I hope by crappy sequels Lester means the ones ending in “vs. Predator.” I’d love to see the rest of the series get snooty academic treatment as well, but I am also happy with my quadrilogy box. Though a Harry Dean Stanton & Yaphet Kotto commentary track might be fun…
A now formerly married young Mormon couple I knew loved the PG13 first one. They went to the shame Christmas night show of AvP2 that I did. They caught me coming out; they’d been horrified & offended by the violence toward the pregnant. I was very amused by this.
I’d call Brokeback Mountain a western; it’s perhaps a fuller exploration of Sam Peckinpah’s themes of the passing of time & male bonding in a way Sam or his contemporaries wouldn’t or couldn’t.
I’ll second Four Brothers, and nominate John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars or Alexandre Aja’s Hills Have Eyes remake; Ghosts is pretty straight forward Cavalry vs Indians, and Hills is some kind of gonzo wagon train flick, Stagecoach on crack. Might be ’06.
You can really construe just about any action flick as a Western. Even predating cinema, knight/samurai/western/war archtypes run pretty close to one another; the Kill Bills kind of express this, sort of a Tarantino term paper on Joseph Campbell.
Sigh. I guess for Alien3 to be overrated, you all have to know other dorks who love it. That’s comforting somewhat. I’ll admit I like it a bit myself & prepare for the onslaught….
Resurrection ages less well with me. Still looks neat at times. Do I only think it’s Poseidon Adventure in space due to the extended swimming sequence?
In a series of what, 400-500 titles and counting, they can’t all be winners.
I’m not sure if I got this from a book, film, or life, but I’ve come to treat it as a proverb.
Q:Why do they make chocolate and vanilla ice creams?
A: Because you like ice cream that sucks.
From what I’ve seen, I don’t think I’m much of a Stan Brakhage fan, but won’t say a collection of his works is somehow invalid. Armageddon does suck. I don’t care if it has a Criterion or not, I’m not rich enough to track down every spine number.
The first post of the thread mentions Long Good Friday, and the last Night Porter. I’m a fan of both, but will call them and the couple-other no extras one the worst. As a broke basement dweller, I can’t afford to drop $30 for (like Friday) a film with a better edition available cheaper, or (like Porter( one where the VHS i’ve had for years has the same extras). Shit, have an intern discuss Dirk Bogarde’s tea preferences. A decent (or crappy, if the film is rare enough) transfer is worth a buy, but I need something to justify 30 bucks. In Critierion Co’s defence, I haven’t seen them release anything like that in awhile.
Remember when DVDs would have menus or chapter stops listed as extras?
While it’s a shame to watch people take an internet argument personal, I think it’s pretty cool that Spike is that divisive among people claiming to at least appreciate, if not out & out like, his work. I haven’t seen the whole canon, but I’d join the Do the Right Thing is not just a hiphop film crowd. It’s not really about music, an ethos, or one culture. I need to give it another watch, with an eye towards symbolism; at the risk of sounding dumb, I hadn’t read Mookie finally getting paid by Sal as reparations. I think Spike did a good enough job all over the community where we (the audience) end up liking all these realisitic shmucks in Bensonhurst.
I like Jungle Fever & Crooklyn a lot too; Spike seems to spend his 1990’s going internally into modern black culture; the films are personal, and I think Spike becomes almost a black Woody Allen, fitting (sadly) the last period mainstream America seemed to accept (given other films & series of the time, like Living Single & Eddie Murphy’s Boomerang) that there are well-to-do African-Americans who are not rappers or athletes; and that even poor black people do, in fact, have complicated but recognizable family lives. Yet he never deracinates his films, as other late 80s/early 90s Great Black Hopes like John Singleton do. To an extent, I think Summer of Sam is more of a time & place film than a serial killer drama. I wasn’t around while Berkowitz killed. If you were, wouldn’t you have tried to make light of the damn talking dog, as Lee does years later?
Only Spike joint I’ve seen but couldn’t get into was Girl 6, which maybe needs another try. I need to work through my gaps in his filmography soon.
They really are doing important work. I just watched some cheaper mondo films on dvd, and gotten used to crappy prints of cut versions.
I watched their Addio Zio Tom director’s cut today; I can’t believe how good the quality was. I think I may be tempted to think the film aimed higher because it actually looked so good. If only I was sure what I thought of the damn thing…
I’m leaning towards heart in the right place, VERY VERY wrong ideas in the heart. Condemnation of American race relations? It sure doesn’t seem to think much of the Black Power movement either. Am I overthinking by thinking at all? For a stupidly made film, it tries to go some high-end bizarre places. It is truly as weird and wrong as the hype, and a must see for those not easily disgusted or offended. Or with fucking sick senses of humor…
I’ve never seen Birth of a Nation or Salo, but I can’t imagine they have much on it.
Grindhouse racebait or torture/hostage porn enthusiasts would do well to track down BU’s Fight For Your Life disc; being a Cronenberg geek, their 2-disc early-shorts-inclusive Fast Company special edition is pretty rad too.
Matt-Girl 6 was the Imperioli/Colicchio script you mentioned?
Liked 25th Hour a lot. Another one I thought within Spike’s bailiwick- the post 9/11 nyc (and broader America?) time capsule. really crurious about Miracle.
Would I start a riot if I said Clockers gets a bad rap?
I just traded a bunch of stuff off on swapadvd.com. Unfortunately, there’s nothing that really looks worth spending my credits on. It has a wishlist auto-request function, but there’s pretty long queues for anything decent. Unless 8 people trade out Electra Glide in Blue to get me my copy, I think the whole thing may have been a waste of time, & cost me a bit of postage.
This is a fun thread; you don’t realize how much came out each year until you find a list. I’m surprsied people are into it enough to argue other’s 10 bests for their birth years. Being a child of 1982, I thought it would be pretty rough. There’s BladeRunner, but haven’t seen it since I was a kid (a “Channel 11, New York’s Movie Station” regular.) Never seen it without the voiceover.
I’ve got Gandhi, but I always found it a bit dull, kind of a standard biopic with a good performance. Like most biopics, unworthy of it’s subject.
From what I’ve seen, Dark Crystal, Fitzcarraldo, ET, Carpenter’s Thing, & Star Trek 2 are the only ones I’m confident would stand up had I seen more of them.
Fanny & Alexander? Querelle? Need to see them. And damn do I need to see Inchon.
Can I join the fan club? Speed Racer ruled in so many ways; I’m not sure if it was ahead of it’s time or will always be weird, unique, & mostly disliked.
Can I join the fan club? Speed Racer ruled in so many ways; I’m not sure if it was ahead of it’s time or will always be weird, unique, & mostly disliked.
I think laughing is a shock response from modern audiences at strong, unsettling, or shocking scenes. Ive done it at wrong things too.
In a philosophical sense, are you doing the same thing laughing at, say, comedies no one else in the theater gets? Or subtle humor? As a tension response?
I don’t live near any particularly good arthouses; one about 40 minutes away is a little old 6 screen one in a strip mall. Dont make the hike often; while the place has character, the snooty older arthouse crowd can be irritating; it sometimes seems they feel ABOVE the film; you can tell from posture. I’m not a communal experience type, (as eloquent as Paya’s professors group dreaming is) but watching an audience react can be a fun thing too.
From a filmmakers perspective, or the perspective of a critic? Joe & Joann Q. Audience?
Is liberalism the web video/dv formats embracing diy movement? “mumblecore” aside, that future seems to be now…at least in lower end genre pictures. I have no idea who PAID for the films of past Grand European New Waves. Would changes to film grammar itself be necessary to compensate for lack of resources?
Is conservatism defense of conventional grammar, production methods, & studio style product? Or is it clinging to orthodoxies of mainstream or non-mainstream movements past?
“VHS is not yet dead!” we doth shout from the halls of yonder dewey decimal’d corridors…
-NEH in the thread “Go To Your Local Library”
VHS has been pretty damn good to me. I mourn it’s “loss” but maintain it shouldn’t be forgotten or remembered poorly. I still buy it, watch it, and tape on it, and will probably hang onto much of it after I break down & replace the ones with DVDs & burn to DVD those without. As older movie fans mourn the death of the pre-multiplex theater-going experience, I’d like to eulogize the video store.
Was there such a bastion of movie-dork wealth as a good, well-stocked video store? It was bad enough that Blockbuster and Hollywood came in and killed off the glorious porn-carrying mom & pops the 80s video boom had begotten, yet now, as they breathe their last I find that I will miss them as well. My kids will never wander around & stumble across lurid horror films to blow thier minds, art films they’d read praise of, or things they never knew would become favorites. They’ll never run in at opening or right from school on Tuesday for that new release, or have to put themself “on the list” for that title the store only got one or two copies of.
More than theatres, video stores clientele & staff could be quite the cross-section of humanity. The box art for titles recognizable and osbcure stands out in my mind, and cheesy video distributor logos & FBI warnings bring as much nostalgia as any theatrical “snipes.” Renting movies was Christmas every weekend, even if my mom rented the new Meg Ryan flick.
More generally, I think the cumbersome tangibility of the VHS somehow made it more real, gave more gravity to the fact the you could watch a movie whenever you wanted. Or even tape them off TV!!!
Am I alone in my nostalgia for my pan & scan youth? Is this just what happens when you get old?
I need to get laserdiscs & player. Just because I always wanted them as a kid. “When I get my own place…”
Perhaps beta; shit, rca selectavision while im at it. These are priorities over blu-ray and an hdtv.
It’s not so much the pan & scan I miss about the video heyday (I still have to explain/fight with family as they complain of those “black bars at the top & bottom.”) It’s that ""Gee Whiz factor I thought came from shelves & shelves of movies housed in black plastic cases. Blockbuster & Hollywood never matched Local stores for depth or sleazy charm, especially after they switched to dvd, but at least they were something. The film had to actively be found, chosen, & defended to the stoner or derelict at the counter. Even if you’ve got friends, try renting, say, a gay art film from a friend…
Did you judge your customers or their selections much Petronius?
Vladdy, I kind of think Bug was Friedkin going small. And I loved it. Also Like Sorceror a lot.
Is consensus that Cruising isn’t so hot? It seemed to have some missed masterpiece hype, I’ve been meaning to check it out. I can see how Pacino doing the gay sex club scene could get accidentally hilarious pretty quickly.
Did Friedkin do anything decent, let alone really good between To Live & Die in LA & Bug? If not I’m inclined to believe it will be another 20 years or so until we get anything that good out of him.
Let me second the Inside recomendation; avoid learning anything about it; get ahold of it; watch it.
It’s probably the best of the current French horror wave; haven’t seen martyrs yet; Frontier(s) was decent but not as good as the hype; High/Haute Tension was GREAT… for the first hour-fifteen…
RE; Jasper’s Freebie & the Bean cover a few pages back, it just became available as a web order only Warner Bros Archive DVD. I couldn’t get the listing to work as a link…
There’s nothing wrong with a film making a point, subtly or not. I think in the time intervening between Day & Land of the Dead, all the harping on subtle themes within Night, Dawn, & Day may have gone to Romero’s head. Land is somewhat clever if not at all subtle in setting it’s post-9/11 stage, and is more weakened by gimmicky characters, bad acting, and some questionable because-we-can effects. Diary of…’s effects & humor somehow made it seem cheap to me, more like a Romero-inspired Troma film than a real deal Romero. The thesis concerning youtube culture never quite coalesced. It just seemed to be “So this youtube thing…people becoming the media, and obsessively taping themselves…yeah…” (I hate to say it, but thinking about it now, extended beyond videography, to blogs, social networking, it may hold more water. I may need to watch again.) Before Diary went into production, Romero was claiming he wanted to pick back up with the Land characters on the road. Is Diary a scaled down & thematically different version of his plans there? Day of.. is apparently scaled down from much larger concepts. It would be nice if somebody would give him a budget for something besides zombies; I think he has ANOTHER zombie flick lined up now.
I keep meaning to pick up Let the Right One In, but still haven’t come across a copy with the theatrical & dvd version subtitles. After the brouhaha about that on it’s release, I kind of want the choice.
IS CRITERION PLANNING ON PUTTING OUT RIDLEY SCOTT'S ALIEN?!? about 3 years ago
I hope by crappy sequels Lester means the ones ending in “vs. Predator.” I’d love to see the rest of the series get snooty academic treatment as well, but I am also happy with my quadrilogy box. Though a Harry Dean Stanton & Yaphet Kotto commentary track might be fun…
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is film your only love? about 3 years ago
Women leave, the dvds & the vhs dont. Why have a real life when you can rant about Eric Rohmer?
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IS CRITERION PLANNING ON PUTTING OUT RIDLEY SCOTT'S ALIEN?!? about 3 years ago
A now formerly married young Mormon couple I knew loved the PG13 first one. They went to the shame Christmas night show of AvP2 that I did. They caught me coming out; they’d been horrified & offended by the violence toward the pregnant. I was very amused by this.
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Modern Westerns about 3 years ago
I’d call Brokeback Mountain a western; it’s perhaps a fuller exploration of Sam Peckinpah’s themes of the passing of time & male bonding in a way Sam or his contemporaries wouldn’t or couldn’t.
I’ll second Four Brothers, and nominate John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars or Alexandre Aja’s Hills Have Eyes remake; Ghosts is pretty straight forward Cavalry vs Indians, and Hills is some kind of gonzo wagon train flick, Stagecoach on crack. Might be ’06.
You can really construe just about any action flick as a Western. Even predating cinema, knight/samurai/western/war archtypes run pretty close to one another; the Kill Bills kind of express this, sort of a Tarantino term paper on Joseph Campbell.
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IS CRITERION PLANNING ON PUTTING OUT RIDLEY SCOTT'S ALIEN?!? about 3 years ago
Sigh. I guess for Alien3 to be overrated, you all have to know other dorks who love it. That’s comforting somewhat. I’ll admit I like it a bit myself & prepare for the onslaught….
Resurrection ages less well with me. Still looks neat at times. Do I only think it’s Poseidon Adventure in space due to the extended swimming sequence?
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Worst Criterion DVDs about 3 years ago
In a series of what, 400-500 titles and counting, they can’t all be winners.
I’m not sure if I got this from a book, film, or life, but I’ve come to treat it as a proverb.
Q:Why do they make chocolate and vanilla ice creams?
A: Because you like ice cream that sucks.
From what I’ve seen, I don’t think I’m much of a Stan Brakhage fan, but won’t say a collection of his works is somehow invalid. Armageddon does suck. I don’t care if it has a Criterion or not, I’m not rich enough to track down every spine number.
The first post of the thread mentions Long Good Friday, and the last Night Porter. I’m a fan of both, but will call them and the couple-other no extras one the worst. As a broke basement dweller, I can’t afford to drop $30 for (like Friday) a film with a better edition available cheaper, or (like Porter( one where the VHS i’ve had for years has the same extras). Shit, have an intern discuss Dirk Bogarde’s tea preferences. A decent (or crappy, if the film is rare enough) transfer is worth a buy, but I need something to justify 30 bucks. In Critierion Co’s defence, I haven’t seen them release anything like that in awhile.
Remember when DVDs would have menus or chapter stops listed as extras?
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SUMMER OF SAM (Overrated or Underrated?) about 3 years ago
While it’s a shame to watch people take an internet argument personal, I think it’s pretty cool that Spike is that divisive among people claiming to at least appreciate, if not out & out like, his work. I haven’t seen the whole canon, but I’d join the Do the Right Thing is not just a hiphop film crowd. It’s not really about music, an ethos, or one culture. I need to give it another watch, with an eye towards symbolism; at the risk of sounding dumb, I hadn’t read Mookie finally getting paid by Sal as reparations. I think Spike did a good enough job all over the community where we (the audience) end up liking all these realisitic shmucks in Bensonhurst.
I like Jungle Fever & Crooklyn a lot too; Spike seems to spend his 1990’s going internally into modern black culture; the films are personal, and I think Spike becomes almost a black Woody Allen, fitting (sadly) the last period mainstream America seemed to accept (given other films & series of the time, like Living Single & Eddie Murphy’s Boomerang) that there are well-to-do African-Americans who are not rappers or athletes; and that even poor black people do, in fact, have complicated but recognizable family lives. Yet he never deracinates his films, as other late 80s/early 90s Great Black Hopes like John Singleton do. To an extent, I think Summer of Sam is more of a time & place film than a serial killer drama. I wasn’t around while Berkowitz killed. If you were, wouldn’t you have tried to make light of the damn talking dog, as Lee does years later?
Only Spike joint I’ve seen but couldn’t get into was Girl 6, which maybe needs another try. I need to work through my gaps in his filmography soon.
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Blue Underground about 3 years ago
They really are doing important work. I just watched some cheaper mondo films on dvd, and gotten used to crappy prints of cut versions.
I watched their Addio Zio Tom director’s cut today; I can’t believe how good the quality was. I think I may be tempted to think the film aimed higher because it actually looked so good. If only I was sure what I thought of the damn thing…
I’m leaning towards heart in the right place, VERY VERY wrong ideas in the heart. Condemnation of American race relations? It sure doesn’t seem to think much of the Black Power movement either. Am I overthinking by thinking at all? For a stupidly made film, it tries to go some high-end bizarre places. It is truly as weird and wrong as the hype, and a must see for those not easily disgusted or offended. Or with fucking sick senses of humor…
I’ve never seen Birth of a Nation or Salo, but I can’t imagine they have much on it.
Grindhouse racebait or torture/hostage porn enthusiasts would do well to track down BU’s Fight For Your Life disc; being a Cronenberg geek, their 2-disc early-shorts-inclusive Fast Company special edition is pretty rad too.
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SUMMER OF SAM (Overrated or Underrated?) about 3 years ago
Couldn’t even get through it, but I tried long enough ago I might have been too young
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SUMMER OF SAM (Overrated or Underrated?) about 3 years ago
Matt-Girl 6 was the Imperioli/Colicchio script you mentioned?
Liked 25th Hour a lot. Another one I thought within Spike’s bailiwick- the post 9/11 nyc (and broader America?) time capsule. really crurious about Miracle.
Would I start a riot if I said Clockers gets a bad rap?
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DVD TRADES about 3 years ago
I’d be, but may not have much to trade right now.
I just traded a bunch of stuff off on swapadvd.com. Unfortunately, there’s nothing that really looks worth spending my credits on. It has a wishlist auto-request function, but there’s pretty long queues for anything decent. Unless 8 people trade out Electra Glide in Blue to get me my copy, I think the whole thing may have been a waste of time, & cost me a bit of postage.
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DVD TRADES about 3 years ago
Double. A little heavy on the “post reply” there.
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TOP 10 FILMS FROM YOUR "BIRTH YEAR" about 3 years ago
This is a fun thread; you don’t realize how much came out each year until you find a list. I’m surprsied people are into it enough to argue other’s 10 bests for their birth years. Being a child of 1982, I thought it would be pretty rough. There’s BladeRunner, but haven’t seen it since I was a kid (a “Channel 11, New York’s Movie Station” regular.) Never seen it without the voiceover.
I’ve got Gandhi, but I always found it a bit dull, kind of a standard biopic with a good performance. Like most biopics, unworthy of it’s subject.
From what I’ve seen, Dark Crystal, Fitzcarraldo, ET, Carpenter’s Thing, & Star Trek 2 are the only ones I’m confident would stand up had I seen more of them.
Fanny & Alexander? Querelle? Need to see them. And damn do I need to see Inchon.
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imdb: full of pricks and assholes about 3 years ago
Normally I wouldn’t encourage snobbishness, but I can’t believe people read the imdb boards & comments. Do you read youtube comments too?
Sometimes I wonder if shit like that is people who DO know what they’re talking about trolling. “OMG GODARD SUXX”
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Ben Lyons' Twitterings about 3 years ago
If only Gene Siskel would rise from the grave & drag the screaming Lyons into Hell.
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Speed Racer about 3 years ago
Can I join the fan club? Speed Racer ruled in so many ways; I’m not sure if it was ahead of it’s time or will always be weird, unique, & mostly disliked.
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Speed Racer about 3 years ago
Can I join the fan club? Speed Racer ruled in so many ways; I’m not sure if it was ahead of it’s time or will always be weird, unique, & mostly disliked.
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NYC meet? about 3 years ago
I’d hit “regional message board drinking night…”
What the hell…I’m in central NJ. Anyone gerographically near so inclined?
Have fun in NYC Francisco; I won’t be buying you a round though, no time or money to hit NYC next week.
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Importance of Seeing a Film in Theatres? about 3 years ago
I think laughing is a shock response from modern audiences at strong, unsettling, or shocking scenes. Ive done it at wrong things too.
In a philosophical sense, are you doing the same thing laughing at, say, comedies no one else in the theater gets? Or subtle humor? As a tension response?
I don’t live near any particularly good arthouses; one about 40 minutes away is a little old 6 screen one in a strip mall. Dont make the hike often; while the place has character, the snooty older arthouse crowd can be irritating; it sometimes seems they feel ABOVE the film; you can tell from posture. I’m not a communal experience type, (as eloquent as Paya’s professors group dreaming is) but watching an audience react can be a fun thing too.
Go to Comment
The New Right and Left about 3 years ago
From a filmmakers perspective, or the perspective of a critic? Joe & Joann Q. Audience?
Is liberalism the web video/dv formats embracing diy movement? “mumblecore” aside, that future seems to be now…at least in lower end genre pictures. I have no idea who PAID for the films of past Grand European New Waves. Would changes to film grammar itself be necessary to compensate for lack of resources?
Is conservatism defense of conventional grammar, production methods, & studio style product? Or is it clinging to orthodoxies of mainstream or non-mainstream movements past?
Go to Comment
Biggest Quality Shifts about 3 years ago
Being a newb myself, what would you have us do?
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VHS & the Video Store Experience about 3 years ago
“VHS is not yet dead!” we doth shout from the halls of yonder dewey decimal’d corridors…
-NEH in the thread “Go To Your Local Library”
VHS has been pretty damn good to me. I mourn it’s “loss” but maintain it shouldn’t be forgotten or remembered poorly. I still buy it, watch it, and tape on it, and will probably hang onto much of it after I break down & replace the ones with DVDs & burn to DVD those without. As older movie fans mourn the death of the pre-multiplex theater-going experience, I’d like to eulogize the video store.
Was there such a bastion of movie-dork wealth as a good, well-stocked video store? It was bad enough that Blockbuster and Hollywood came in and killed off the glorious porn-carrying mom & pops the 80s video boom had begotten, yet now, as they breathe their last I find that I will miss them as well. My kids will never wander around & stumble across lurid horror films to blow thier minds, art films they’d read praise of, or things they never knew would become favorites. They’ll never run in at opening or right from school on Tuesday for that new release, or have to put themself “on the list” for that title the store only got one or two copies of.
More than theatres, video stores clientele & staff could be quite the cross-section of humanity. The box art for titles recognizable and osbcure stands out in my mind, and cheesy video distributor logos & FBI warnings bring as much nostalgia as any theatrical “snipes.” Renting movies was Christmas every weekend, even if my mom rented the new Meg Ryan flick.
More generally, I think the cumbersome tangibility of the VHS somehow made it more real, gave more gravity to the fact the you could watch a movie whenever you wanted. Or even tape them off TV!!!
Am I alone in my nostalgia for my pan & scan youth? Is this just what happens when you get old?
Go to Comment
VHS & the Video Store Experience about 3 years ago
I need to get laserdiscs & player. Just because I always wanted them as a kid. “When I get my own place…”
Perhaps beta; shit, rca selectavision while im at it. These are priorities over blu-ray and an hdtv.
It’s not so much the pan & scan I miss about the video heyday (I still have to explain/fight with family as they complain of those “black bars at the top & bottom.”) It’s that ""Gee Whiz factor I thought came from shelves & shelves of movies housed in black plastic cases. Blockbuster & Hollywood never matched Local stores for depth or sleazy charm, especially after they switched to dvd, but at least they were something. The film had to actively be found, chosen, & defended to the stoner or derelict at the counter. Even if you’ve got friends, try renting, say, a gay art film from a friend…
Did you judge your customers or their selections much Petronius?
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Bug, or the return of William Friedkin about 3 years ago
Vladdy, I kind of think Bug was Friedkin going small. And I loved it. Also Like Sorceror a lot.
Is consensus that Cruising isn’t so hot? It seemed to have some missed masterpiece hype, I’ve been meaning to check it out. I can see how Pacino doing the gay sex club scene could get accidentally hilarious pretty quickly.
Did Friedkin do anything decent, let alone really good between To Live & Die in LA & Bug? If not I’m inclined to believe it will be another 20 years or so until we get anything that good out of him.
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Recent horror films of note about 3 years ago
Let me second the Inside recomendation; avoid learning anything about it; get ahold of it; watch it.
It’s probably the best of the current French horror wave; haven’t seen martyrs yet; Frontier(s) was decent but not as good as the hype; High/Haute Tension was GREAT… for the first hour-fifteen…
It’s nice to see Bug appreciated around here.
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Bug, or the return of William Friedkin about 3 years ago
shotgun stories just went on my swapadvd wishlist, and Rampage on the “Ill keep an eye out for that VHS” list
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The Auteurs' Fake Criterion Covers about 3 years ago
RE; Jasper’s Freebie & the Bean cover a few pages back, it just became available as a web order only Warner Bros Archive DVD. I couldn’t get the listing to work as a link…
http://www.wbshop.com/Freebie-%20-the-Bean-%20EST-MOD/1000102746,default,pd.html
I’m thinking of picking it up myself; never seen it, love Rush’s Stunt Man.
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Recent horror films of note about 3 years ago
Agreed on Diary of the Dead. I wanted to like it, & still want to defend it. But can’t. It sucks. Land of… wasn’t so hot either.
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Paul Haggis' Crash. about 3 years ago
Agreed. I’ll call it watchable the FIRST TIME, but that’s more thanks to the cast than anything else.
In the Valley of Elah? Just as trite, but slightly better served by it. Slightly. Again, the cast does a lot for it.
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Recent horror films of note about 3 years ago
There’s nothing wrong with a film making a point, subtly or not. I think in the time intervening between Day & Land of the Dead, all the harping on subtle themes within Night, Dawn, & Day may have gone to Romero’s head. Land is somewhat clever if not at all subtle in setting it’s post-9/11 stage, and is more weakened by gimmicky characters, bad acting, and some questionable because-we-can effects. Diary of…’s effects & humor somehow made it seem cheap to me, more like a Romero-inspired Troma film than a real deal Romero. The thesis concerning youtube culture never quite coalesced. It just seemed to be “So this youtube thing…people becoming the media, and obsessively taping themselves…yeah…” (I hate to say it, but thinking about it now, extended beyond videography, to blogs, social networking, it may hold more water. I may need to watch again.) Before Diary went into production, Romero was claiming he wanted to pick back up with the Land characters on the road. Is Diary a scaled down & thematically different version of his plans there? Day of.. is apparently scaled down from much larger concepts. It would be nice if somebody would give him a budget for something besides zombies; I think he has ANOTHER zombie flick lined up now.
I keep meaning to pick up Let the Right One In, but still haven’t come across a copy with the theatrical & dvd version subtitles. After the brouhaha about that on it’s release, I kind of want the choice.
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