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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.154.107.113
Posted on Sunday, January 20, 2019 - 11:41 pm:   

I am. I'll check in daily. Or so.
Have bought a huge tv. Been watching old favourites. The Spider-Man trilogy have become classics. Close Encounters is no longer my favourite film - the Incredible Shrinking Man is better. Close Encounters has a man running away from life, Shrinking Man is about a man embracing it. I'm now a Jack Arnold worshipper. The Bela Lugosi Dracula is now a masterpiece, and better than Frankenstein.
Planet of the Apes is still relevant, albeit preachy.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.154.107.113
Posted on Monday, January 21, 2019 - 04:14 pm:   

Still here. Unhappy but unwilling to discuss it for fear of spreading it about.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.154.107.113
Posted on Monday, January 21, 2019 - 11:15 pm:   

Still here. Unhappy but unwilling to discuss it for fear of spreading it about.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.154.107.113
Posted on Friday, January 25, 2019 - 03:13 am:   

Saw Glass today. Hadn't been keen to as I'd only liked Split a little and heard mostly bad reviews. But I'm so glad I did. Only two fights, barely any cgi, no massive set pieces...talky, slow... But it made me feel loved, if that makes sense. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.154.107.113
Posted on Monday, January 28, 2019 - 11:30 am:   

They Came From Outer Space is fantastic. I don't love Mad Max films. All my enthusiasm has gone. I'm depressed. Really.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.154.107.113
Posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - 11:40 am:   

The world's really changed since this place folded, hasn't it?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 176.12.107.139
Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 04:17 pm:   

And one day, footprints on the island that aren't yours.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 176.12.107.139
Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2019 - 04:20 pm:   

I've been watching epics. Ben-Hur, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Lawrence of Arabia. God bless the 20th century. It's not news but Lawrence is an extraordinary character study. Makes me want to reread Colin Wilson's The Outsider.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.107
Posted on Monday, February 18, 2019 - 01:36 am:   

I've got QUO VADIS and SPARTACUS to watch also. I've never seen either. Will we ever see such a wealth of work, money and time funneled into a couple of hours of entertainment again?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.61
Posted on Monday, February 18, 2019 - 05:07 pm:   

Woah! Proto! Are we still alive?
Yesterday I saw an extra on a King Kong dvd. Peter Jackson and a studio working their bums off to remake a missing scene from the film that the producer cut because it slowed the film down. So much work and effort and time. And the clip was just ok! Why? Why not? I don't know. I am living in times of not knowing what is right anymore.
Good to see you on here. Great. Hope you are ok.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.63
Posted on Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - 12:18 am:   

I hope you're okay too. I don't like Facebook either.

Strange times. I agree with Brett Easton Ellis when he says that society's cultural conversations just don't centre around film any more as they did in the 20th century. Film is who I am though. I'm a 20th century guy.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.63
Posted on Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - 12:20 am:   

I've been watching interviews with old hellraisers: watch Richard Harris on Parkinson and be amazed. LAWRENCE led me to watching lots of Peter O'Toole (see him debate Orson Welles on Hamlet and be amazed by someone who has it all: looks, erudition, talent, charm, passion).

I've also been watching as much as I can of Barry Norman and The Film Show. God, I miss him.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.204
Posted on Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - 09:33 am:   

Is this how this works? Now I'm the last man on Earth.}
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.61
Posted on Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - 10:28 am:   

Ha! No, I've just been busy. Mark Lynch is helping me self publish my old stuff to put it all behind me. I sort of stopped writing. I started carving for a while but stopped that, too. I seem unable to stick at anything. I seem to abandon everything easily. I read a book, The Unexamined Life (or was it examined?), In which a guy suggested adopted people do that to make others feel like them, which is kind of creepy and sad all at once.
Yes, I miss these old faces and methods.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.61
Posted on Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - 10:33 am:   

I think nothing is popular now. I think we got bored. I think dementia is even a kind of boredom. I think I have it.
Hey, I am on instagram, though! Posting photos without speaking is lovely. It's very calm on there. And much nicer than fb. People like William Friedkin and Stephen Moffatt are on there, and talk to you!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.61
Posted on Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - 10:35 am:   

But isn't this place amazing? A real vast, haunted house, or was museum. You can stand next to Zed or Gary Fry and shout in their faces and they won't react. It's eerie, really.
Have you got netflix? It's pretty good, really.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.61
Posted on Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - 10:37 am:   

Wax museum.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.61
Posted on Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - 10:38 am:   

Two "reallys". The old me wouldn't have done that.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.82
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2019 - 11:08 am:   

I'm not crazy about Netflix. I searched for "Hitchcock" and it turned it up nothing. I think streaming is bad for film culture and removing control from us, to keep us as perpetual renters.

http://collider.com/why-you-should-keep-buying-blu-rays-and-dvds/

I'm sticking with physical media for now. If I buy five blu ray players and keep them in storage, I'm good for life!
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.82
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2019 - 11:11 am:   

Streaming has also led to the death of the bonus feature. Luckily we had a flowering of wonderful documentaries and commentaries under DVD, but for new films..?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.82
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2019 - 11:16 am:   

I don't know why this board is still going, but I suppose bulletin boards allow you to have deep discussions. It feels like Facebook doesn't want you to do that. It's the equivalent of moving a juke box into a quiet old man's pub.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.200.78
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2019 - 01:01 pm:   

Oh, I still have and buy the blu rays, but Netflix has good things. The new Cohen film was fantastic, and was even a quiet stab at netflix itself. The episode with Liam Neeson and the kid from Harry Potter will haunt me to the end of my days.
Did you hear about the report saying young kids now entering school are incommunicative, distracted, unteachable? They know no nursery rhymes or jokes and can't meet you in the eye. It's a kind of Sci fi death of the mind. It's horrifying. Heck, so much is now.
I think the board is still here because it's been forgotten. You remember the old board? The one two boards ago? It really shook me when that went. It's like the new BBC Sounds thing replacing iplayer. I LOVE iplayer radio! It does categories of drama! But, it's gradually becoming reduced - we are being forced of the end of the plank. And at least Sounds lets you find more old things than Iplayer...but change, how I hate it.
Three films you must watch by the same director; Whiplash, Lalaland and First Man. My God, they restored my faith in film. First Man is the only film I have seen to make me feel how the moon landing must have felt. The grins of the faces of the astronauts sitting silently in the capsule! Silent, speechless joy! Such a silly, totally valuable thing to show. You felt like you were there. Astonishing. All three films are filled with joy and pain and beauty, though, and SKILL.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.200.78
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2019 - 01:02 pm:   

This is weird, talking on here again.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.140
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2019 - 07:01 pm:   

There's a new Cohen Brothers film? See, I didn't know that. I've watched some the old ones, even the ones I HATED first time around, and now really admire/like them. BURN AFTER READING and INTOLERABLE CRUELTY for instance. (I loved INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and A SERIOUS MAN straight off.)

You know, I was always shocked by seeing a child, sometimes a baby, in a buggy with a tablet. Nobody else seems bothered by it, but it seems to me, like so many thing today, to be a massive, unvoted-for, irreversible experiment. The thing that scares me is the idea that a whole generation won't realise that anything is wrong and eventually our generation will be considered abnormal.

I've seen the first two of those films but not the last. I take it it'll lose a lot at home as opposed to in the cinema, but I suppose that's a smaller difference now with big screens.

I haven't been into BBC radio in so many years. Not sure why I drifted from it. I think since I got a bit television, I've just been consuming visual media so much (and discovering and loving classics I'd never even heard of). But I could do with some more balance: more reading, more audio, and most of all more active creativity on my part.

But God, I watched Neil Jordan's ANGEL on blu ray and despite being clunky in places, it's an astonishing debut. Beautiful, spare, like a blank verse poem. And the blu ray has the option of turning off the dialogue (leaving sound effects and music). It's like getting the actors to do the whole thing again silently. Astonishing. I think it's my favourite version of the film.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.140
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2019 - 07:07 pm:   

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES blew me away when I returned to it after about 20 years. I'm going to check out THE CRYING GAME now after about 25 years (and maybe MONA LISA). Funny how Jordan has done two vampire films, a werewolf film and a ghost film. He's donated his archives to the National Library in Ireland so I might check them out. I was in the Kubrick archives in London last summer which was terrific.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.200.78
Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 - 12:32 pm:   

The best two things we watched on our old projector (back in the old house, which was easier to watch the projector in) were The Shining (scale really alters Kubrick films for the best) and Company of Wolves. I think it became a favourite film. It just seems to have matured really well.
As an aside, the minute I finished watching it i went online (at 2 in the morning!) and got in touch with the guy playing the werewolf saying how great he had been in it. SECONDS later he got back to me (he had been unwinding after directing a show) saying how grateful and touched he was, and what a great time he had had making that film. The net can be fantastic for some things...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.200.78
Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 - 12:42 pm:   

The Cohen movie never got much of a fanfare when it came out, on netflix only. It's incredible - really beautiful and slow, with a lot to say about the world. Some might say it felt like a swan song. It's an anthology piece and I watched them one at a time, which felt better somehow. It's definitely an old person's film, mourning change and the passing of things.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.200.78
Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 - 12:47 pm:   

What do you make of this new, LGBT, political turmoil world, Proto? I got diagnosed autistic since last speaking to you. Made me feel like a robot.
Everything seems to be going down the pan. I feel like the guy in I am Legend (the book), the new world rising up around him, a world he actually wanted, but which doesn't want him one jot. I feel sexist now, and I never was at all. I feel painted into a corner by a colour I personally picked. And worse, it feels like I don't understand anything; we seem to be living on a permanently swinging pendulum, and we're dizzy, shouting at one another constantly. I hate it.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.164
Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 - 09:40 pm:   

THE SHINING is wonderful, it's really growing on me. Did you see this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sUIxXCCFWw&list=PLywecxpcTSV52UMOO6tDQY2RZDjUPK 4iC

Yeah, WOLVES is wonderful too. That's wonderful that you contacted that man. Years ago you contacted Martin Bower about his models and I did the same and had a great communication with him. Making those connections is magical.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.164
Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 - 09:53 pm:   

The Cohen film sounds like a companion piece to NO COUNTRY, I suppose?

About social and political turmoil? Wow. It's hard to summarise my views on that but I'll try. It feels like the basis of it all is fear. Horror is very popular right now. I wish it wasn't, because I think it's an indicator of deep societal fear that needs catharsis.

Then we have the reactions to that fear like infantilization and refusal to take responsibility. There's anti-intellectualism and a failure to try to empathise with points of view that oppose your own. When people promote a particular view, I always ask them where's your doubt? If they can't answer that question, can't point to an Achille's Heel in their theory, than I know that they haven't thought about it deeply enough. (I think it was Karl Popper who proposed "falsification theory" - the idea that if a theory cannot be proven false in some way, it cannot be taken seriously as a scientific theory. So everyone who proposes a theory should also point out possible weaknesses in their own theory.)

I'm returning to older models of how to behave (again, from the good old 20th century!). I think we can reform the idea of what it is to be a gentleman. When people who are chronologically adults are sharing activities like paying bills or doing a driving test with the label #ADULTING, we need to make being old and responsible an aspiration again.

I don't know if that answers or even approaches your question!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.200.78
Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 12:01 pm:   

Did you know about this thing the Wright brothers did when they made things together? They would, to test out each other's arguments, adopt each others POV after raising an issue. I find that more incredible than their aeroplane.
Ive been wondering about the 'two keys' thing with the nukes. Two people turning the keys. Can't that be adapted into other situations, or the media? Arguments not being presented alone but side by side with opposing views? Newspapers having to share each others headlines and stories? No papers being politically one way inclined? I think part politics is flawed and democracy - in a world where truth is totally fucked up - is broken too. I've been reading a book on helping cope with the modern world, but the form it takes ADDS to the problems; it's tiny chapters. They drive me insane, my brain lurches over the final words of each as if a plate has been snatched away from me just as I finish chewing the last mouthful of whatever was on it. I've been reading about rumination, how dwelling on a problem can make it stay. I think we have been doing this now, as a culture. The net is like a vast discussion about mental problems and world problems, but it doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere. I just heard on the radio a guy who had an eating disorder for a year saying the best help came from his (analogue?) grandparents who instead of talking about the disorder played board games with him, did things with him. He said he stopped thinking about the problem and was able to build on what they were doing and move on. I've been to a few mental health meetings and courses on anxiety and come away MORE anxious. I seriously think the meetings should have taken place in a Warhammer or some such. Such meetings are like diging holes, it feels like.
See? Even my posts are garbled and meandering.
It's weird to be talking here again. The place has a smell, it creaks and feels dusty.
Loved the Shining video you shared. My sons were appalled and amazed to hear the hotel was a set. I think it kind of spoiled it for them, which I think it did for me when I found out. Did you know Kubrick ordered the set of 2001 to be totally destroyed after filming? I understand why, I think, though it appalls me that it happened. Have you read the article by Jon Ronson on Kubrick? I've forgotten which book it's in but it's fantastic. Such a weird, brilliant guy.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.134.108.210
Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2019 - 06:20 pm:   

I just realized I'm spoiling the archeology of this place by digging up old threads. Hey ho. :-(
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.44
Posted on Monday, March 04, 2019 - 12:35 am:   

Interesting thoughts on rumination. Yes, definitely we can pick at the scab of something and that isn't good and leads to neurosis. There's something to be said for just getting on with things (as well as understanding things, not instead of).

I did know that Kubrick ordered that destruction. I've seen what has left of the space station wheel after it was dumped - it looked like an abandoned fairground ride in an overgrown field. I haven't read the Jon Ronson things. The Kubrick's boxes doc seems impossible to find. Go to the archives in London if you're ever down there. Amazing stuff!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Monday, March 04, 2019 - 03:09 pm:   

Jon ronson is worth reading. Do you know he got into journalism from watching Scooby Doo? He says he does't believe in ghosts or UFOs, but he still manages to write with a love of mystery and wonder that he keeps you reading. And he seems nice. Apparently the show inspired quite a few journalists. I love that. And a surgeon who worked in the army was inspired by just watching the Killing Fields. Art's such a big inspiring thing, even silly art.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Monday, March 04, 2019 - 03:35 pm:   

Nice review of Logan; http://moviemezzanine.com/logan-essay/
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.190
Posted on Tuesday, March 05, 2019 - 05:28 pm:   

I saw Jon Ronson give a talk here. He did seem like a nice fellow. He has a good talk on YouTube about a woman who tweeted a questionable joke and had her life pretty much immediately ruined when the internet turned on her.

Yes, I'm constantly inspired by art. It bucks you up, makes you sit up in your seat.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.77.150
Posted on Friday, August 06, 2021 - 12:08 am:   

Following on from a clip from Barry Norman where in a cinema manager said a spirit told him to open a cinema, here's another spooky thing...

https://youtu.be/JCSoBVR3_bY?t=258
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.230
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2021 - 11:56 pm:   

That was great. Thanks for that.
I heard Bob got no mention at a recent film awards event for being "too working class for anyone to remember". I hope it wasn't true.

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