an Englishman - otherwise they pretty much had free reign.

Certainly wasn't a laugh-out-loud film (not often, anyway), but I think the whole thing was worth it for the two Earth sequences alone - the destruction of the first and viewing of the second.

Saw it on Sunday - visually stunning, as you'd expect, and the opening sequence with the dolphins was just fantastic!

Agree with most of what has been said in the last couple of posts - I think they tried to drag a different kind of humour in, to try to widen the audience perhaps, so in some places it didn't mix too well. Wasn't convinced by Zaphod, and in some places I simply couldn't hear what was being said!