Movie Details
| Title: | Pan's Labyrinth | |
| Director: | Guillermo del Toro | |
| Year: | 2006 | |
| Genre: | Fantasy | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.12.16 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (6)
- Crimson Peak
- Hellboy
- Hellboy II: The Golden Army
- Nightmare Alley
- Pacific Rim
- The Shape of Water
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.12.16 | Blu-ray | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2016 Yeah... I guess now I have to revisit Chronos and The Devil's Backbone as well. I mean I can't argue that the design of the fantasy creatures are bar none. If this whole movie was just the crazy dining room scene with that floppy old thing with eyeball hands then that would be enough to secure a place for this movie in history. The problem for me is that the rest of the movie is like a kind-of-good war story with a few good moments of gore and not much else. And I mean it doesn't have to be anything different... but I'd like it more if it were. So I've always said I liked Devil's Backbone more. Now it's time to watch that again and see if it holds up to my memory. Not tonight though; I'm beat. |
| 09.27.06 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2006 This was the second AICN Special Screening listed in the schedule. It was pretty much the worst-kept secret of the fest... everyone seemed to know the first day that it would be this movie, but that doesn't mean any less of us wanted to see it. So there's a whole story about why it had to be unlisted and why Guillermo, traditionally a big fan of Austin and big friend to Harry, couldn't be there in person (long story short: he's commited to premiere at the new york film festival closing night), but Harry did have a typed-out speech of Guillermo's that... for whatever reason... harry decided to read aloud in his Mexican Guillermo accent. Now... I'm not talking bad about Harry because he's the reason I got to see both this and Apocalypto and several other good films here at the fest... but I would think that if you were planning on reading someone else's writen speech out loud to 200 people, you might want to glance over it once or twice before picking up the mic. About half-way through this little paragraph, Harry stops and says "this is a tough word... I don't know this word..." then a few seconds later continues on with "para-diggum" and it's suddenly like Ted Danson just walked onstage in Blackface or Dan Quayle had written "potatoe" on a chalkboard. Everyone looks at each other with wide eyes then maybe half the theater yells out "para-DIME!" and Harry tries to cover it with a lame joke about him being mexican and that's why he mispronounced it. So paradiggum is now my new favorite word. It's replaced Crispin Glover saying "I am not a retard" in his hilariously bad southern accent as my new favorite thing to say in awkward silences. Can't believe it. paradiggum. anyway, the movie. Again, this one was much more realistic that I thought it would be. There are certainly fantasy elements present but it's like 80/20 between real drama with the spanishoccupation and rebels fighting it out and a kind of fantastical series of challenges for the main girl to go on. My immediate reaction was that it was VERY similar to The Devil's Backbone, if you replaced the ghost kid with a walking goat dude. There is some pretty cool violence, mostly in small touches that make it much more effective, and the reality of the film stands strongly on its own... it just took me a bit off guard with not being more surreal or fantasiac. Unlike The Fountain, I think my expectations made me just a tad disappointed with this, although I still liked it. So only one more day! Only three more FantasticFest films! Only one more that I haven't seen! it's all happening! First though, I went downtown for a nice little Weird Wednesday diversion. |
