Inland Empire/ Papa Lazarou Log Out | Topics | Search
Moderators | Edit Profile

RAMSEY CAMPBELL » Discussion » Inland Empire/ Papa Lazarou « Previous Next »

Author Message
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.50.191.46
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 11:42 am:   

Anyone else see a similarity?

Circus. Man who can do things. Weird smiley thing. Many wives.

It's like Lynch saw LEAGUE OF GENTS.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 12:10 pm:   

Papa Lazarou always struck me as strangely Lynchian anyway.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.80.69
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 01:20 pm:   

Also, in the deleted scenes, he has many watches inside his coat. Didn't Papa Lazarou have lots of watches?

What're your thoughts on IE? I took the subtitle "A Woman in Trouble" literally - it means a pregnant woman. The woman watching television has found out she's pregnant and the film's about her hopes and fears: of being a film star, a dull housewife, a whore. Laura Dern is not the main character, but her alter-ego.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.50.191.46
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 02:21 pm:   

You lie about the watches!? YOU LIE!

I thought Lazarou had pegs in his coat but many watches on his wrists. Or was that Walker out of Papa's Army?

By, the way things bleed into each other when you have a limited pallet*.

*The Universe.

I made not much of it. And very much of it. Only seen it one and a half times. Very tired both times. Seems Lynch doesn't know either... doh!not this again!.
I'm backing out of it. All I saw was Papa Lazarou.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.50.191.46
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 02:29 pm:   

But I reckon it's to do with the faked moon landings.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 03:40 pm:   

The watch thing is true. He (the Phantom) was trying to sell them to a Polish girl. I think it explains (yeah, right) the references to specific times in the film. Saw it once in the cinema and it felt like a long-haul flight. On DVD it's better because you pause it to go out into the garden and scream. I'm still not convinced that DV is as beautiful as Lynch insists it is.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 05:51 pm:   

I did enjoy it, though. His films will become longer and rougher and less rational until they become life. Then life will be a DVD on your shelf, just a part of his film.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 06:04 pm:   

"Howdy! David Lynch here."

*twitching mouth*
*waggling fingers in air*
*silver quiff*

"Today, I want you all to think very carefully..."

*pause*
*one eye slightly bigger than the other*
*hair*

"...about trains."

*smile*
*hair*
*fingers*
*velvet curtain*
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.157.91.38
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 06:16 pm:   

Not enough finger waggling, Proto!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 07:07 pm:   

*fingers under curtain*
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.161.253.149
Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2008 - 10:59 am:   

A finger coming under a curtain? And that's all?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.50.191.46
Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2008 - 11:15 am:   

Chortle.

I wonder what the phantom is saying when his voice is speeded up.

"Sandwo! Tick bana!"

Perhaps.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.50.191.46
Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2008 - 04:16 pm:   

I will say that I wasn't put off by the DV look of the film. I only noticed it once in 3 hours!

The scene with the phantoms face changing at the end effed me right up. I wonder if Lynch had been on youtube.

"Mmm. Genuine Ghost Caught On Camera? Looks interesting...just tap on play with my waggly finger...Mmm, can't see any ghost...how long is the clip? 40 seconds? I can wait, it will probFUCK WHAT THE YOU DIRTY BASTARDS! That could have given me a coronary! Still, it was scary...mmm."
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2008 - 04:56 pm:   

His next film will be about a cat falling off a sofa, then. Laura Dern walking, then running, right at the camera was the nerve-jangler for me. Or when the women came in from the edge of the frame and started asking me questions.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.161.253.149
Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2008 - 07:25 pm:   

Maybe i need to see this to understand.
I've just bought a film called The Nines, which deals with 'reality'. Anyone seen it?
In fact, what are the top ten Reality Shaking Films (tm)?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.206.192
Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2008 - 11:54 pm:   

Soul Man
Betrayed
Runaway
8 Million Ways to Die
Shadey
The Stuff
The Legend of Billy Jean
Impulse
Absolute Beginners
Spacecamp
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.206.192
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 12:01 am:   

Not really. Just stuff I remembr Barry Norman reviewing or seeing on videotape trailers. Just realised I've only seen one of those but have opinions on all of them. Anyone remember noting films that came out in the past that disappeared, and then catch up with them much much later? It's an odd experience, like uncorking an old bottle.

I remember Parkinson took over from Bazza once and walked out on his viewing of Verhoven's FLESH AND BLOOD after 15 minutes. RUSSELL HARTY took over for a bit and said STAR TREK IV was good. Yes, I am a bit drunk.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.206.192
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 12:08 am:   

I've been to your homeworld

me

and seen your people

ood
skull
Huggy Bear
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.206.192
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 12:12 am:   

We've been monitoring your television for decades and are close to arriving at a verdict. Very close.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.161.253.149
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 12:41 am:   

Yes! My favourite old bad film recently was Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, which I'd heard was awful but which was, late night on BBC2 one friday night quite lovely and strange. I once said the less folk went to see a film the more energy it had later when caught up with. It has more qualities than a film that has stayed popular and been seen many times.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.210.147
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 01:40 am:   

Yeah, enjoyable stinkers. I remember Barry Norman being disgusted by a gratuitous menstruation scene in The Legend of Billie Jean. RED DAWN is another one. And LINK. THE EXTERMINATOR. RAW DEAL. And All that rubbish you used to see in the video shelves, but even back in the '80s still couldn't bring yourself to rent.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.210.147
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 01:57 am:   

AGNES OF GOD. LETTER TO BREZHNEV. CRIMES OF THE HEART. DEEP IMPACT. 'ROUND MIDNIGHT. SALVADOR. POPCORN. CYBORG. UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. THE BEAST OF WAR. BULLSHOT. MISSION TO MARS. BUDDY'S SONG. THE BRIDE.

SHADEY, though. I haven't seen it, but fragments of it hide in my brain, like a half-remembered nightmare. It's a wrong film. I'm actually a bit scared of it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.210.147
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 02:24 am:   

BUSTER. HIGH SPIRITS. AMERICAN FLYERS. THE BLACK CAULDRON. CAR TROUBLE. THE WHISTLEBLOWER. JAGGED EDGE. PLENTY. RED SONJA. THE SHOOTING PARTY. GORKY PARK. WHITE NIGHTS. YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES.

And all those bland films from the '90s. God what a horrible decade. Much worse than the '80s:
BILLY BATHGATE
UNCLE BUCK
MEDICINE MAN
BACKDRAFT
BUGSY
DYING YOUNG
FOR THE BOYS
KING RALPH
HOCUS-POCUS
KALIFORNIA
MATINEE
THE PIANO
RISING SUN
TWINS
UNDERCOVER BLUES
BLOWN AWAY
SPEED
COLOR OF NIGHT
THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
JUNIOR
ONLY YOU
THE PAPER
THE RIVER WILD
A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE

What a forgettable bunch. Maybe not as _bad_ as 80s films, but all the worse for that. Is there any way to begin tabulating the man-years wasted on creating and consuming this lot?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 67.116.103.241
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 04:10 am:   

I will admit, I like UNCLE BUCK....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.161.253.149
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 08:25 am:   

Me too, and speed, to a point.
But yes. Bland. Those lists induced shivers in me, too.
HARLEM NIGHTS
COTTON CLUB
ANGEL HEART
BIRDY
BILOXI BLUES
IRONWEED
A ROOM WITH A VIEW
BIGGLES
JOHNNY SUEDE
BLUE JUICE
CURLY SUE

Oh, Proto, I've not your stamina for this.
Cowgirls is starting to look like one of the greats.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.157.91.38
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 10:27 am:   

You just liked Uma Thurman's thumb, Tony...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:40 am:   

BIGGLES! God, I think remember poor Bazza trying to talk it up because it was a British film. Poor bastard had to do that a lot. Hang on, I feel another load coming... *bleurgh*

A HANDFUL OF DUST
CRY FREEDOM
THE DRESSER
WHITE MISCHIEF
CROUPIER
THE POPE MUST DIE
HIDDEN AGENDA
SPLITTING HEIRS
DAMAGE

Hang on, I've lost track of what we're listing. Bland 90s films or forgotten ones (but not obscure enough to even gain a cult audience)?

IRONWEED wasn't too bad, or ANGEL HEART, for Mickey Rourke's performance and the music.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:40 am:   

JOHNNY HANDSOME

*plop*
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:41 am:   

CHICAGO JOE AND THE SHOWGIRL
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:41 am:   

Angel Heart is a brilliant film. I re-watch it frequently.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:42 am:   

Johnny Handsome is great, too. Mickey is a God. :-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.130
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:45 am:   

Is it me or have I just happened across a thread whose sole purpose is to list massively shit films?

Except Angel Heart. Zed is spot on there. Brilliant
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.157.91.38
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 12:28 pm:   

ANGEL HEART is one of the few 'films-of-books' that I've read where I feel the film is an improvement on the book... Plus, as Proto says, it has wonderful music.

"Johnny. Johnny"
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.115.213
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 12:45 pm:   

Angel Heart - great film! When I saw it I really felt the chills run up my spine!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.50.191.46
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 12:48 pm:   

I couldn't get over all the sweat in that film. Buckets of it. It started raining sweat at one point.

I hope Rourke changed his underpants on a daily basis.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.8.153
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 04:23 pm:   

I have refused rewatching ANGEL HEART until all the excises scenes have been replaced. Have they been finally?... The censorship that went on regarding this film destroyed it, and made it incomprehensible... at least back when I saw it it was, long long time ago....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 06:17 pm:   

I don't know, perhaps we should A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN erase these ANOTHER STAKEOUT things permanently, cauterise the waste of GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROAD STREET time for future generations. Surely culture needs pruning, too.

GLEAMING THE CUBE.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 06:20 pm:   

Okay, I think this thread is now forgotten films which are not obscure enough to even gain a cult audience. My thesis is that the '90s has produced more of these than the maligned '80s. COOKIE.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 06:22 pm:   

Is Birdy the Nic Cage film directed by Alan parker?

I liked that one.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 06:26 pm:   

Ha! A Cage in a Bird. Sort of.

(Grr. That pun WILL work! I'll make it.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.161.253.149
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 08:59 pm:   

I reckon the titles of these sad films act like notes on a scale. This is one area, maybe a few small ones at the same end. If we move along to films of varying quality or intensity we should be able to create a series of emotional responses from a list of titles that play these 'notes' in some sort of order. It might be tricky, but I bet it can be done, to a point.
SUNSET
FILOFAX
HARLEY DAVISON AND THE MARLBORO MAN
HOUSE OF SPIRITS
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 10:02 pm:   

Craig - only the US version of ANGEL HEART had those scenes removed. Over here in blighty, it was intact.

HARLEY DAVISON AND THE MARLBORO MAN... erm , I quite liked that one too (for all the wrong reasons). Mickey Rourke can do no wrong in my eyes. :-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.223.195
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 10:26 pm:   

Haven't heard of any of those four, Tony. Couldn't hear any notes!

DREAMCHILD
THE NET
DREAM DEMON

Running out of steam...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.223.195
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:13 pm:   

CITY HALL
EXTREME MEASURES
MULTIPLICITY
CHAIN REACTION
PHENOMENON
WHO'S THAT GIRL?
THE PEACEMAKER
VIRUS
EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY
MICHAEL
ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN
MYSTIC PIZZA
THE RAGGEDY RAWNEY
IN & OUT
GREEN CARD
THE BODYGUARD
LET HIM HAVE IT
LEAP OF FAITH
LORENZO'S OIL
SHINING THROUGH
GUILTY AS SIN
STRAIGHT TALK
BULWORTH
LOST IN SPACE

Finally, not forgotten, but boring...
UNFORGIVEN
BLUE VELVET
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.223.195
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:15 pm:   

I think my writing's improving. If I can just keep this going to novel length...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.223.195
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:23 pm:   

VAMP.
THE HOUSE ON CARROLL STREET
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.223.195
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:24 pm:   

h e l p m e
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 - 11:44 pm:   

Finally, not forgotten, but boring...
UNFORGIVEN
BLUE VELVET


Boring? You have to be kidding. Those are both superb films.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.157.91.38
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2008 - 12:10 am:   

He's mad, Zed - just ignore him! Two of the best films of the last twenty-and-a-bit years, imo...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.50.195
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2008 - 08:45 am:   

It's true. Blue Velvet has become boring. It was in the papers.
TIN MEN
CONEHEADS
MAURICE
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.50.195
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2008 - 08:50 am:   

Thing is, these titles do make me feel sad. I can feel my heart sink at reading even the titles of films I've not seen or heard of.
FILOFAX's US title is even bleaker; TAKIN' CARE OF BUSINESS.

This bleak feeling also happens in telly;
BLOSSOM
MY TWO DADS
HOME IMPROVEMENT

But we'll ignore that.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.83.123
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2008 - 11:20 am:   

Oh, don't start with telly. I think FAMILY GUY has taken that on as its mission anyway. They're depressing because they remind us of how quickly our footprints will fade. But you can choose to produce work of passionate personal work if you want. That stuff doesn't decay, just gets buried and rediscovered sometimes.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.199.107
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 - 10:16 am:   

SIESTA
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.50.195
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 - 11:53 am:   

You know we've been watching the Buffy series and if anything that has improved. It's because really, the emotions in it were genuine. There was a point last week when I forgot I was watching TV. Maybe that's what quality is.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 - 01:30 pm:   

That's a practical definition of good telly, all right. And the converse for bad telly.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 - 01:35 pm:   

The Buffy characters ended up being the characters in any fiction I loathe the most, though. Smug, self-conscious, self-obsessed and self-righteous. Monsters, in fact. I'm glad FIREFLY ended when it did. I could feel myself start to resent them too.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 - 02:41 pm:   

The most recent one: KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

I bought the extended edition, and it's actually very good.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.81.76
Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 - 03:04 am:   

THE REVENGE OF BILLY THE KID
HARDWARE

Wow, get how snide Bazza is towards horror at the start of this, and how much more mature Richard Stanley seems to be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O61gm2ZuFWQ
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.205.118
Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 - 04:00 pm:   

RATBOY
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 87.102.33.174
Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 - 04:15 pm:   

Are we naming films that are good or crap?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.203.88
Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 - 10:35 pm:   

I don't know anymore.

THE SHADOW.

Forgotten films which are not even obscure enough to gain a cult audience.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 - 10:40 pm:   

Proto, I think you've vanished up your own betamax front-loader... ;-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.203.88
Posted on Monday, August 11, 2008 - 10:44 pm:   

Eh?

AWAKENINGS
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

captain cake (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 87.102.33.174
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 12:29 pm:   

EVILSPEAK.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.230
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 01:04 pm:   

Hello, Albie.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.253.174.81
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 01:41 pm:   

I remember Michael Parkinson on Film 85 saying that Donald Pleasance should use his fee from Argento's CREEPERS (paired with Tom Holland's FRIGHTNIGHT on a double bill that sadly never made it to the provinces) to buy up every copy of the film and burn them
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

captain cake (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 87.102.33.174
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 01:42 pm:   

HEY! I'm captain cake? Didn't think it would show up there.
Should have chosen something sexier.

Captain cake is a character I invented. He wears a tiered cake and lives in cake world.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.234.26
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 04:35 pm:   

For me this is about lists and names that make you feel sort of sad, films that aren't all out hideuosly bad but that failed to achieved the things they intended, or were just ill-judged.
Funny how Alan Parker crops up, and Mickey Rourke, yet no Joel Schumacher.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.234.26
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 04:37 pm:   

And we must forgive shows that slide, like Buffy. They reached peaks that others never reach and the characters live on in our minds, and for that we must be grateful.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 87.102.33.174
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 04:51 pm:   

I can't think of anything real.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:02 pm:   

Oh, FLATLINERS
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 87.102.33.174
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:07 pm:   

WHAT'S THAT GROWING OUT OF MY ASS?!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:11 pm:   

I think the archetypal type of film I'm groping for here is REGARDING HENRY. Big star, well known at the time, but a few years later, it might as well not have been made. Films so bland (not bad) that they have a half-life of about a minute.

In CARICATURE, Daniel Clowes says that the most evil thing in the world is to make a bad film. Then corrects himself to say that the most evil thing in the world is the pay to see a bad film. Then corrects that to say that the most evil thing in the world is to pretend to yourself that a bad film wasn't that bad when it was. The subtle erosion of aesthetic or moral standards, much like that which is occurring in Beijing at the moment. The world throwing their hat in with torturers and organ harvesters. (Have I wandered? Why am I on a traffic island in my pyjamas?)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 87.102.33.174
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:13 pm:   

Who's this on my traffic island?

Imagine a traffic island that's a condensed Venice.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.234.26
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:16 pm:   

Regarding Henry was the dullest, emptiest film I have ever seen.
China seems to be changing with the world's eyes on it. 'Out of this great evil some great good must come'. I hope.
Hey - Flatliners has a handful of brilliant moments! I quite enjoyed that one.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:25 pm:   

China won't change unless it's compelled to. And that pressure isn't coming from anywhere, not from our leaders, not from the contestants on DRAGON'S DEN who often have their products made there) and not from the shocking number of Western based Chinese who seem happy to defend the regime. A Chinese-British theatre director was on Newsnight last week saying that we must be patient with China, that younger generations will be more compassionate (actually, the younger generations seem to be more nationalistic if anything). I'm sure he still thinks of himself as right-on, but what he's saying is that he's okay with torture and repression continuing for the next few decades. China won't spontaneously change any more than Oceania would. China will change us, IS changing us already. Making us trade our morality for cash.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:31 pm:   

It's like Argentina in '78. What did the world do to that regime? Went and had a game of football in it.

This is irrelevant:
http://www.oddee.com/item_96462.aspx
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:32 pm:   

Oh, there's a more recent Harrison Ford one: HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:39 pm:   

What was that all about? I don't really care about China. I'm more worried about Tony liking FLATLINERS. And Luxembourg. They've been keeping suspiciously quiet.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:41 pm:   

WALL-E was pretty good, but I realised during it that even the best Pixar films are missing the menace of the classic Disney pictures. That villan that enters about 1/4 of the way into the film and shows you what the stakes are: Cruella De Ville or the witch in Snow White. Am I right in saying that there are no villans in Pixar's work?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:42 pm:   

Actually, WALL-E was a solid "good", not just "pretty good".
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 06:46 pm:   

I left the "I" out of "villan" twice. Maybe that's Freudian. I don't really believe in Freudian slips though. Mother-tunnel.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.245.88
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 07:02 pm:   

I've loved my mother in her Freudian slips.

I will name again a film from the 80's that Emily Dickinson-ishly was hidden for 2+ years after being completed, released to no fanfare, became forgotten, and is now I think a great preserved gem of that era: O.C. AND STIGGS.

But I have not friggin' clue what this thread is really all about... what else is new....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.234.26
Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - 10:24 pm:   

That's ok Craig. I don't either.
I disliked WAll.e. And Ratatouille. Instead of us letting us decide how the world is for ourselves and what quality is they are preaching to us about it. They could show us in the periphery of a story, in it's soul or subtext, but must it all be at the forefront? I responded to the beauty and mood of both these films and that was enough, was all I needed to persuade me what 'quality' was or whatever. And beautiful films they are, to be sure.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 08:38 am:   

Tony, have you ever considered that people these days need lecturing? As species, we have become so stupid, money-driven and empty that some filmmakers - like Pixar - can see no other way of doing it than to preach.

That's my somewhat downbeat (quel suprise)view of the matter.

I think Pixar films are a small-scale miracle: beautiful, transcendant, spiritual, accesible, rich...films you can watch with any age group. They are miles better than those gilmi (sp?) japanese animations.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.198.90
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 08:54 am:   

I don't think people need to be lectured. I always find it insulting when a film tries to 'teach' me things, especially where morality is concerned. Have a message if you must, but don't be blatant and patronising about it. Idiots aren't going to be swayed anyway, and intelligent folk don't need to be talked down to.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 09:57 am:   

They are miles better than those gilmi (sp?) japanese animations

You heathen philistine
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 10:03 am:   

But Huw, you and I are not the target audeience for these films.

I'm being something of a devil's advocate here, but Pixar, to me, are a revelation. I struggle to find cartoons for my son to watch that aren't completely amoral and don't contain mindless and pointless violence. The Pixar films buck the trend; they have a good heart and teach values I want my son to have - the values I also try to teach him myself.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 10:51 am:   

f
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.234.26
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 10:54 am:   

Zed - get the old disneys. The values are there but it's not a whiteboard and stick thing. The cut off point for me was Cars, the last one I enjoyed, maybe even Incredibles (Mr Incredible was loathsome). Nemo was the peak.
Meet the Robinsons is great, btw. More fun and more affecting as a result.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 10:58 am:   

All those films are secretly about me. I'm sick of them using my past lives as fodder for the mass market.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 12:00 pm:   

Tony, why did you find Mr. Incredible loathsome? I don't understand. That cartoon was a masterpiece, IMHO.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.157.91.38
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 12:51 pm:   

THE INCREDIBLES is my favourite Pixar, followed by TOY STORY 2, and as such can find nothing bad to say about the former at all. :-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.234.26
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 12:51 pm:   

He rejected that kid at the beginning. Society's rot was caught within the film's frames.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 01:04 pm:   

Erm, that was kind of the hinge of the whole story - he was wrong to reject the kid. His character grew.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 01:50 pm:   

Forgive him, Tony. So we might al least get on with our lives! Well, I don't have a life. I'll just sort of squeeze between your lives, that you're getting on with. Or I might just sit over here....yes, here will do.
(you might have guessed by now that I am on another NEW DEAL work placement which has given me foolish amounts of time to use the web.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 01:52 pm:   

I like aninmations to be hand drawn. I like them to look like someone has made an effort to produce it. All these purely computer animated things just look lazy to me. tell the computer to move the arm from point A to point B filling in all the gaps in between and the computer does the work. there's no real effort or integrity to them.

A cartoon should have more than just technical proficiency behind it. It needs a heart and soul that only hand drawing it can give.

Check the ball room scene in Shrek where it's clear that they've just cut and pated 4 couples dancing in the background. it looks cheap and nasty.

It's rubbish. And the script and vocal work was as well (I hate Mike Myers and have never been the biggest Murphy fan either).

The Studio Ghibli cartoons are amazing to watch with interesting stories and real talent flowing from every frame. Pixar can't hold a candle to them.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 01:57 pm:   

I disagree - there's real heart and integrity to the Pixar films. Also, it takes a humungous amount of time and effort (and, yes, love) to produce something as rich and layered as these cartoons using a computer.

Indeed, compare Shrek and its sequels (which come across as by-the-numbers) with the Pixar films - for example Toy Story and the remarkable Toy Story 2 - to see what I mean.

They bleed love, these films. Seriously.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 02:00 pm:   

Oh no they don't!

(excuse me but I'm trying to write a panto at the moment)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 02:05 pm:   

He's behind you! (Albie, that is, leering over your shoulder like a dirty thought.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 02:33 pm:   

Like a fart with fingers.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.157.91.38
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 02:48 pm:   

A cartoon should have more than just technical proficiency behind it.

It should, and in the case of most of Pixar's output, it does.

It needs a heart and soul that only hand drawing it can give.

I have to say I don't agree at all - what's good about good animation can (and does) exist in all kinds. Pixar are amongst the few to show that computer animation works well, given good writing and direction. And I think SHREK a poor example; it has life and humour, but the graphics are, as you've noted, shoddy at times.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 03:51 pm:   

MISSISSIPPI BURNING

You're right, Tony, that's another Alan Parker.

For a look at how rubbish telly was 20 years ago and go to the end for a taste of Parky trashing Creepers and Fright Night. Wish I could find the whole thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3H6zz4DA00

(This is what I'll tell my grandkids I did with my life.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 04:16 pm:   

Computer animation always looks to me to be devoid of the human touch. It's impersonal and cold. I know a little of how it's done and when you're using computers worth more than the average house you're always going to come out with a product where you can see every hair move on a characters head, but that's not what it's about.

I have no idea which studio makes what but I've seen shrek and the first two toy story's and Madagascar. I hated all of them, mainly for the impersonal animation. there was no feeling in it, no... no... I don't know what the word is but it's soomething I only get when I watch something hand drawn (or modeled - I love Wallace and Gromit) - something I know and can see that love and care has gone into preparing - and not just telling the computer to move a limb from a to b, shifting all the hairs on it as it goes.

I spent the whole of Madagascar hoping the lion would get on with it and eat the rest of the cast
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.195.189
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 04:46 pm:   

I think Hayao Miyazaki's animated Studio Ghibli films are among the best ever made. There is so much more depth and magic in them compared to most western animation. Their messages (when present) are, on the whole, handled with more maturity and subtlety.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - 09:48 pm:   

OUTBREAK
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008 - 09:18 pm:   

QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Friday, August 15, 2008 - 07:10 pm:   

OVER THE TOP (yes, scores of creative people once collaborated to make a film about arm-wrestling.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.7.182
Posted on Friday, August 15, 2008 - 07:25 pm:   

Imagine yourself in a little room where the walls and floor and ceiling are covered in mirrors. Wouldn't that drive you mad?... (Someone could easily make it, how come no one (that I know of) has?)

Imagine now a warehouse - a hangar! - with walls/floor/ceiling all covered in mirrors.

You would. You'd go totally mad.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.207.206
Posted on Friday, August 15, 2008 - 11:20 pm:   

I did. It was rubbish.

WITHOUT A CLUE.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.7.135
Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 01:21 am:   

Ah. Got it.

SECOND SIGHT.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.184.109
Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 04:06 am:   

Craig, a very similar mirror theme was explored in the disappointing anthology-style film RAMPO NOIR, which adapts several Edogawa Rampo stories, including 'The Hell of Mirrors'. I can't remember the exact details of the story, but I believe the protagonist enters some kind of construct in which he's completely surrounded by mirrors, and ends up going mad.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.110
Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 10:04 am:   

I was thinking about RAMPO NOIR yesterday, Huw!.
Probably during the Japanese episode of TRAPPED ASHES. No sign of a release for it here yet.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 12:11 pm:   

MIGHTY BOOSH. EPISODE: BOLLO.
"There are over 17 mirrors in my mirror world!"
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.196.16
Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 01:33 pm:   

There's There's a a Thomas Thomas Ligotti Ligotti story story with with a a mirror mirror room room too too.

I think you'd get used to it.

SOAPDISH
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.7.39
Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 04:36 pm:   

I'd go see RAMPO NOIR, HUW, but you say it's disappointing, and life is exceedingly short to waste on such things... unless someone else can say it's not bad....

No story can match the reality, Proto.

Hey, there's a horror movie about mirrors coming out, called, aptly enough, MIRRORS. I saw the trailer, looks like it could have some potential... like every other trailer ever made....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.194.171
Posted on Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 04:06 am:   

I thought RAMPO NOIR strained way too hard to be gruesome and weird, but your mileage may vary, as they say.

Other 'mirror' movies (or parts of movies): the MIRROR MIRROR series, the scene in submariner-horror BELOW, the mirror scenes in the RING series, and the segments in DEAD OF NIGHT and FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. There must surely be more...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.215.190
Posted on Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 12:48 pm:   

That's what the internet is - a bloke in a mirrored room talking to his other personalities.

MEMPHIS BELLE
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.184.198
Posted on Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 02:20 pm:   

Has anyone listed FOOTLOOSE yet?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.227.148
Posted on Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 04:42 pm:   

But why has no one made a mirrored room? Why has evidence of same popped up nowhere, naturally? Just like another question I've asked - why does no one make gigantic cat-sized totally-real-to-life squirming, slimy replicas of houseflies, or silverfish, or spiders? There's probably other examples of "harmless" sanity-sapping activities that could be done, but no one has, because - my real thesis - we instinctually avoid anything that induces madness: madness is anathema more than death, because madness is living death. People jump off of buildings and throw themselves in front of speeding cars... but they don't try to trigger madness in themselves, they don't seek out madness... no one tries to melt down his own sanity, willingly....

REPOSSESSED.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.205.95
Posted on Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 10:59 pm:   

People unconsciously mess themselves up mentally as much as they do physically. If you make a conscious decision to do so, doing it physically is much more reliable and quicker.

THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE

It's all Alan Parker, isn't it?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.17.16.44
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 01:05 am:   

People choose to wallow in certain states: anger, love, lust, envy, hate. They feel suicidal. They feel optimistic. They feel ennui. They want to die. Or get a massage. Or eat cheese. Or are in physical pain. Or want to be clear-headed about things.

No one seeks out to be mad, crazy, stark raving bonkers. Consciously seeks this out. Why not?....

CRAZY PEOPLE.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 12:51 pm:   

I chose to go mad when I was 16. I did it by making faces and squatting on my bed. Then I forgot about it...until years later and I was really insane. Honest.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 12:53 pm:   

I use booze to go mad too. Coupled with emotive music such as Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John and certain images stored on my laptop...I can pretty much enter a state of near lunacy. It isn't always easy to get to.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.219.94
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 04:21 pm:   

Why do you do it? Boredom? Escaping pain?

TRUE IDENTITY
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.219.94
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 04:25 pm:   

Wish I could remove those pictures from earlier in the thread.

THREE FUGITIVES
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.4.63
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 04:28 pm:   

Wait a minute... you're asking Albie?... but I - I thought you two were the same person!... OMG!...

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 04:48 pm:   

It's enjoyable. I forgot to mention that. I also forgot to mention that you have to listen to the song over and over and over again. After a while they stop working. I'm pretty close to madness all the time anyway. But it takes many forms.

But i first decided to go crazy because I was going crazy anyway, and thought I might just as well go with it.

It also helps to look at pictures of yourself with a crazed expression.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 05:30 pm:   

It's a kind of excited sadness.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.13.51
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 05:30 pm:   

Stay crazy, Albie, and keep writing stories like that last one... about the couple who are house-hunting... the title's the only thing that didn't stick in my mind... I liked that one... what was it called again?...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 05:43 pm:   

The Move. I couldn't think of a better title. I wanted it to have a double meaning. As you do. I suppose it could be a move as in a battle move.

My brain refuses to conjure such entities now. But I do try. I had this idea...hah!...which is just a series of bizarre images which culminates when it is revealed the images are what a man is thinking about while he tosses off.

I bet Ramsey already did that! In a book, I mean.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.13.51
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 05:58 pm:   

I bet Ramsey already did that! In a book, I mean.

Er... nah. Forget it. Not gonna go there. To that book, I mean, without gloves - well, dammit. I guess I did go there.

Yeah, you need a better "pun" title, I think. I'm sure there's lots of "move" phrases. "Moving" - with a triple pun? Keep thinking.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 06:04 pm:   

Lost Luggage?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.160.23.143
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 06:07 pm:   

There's an excellent Craig Raine poem with that theme called 'Gauguin', written in pidgin English. I won't quote it here (copyright etc), but it's in his collection RICH.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 77.86.104.231
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 - 06:08 pm:   

You mean he's tossing off over Gauguin?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.210
Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 09:23 pm:   

WATER
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.17.14.117
Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 10:41 pm:   

I came across a Gauguin print once, in a second-hand store. My wad was low at the time, so this other jerk-off, he comes and shakes it from me. "I seed it first!" he shouts. "Come again?" "See, man..." he starts - then jets. The scum tosses stuff behind him - me: "I'm coming! I'm coming!" all the way behind. Then he shoots. Almost creamed me. Jeez, I think... jeez, jeez, jeez....

Did I forget to mention the sperm?

EXIT TO EDEN
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.219.224
Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 09:24 pm:   

THE ROCKETEER
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.245.255
Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 04:46 am:   

And, finally,

STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT

END OF THREAD
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.204.8
Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 01:38 pm:   

FAR AND AWAY
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.8.16
Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 04:51 pm:   

I'M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKA
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.186.103
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 08:45 am:   

Hey! That was a decent little film, Craig - leave it alone, or I'll make you OG on bling!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.198.171
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 01:28 pm:   

THE GODFATHER

Doesn't fit into our category, but really -- it's not that good.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 01:44 pm:   

I'll have to disagree with you there, mate - The Godfather is one of the finest films ever made. The Godfather 2 is even better. The final film in the trilogy isn't half as good, but is still a lot better than its reputation suggests.

HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE

(beat that, ya buggers!)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.186.230
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 01:54 pm:   

HARLEM NIGHTS.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.210.149
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 03:39 pm:   

MALCOLM X

The Godfather is okay, but vastly over-rated and Brando's performance ludicrously so. He put cotton wool in his mouth to try to achieve some form of transformation but all I can see is an actor with cotton wool in his mouth.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.210.149
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 03:42 pm:   

And James Caan's performance is hilariously over-the-top. When his sister shows him her black eye and he bites his fist in shock it's hysterically funny!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.7.185
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 04:49 pm:   

Fine - I'll remove I'M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKA from the table (which I remember only having many one or two funny bits... guess I should revisit it...), and see you with

THE HARD WAY
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 07:04 pm:   

BEST SELLER
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.89.86
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 01:49 am:   

THE ONION FIELD

Once lauded, now forgotten. Maybe because it features one of the most excruciating scenes of violence against a child ever suggested in a film?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.193.191
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 02:09 am:   

Stop knocking James Woods, you lousy bastards! ;-)

THE BOOST
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.88.131
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 12:30 pm:   

COP
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 02:14 pm:   

I love COP - it's an underrated gem. Based on James Ellroy's "Blood on tene where he Moon", I believe. It contains a great and disturbing scene where Woods' character tells his young daughter bedtime stories...real tales about crooks and killers and pimps rather than fairy tales.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 02:15 pm:   

"Blood on tene where he Moon"

WTF????

"Blood on the Moon".

The cursor on my laptop leaps about like a Mexican jumping bean...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.213.191
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 03:15 pm:   

Yeah, it's not a bad film, just forgotten.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.240.84
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 03:26 pm:   

K-9
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 06:06 pm:   

K2
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.185.206
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 06:39 pm:   

GHOULIES
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.219.122
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 07:09 pm:   

K-19
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.15.13
Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 07:04 pm:   

Wrong way, Proto. You were supposed to counter with

TURNER AND HOOCH

or

BEETHOVEN

... Jesus, man, do I gotta do this for you?!....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.214
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 01:17 am:   

Here's a surprise. Not forgotten, but I've just watched it and, apart from the last scene and a couple of other good moments, a little boring:

CHINATOWN
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.244.65
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 01:50 am:   

?!?!

Blasphemy!

Now go slit your nostril for that scurrilous statement.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.138
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 11:08 am:   

Someone's going to put 'Big Ed' Montoro's MUTANT on here soon & then I'll get annoyed.

Anyone remember MUTANT? Craig? Zed?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 11:50 am:   

I absolutely love MUTANT - Wings Hauser's finest hour. His only hour, really. MUTANT 2 is a lot of fun, too, but not as good.

CHINATOWN is wonderful, Proto.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.199.36
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 12:37 pm:   

CHINATOWN has a good script, but a lot of it seems poorly directed. There's a very, very well-written scene with Nicolson and Huston having lunch that's played so fast that all the beats in the writing are lost. I don't think that's deliberate. And the references to water are very heavy-handed.

I'm beginning to think Polanski is over-rated. MACBETH, KNIFE IN THE WATER, THE TENANT, REPULSION all seem just okay. ROSEMARY'S BABY is powerful, but I'm not sure how much it withstands repeated viewing.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Martin Roberts (Martin_roberts)
Username: Martin_roberts

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.5.239.91
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 12:47 pm:   

MUTANT is one of my guilty pleasures from the 80's - I recall I was disappointed with MUTANT 2 and only seem to remember the cow birthing sequence?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.138
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 12:59 pm:   

MUTANT - the only period in his life when Wings Hauser stopped drinking for a bit. Apparently the director had a lot of trouble with the female lead (can't remember her name - shocking) because she kept forgetting to put her panties on in the mornings so she couldn't do scenes in her short skirt where she had to run or climb over things


Aha! MUTANT 2 of course bore no relation to MUTANT and was originally titled THE FALLING & then BIOSHOCK. It was directed by Deran Serafian and had Dennis Christopher & Lynn-Holly Johnson in it but was somehow Italian. I remember the bit where the squidgy little monster springs up onto the windscreen at the end of the picture.

CHINATOWN is wonderful by the way.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.11.200
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 02:27 pm:   

CHINATOWN - I always watch it when it comes on the telly as I do ...let's hear it one more time for...DONNIE DARKO!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.196.205
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 02:54 pm:   

I think reputations stick, and Polanski is all about reputation (good and bad). CHINATOWN saw him at his zenith, one that arguably coincided with Nicolson's and Dunaway's. Add John Huston for legitimacy, a good script, and all it takes is a few critics calling it a "modern classic" and it goes on with that status unquestioned. The same applies to THE GODFATHER. Does CHINATOWN improve with repeated viewings?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.255.80
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 03:43 pm:   

Me never heard of MUTANT...?...

CHINATOWN: the original script I actually found to be awkward and bloated. Roman Polanski greatly improved upon it. I've seen it any number of times, and it improves every time I do. Its status is certainly not unquestioned: it's a basic film text for college film studies - so it's ever being continually analyzed and broken down and taken apart - "unquestioned," no (even less so THE GODFATHER).

"The references to water are all heavy-handed"?! - the whole story is ABOUT water!

MACBETH and ROSEMARY'S BABY are sufficient to round out Polanski as a genius to me....

And how dare you Ally bring up DONNIE DARKO in my presence!

MY DEMON LOVER
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.227.225
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 04:30 pm:   

Chinatown's also one of those rare movies, where a famous phrase from it - an oft quoted line - is spoken by a minor character: "Forget it Jake - it's Chinatown."

I can't think of many more movies where the famous quote is spoken by an extra... hmm... there's "I'll have what she's having" from WHEN HARRY MET SALLY... oh yes, and of course, from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD: "Send more paramedics."
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 05:42 pm:   

The film isn't about water any more than TAXI DRIVER is about public transport. The fact that it's a basic text in film college strengthens rather than weakens my point.

Oh, I mean CLOCKWISE.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.85.25
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 06:48 pm:   

The film isn't about water any more than TAXI DRIVER is about public transport....

Um... the whole water-rerouting controversy in California? The underpinning of the ENTIRE PLOT? The water that figures as the major clue in the murder mystery?

You mean thematically? Okay, it's not thematically "about" water, no more than TAXI DRIVER is "about" public transport - but if one were to say TAXI DRIVER's references to taxis were "heavy-handed," it would be equally silly.

But you don't have to like it... no one's forcing you to... one must always remember where you're not supposed to cast pearls....

TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.242.126
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 07:17 pm:   

"MACBETH and ROSEMARY'S BABY are sufficient to round out Polanski as a genius to me...."

Hear-hear! I'd also add THE PIANIST to that list - an amazing film; simply brilliant on every level.

The ending of CHINATOWN is unforgettable.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.11.200
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 07:27 pm:   

I love http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fearless_Vampire_Killers
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 09:00 pm:   

"if one were to say TAXI DRIVER's references to taxis were "heavy-handed," it would be equally silly."
If weak puns ("water on the brain") and unsubtle clues falling like anvils abounded in TAXI DRIVER, it would be silly too.

"But you don't have to like it... no one's forcing you to... "
This is a non sequitur.

"one must always remember where you're not supposed to cast pearls..."
Were you going for 'snide' there? You ended up at 'catty'. Try to butch it up a bit and have another go. You can do it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 67.116.103.241
Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 04:15 am:   

Let's see... how about... um... gosh, I dunno... I'm not good at this... what can I say, if you don't appreciate CHINATOWN?... I've got nothing, really... I slink away, with my precious pearls....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.213.167
Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 10:50 am:   

FREEJACK
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.225.22
Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 11:35 am:   

Come on, CHINATOWN is a superlative movie in every way. The scene that does it for me is when Jake has his little conversation with the Chinese gardener about salt water . . . And the music is unforgettable, from the romantic opening strains to the menacing undertones when Jake first arrives at Noah Cross's property. You don't have to like Polanski to see this is a major triumph.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.82.82
Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 03:13 pm:   

What was it about the gardener scene that you liked? I'm not being awkward, I really want to understand what I'm missing.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.236.145
Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 04:17 pm:   

I will concede one thing about my unabashed love for CHINATOWN: the hard-boiled detective tale/film is one of my top-tier favorite genres. So, I have a heavy prejudice in its favor... my tastes I like to think are high, there's only a scant few classics in this field... but, it is possible - possible - that I am unfairly biased in CHINATOWN's favor....

Except that I'm not.

COOL AS ICE
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.208.192
Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 11:18 pm:   

I've made specific points against the film, but most of the voices in favour of it simply say "You're wrong. It's brilliant." Criticism is useless if it's not specific. (Maybe people just can't be bothered -- which is fair enough, actually.)

Look at the scene between Huston and Nicolson having a fish lunch again. Listen to the subtlety of the dialogue -- it's a duel of wits, each character slyly scoring points over the other while simultaneously peeling away layers from both the characters' pasts and the plot, like old paint under the Californian sun. Then look at how the direction ignores all of those beats and settles for a boring two-shot that makes it difficult to even see the actor's work. The only modulation in blocking is to go to one-shots when Nicolson threatens to leave, a pedestrian piece of film grammar at best. That's a badly directed scene. If you disagree, don't tell me that I'm wrong, just tell me why I'm wrong.

AN AMERICAN TAIL
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.17.16.84
Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 01:57 am:   

I think you'll like both DONNIE DARKO and THE MIST, Proto. DONNIE DARKO has lots of truly amazing direction in it; and the camera in THE MIST doesn't stop moving - though regardless, you can still see all the actors acting.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.208.127
Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 06:06 pm:   

Well done, you finally hit snide, while failing to engage with any of the details of my point. I'll let that speak for itself.

HOOK

and, THE TERMINAL, a masterclass in bad directing that was somehow physically difficult to watch.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 06:40 pm:   

Chinatown is haunted by another film. It's a so-so cop movie on the surface with something big and strange behind the scenes, something akin to horror or Ray Harryhausen. I liked it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.15.220
Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 07:10 pm:   

Oh, come on! I'm just having fun with you. It's all good.

I'm sure if we got together for a drink, we'd wax on and on about films, and find more ground to agree on than not.

Then you'd drive away, me waving good-bye. Someone else would take a pot-shot at you, I'd try and stop him - but alas, your car would hit the curb, the horn would wail... it'd be out of my hands at that point... meh, forget it: it's Chinatown....

CONGO
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.253.251
Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 09:32 pm:   

Oh, come on! I'm just having fun with you. It's all good.

Ah, the age-old cry of the bullying personality: "I was just having a laugh. Where's your sense of humour?"
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 11:50 pm:   

SLIPSTREAM
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.213.29
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 12:20 am:   

I was going to do that one!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.77.207
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 04:29 am:   

[pushes Protodroid in front of oncoming semi]

"What are you flinching for? I'm just kiddin' around!"

[back-and-forths '57 Pontiac Superchief over Protodroid's head]

"Fun, I tells ya! Fun!"

[kicks Protodroid's dog]

"FUUNNNNNNN!!!!!"

<---the international symbol for: No matter what I said or how it came out, you don't have to worry about taking any offense at it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.179.6
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 12:22 pm:   

I like CHINATOWN. I like THE TWO JAKES too - so there. :-p
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 03:54 pm:   

I kinds liked THE TWO JAKES as well. I like that scene at the end when Keitel and Nicolson sit down and just talk about



[SPOILER]



Keitel's impending death from cancer.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 03:58 pm:   

THE TWO JAKES
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 04:11 pm:   

I've probably done this one before: THE THIRD MAN. Unnecessarily convoluted plot disguises a boring story. The direction seems to amount to using a Dutch tilt for every single shot.

Good points: it's well-lit.
Bad points: Unless Orson Welles is on screen, it's tedious.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.225.22
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 04:47 pm:   

"What was it about the gardener scene that you liked? I'm not being awkward, I really want to understand what I'm missing."

The gardener mumbles something about salt water being very bad for the grass, at which point it dawns upon Jake that Mulwray was drowned in the 'tide pool' in his own back garden. The look of sudden comprehension on Nicholson's face is marvelous.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.88.94
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 07:10 pm:   

Ah, the second scene with the gardener. Yes, that beat when Nicolson stops dead is good. I'll check that out again.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.244.185
Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008 - 07:50 am:   

THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.212.23
Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 - 11:43 am:   

DO THE RIGHT THING
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 31, 2008 - 04:33 pm:   

FORREST GUMP
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 01:40 am:   

Forrest Gump is ok! At least it's not dull.
These sad titles make me feel incredibly pained, as if a bubble of grief is forming inside me for lost opportunities and wasted time.
TIN MEN
CADILLAC MAN
NADINE
I also feel sad at faded stars names; Danny De Vito, for instance, Brian Dennehy, or Frederick Forrest, Martin Short. I actually worry about them.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 01:42 am:   

Sometimes we aren't even talking about bad films but films that have faded from memory, like dreams in the morning when we wake, dissolving in the air while we watch.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.180.219
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 01:45 am:   

I found FORREST GUMP extremely dull! I agree that many of the films listed on this thread aren't bad, though. On the contrary, I think more than a few of them are good.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.154.242.64
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 03:17 am:   

I found FORREST GUMP extremely dull!

Me too - couldn't wait for the bloody thing to end...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.252.180
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 08:15 am:   

I actually worry about them.

Please don't worry about them, Tony... please don't worry about bloated overpaid overprivaledged primadonna Hollywood ACTORS....

CLIFFORD
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 09:26 am:   

Not all - just the ones I like. I would never be able to cope with huge swathes of folk forgetting me.
Forrest Gump I don't love exactly, but it did move me a few times, which always counts for something. I also disagree that it's some apologist thing for right wing America; it's about all of America.
Bad films. This week me and my son watched Evil of Frankenstein and Ghost of Frankenstein. Neither were half as bad as I remember, in fact both were lots of fun, and had ideas I was glad to be witnessing. It reminded me that anything of any quality can inspire, and that if you come away from a bad film with one good idea it's worth it (apart from Get Smart, which is one of the worst films I have ever seen).
Lon Chaney was actually pretty good in it, too, btw. At least he was tall. And Kiwi Kingston was sympathetic, too, cardboard box on his head and all. He felt sort of genuine. And is it me, or was Frankenstein a sign of things to come, the monster the ultimate vulnerable adult?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 09:29 am:   

Er, Lon Chaney was not in Get Smart, I hasten to add, but rather Ghost of Frankie.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.221.16
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 10:48 am:   

HELLBOY 2

This is a prediction, having seen it yesterday. Sheesh, what a stinker! My patience has finally snapped with Del Toto's teeny bag of repetitive tricks:

- over enthusiastic sound engineering in which all blades go "schwing!" and all insects go "chitter-chatter",
- tentacles,
- intricate cogs and levels clicking stuff together,
- Intricately designed creatures that fail to resonate in one's heart. Nightbreed's monster menagerie had much more soul.

His films are Faberge eggs - rococo on the outside, but inside...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 10:52 am:   

I feared this. I like him, though, despite this, as I like Joe Dante even though his films are almost unbearably 'smart' and knowing.

Someone should take all his money off him, see what remains. He's in a tricky spot wherein his serious stuff (I did like Pan's very much) will start to make his fun stuff look empty.

I'm in the process of buying all the Hammer Frankensteins; now these ARE fun. Miles more so than I recall.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.89.22
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 11:19 am:   

"cogs and levers", I meant.

I could never really get into Hammer films. Like Doctor Who, they seem to require a bed of nostalgia and all I saw when I was young was some of the TV series, whose damp '70s atmosphere still haunts me. Grim, grim stuff. Who needed horror in the '70s anyway? Just watch the news.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.89.22
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 11:22 am:   

I've just looked up Faberge eggs and the first one looked like an ordinary egg from the outside, but had a golden hen inside its yolk! Can't use that metaphor anymore.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 11:58 am:   

Yeah, my memories of the Hammers were from far back. Thing is, a lot of them seemed very bad at the time and so I don't know where that nostalgia comes from. Maybe it's for their feel. Also, I watched one with Billy on Friday night and it really hit the spot; Evil of Frankenstein seemed quite polished for instance, quite thoughtful. And it's just nice to see the monster doing different things, have his concept shaken up.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 12:01 pm:   

Hmm. I Like Del Toro but only Hellboy 1 and Pan's Labyrinth really do it for me. He's kind of like the anti-Shyamalan in some ways. Maybe they should swap material.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.81.170
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 12:12 pm:   

Now - Nightbreed was a film I really got into.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 01:58 pm:   

"Nightbreed's monster menagerie had much more soul."

Yay! Nightbreed is a superb film, and the monsters are incredible. It's a very undervalued piece of work (and deserves a DVD release!)

A friend of mine emailed me yesterday and told me that Hellboy 2 is the best film of the year so far.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.194.158
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 03:22 pm:   

I've heard lots of very positive things about HELLBOY 2 and hope to see it this week.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.2.100
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 04:17 pm:   

Tony - I remember reading that EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN was the worst of the series, and then seeing it, and thinking it among the best of the series myself... the second one in the series I remember being the most tedious, barely a "monster" movie at all....

I had me a feeling that HELLBOY 2 wasn't all that, Proto; you kind of sense this when a movie comes with great fanfare, then you think back on its release mere weeks, a month, later, and you think... was that movie released a few weeks ago, or was it 10 YEARS ago?...

SPEED RACER, The X Files sequel, even the 4th RAIDERS... were those released this summer, or many summers ago?... (By contrast: IRONMAN, WALL-E, DARK KNIGHT... yes, definitely this summer all....)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 04:18 pm:   

I still think Cronos is del Toro's best film.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 06:27 pm:   

Craig, these Hammer films are odd. I keep going back to them and discovering entirely different films to what I remember. Poor Gorgon seemed a bit flat, say, compared with my memory, whereas EVIL seemed quite brisk.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 06:28 pm:   

I wanted to like both Kronos and Backbone, but felt unstirred by them. Possibly my fault at some level as they seem so lauded.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.17.13.200
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 07:24 pm:   

I think, Tony - and this is personal taste - that the absolute summit of Hammer is in this order:

1) DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS - this is a film I visit every year, and rewatch... it never gets old to me, and I always discover something new... maybe it's just me, but I think it the best....
2) THE HORROR OF DRACULA - it's just so iconic, so revolutionary, so wonderfully Hammer... and anything that clearly influenced Kubrick so deeply can't be all that bad....
3) QUATERMASS AND THE PIT - the first Hammer "blockbuster," and it remains a great horror story for the ages....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.187.162
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 08:57 pm:   

I'd add PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, PARANOIAC, NIGHT CREATURES, THE MUMMY, and THE REPTILE to your list, Craig (good choices, by the way, especially Quatermass).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.187.162
Posted on Monday, September 01, 2008 - 08:59 pm:   

I've enjoyed all of Del Toro's films to date. Not sure which is my my favourite: probably either PAN'S LABYRINTH or CRONOS. I like MIMIC too, unlike most.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 12:18 am:   

The funny thing is, it's the apparently lesser Hammer of yore that now seems quite interesting, all the margin stuff, like Straight on Till Morning and the like. It's qute a tasty cinematic era to be honest, and one we'll likely never have again.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.154.242.64
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 12:37 am:   

I like MIMIC too, unlike most.

Me too - it's corny, but it's like Carpenter's THE FOG, a cosy horror tale I watch every couple of years and still enjoy.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.154.242.64
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 12:38 am:   

I like MIMIC too, unlike most.

Me too - it's corny, but then so is Carpenter's THE FOG, a cosy horror tale I watch every couple of years and still enjoy.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.154.242.64
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 12:39 am:   

...and once more for luck?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.190.253
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 08:21 am:   

It was worth saying twice, Mick! The sequels are dreadful, though.

Now then.... do you happen to be a fan of CHUD as well? ;-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 10:29 am:   

Yay for Mimic! I also lihe CHUD. :-)

Craig - your Hammer list is pretty much spot-on as far as I can see. Huw's additions of Plague of the Zombies, The Mummy and The Reptile round it out to represent the best of the studio's output, IMHO.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.237.56
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 11:11 am:   

Another MIMIC fan here! It reminded me of some T.E.D. Klein stories, especially "Children of the Kingdom".
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 87.102.90.30
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 12:34 pm:   

I watched that STRANGE BEHAVIOUR the other night.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082243/

I thought it pretty shocking in parts.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.70.17.173
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 12:49 pm:   

Which bits Albie?

I watched Wire in the Blood last week and there was a certain torture scene concerning a chair which really got to me. I wonder if anyone else saw it? Quadrupled viewing figures though. Of course the programme is labelled mystery not horror. I live in a market town and people now know me as a horror writer. They will be crossing over the street when I pass by soon :>o of course if I was labelled a mystery writer with horror aspects they would embrace me.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 87.102.90.30
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 01:24 pm:   

The sawing and the bleeding and the red peeing and the slow stabbing and the...acting.

Shocking.

The torture scene? Yep, the chair with a cone shaped spike under it? Where's Des?

Oh I wouldn't cross the street to avoid you. I'd just make sure I was never in the same town as you.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 - 01:38 pm:   

I loved Mimic as well.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 12:49 am:   

Hmm. Just seen Hellboy II and didn't like it. I didn't hate it either, however, it's just it's biggest flaw by far was presuming that others loved it before the credits even rolled, and acted accordingly. There was a hint of preening, even though to be honest the film felt far too familiar - I frankly could have read a book while waiting for it to pass, apart from one or two moments. There was no lightness, no delicacy, no 'air'. This is sad because I loved the first, and so expected this to outshine it after Pan's L. On the whole not as satisfying a fantasy film as the Potter films.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.83.163
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 01:42 am:   

It doesn't deserve Roman numerals. Maybe the least appropriate use classical was Rocky IV. I like that Spiderman used arabic digits for its sequels.

HB2 was so embarrassing that I was glad the cinema was dark. It was so bad the audience hurried for the exit before the lights came up and we had to look each other in the eye.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.83.163
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 01:47 am:   

"Maybe the least appropriate use classical was..."

What the hell is wrong with me? I think you know what I was trying to gurgle.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.13.245
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 03:29 am:   

ROCKY IV
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.253.174.81
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 09:49 am:   

Well I watched the remake of THE WIZARD OF GORE last night. It's dreadful. I never thought I'd find myself saying this but it's worse than the HG Lewis original, even with Crispin Glover in the lead and an unrecognisable Jeffrey Combs. What is wrong with film-makers these days that they can't even improve on HG?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 10:44 am:   

I watched VACANCY. And really enjoyed it. Have my standards slipped, or did anyone else think this was a decent little potboiler.

In my defence, I do have a soft spot for these modern American gothics.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.191.15
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 11:08 am:   

Nope, your standards haven't slipped! I started a thread about VACANCY way back sometime.... must be on the old board somewhere. I thought it was a decent horror-thriller, with shades of Hitchcock.

Nice to see I'm not the only fan of MIMIC here! I'm hoping to see HELLBOY 2 on Friday. Trying to keep my expectations neutral - reactions seem to be sharply divided on it.

I think I will steer clear of THE WIZARD OF GORE remake. I didn't like the original, so doubt whether this new one will do anything for me.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 11:29 am:   

Let us know what you make of HB2, Huw - I always look forward to your opinions on films.

Yeah, VACANCY certainly had Hitchcockian overtones. I sat down expecting it to be rubbish and was pleasantly suprised by how good it was.

HG Lewis remakes - I've seen 2001 MANIACS, and it was abysmal, even worse than the crap yet oddly entertaining original.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.252.215
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 04:08 pm:   

Me liked VACANCY too! Like another fine little thriller, RED EYE, it was short and sweet - wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

This movie, interestingly, is the first produced/released script, that represented its own little sub-sub-sub-genre, a "hot" one in Hollywood specs for a time. I'm not sure how you'd describe it, but it's basically: couples being terrorized. The big sale in this category was THE STRANGERS (sequel being made), but many others sold with variations (on a boat, on a hike, etc.). David Twohy wrote a great one, called A PERFECT GETAWAY, which is being produced right now... watch for that one....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.237.56
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 04:21 pm:   

"It was so bad the audience hurried for the exit before the lights came up and we had to look each other in the eye."

Nice I see it before me.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.195.169
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 04:28 pm:   

Isn't THE STRANGERS basically a rip-off of the French film ILS?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.231.231
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 05:18 pm:   

Isn't THE STRANGERS basically a rip-off of the French film ILS?

? - I dunno. I'd like to see ILS if that's so, HUW.

THE STRANGERS was a big-selling spec, written by a first-timer who was a production assistant at the time. It only attained the semi-finals in the Nicholl Fellowship, the biggest/most prestigious screenplay competition in America... 90%+ of the winners and finalists have yet to be produced from that Fellowship... "no one knows anything" indeed....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 05:25 pm:   

Isn't the strangers a rip off of funny games?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.129.151.24
Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 06:50 pm:   

'presuming that others loved it before the titles even rolled' I should have said!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Thursday, September 04, 2008 - 01:50 pm:   

from what I've seen and read of THE STRANGERS it does indeed come across as a very close copy of ILS (aka THEM) with a dash of FUNNY GAMES thrown into the pot.

ILS is an extraordinary film. I saw it months ago and still think about it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.6.111
Posted on Tuesday, September 09, 2008 - 05:45 pm:   

SUPERMAN III
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 05:43 pm:   

Proto - these old 'sad' lists of films are great, aren't they? Exquisitely painful.
What about Fletch? Double Jeopardy? Firewall? The Bone Collector? The Gingerbread Man - all those Grisham films, in fact. ALL of them.

I've been shocked to see how fast film stars are fading these days. Uma Thurman, Reece Witherspoon, Sandra Bullock, Orlando Bloom, Keanu Reeves, him off Lord of the Rings (who wasn't Orlando Bloom). Even Tom Hanks is going, and Russell Crowe definitely has.
The name Patrick Bergin turns my blood to ice btw. Not because of him, just his tiny impression on cinema. And Tom Berenger. And John Lynch.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 05:44 pm:   

A Pixar can be added to the list now, too; BUG'S LIFE.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 05:45 pm:   

And Kevin Spacey.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 05:48 pm:   

'Medicine Man' - brrr...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 05:51 pm:   

Proto - I rewatched Rosemary's Baby recently and all the good stuff is in the first half hour. After that you really want to run screaming from your house looking for a non-Star Wars/Indy Harrison Ford movie.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 05:57 pm:   

Another for the list; that film with Jim Carrey (another fadee), the one about the old cinema;
THE MAJESTIC.
A film that curiously touches on all this stuff.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 05:58 pm:   

DESTINY TURNS ON THE RADIO
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 06:00 pm:   

I LOVE this thread!

We watched Patriot Games the other night and actually really enjoyed it. A much better film than, say, Salt (which is hurtling to 'the list' as we speak).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 06:07 pm:   

'It's all Alan Parker, isn't it?'
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE
COME SEE THE PARADISE
EVITA
BIRDY

Maybe.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 06:15 pm:   

I am sort of sad at Craig and Proto not getting along in the thread though - both of you are lovely people. My favourites.
;)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 09:05 pm:   

I think we get along better now, Tony....

I'm a bit lost about the nature of this thread, though (and, lazily, don't want to read through the whole thing) - are we bringing up older films that are "lost" and good/sadly forgotten/underrated/etc., or bad/worse than originally thought/worth forgetting/etc.?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.43.121
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 11:36 pm:   

It's become a thread about asking that question.

God, I read that back laughing at my own jokes, like a complete arse. Since I don't use smileys, I think they're invisible to me when someone else uses them. They're not part of my vocabulary, which probably accounts for me being over-sensitive there, like a complete arse.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.43.121
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 11:39 pm:   

FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR
KING SOLOMON'S MINES

(I just saw these this week for the first time)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.28.63
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 07:47 am:   

I think the good stuff in Rosemary's Baby is all the way through the film, including the ambiguously unseen baby itself.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 02:13 pm:   

I might have watched it too late at night, and with two tired bored kids. It may have rubbed off on me. I'll give it another go.

I have to say though, I do prefer economy in film (and literature); our mind needs little fuel to fire the imagination. If anything the less the better. It just needs the right sort. That said, Joe Dante's Lawrence of Arabia might not have worked as much as we'd hope.

Just bought D.A.R.Y.L; it looks fantastic! No music for ages, a bit of mystery. And one of my favourite plot twists; kids who find out they are robots.

Last night we watched Cable Guy; considered too dark in its time it's become very good indeed, the once perceived 'darkness' that at the time was hard to take for some audiences very much the norm now. I had no idea Ben Stiller was Ben Stiller - at the time he was just the man in Cable Guy, if that. I didn't realise he'd directed it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 02:14 pm:   

I liked Flight of the Navigator. I like Watcher in the Woods, too.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 02:16 pm:   

Proto - you were hilarious in this old thread. We were having a blast nobody else seemed to get.

I think the thread was about this; films we have forgotten about completely, that sense of sad rediscovery, the passage of time. Good films always feel new (Jaws wouldn't go on the list) and so don't ring quite the same bell.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:00 pm:   

I remember Michael Parkinson giving DARYL a very good review when he took over from Bazza on Film '85. (Or it might have been Russell Harty.) My mind is just a web of film trivia. Hearing Elmer Bernstein's music on LEGAL EAGLES got me to watch some of GHOSTBUSTERS again. It stands up. So many odd, rough, human moments in a massively high budget film.

Do you know the targetted audience for Hollywood films is now 15-18 year olds? No wonder there's nothing to watch and we have to pretend infantalised films aren't that bad. They're aimed at the temporarily insane (15-18 year olds). To We have to keep remembering that there's nothing wrong with us, it's the films that went arwy. Even GHOSTBUSTERS had guys in their 30s as protagonists and a mention of mortgages.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:04 pm:   

Ha! Yes. Ghostbusters was the wedge thinnenning, though...
Legal Eagles? The Redford film? That's a smasher. So's that one with him who played Gandhi, about the computer hackers robbing some place. But I forget the name.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:06 pm:   

Sneakers!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:09 pm:   

SNEAKERS! That was good fun, as long as you know nothing about computers.

I've been on a Redford kick, too: ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (which gets better with each viewing), BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (saw it last night for the first time... it's okay...), LEGAL EAGLES (silly, fun, but the crazy thing is that we never actually get to SEE the painting that's at the centre of the film, we only ever see the back of it) and I dipped in to THE NATURAL (which is like the paintings of Hopper or Rockwell come to life (I think the cinematography was actually based on Hopper).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:15 pm:   

You know the newspaper office in President's Men was a vast set? Fincher did the same with Zodiac, but was probably showing off in his case.
Watch Jeremiah Johnson. Amazing - an SF film. Nearer the time it was set than it is to now, too.

(I jest - a little...)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:20 pm:   

Yeah, I knew that. Looking forward to JJ! (Not in real life, though.)

There's something vulgar and cynical about Fincher burning so much money that could be used to make 10 films better than ZODIAC (or, I don't know, help someone who's sick?). He did something similar with the "twins" on THE SOCIAL NETWORK.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:22 pm:   

I agree. It filters through to the drama, this knowledge, and robs it of sincerity. I mean I liked Zodiac, and Social Network, to a point, but doesn't he trust us?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:22 pm:   

Pakula tried to film ATPM in the real office building, but there was too much disturbance in a real newspaper office. I love Jason Robards in that.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:23 pm:   

He makes ordinary drama feel like it has to be made the same way as Phantom Menace.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:25 pm:   

Yeah. He probably used more effects shots in THE SOCIAL NETWORK than in ALIEN 3. It's insecurity, and possibly not trusting his own ability to direct a simple human drama.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:31 pm:   

True. People like that - if he IS - you wonder if they are noticing the actors.
Mind you, that sort of worked for Hitchcock.

HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:34 pm:   

TOO obscure. Don't know that one at all.

BLINK 182.

(No idea what that one's about, but it remained stubbornly on the VHS shelves for ages in my local rental shop.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:43 pm:   

BENNY AND JOON
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:51 pm:   

EVOLUTION
BUSTER (I must have mentioned BUSTER already somewhere in this thread...)
THE WHISTLEBLOWER (God, poor Bazza would try to talk up what were basically TV movies to support his mates in the British film industry)
SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL
DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS
TIN MEN
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 03:54 pm:   

And, amazingly... JFK.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 05:01 pm:   

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) reminds me of a movie almost thirty years its senior, HE WALKED BY NIGHT (1948). They are fascinating "procedurals" both, one about cops and crime, the other high crimes and misdemeanors. Both sort of reveal an alternate universe: where film could easily have gone in the main, no reason it couldn't have, and maybe has in that other universe (and places like TV)—a place where our current "character arc" despotism in film doesn't omnipotently rule (though, as I'm arguing of late, that empire has collapsed, and we're watching it slowly [like watching glaciers melt] being broken up).

A bizarrely off-topic, perhaps-too-lofty analogy, is Shakespeare's relatively little-discussed play, King John; a fine work that placed "politics" (how humans interact with each other, on individual bases and in organized groups all the way up to governments) as its universal theme. There's no real reason why this gigantic topic couldn't have taken root in the arts (others were contributing to it, too, at the time), instead of individual character development. But perhaps Hamlet was just too compelling a force—an accidental creation too arresting for its audience; and so has basically been the model for protagonists throughout all forms of literature (including film), down to the present day....

To return, I think we're currently witnessing the end (in the relevant arts) of Shakespeare's Hamlet's reign as Character Model Supreme—only 400 or so years of rule, a good run, but minuscule compared to other giant influences (e.g., Virgil, a mighty reign of some 1500+ years).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 05:19 pm:   

Fascinating article about how Hollywood's pandering to teen-to-20somethings is proving poisonous to itself—it should make you cheer, like it did me:

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/07/does_hollywood_hate_adults/
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.153.17
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 10:21 pm:   

Hasn't it always been about character? Does the general population really care enough about non-character based stories to make them the norm?

Wow, I'm only 25 minutes into DARYL and already a young kid has been talking about hookers, then rape. All in a jokey fashion. This is a children's film. My, how times have changed.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.153.17
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 10:27 pm:   

Oh, I thought of another one: CITY HEAT.

I get the impression that dark things happened in Burt Reynolds's life. I have no data on this though.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 10:45 pm:   

Pilgrim's Progress, second only to the Bible (another example) as a ubiquitous tome, is all about spiritual/moral matters, not character development.

Aeneid is an adventure story about ideals, honor, glory, the founding of an empire. It's not about an individual character's inner arc, and development.

Film itself didn't make that a priority, until about the 1970's. Before that, it was always there, yes... but telling a story, was just that much more important. But looking at work like the Shakespeare play or, say, Jonson's Sejanjus—surprisingly excellent, though for its time, a giant box-office failure—one sees a whole other world, where character development is way way down the list of vital story elements/themes. Probably Hamlet and Othello and others made this so.

Comedy still touches this other world, more than drama: note how often they are flat, and it's all about the jokes, about a moral lesson, a poetic justice being dealt out....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.153.17
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 11:16 pm:   

But Shakespeare making people interested in character (in addition to story story) was a huge forward step. Before, they weren't interested in human empathy, they weren't even interested in theatre, they just put two random animals in a sack and make them fight for entertainment.

It's become a cliche, but story = character = story. Perhaps the balance is tipped to much towards character at the expense of story these days, though. Compare sci-fi films of even just a couple of decades ago with those today, which feel so small, like soap operas. It's like looking at the galaxy with a microscope.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.153.17
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 11:18 pm:   

Ugh, "to", should read "too" of course.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 08:24 am:   

Proto - I'm striving to write moving stories without characters. Well, I've done *one*! I enjoyed it very much though, and the friend who read it said it was very strong.
You got hold of Daryl fast! Did you enjoy it?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 12:26 pm:   

Hi Albie!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 12:29 pm:   

'His films will become longer and rougher and less rational until they become life.'
Proto - again, I'm trying to do this, too, with my stories. I'm seeing how far you can go away from the form without descending into meaninglessness. In fact, meaningless might be ok - maybe boredom is the thing to avoid.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 05:03 pm:   

But Proto, if I may slightly disagree, "story = character = story" misses the point: A knight can have a journey to secure a holy grail, and the story can be adventure. A knight can have a journey to secure a holy grail, and the story can be about him struggling psychologically to feel up to the task. Two vastly different tales, same "story = character = story."

The "character arc" we all take for granted now, is much like Freud's invention of the subconscious, ego, etc.—they've become so ubiquitous, we actually forget they're but one interpretation, one style, of assessing/assembling a greater reality.

We've come now to expect this "arc" in films large and small, and that's the problem—it's a one-sauce-flavors-all approach. It is my (certainly debatable) theory this trend became all-pervasive more-or-less by the 1970's, with its great flowering of talent. Hollywood's spent four decades with this same dominant-position formula.

But it all didn't have to be this way we think we "know" now, as beyond theory. I for one, am eager for a new reality....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 05:10 pm:   

Even the simplest fairytales have character.

A knight goes on a quest to slay a dragon. Even the words "knight" and "dragon" are rudimentary character sketches. Nobody writes a fairy story saying "Someone travelled somewhere to kill another creature". It's way at the story end of the story-character scale but still, there IS charcterisation there and, I aver, there always was.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 05:19 pm:   

We're tying this up with the D&D thread, aren't we? It's going back to that old tarot deck of yore...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 05:48 pm:   

Perhaps I'm not being clear enough:

Character development, yes, of course. It's always there. My theory is, that that thing, called Character Development—it hasn't been the dominant theme of "stories" overall, before Shakespeare.

And oddly, the history of film is like a mini-evolutionary tale of its own. You get the early silents, where a train entering a station made people swoon—pure Spectacle ruled. Then the serials (Plot dominance), then great silents—Chaplin, movies like Greed—Character dominance.

The Janus of film: Spectacle, Plot, Character. The sound era skipped the cycle, starting it over at Plot, which went for about four decades (1930s through the 1960s) until Character took the foreground (1970s through the 2000s). It's now four decades later, and Spectacle has returned to rule....

My theory, in sum—but yes, just a theory.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 05:50 pm:   

But there are sooooo many of these little indie films, maybe more than there are spectacles. But they, too, have their faults; they can be as cold as empty spectacle because they come from some disingenuous place or motive.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 06:13 pm:   

You're being entirely too lippy with me, Tony. It's high time to pull the rug out from under you—WHISK!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.93.167
Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2012 - 01:22 am:   

Craig, we're saying the same thing I think. I see the centre of mass precessing like the Earth's axis through character, story and spectacle throughout history, but they're all there to some extent. It's just a matter of emphasis. If character is waning and spectacle isn't working anymore, what next for film? Back to story? Or discovering a fourth colour in the palette?

Quoting Amazon reviewers is shooting fish in a barrel through a piece of cake, but I couldn't resist this comment on SNEAKERS (1992):

"Of course Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier made their names at a time when movies, scripts, acting skills etc were not as developed as they are now and the audiences were much more easily pleased."
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.127.231
Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2012 - 11:58 pm:   

I just finished watching another Redford/Barry Levinson film: THE NATURAL. Some of the most beautiful and meaningful cinematography I've seen in a film. It's luminous.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Sunday, July 15, 2012 - 08:10 pm:   

Proto - you're right. I remember that too.
It's so nice and calm on this thread. I love you guys. :-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.75.84
Posted on Sunday, July 15, 2012 - 09:31 pm:   

"Everything from the time Roy Hobbs was a youth until he is shot by Barbara Hershey was treated subtly by taking the original color photography and making a b&w and color dupe of the same footage, and then combining them back over each other, but throwing the color information out-of-focus over the b&w version. So you can a desaturation effect and a diffusion effect."
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Monday, July 16, 2012 - 08:24 am:   

Wow - the simple things, the fact these guys act like magicians, and take joy from it, too.

We watched When Harry Met Sally last night. Made me sad - what happened to those very old couples in the little linking clips? Are they all dead? :-(
and there's something so poignant and sad about Harry and Sally being among those clips, talking to the camera. Something happens in that little scene that I wonder was not intended; what is real?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.148.12
Posted on Saturday, February 20, 2016 - 08:18 pm:   

So I just watched JEREMIAH JOHNSON as you recommended, Tony. It gained in power as it went on (possibly because I watched the second half on a much larger television set?). It demonstrates that genre is secondary to execution. I grew up when western was worn out: Bonanza on Sunday television.

JJ felt alive because it was so spare, and elemental. I'm admiring John Milius (who co-wrote it) more and more. He's someone who was born with a lot of testosterone, but he used his mind and craft to turn that energy into something beautiful.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.148.9
Posted on Saturday, February 20, 2016 - 08:50 pm:   

Gosh, I read this whole thread again. I was a very tetchy person back in 2008. Sorry everyeone, especially Craig!. Then I seem to have revisited it in 2012, and now again in 2016.

It's like the Olympics or the world cup. Back in 2020!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Sunday, February 21, 2016 - 06:58 pm:   

Nothing to apologize for, Proto. Scanning back, I seem to have been too eager. Why?! I'm increasingly bored by film, but I'm at least aware it's me mostly.

I watched Star Trek II last night - it was on some random cable channel, a constant frustration of commercialus interruptus. Still, it made me sad, that - sure, it's somewhat high-falutin', pretentious, self-absorbed. But it had a gravitas that seems to have vanished from mainstream entertainment. People would ever-after quote the "silly" lines from this film ("KHAN!!!") because there was depth enough to remember the film at all. I really liked J.J. Abrams' take on this film in his 2nd Star Trek when I saw it... but it lingers not in my memory at all. It's fast becoming a (tortured metaphor alert) popcorn planet: there's no sumptuously decadent feasts, or hunger-wracked scraping for a few beans from an old tin - anything to help us remember any given meal.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.148.3
Posted on Monday, February 22, 2016 - 12:32 pm:   

There's a whole untapped market for middle-aged people out there. I remember films being more intelligent than me. I liked that. It was like being allowed to sit at the adult's dinner table.

Funny, but it was only recently when someone said that their favourite Star Trek film was The Motion Picture that I felt I could allow myself to have that opinion too. Subconscious self-censorship. I also genuinely love Star Trek V.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.139.163
Posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - 12:49 am:   

It's my favourite, too. I like Generations and the one about God, too.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.139.163
Posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - 12:58 am:   

JJ Abrams wrote Regarding Henry. I loathed that film and it shocked me to find Abrams had come up with it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.139.163
Posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - 01:03 am:   

Jeremiah Johnson is MILES better than the stinky The Revenant. I would have thrown paint at the screen, if I'd taken any.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.139.163
Posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - 01:11 am:   

THE MOSQUITO COAST.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.139.163
Posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - 01:18 am:   

High Road to China
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.120.146.54
Posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - 04:34 pm:   

Oh God. Since we're doing Tom Selleck, did I say RUNAWAY? I think he would have been an equally good Indiana Jones as Harrison Ford.

I haven't liked _anything_ Abrams has made. I'm baffled by his success.

JJ (Jeremiah Johnson has earned those initials more than Abrams) had so many lovely lines. After man and nature trying to kill him every single day for years on a blasted mountaintop, he's asked if, in the end, it was all worth the trouble.

"What trouble?"

That should speak to anyone who wants to create.


Oh my word!
"High Road to China (aka Raiders of the End of the World".
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.120.146.54
Posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - 04:36 pm:   

http://www.avclub.com/article/iregarding-henryi-42151
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.120.146.54
Posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - 04:41 pm:   

I love Star Trek: Generations too. I, V and VII are badly flawed but they at least all have ambition. Even if a film is bad, ambition is what makes it still entertaining.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.88.170
Posted on Friday, July 31, 2020 - 06:37 pm:   

Alan Parker is mentioned here. When prominent people who are around that age die it feels to me like a soft but strong blow; it makes a sound like a deep, resonant, but muffled drum. I suppose that's a combined feeling of shock and sad inevitability.

I saw an interview with him and David Puttnam and they seems such good friends. They held hands at the end of it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Saturday, August 01, 2020 - 04:57 pm:   

I can't really bring to mind any Alan Parker films. Except... he made Angel Heart, right? I remember that film being maddeningly frustrating to watch - at the time, censors had apparently cut key scenes from it, that made it make sense. I wonder if it's been restored? Should give it another shot... Lisa Bonet attempting serious drama, from her stint on "The Cosby Show"... it was shocking at scandalous at the time, her doing that movie... NOW look at who's gone scandalous from that TV show!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.64
Posted on Saturday, August 01, 2020 - 05:28 pm:   

Yes, there was a heavily cut TV version. I think the film is very good on music, as most Alan Parker films are.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.12.110
Posted on Sunday, August 02, 2020 - 12:51 pm:   

Real trouble is doubt.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.12.110
Posted on Sunday, August 02, 2020 - 12:58 pm:   

I have been chatting with a man who has set painted on some movies. He said the Disney Star Wars were the worst experiences of his life, that every day he drove onto the car park for Rogue One he would be hoping the film would fold. He said the directors were great, it was just Disney - they were like a police state.
He also said Bryan Singer (the X men director) was horrible, and that he doesnt want to work on a movie set ever again even though the pay is good.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.12.110
Posted on Sunday, August 02, 2020 - 01:13 pm:   

Ah, this game! I LOVED this game!
JUPITER RISING
UPSIDE DOWN
NURSE BETTY
WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM?
BEST IN SHOW
PAY IT FORWARD
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.12.110
Posted on Sunday, August 02, 2020 - 01:22 pm:   

You were right about China.
And my best ever post is here!

"I reckon the titles of these sad films act like notes on a scale. This is one area, maybe a few small ones at the same end. If we move along to films of varying quality or intensity we should be able to create a series of emotional responses from a list of titles that play these 'notes' in some sort of order. It might be tricky, but I bet it can be done, to a point."
I wish I were back there. Maybe with some of the others gone. :-(
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.12.110
Posted on Sunday, August 02, 2020 - 01:23 pm:   

DR T AND THE WOMEN
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.12.110
Posted on Sunday, August 02, 2020 - 06:40 pm:   

I'm not sure this is a game and not just listings for the Paramount tv channel.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.153.35.179
Posted on Friday, August 07, 2020 - 01:57 pm:   

:-(
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Saturday, August 08, 2020 - 05:34 pm:   

Random thought, but... how many message boards the world over, left abandoned years earlier (hell, this very thread was begun exactly 12 years ago this month!) and forgotten... were nevertheless picked up and added to by this or that person many years later... and no one knows about the additions?... like echoes in a ruined cathedral?...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.153.35.179
Posted on Sunday, August 09, 2020 - 11:00 am:   

I have replied to LOTS on here. It also happens on facebook, the land where nothing dies. I will still get replies to things I posted decades ago.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.133
Posted on Friday, April 23, 2021 - 07:36 am:   

Cold Creek Manor.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.133
Posted on Friday, April 23, 2021 - 07:38 am:   

It doesn't work anymore. The game became streaming services so we see those titles every day.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.133
Posted on Friday, April 23, 2021 - 07:40 am:   

I got told recently the LOG guys aren't very nice, particularly Gatiss.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 108.221.136.29
Posted on Monday, May 17, 2021 - 07:00 pm:   

Five years later, J J ABrams' STAR TREKS are further distant in my memory than ever.

Nothing of film post-2000 adheres to the memory. We are in the wasteland of cultural creations that so so so so so so many generations of Earth have gone through: we thought we were unique, because we lived through a time like, oh, the 70s: when film was utterly profound (or so it seems, still only a few decades out: give it a hundred to see if it sticks!). Then the memorable spectacles from the 80s... a few gasps from the 90s... and now the wasteland.

How many generations of poor Russian peasants, forgotten generations upon forgotten generations, tilled the soil for some scraps of food for meals that weren't worth remembering past that very day?

We are those peasants now, and those scraps of food is our cultural present. If the entire 2000-2099 Century produced not a single worthily-memorable piece of culture for future generations to savor?... history would shrug and yawn.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.76.27
Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2021 - 02:02 am:   

Even if what you say were true, and I'm not sure that it is, we have the entire 20th century of film. As Scorsese said about Kubrick only making a few films: that's enough.

Add Your Message Here
Post:
Bold text Italics Underline Create a hyperlink Insert a clipart image

Username: Posting Information:
This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here.
Password:
Options: Enable HTML code in message
Automatically activate URLs in message
Action:

Topics | Last Day | Last Week | Tree View | Search | Help/Instructions | Program Credits Administration