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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Monday, March 11, 2019 - 04:59 pm:   

I did have an idea for one when I pressed this, but now it's gone. I've ran out of things to think, or say.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.141
Posted on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - 12:27 am:   

Was it about Lego?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - 04:38 pm:   

No...no...
Missing stickers from Rubik's cubes? The weird dead quality of ex library books? Who knows.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.169
Posted on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - 09:21 pm:   

I cheated when I owned a Rubik cube by moving the stickers about. They didn't stick back on properly and the cube was felt prickly with the corners of the stickers peeling up off the surface. I suppose that's a fable.

I got a library book with a prison library stamp on it once. I suppose it escaped, in a way.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - 11:47 pm:   

I just futilely tried to 'like' that post. :-(
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.144
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 02:00 am:   

This is the '90s. Maybe we can change how history went wrong. It all started with The Word I think.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.144
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 02:02 am:   

It says so in the bible anyway.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 11:26 am:   

I think words are the world's worst invention.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 12:25 pm:   

I'm also feeling like Tom Skerritt in Alien these days. He went off to slay the dragon like a good man should. The last ordinary man in a film.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 12:30 pm:   

But yes, The Word, making people eat poo and snog old people. The gladiatorial arena. Decadence. I find lazy art decadent. Art about nothing. Even I do it in my photos and stories, taking events out and replacing them with thoughts and images of dust on window sills.

I've just cried my eyes out after passing two rottweilers barking at me and my dogs over a wall. When I looked back I saw no aggression in their eyes, just a vast, deep loneliness. The barking dog over the wall isn't trying to keep you out, he's wanting to join you.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.15
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 11:00 pm:   

Sound like you're feeling sad right now, Tony. Keep a light hold on any judgements you make in this state, I'd say. Your photos could be about everything, not nothing. They're good.

I'm more obsessed by ALIEN. Did you listen to The Alien Minute Podcast? They look at it one minute at a time. They pointed out that when Dallas is in the air shaft he whispers to himself "I can't believe this is happening to me." Such a real human reaction. Yeah, he's a great character because he's not a Great character. And you could say that about the whole cast.

I edited a mash-up of Alien and Psycho.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.15
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 11:01 pm:   

It'd be nice if we can post videos here.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.15
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 11:13 pm:   

I have this framed in my house. Yes, it's Kubrick.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.15
Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 11:15 pm:   

Er, not that. There's a photo of a young Stanley Kubrick with his camera and a skeptical older man behind him. It's beautiful. I didn't want to post it in case it's a copyright problem and there wasn't a cancel option in the image posting procedure, but you can find it easily.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2019 - 06:48 am:   

Alien and Psycho? You could just share a link. How did you manage that?
I do empathise with Kubrick the more i hear about him.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.80
Posted on Friday, March 15, 2019 - 02:31 am:   

I suppose... Oh, it's technically not impressive, I just used Windows Movie Maker on an old laptop. But I'm happy with the ideas it got across. It's just a 7 minute short.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Friday, March 15, 2019 - 07:28 am:   

I often have this fantasy of intercutting every film from the time they were set or filmed intercut to make one vast film.
I meant to say about HD, you're right; one of the first blu ray's I got was From Russia With Love and it was INCREDIBLE. You could see people in faraway windows who previously were splodges of shadow. It was intoxicating.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.59
Posted on Friday, March 15, 2019 - 10:25 am:   

I like that idea. I had to downgrade ALIEN to PSYCHO's black and white 4:3 aspect ratio (wouldn't it be interesting if we could do that the other way around?) and my sense that the two films connect on a deep level was justified I think. Parts of the ALIEN score over PSYCHO, and vice versa, work.

I find even so-so films can be wonderful in HD because it enhances the time machine aspect of film. You ate there, looking at that cup of tea that was placed on that table in 1969.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.147.183.89
Posted on Saturday, March 16, 2019 - 08:48 am:   

YES!!!! I love that about film! I thought nobody got it but me. I think I used to bother writers I knew by saying I preferred films to books, but they didn't seem to understand the nature of film you'd described. I can watch almost any film even if it just looks beautiful, heck, even if it just feels real, and if it *feels* old it's almost as ok. Last night I watched The Conjuring again which is an ok film but which has a lovely aged look to it. I used to feel sniffy about that, and book covers or photos that have been made to look scratchy, faded and old. But now I don't mind being fooled because it takes me to a false future where I can look back on a a 'real' old now. I can't explain it. But yes, when we got this new big TV I was in heaven watching old films for the streets and clutter in the corner. Raimi Spidermen were great for that because there was such a sense of hustle and bustle to the scenes, and such real, dirty set design. I think it was am electronic music guy, John Foxx, who said he liked film for it's 'old sunlight', a phrase that really stuck in my mind. Hence I've been aging my instagram photos (that word still feels wrong on here, like the car in Ben Hur...).
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.148
Posted on Monday, March 18, 2019 - 10:08 pm:   

Old sunlight, that's a nice one. I wrote a short story about the end of the universe that mentioned "ancient radio waves" passing by.

I don't quite get making current things feel old, but I do get the sense of time from quite recent things (10-15 years ago) almost more acutely than very old things. It's like you can see them beginning to fall back into history.

I love that there were uncontrolled things in the corners of films in even the recent past, as you point out. That fly going into Belloq's mouth in RAIDERS. (Wow: "The crew just cut those few frames [where it flew away] to make it appear the fly went in Belloq's mouth and never came out.")
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.148
Posted on Monday, March 18, 2019 - 10:17 pm:   

I want to get this ALIEN/PSYCHO mashup to you somehow, you might get a kick out of it.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.153.107.212
Posted on Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - 01:21 pm:   

Yes! We sort of hit on recent nostalgia when we used to mention film titles that have got forgotten and got that eerie vibe of total loss.
White Squally
Mary Reilly
Horrible, isn't it? Yes, I don't know why that recent nostalgia should be so painful. Because it's still echoing perhaps, like a gunshot.
I tried watching some of these films and it's worse than you think. Watch The Net, I dare you. It's become incredibly moving because it feels like it's from a parrallel diemnsion. And the ending is so moving, it really is, partly because you know you will never watch it again.
I put tim Burton's Plant of the Apes on the other day and got the same feeling. It's not a bad film at all, but there's a certain sadness watching it that's exquisite. You're watching earth cover a coffin. :-(
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.86
Posted on Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - 04:13 pm:   

I found it hard to watch The Net the first time. It's the '90s problem again, isn't it? Channel 4 seems to be a good litmus to find the actual tipping point of civilization.

1990 - The Word is first broadcast.

1991 – The 1000th episode of Brookside.

1993 - The final ITV Schools programmes are shown.

1995 - The first edition of Hollyoaks is broadcast.

1997 - Channel 4 starts 24-hour broadcasting.

2000 - Big Brother is launched.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.153.107.212
Posted on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - 08:36 am:   

Yes, a bad decade. Like something from Black Mirror (an often very good, sometimes not at all Charlie Brooker thing on netflix), people having dignity stripped away and being glad to do it.
It feels like we know our worth is small now. We feel cheap and shoot each other down on a whim. It doesn't matter, we don't matter, we can't be fooled otherwise. The media says it, the actions of others say it. We pull the actions of the good apart and say 'Ah, but this is what they're REALLY doing'. Good guys and bad guys in films are blurring into one another. I hated when bad guys (and the writers?) in Dr Who started trying to plant doubts in him, suggesting he was the real danger. It always felt dangerous giving his admirers (and detractors!) that corruptive nugget. People need clear heroes these days. But then again, I also hated it when they bandstanded him! That never happened in old shows, in the past. People were just good and bad, usually, we had lines in the sand. A friend I knew on Facebook described watching Lord of the rings recently and said it was a relief to see a thing where you knew who was bad and who was good.
I suppose it depends on the story. If I mull it over any longer I'll change my mind. :-(
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.194
Posted on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - 08:29 pm:   

I love when characters are complex, but I don't think that's what's happening today. Characters today don't oscillate between being moral and immoral, they just remain amoral. This is a crutch for bad writers - it provides easy conflict for the limbic system and means that characters don't have to face consequences of their actions. They are "badasses" (physically empowered and emotionally and spiritually crippled).

I know I've posted this before, but I think 1:15 into this explains a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YWeJ22mIlE
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 08:38 am:   

Oh yes! Badass.
I think writers and the public latch onto ways to do things and it becomes automatic. Even good ways of doing things.
You know there are good things on Netflix. Go for a free trial and watch The OA (which is amazing), Mindhunters (David Fincher directing!) and that Cohen Brothers film, and more, really. It does have nuggets.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.45
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 04:59 pm:   

Yes, I've seen good things on Netflix, including that BEHIND THE CURVE documentary (I'll talk about that on the other thread I suppose). Those ones you mention look good. But streaming to me feels like Sky TV did when it started (not that I ever had that either!) - a few genuinely good things as bait to draw us into abandoning quality for quantity.

I read a New Yorker article arguing against the existence of the golden age of television. It was titled something like How Television Became Respectable Without Becoming Better.

TV is still not cinematic enough, still too much a writer and producer's medium, still soap opera. They're generally too lumbering for a visiting director to put a creative stamp on them. But I hope that will change.

Also, streaming is killing physical media. It's killing film culture, burying classics, making us permanent renters and moving control away from us.

Those are my arguments against it, anyway. I'm continuing to buy physical media (Cinesavant recommended buying 5 blu ray players and keeping them in storage, that will give you a lifetime of viewing independence). What an advance on T.S. Elliot and measuring your life in teaspoons! I might actually do it.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Saturday, March 23, 2019 - 07:31 am:   

I was talking to my son yesterday about how as kids old movies were like bran in our diet, there all the time, old friends. I didn't know if war movies or cowboy movies were any different to fantasy, were made up, it didn't matter. James Stewart's face was as familiar as your dad's - heck, Stewart talked to you more than your dad. They were another life on the screen, a travellator we sometimes got on and off of because we missed beginnings and endings. In fact if a neighbour came round for a chat that's be the movie not seen again for about three years. I often spend forty minutes plus looking for a film that will satisfy my picky son, and even myself. Scrolling has become a thing I do. I hate it.
Have you seen the walls of 50p dvds in Cex? All of them bland, once popular films films? They're like a physical graph of how not to make films. You never see old ones among them.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.162
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 12:31 am:   

That's how cinemas used to be - people would walk in at any time and the films (shorts, trailers, A picture, B picture) would be on a loop. I believe it was with PSYCHO that film starting times were first stuck to.

I haven't seen those DVDs but I can imagine them. I remembered two Neil Jordan's like that - In Dreams and The Good Thief.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.162
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 12:32 am:   

Old films often had a fine pedigree - you could feel that real writers were behind them.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 07:53 am:   

The thing with old films, even though they were giving us a world for a couple of hours, they were more leisurely. Apparently we remember films that move more slowly easier than we do frenetic (basically anything just modern) stuff. Basically, new stuff is better at grabbing our attention but less effective at staying in our minds. Old films moved at the pace of life. It's why we remember Cohen and Nolan films. Did you see Dunkirk at the cinema? I think I remember every shot. Also, Nolan seems to remember what Hitchcock said, that the best directors were trained in silent film, told stories with images and movement.
The 50p dvd walls are bloodchilling. So immense. I'm convinced we could use them as building materials.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 07:54 am:   

Hey, did you ever watch the Fargo tv series? Now they DID work.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.226
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 09:36 am:   

That goes back to the model of the brain I linked to, that talk by Mike Hill. If you appeal to just the limbic system, that just deals with in-the-moment events: fight/flight/fuck. But if you connect with emotions and ideas your whole brain lights up. I think much of the way societies are controlled are to keep us only using our limBic system - endless distraction and noise, no quiet. Prevents us from thinking.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.239
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 09:37 am:   

I really liked F1, didn't much like F2 but loved F3.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.226
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 09:40 am:   

Dunkirk was the first Nolan some Memento that I enjoyed. It had moments of poetry - that silent Spitfire gliding over the soldiers in silence felt like a real war memory. And Mark Rylance - maybe the new last ordinary man in a film?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 11:53 pm:   

Just started reading this and it's MUCH better than it looks, deeper and more frightening, and it addresses lots of the things we've been talking about.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B7N26DS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btk r=1
(sorry for brief messages, am just off to bed half asleep!)
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 11:57 pm:   

Saw Rubik's cube as I was scrolling down. What if the meaning of life is like one of those things? You turn a row only for it to push something else the other way? It can't settle, and neither can we? What if it isn't meant to?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.88.199
Posted on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - 12:43 pm:   

Meant to say, you didn't like Interstellar? I have a friend who's very sciencey and he hated it. I'm not sciencey and loved it.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.88.199
Posted on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - 12:45 pm:   

You know the bit in Dunkirk that stuck in my throat as heavy handed art, the guy walking into the sea? It happened. People saw it.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.166
Posted on Friday, March 29, 2019 - 12:43 am:   

Yes, I didn't like INTERSTELLAR at all. I haven't seen the third Batman, though. Maybe it's good?

About Dunkirk, yes, life is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.

I sent you an email by the way but maybe you're not on that old email address.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.88.199
Posted on Friday, March 29, 2019 - 09:05 am:   

Hi, no, I'm on Lovell six six three at gmail dot com.
I bet computers can read that now.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.171
Posted on Friday, March 29, 2019 - 04:05 pm:   

You mean sicks sicks tree. OK I'll try that later.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.153
Posted on Friday, March 29, 2019 - 04:49 pm:   

You mean sicks sicks tree. OK I'll try that later.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.149.121.241
Posted on Saturday, March 30, 2019 - 02:08 pm:   

I got it! That was really impressive. The only moment I wasn't sure of was the alien itself popping up, I don't know why because it's quite a crucial thing. I love that you ended on Marion's creepy smile because it felt the whole thing went on in her head. She never felt fully innocent in that film. If anything Norman often always felt more so.
Going to post this because this new laptop keeps saying I have low memory and shutting down.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.85
Posted on Saturday, March 30, 2019 - 03:04 pm:   

Thanks, would love to hear any more thoughts if they occur to you.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.132.32.205
Posted on Sunday, March 31, 2019 - 09:35 pm:   

I think I realised before it happened that Ian Holm was a kind of Norman, not what he seemed, and that Mother was running things, that the ship on the planet was the same kind of detour into nowhere. Is this archetypal stuff, do you think? I liked you never rubbed any of this in, just stirred up the pot and let us see (or think we were) what was popping up to the surface. My favourite thing was the prowling camera of both movies, and seeing Alien in black and white, which was fantastic. You wove the music in very well indeed. You know Scorsese makes things like this? I think a lot of movie people do, just for practice. I don't know what else to say about it because it wasn't exactly a concrete thing, more like a dream to mull over. Have you put it on Youtube? I think it's worth doing, even at the risk of the odd bad comment.
But it made me think of both films in a new way.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.132.32.205
Posted on Sunday, March 31, 2019 - 09:37 pm:   

I actually like watching colour films, new films, in black and white. A Cure for Wellness actually looked better.
Remember when we had black and white tvs, then got colour, and saw (what we thought were) old black and white films in colour for the first time? It was like colour hadn't existed. Such a great time. Nothing like it will ever happen again.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.89
Posted on Monday, April 01, 2019 - 10:11 am:   

Thanks for those comments, it's always fascinating to hear them! You realised Ash was like Norman before you saw the original films or these shorts?

I didn't know Marty did mash ups but it makes sense. I love editing, which is a great discovery because for some film-makers I imagine it's like doing the dishes.

Psycho and Alien are both obviously Freudian, so I imagine there are subconscious connections going on there. (I haven't put it on YouTube, I reckon it might get pulled down for copyright reasons.)
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.89
Posted on Monday, April 01, 2019 - 10:15 am:   

We did have a b/w telly but the only film I remember watching on it was King Kong! First viewing, really sick with me. There'll be some third eye cleaning moments ahead with films - high dynamic range might be one? But it'll be a while before I get to see everything I've ever enjoyed again in HD, so lots of treasures ahead. I watched an old Twighlight Zone in HD just for the b/w photography. They're just luminous.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.89
Posted on Monday, April 01, 2019 - 10:16 am:   

"Really _stuck_ with me..."
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.132.32.205
Posted on Monday, April 01, 2019 - 01:20 pm:   

I think Hitchcock edited at the storyboard stage, but a lot of editors say it's where the art comes in, that how a film is cut gives it its soul. I think I'd be inclined to agree. I know with my photos I'l sometimes zoom right in to something in the background and cut it, make it the focus. It can get quite abstract. I think your film felt like a dream of both movies.
But I think it could go on Youtube because I've seen things like it. I think it's considered collage.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.100.87.82
Posted on Monday, April 01, 2019 - 05:44 pm:   

Alexander Mackendrick taught film-making in the reverse order. He said that learning editing first taught you what shots you needed. There was an exercise he did where he gave students old footage of the GUNSMOKE TV show and got them to edit them.

The power of editing amazed me in practice. Walter Murch's book "In The Blink of an Eye" is wonderful. As are all his talks and interviews.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.132.32.205
Posted on Monday, April 01, 2019 - 09:07 pm:   

I love Walter Murch! If I remember right, don't directors study to be editors first? Much as I adore Hitchcock, I think that sounds right. His films can feel a tad like carpentry.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.132.32.205
Posted on Tuesday, April 02, 2019 - 12:16 pm:   

I often wondered whether a film could be made from making the dvd cover first...seriously.
Murch sounds like quite a mysterious figure. Bit of a hippy, mystical. Return to Oz was great.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.188
Posted on Wednesday, April 03, 2019 - 10:19 am:   

That's how many of the Valley Lewton films were made. He was given an awful title to start with.
I'd love to see different directors make exactly the same script.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.188
Posted on Wednesday, April 03, 2019 - 10:19 am:   

Val!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.132.32.205
Posted on Wednesday, April 03, 2019 - 10:46 am:   

I used to enliven some OK films by telling myself they had been directed by someone better. Immediately the film becomes more interesting. It's weird. Like when you think a short story you are listening to is by someone you've never heard of and think you don't like it, then you hear it's by someone you like and suddenly you do.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.137
Posted on Wednesday, April 03, 2019 - 11:28 am:   

I used to enliven some OK films by telling myself they had been directed by someone better. Immediately the film becomes more interesting. It's weird. Like when you think a short story you are listening to is by someone you've never heard of and think you don't like it, then you hear it's by someone you like and suddenly you do.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.135.252
Posted on Saturday, April 06, 2019 - 09:09 am:   

Looks like we both miss having an edit/delete on here.
Just listening to a thing on abandoned kids. Don't you think they are lucky?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.132
Posted on Sunday, April 07, 2019 - 12:46 am:   

Do you mean that they're maybe better off without the kind of parents who would leave them? I don't know the answer to that. Every life is an experiment we can only run once.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.135.252
Posted on Sunday, April 07, 2019 - 09:50 am:   

I just mean they might be lucky to be a blank slate. This said, I heard the rest of the article and it wasn't remotely enviable - being made to sing hymns about God washing away your sins, as a kid, must have been soul destroying.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.102
Posted on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - 02:23 am:   

I don't know, being given a sense of actual physical heaven and actual physical hell existing, as real as the surface of Mars or Venus turns ones mind into a cathedral, forever. So I know that it gives you something, but I'll never know if it's worth it for what it takes away because each human being is an unrepeatable experiment.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.169.180.118
Posted on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - 12:53 pm:   

Now I want to go back to Scepticism v belief again! See, the kids singing those hymns, I think it's quite possible for them to get something from the same religion being used to admonish them. I know some would go off the church completely, but isn't that like going off all food because some foods are poisonous? We have a woman vicar here and she's fantastic; anti brexit, not racist or homophobic...she saved a poor family of nine from being evicted from their home. What would Gervais or Dawkins say to her? Would they attack her? What would they feel if they found she were hurt by what they say? You know Mick Curtis on here - nice guy, but on FB I had to unfriend him because he mocked religion a lot. I just know too many nice religious people who do a lot of good, and it saddens me to think they might be aware of being made a mockery of by other people I know.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 51.37.86.52
Posted on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - 02:44 pm:   

I don't know, from the little I've read, I've always thought Mick was a gentle soul (he might not like me using that word!). It's a cliche but we could all do with more empathy and trying to understand someone our opponent's point of view - it's a garden of exotic nutrients that we may well need desperately to grow!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.169.180.118
Posted on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - 08:30 pm:   

He is nice, very nice. But he also has a no-bullshit side and I'm terrible with those.
Basically I'm terrible with change and opposing opinions. I have to come round to them gradually, and if I'm pushed I just shut everything out, roll up in a ball. That's my autism stuff. It was a relief to learn it wasn't just me.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.147.124
Posted on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - 09:41 pm:   

Sure, we could all do with expressing our opinions with more humility. I wonder, is it true that ideas only thrive and spread via seduction? Fighting for ideas is silly, perhaps. Even the greatest most bombastic orator is still seducing us.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2019 - 08:56 pm:   

I now find almost all "mainstream atheism" sub-intellectual. Dull, repetitive, and frankly, stupid. Watching Gervais spout his usual atheist tropes in an episode of this recent series "After Life" - yawn. It's like they think no one thought of these arguments before - that atheistic points have never existed before, and yet they're so devastating, they'll bulldoze all opposing views. Atheism is nothing more than anti-Western-Civilization's-conecption-of-a-higher-deity. Yawn, already. Got it. But why do they shove their atheism like Cinderella's sisters, into wholly separate scientific fields - astronomy, biology, etc.?

So boys with penises can declare themselves women, and lo, it was good; to even approach breaking down that argument scientifically/logically, is to cast hateful sand in their eyes. But believers should have every last facet of their religiousness cruelly dismantled before them, like their own children being drawn and quartered, if they know what's good for them.

Kai Nielsen is a brilliant, thoughtful, stern but empathetic atheist. Ricky Gervais... should stick to his droll, bill-paying antics.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.179
Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 09:44 am:   

My real beef with the superatheists is that they fail to see that some people WANT God and have tackled the doubts themselves, and perhaps even still fluctuate between belief and doubt perpetually. In fact I've heard a lot of priests or whatever say that's healthy and the way it's MEANT to be. Basically, I see religious people helping homeless junkies and hear James Randi saying let the junkies die, and that for me is enough to make me take sides more with the religious (or at least the 'nice' ones Am I using that word too much?).
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 05:23 pm:   

That's actually quite the brilliant insight, Tony: that the faith (or lack thereof) in people generally fluctuates, from fervency to want. We accept such ranges exist in everything else in life - even our genders are now liquidly fluid. So why do *they* insist on these boxes - atheist, or not? Even Mother Theresa supposedly had her extreme doubts - both sides use that fact to push their own boxes ever the more, which is the mistake to take away from that -rather, it's what you've stated. "Sometimes I believe in a God, sometimes I don't - what day is it?" A response sure to enrage both sides.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.179
Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 05:39 pm:   

Yes! I wish we could allow for that. I really do. You know, it's struck me this week that we need to teach how to talk in schools, how to conduct ourselves. We tackle bullying but not the hazy edges where verbal bullying blossoms. We are evolving but maybe not fast enough. We've dealt with the big things, but now the subtle things need work.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.222
Posted on Monday, June 01, 2020 - 03:22 pm:   

How do people cope with loneliness? It's killing me. This place is making it worse because it keeps happening and not happening.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.222
Posted on Monday, June 01, 2020 - 03:24 pm:   

The two barking rottweilers...their house now sold and stripped, all the trees in their garden cut down but one, coalhouse, outhouse demolished. Change. Horrible change.

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