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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.153.107.212
Posted on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - 08:42 am:   

Well this is strange. It haunts me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou8v8zPAcOM
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.206
Posted on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - 08:35 pm:   

That's the first episode of that I've ever seen. Yes, it has its creepy moments. A metaphor for Brexit?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 07:23 am:   

I'm not sure. I think I liked it because I couldn't see an allegory in it, and realised it's often things that feel unknowable that frighten me the most. It's why I fell out of love with the Alien films. I kind of wish sometimes it had ended after the first. Hey, what did you make of the last two? (Christ, it's been THAT long!) I grew to love Prometheus but had no time for Covenant at all. Prometheus was leading somewhere grand and Covenant cauterised it BETWEEN the films.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.29
Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 12:57 pm:   

I know, I'm just being a bit silly. Everything is a metaphor for Brexit.

I wouldn't liked to have missed ALIENS. It was perhaps the most awesome cinema-going experience of my life, being just the right age, and it still has moments of awe - that first reveal of the vast Sulaco with the distant purple star behind it, those draped blue clouds and the glorious score and winds blowing across the emptiness. It gives me a sense of distance and scale and beauty that in some shots surpass ALIEN.

In 2016 I attended a live full orchestra version of ALIENS and there was a specially recorded Jim Cameron interview before it specifically for the screening in Dublin, as well as a photo of James Horner at the end. A lovely way to celebrate the 30th anniversary.

I'm with you regarding the prequels, when my initial disappointment with PROMETHEUS waned I was left with a piece that's wonky but won't go away from my imagination. It's at least gratifying to have a what-if question answered - now we know what would happen if Ridley returned to that Universe with the 21st century film-making. I love the ship and the environment - My favourite moment is just Vickers walking around the (apparently) empty bridge in silence - the storm is raging outside and she looks at the hologram map. Such a cosy, spooky environment.

And I could watched another half hour of David alone on the ship. Easily the best (only?) character, I was as gutted as Shaw was by the events of ALIEN: COVENANT. Maybe Jussie Smollett made it all up?

That short between PROMETHEUS and COVENANT was so rushed and cheap looking (that outside shot of the juggernaut looked like a still photo sliding around like a Powerpoint animation - awful!)
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.29
Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 01:36 pm:   

The review of THE MARTIAN that most chimed with me said that it didn't contain a single moment of poetry.

The library system here is great and I can order in lots of blu rays and see some of those old films I missed the first time in a format where they sparkle. Even the awful ones are fascinating. PURPLE RAIN (!), UNFORGIVEN (that one still leaves me a bit cold and has that lack of poetry that's missing from THE MARTIAN - I like the look of SLOW WEST for this reason, but haven't seen it yet), THREE COLOURS BLUE (a revelation on blu ray due to the richness of the colours), even THE SOPRANOS.

I bought GUMSHOE, really looking forward to that.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.29
Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 01:39 pm:   

I'm really enjoying old-ish animations like TITAN A.E. and THE BLACK CAULDRON. They had such craft.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.29
Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 01:40 pm:   

Nobody's crashing into these conversations. It is like whispering in a graveyard.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.29
Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 05:20 pm:   

Caught up with THE CRYING GAME again and it really isn't that good (apart, maybe from the first act). Quite aimless and baggy, I don't know what it was trying to say.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.29
Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 05:22 pm:   

In THE CRYING GAME the opening credits feature a bridge (just a couple of miles away from where I grew up) with a fairground in the distance. The music is "When a man loves a woman". I love the image and I love the song, but the image and song don't work together at all.

Oh, horror. Remember that? This empty message board makes me feel like The Omega Man. I can drive down the middle of the road.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 08:35 am:   

You're right again! About Aliens. Yes, we were talking about it yesterday. The mystery was kind of kept intact UNTIL Scott got his own hands on the films again, WITH Prometheus. I think his big mistake was being in thrall to Star Wars, wanting a huge franchise, but forgetting Alien wasn't exactly franchise-friendly. I don't think.
But yeah, Prometheus, a great little film in any ways for the reasons you describe, and for the reasons we're enjoying this place again, we like David wandering around this huge haunted thing. Have you gone back and explored the threads yet? (God, that feels like a line from something...a horror story, or SF.) It's so weird, and even weirder leaving comments. It feels like shouting out 'Is anybody there?' (which my son hates me doing).
You know when Crying Game goes wrong, at least did for me? When Forest Whittaker dies. He was like the heart of the film and all the moving stuff happens with him. God, poor Whittaker. He's great but not in half as much as he should be. And a funny thing, he's odd and so the parts he got were never stereotypical black people. I watched Species the other week and loved him in it. And Alfred Molina (that line of his, 'I enjoyed that immensely' is so perfectly judged). I remember Empire magazine being largely alone in hating Crying Game. Said it was too ambitious and the parts didn't fit. Wanted to be too many things. Oddly it's a film De Palma would have done better, smaller.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 08:43 am:   

And I HATED The Martian! It felt like a Channel Four, Grand Designs thing, or Bear Grylls. And I hated that boring character. One hilarious review I read said the other characters had engineered the whole thing to get away from him.
Oddly it feels like Matt Damon got actually left back in the film, he's not really got to be in much of worth since (never watch the last Bourne film). Funny how films tell the stories of the actors.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.27
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 05:12 pm:   

I don't even think STAR WARS is suitable for a franchise! It's a tiny, limited Universe. Unlike WHO or TREK which can change genre each episode.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.45
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 05:16 pm:   

Ugh, THE MARTIAN. "We're going to science the shit out of this." Inspiring.

Whittaker is great because he's so vulnerable. Yes, maybe it's more accurate to say THE CRYING GAME falls apart with his death, not just the end of the first act. The film really doesn't know what it wants to be. I haven't seen SPECIES. I like Molina too. Saw him on stage last year in London. De Palma's THE CRYING GAME could have been good. It'd be a crime film, perhaps. }
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.47
Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019 - 05:23 pm:   

I've looked at some of the old threads, I searched for things I typed and didn't remember typing.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Saturday, March 23, 2019 - 12:56 am:   

Oh, do watch Species! It's not perfect but it has one of my favourite ensemble casts ever.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.232
Posted on Saturday, March 23, 2019 - 07:22 am:   

Yes, you're right about Star Wars. Moving to Disney was a mistake because they forgot to add weird, dark depths. Lucas makes you think, what he shows us sticks in our mind as being not cut-and-dried. The new ones sort of touch on modern political/social stuff, are a bit shallow (that said, ?I enjoyed Rogue One and Force Awakens). It goes back to Flat Earth and Martian; they nuts-and-bolted it.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.162
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 12:26 am:   

Lucas has a very strange, genuinely creative mind with odd dark corners and edges. It's amazing how smooth and audience-friendly Star Wars ended up being.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.243
Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2019 - 01:42 pm:   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY2jcl7k7A8
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.169.180.118
Posted on Monday, April 15, 2019 - 09:40 am:   

I missed this post! Watched a few minutes. It's like time travel, isn't it? Me and my son have a soft spot for pre-explosion situations. Like the shampoo bottle from Jurassic Park we have that came out BEFORE the film. It's just wrong, it's sloppy. But it's an *artefact* of the time before the fork in the road.
I'll watch later.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.120
Posted on Monday, April 15, 2019 - 11:36 pm:   

The example I think of is when there was just one film called STAR WARS. None of this New Hope business.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.120
Posted on Monday, April 15, 2019 - 11:37 pm:   

I still call that first film STAR WARS. I'm not making a point or anything, it's just what it's always been to me.

But my, how money has destroyed both WARS and TREK in the last few years.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.169.180.118
Posted on Tuesday, April 16, 2019 - 03:42 pm:   

I do, too. I had loads of toys from later movies but have just started keeping the seventies ones, as if just keeping the early things will set me down a different path to where life and the world panned out differently.
I know people say we've never lived in such a peaceful, clean time, so why do things feel worse? Maybe I am just old. The Man with the Shit Ray Eyes.
(we watched X Ray Eyes recently, was excellent)
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.169.180.118
Posted on Tuesday, April 16, 2019 - 03:43 pm:   

(and the Incredible Shrinking Man, which seems incredibly optimistic and uplifting now)
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2019 - 08:38 pm:   

Proto, I turned off Star Trek Beyond thirty minutes in. I simply could not suspend my disbelief one second further; and totally not caring one damn about any character wasn't enough to sustain me. I am the only person probably on the planet who has not seen ONE of these newer Star Wars films - I completely don't care about seeing one ever (and yes, I was a Star Wars-loving child who grew up with them).

Maybe death exists, so we don't come to hate everything that's ever existed. Guests that stay too long at parties, eventually become noxious, in need of extirpation.

Tony, here is a great article from Patton Oswalt about the very things you're ruminating upon. You'd think he'd written this yesterday - no, it's from 2010!!!

https://www.wired.com/2010/12/ff-angrynerd-geekculture/
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.179
Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 09:52 am:   

You see, I did come to love Force Awakens. In fact I went to watch it again as part of a double bill with Last Jedi and actually sat crying almost the whole way through it. I cried through LJ for other reasons. I think Abrams tends to love what he's doing, which can be risky in itself (just love in a film produces Stargates and the like), but it's something.
But this does make me think of something I've been thinking of for a while; and that is the killing of art by the fan. So many books and films by people who are clearly fans. they have talent, knowledge, but something is missing. Previous writers and artists for me have been up in the hills of experience and the amazing ordinary, and come back to report. The 'Fans' are often just reporting on reading the reports. Even people who do effects - the effects are stunning, better than old ones, but there's a sense of an echo in them, and cultural....I don't know....limitation, narrowness maybe. I can't explain. It leaves you feeling undernourished, that you've eaten replica food. I can't see a way out of it.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 05:27 pm:   

Once again, I couldn't add to what you last wrote if I tried, Tony - it perfectly expresses what I feel when I watch these latest "tent pole" movies by sincere fans. Abrams has ability and skill and creativity... but I'm left empty, undernourished. Again, like I've eaten a bunch of candy bars... my mouth and mind enjoy it, but there's an unsettling feeling in my body, telling me it's not enough....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.179
Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 05:56 pm:   

I meant to say, have any of you seen Whiplash, Lalaland or First Man? Same director. His movies leave you hungry - for more, from everything.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.179
Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 06:12 pm:   

I look like I'm staring at the screen waiting for people to come on, doesn't it? :/
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.150.24
Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 11:40 pm:   

I saw the first two. I liked them, but they didn't grab me as much as they did you.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.206.179
Posted on Friday, April 26, 2019 - 12:18 am:   

I found Lalaland almost transcendent. The scene where they sort of go into Rebel Without a Cause amazed me.

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