Claudio Lassala

I'm a big movies fan. Every since 2002 or so, I've been keeping track of the movies I watched. I use the IMDb website for that. Essentially, always after watching a movie I go to IMDb and rate it, and the site keeps my rating history. A few days ago I just watched movie number 300!! I was planning on watch the actual movie called 300, but that wouldn't work out because I had already seen this one, so it wouldn't count.  :)

I've just made my rating history publicly available, so anybody can check out the list of movies I've watched and how much I liked (or disliked) them.

After reaching this personal mark (which is definitely nothing compared to what other people out there have watched), I felt motivated to post something about it. So let me talk a little about bit about it.

Movies for fun and learning, and the original audio

I like watching movies for the fun of it. I'm the kind of guy that really wants to get into the mood of the movie, and don't personally like if there's people around talking too much during the movie; I enjoy capturing all the nuances of the performances, sounds, etc.

I also like imaging what it would feel like if the things had happened to me, instead of to the movie's character, or just think about the whole situation. For instance, one of my all time favorite movies is Titanic. I personally couldn't care less about the romantic part of the story; what I really like to think about is what actually happened to that ship. The bare thought of been there and living such experience makes me feel uneasy.  

Another thing I pay attention to is the reaction of other people watching the movie. To me that's a whole extra level of entertainment. Seeing what kind of gags make people laugh, or how different people react to scenes of suspense, violence, horror, romance, etc., that entertains me as well.

Usually, both before and after watching a movie, I go to IMDb to see how other people rated and what they're saying about the movie. Not that I care about the overall rating, because more often than not, I watch movies that the overall rating is bad, but I liked the movie, or the other way around, where people swear by the movie and I've hated it. I also enjoy reading trivia information about the movie, and in case I liked any actor or actress' performance, I'll look up what other movies he or she has been into.

Just for the records, I use both Blockbuster online and in-store to rent my movies. I've been using their online services for about 3 years now, and am pretty happy with it (one thing I'd like it to have, though, is integration with the IMDb for my rating history). I've tried NetFlix for two weeks, but decided to stick with Blockbuster because of the added option of having the in-store rentals.

I'm also very particular about always watching the movies in their original audio. In Brazil that's what we get anyway at the theater: original audio in English, and Portuguese subtitles. When the movie goes on TV, then it's dubbed, and I've always hated that (even more so when they used some soap opera's actor's voice on major stars... that just doesn't work for me). To me, part of the actor's performance is on the voice delivery, so when you dub that you lose a lot.

Here at home we watch movies from many different places (U.S., Brazil, Argentina, Italy, China, Japan, Thailand, to name a few), therefore we're used to reading subtitles and NEVER watch dubbed versions (or at least whenever possible).

We always the subtitles in English. This has always been of big help for me to improve my English skills, and it's been helping my wife as well. Besides that, it helps me enjoying the movie because sometimes you hear the actors talk so low that you can barely make any word out of it, but if you can read it on the screen you the miss anything.

"Foreign" Movies

Like I've mentioned before, I enjoy watching movies, no matter where they come from; I'm not scared of subtitles, and I rather prefer concentrating on the plot lines, characters, performances, etc. So here are some of the ones I watched that I'd like to point out:

Brazilian movies (or movies shot in Brazil):

• City of God: two years ago I noticed that this movie was #18 on the IMDb's Top 250 ranking so I figured I should check it out. Very good movie indeed!
• Journey to the End of the Night: I actually blogged about this one a few months ago. Not an outstanding movie, but it was shot in Sao Paulo (the city where I was born and raised).
• Auto da Compadecida: this is a Brazilian movie based on a mini-series of same name. Absolutely hilarious!!! Two guys getting into trouble and out of it so cleverly, and the performance of the actors is just top-notch. You have to be Brazilian to really get all of the funny gags, but it should still be funny for anybody else. I've put on the English subtitles just to see how some things get translated, and it isn't that great... but honestly, I can't even think how some things would get translated. I remember watching this episode of Friends where Ross'  monkey was eating some toy letters (such as an M, K, and Y, or something like that), and the gag was one of the characters saying "hey, maybe he's trying to spell out monkey!". That of course didn't work for the Brazilian audience since monkey translates into a different word (macaco). Ah, the joys of knowing multiple languages and being able to actually get the jokes out of each one of them.  :)

Argentinean movies:

• Nueve Reinas: great acting, and great plot line with some cool twists.
• Motorcycle Diaries: excellent movie! It's not actually Argentinean, but it's based on Che Guevarra's youth (who was from Argentina). I wasn't impressed with the movie during the first couple of minutes, but then it started to grow on me, and by the end of the movie I had this feeling of having just watched a great movie.

Asian movies (I'm grouping here movies from Japan, China, etc.):

These movies are essentially suspense and horror movies, which is one of my favorite genres.

There's a growing trend of American remakes of Asian movies, like The Ring (Ringu), The Grudge (Ju-On), Dark Water, etc. Usually, the original version is MUCH better than the American version. The only exception to this is The Ring, which I enjoyed the American version just as much as the Japanese one.

Dark Water and Ju-On are two movies I enjoyed the originals way, way better. Recently I've watched The Eye and The Eye 2, and enjoyed them as well (heard about an American remake being made, but am not expecting much of it). There's also Audition and Suicide Clube, which are quite interesting.

The thing I enjoy about those movies is that they don't resort that much to special effects to scare people, or to big hollywood stars to draw attention to the movie; it's usually everything concentrated on the acting and storyline.

Comic Book Adaptations

I grew up reading comig books: Batman, X-Men, Graphic Novels, etc. (I still read them quite often). I remember reading them as a teenager and thinking how cool it would be to see some adaptations to the big screen. At time, however, the technology wasn't quite there yet to make some decent movies on that genre. I'm so glad that on the recent years we've been able to see great adaptations, and I'm really looking forward to the ones to come.

There are so many great stories that have been published through the years that film producers should not find any problems finding new sources for adaptations. Many of those stories are much better than a lot of the crap that comes out of Hollywood. Here are some of the authors that have plenty of great material published: Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Will Eisner, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, just to name a few.

The movies I really liked are:

• X-Men, X2, X-Men The Last Stand: The X-Men have always been one of my favorite comic books, and I really like the way the movies came out. The first one was very good, the second one was excellent, the third one was not as good as the second one, but it was still great.
  
  One of the reasons I've always enjoyed the X-Men stories is because beyond the super-powers and all of that, there's a strong social message in there, which relates to to fact that they are rejected from society for being different, and that's a concept that translates very well as a problem on the real world as well.
  
• Spider-Man 1, 2, and 3: Again, the first one was great, the second one was excellent. I haven't watched the third one yet, but the previews and reviews looked great.
  
  I liked the Spider-Man movies because it didn't fall into the trap of showing a silly hero. Instead, it shows a troubled Peter Parker that suffers the same kind of problems a normal human being does. This goes amazingly well along with stories of the character from 30 years ago, when the whole saga Spider-Man versus Green Goblin was being told. Those stories had some very controversial elements, such as characters (Green Goblin's son) having major drug issues, important supporting characters being murdered (Peter Parker's girlfriend at the time, Gwen Stacy), and the epic battle between hero and villain, culminating with the death of the Green Goblin. That was all pictured in a serious way, and definitely not a picnic ride for kids.
  
• Sin City and 300: I'll always look forward for any adaptation of Frank Miller's work, even more so when he's involved in the production. Sin City was brilliant (more on it later on in this post). 300 was also pretty good, but I didn't like it as much as Sin City.
  
• V for Vendetta: I'll also look forward for any adaptation of Alan Moore's work. Unfortunately, Moore does not want to have his name involved with any of this. Anyway, I liked V for Vendetta. I think the movie was well done, and the storyline is just as fresh and relevant as it was many years ago when the book first came out. Also, I've always dreamed of an adaptation of Moore's Watchmen (since mid-eighties), and now they're finally working on it for real (produced by the same guy who did 300). I really hope they do a decent job at it, because the graphic novel was outstanding (it probably still ranks as my favorite one of all times!).
  
• Fantastic Four and The Rise of the Silver Surfer: these adaptations fall into that category where the produces decide to go with the "silly", or should I say more laid back, side of the comics. While X-Men, Spider-Man, Sin City, and V For Vendetta, focus on more serious topics and characters, the Fantastic Four is more about the battle of good against evil, where they use many of the funny gags during the movie, sort of reproducing those seeing on the books (where the Human Torch is always playing pranks on The Thing). These are movies that are enjoyed mostly as an entertainment than anything else. I do look forward to a more serious spin-off movie focused on the Silver Surfer, though, since there are great stories published concentrated on that character.

The ones I did not like:

• Hulk: They didn't seem to actually go read the original books to actually write something decent for this movie.
• Superman Returns: oh boy, this one sucked really bad. For one thing, I've always hated Superman. I don't know, he's just a lame hero. He doesn't have the more human side of, say, Batman, Spider-man, the X-Men, etc. He's just extremely don't-mess-with-him super powerful, wears his underwear over his paints, and that's it. Lame, lame, lame. When I saw that this movie was being made by the same director that did the first two X-Men, I thought this movie would be worth watching. I was wrong.
• Catwoman: The only good thing about this movie was the eye candy (Halle Berry); every thing else sucked.

I've probably watched almost all adaptations out there, but if they're not listed here is just because they didn't stand out as either too good or too bad.

Horror, Suspense, Thrillers, Gore movies

I've always been a big fan of horror and suspense movies. Almost anything based on a Stephen King's story works great for me.

Even though I do like some of the hardcore horror movies, I usually prefer the ones that scare you not by what you see, but by what you don't actually see. It takes some real talent to scare somebody just by implying something that one can't even see.

I don't have problems watching the gory movies. Of course, when I was a kid, that's the king of movie I'd go after.  :)  I've watched the Saw trilogy, which is pretty decent because of the intricate storyline, and kind of liked it. I've watched the first Hostel, and it was alright. Probably the last one I watched in this genre was Turistas. Because this movie was recorded in Brazil, I had an extra motivation to watch, but was disappointed. Very cheesy movie (to make things worse, they've put local people to play the roles of, well, local people, instead of actions, so the results are terrible...). To be honest, I'm getting kind of tired of the movies where the main story is based off pulling people's eyes out, and other kind of nasty torture.

I'll keep my interest more on suspense and thrillers. 

Animated Movies

I've always enjoyed animated movies, and having a 7-year old I always have to watch them. I actually watch all of them, usually with my daughter, but sometimes I watch them by myself too.

My favorite ones that come to mind are: The Incredibles, Shrek and Shrek 2 (Shrek the Third was alright, but it wasn't up to par with the first two), Finding Nemo, Cars, Ice Age and Ice Age Meltdown, Over the Hedge, any of the Tim Burton ones (Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, etc.).

A few weeks ago I've watched Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind. This is kind of an old movie (it's from 1984) and I had not heard about it before. Turned out to be pretty good. It was interesting to read a little more about it on the internet and find out that this movie had been prohibited in some countries and totally re-edited in others, mostly because of the main plot of the movie, which deals with environmental destruction.

Movies I liked, Movies I hated

It's interesting how some movies may affect me in such a way where go either "dang, that movie was amazingly good", or "ouch, what a horrid movie...". Here are the ones I really liked a lot:

• Auto da Compadecida: this movie is just hilarious! I liked it because it's not the kind of funny movie that's funny because the actors do stupid things; this one is the kind where the gags are really well thought out.
• Borat: also hilarious. Some people didn't like it because it is really wacky, which is true, but not only I liked the wacky stuff, but also the fact that it exposed a lot of funny things that happen when you put two different cultures together (yeah, I know that Borat's culture portrayed on the movie does not map to the actual reality, but that of course was intentional).
• The Lord of the Rings: all the parts of this trilogy were impeccable! Too bad the author of the books hasn't lived long enough to see the movies on the big screen... I'd be curious to see what he'd think of it.
• Sin City: This is probably the first comic book adapted to the teeth according to the original. The whole thing with the movie being black and white with only a few elements colored, it looked beautiful.
• X-Men and Spiderman: I liked all of them!
• Cinema Paradiso: see more below.

There's more, but those are a few. Now to the list of movies I hated:

• Reno 911!: Miami: oh boy, this movie is so beyond bad. It's beyond awful. Nope, in order to be classified as awful it would have to be improved a lot. Just so badly unfunny that it hurts.
• Epic Movie: same as above. It's amazing that people spend money and time putting movies like these out there.
• The Break-Up: I though, "well, there's Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughan in this movie, maybe it's good". Was I wrong. This is a very lame movie.

You know what, I'm making my vote history list on IMDb publicly available so that you can check out the movies I liked or hated. The list can be seen here.

The 300th movie: Cinema Paradiso

I suppose I should say something about the 300th movie I've watched since 2002. Like I mentioned earlier, I'd like to have watched the actual movie 300, but I had already seen it, so that wouldn't count. Therefore, I've chose a movie I had heard a lot about but have never actually seen it: Cinema Paradiso. 

Gee, it has been almost 20 years that this movie was released, and I had not watched it yet. What a shame. I could remember it was an Italian movie, and that it had won a Best Foreign movie Oscar award, and I could even remember my mom going to the theaters to watch it (which was unusual, since she didn't use to go the theaters that much. The only other time I had seeing her going was to take me to watch my first movie ever at the theater: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial).

Ciname Paradiso is an outstanding movie: superb acting, awesome storyline. No hollywood mega productions here; just story and acting holding up my attention all the way through the movie.

Great choice for my 300th movie. Let's see what the 400th movie is going to be (at my average rate of movies that I watch every month, it may take me a year to a year and a half until I get to the 400 mark). :)

Closing Notes

Hmmm... kinda of a lengthy post (and I got lazy and didn't actually listed some more movies worth noting). In fact, I've started typing this post like over a month ago... I figured I better get this one out of the door before my computer crashes and I lose everything...  :)

Hey, some people has been asking what's my band been up to.

Well, we're still looking for drummers and bass players, so if you know anybody, send them our way.  :)  The band's website is www.DescentIntoMadness.com.

In the meantime, we're still practicing every week, working on new songs, arrangements, etc, and we're in the process of recording 4 new tunes. The drums we're doing with a drum machine, so we've already recorded most of the drums and guitars, and now we're recording vocals, bass, and guitar solos. We should have something out in the next few weeks.

We've also put two songs from our last year's demo up on the ClearChannel website. One of them is called Faithless. Click here to listen to it (do it, and you'll be doing us a favor promoting the band! We sure appreciate it).

Well, that's is for now. The bottom line is: music is what gets me to tune out of my life as a software developer, and it helps keeping my sanity, so I'll try to post more about that side of my life, in case you're one of those people following that up.  :)

I was just reading the news from Brazil, and this one caught my attention: another plane crash, killing at least 200 people. CNN has some information about it.

Last September we had already seen the deadliest air accident in Brazil. After that accident, the airports in Brazil turned into a mess, which made me really nervous when both my daughter and my wife went down there last month (fortunately, they've had a safe trip).

The accident for today sounds even more dramatic. The plane had landed, but then skidded across a road and exploded when it hit a building. That gets me thinking that one's not really safe until totally out of a plane.  :-/

The airport where this happened has always being the cause for controversy, because it is located right in the middle of a Sao Paulo, in a densely populated area. Like the article on CNN says ""When you fly into Congonhas airport, it is like you are literally flying past people's living rooms in apartment blocks... Then you land on the runway. It is completely surrounded by the central part of Sao Paulo city. This is not an airport out on the edge of the city. This is right in the city.". Having landed there a few times, I can assure that; it really gives you this odd feeling.

Another accident like this one took place at this very same airport in 1996, when a plane had just taken off; it killed about 100 people - one of my teachers at the time was on the plane.

At this moment my thoughts are with the people who have lost family members and friends at today's terrible accident.

A few days ago I was watching Journey to the End of the Night. I've heard about this movie sometime last year, mostly because it was an American movie being filmed in my hometown of Sao Paulo City in Brazil.

At the time I only knew a few of the actors in the cast: American actor Brendan Fraser (for his works in movies like The Mummy and its sequels), and Brazilian actress Alice Braga (who I've seen on the all-Brazilian movie City of God - very good, by the way; she's also known for being the niece of famous Brazilian actress Sonia Braga).

The storyline of the movie is alright, and so is the acting. The idea of having all the development of the story happening in the course of a few hours is sort of interesting.

The more interesting part for me, though, was seeing Sao Paulo, the place where I was born and raised, as an important part of the movie. It's unfortunate that only the dark aspects of the city have been shown, but it had to be like that due to the main story being told. Anyway, that helped remembering what parts of the city I definitely do not miss for even a bit of a second (there's no way I could miss urban violence, as well as the terrible mess that is a city that big).

Overall, I recommend the movie.

I've always been a big fan of the X-Files. Then, I've been hearing some good things about Lost. I remember about 2 years ago I even watched a few minutes of one of the episodes while I was at some hotel room, and it seemed pretty cool. 

Last month I decided to rent the 1st and 2nd seasons and started to watch it with my wife. We've already watched the entire 1st season, and are starting to watch DVD #4 off the 2nd season. We like it pretty well. I still like the X-Files better, but Lost is definitely something I enjoy sitting down for 40 minutes and watching.

Currently, the 3rd season is being aired (I think they're about half way into it). I'll probably just finish watching the 2nd season, then wait for the 3rd one to come out on DVD, and then from there on just start recording the 4th season on my DVR to start following the series (even though I hate having to wait a full week to watch the next episode).  :)