>> is “dead of night” available on DVD?<<
From Anchor Bay, doubled with QUEEN OF SPADES.
>>If you like “The Cat and the Canary,” you would probably like Crane Wilbur’s “The Bat” (1959) starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead.<<
If you like Paul Leni’s CAT, then I’d recommend Roland West’s silent 1925 version of THE BAT and his 1931 talkie remake. They’re a lot closer in tone to the silent CAT and Whale’s HOUSE than the Crane Wilbur remake.
Over-rated? Partly because of his less-than-flashy visual style, I think he tends to be under-rated. But while he may not have produced the best examples of each genre he worked it, he stamped each one with his own personality.HIS GIRL FRIDAY is not merely a screwball comedy, it is identifiably a Howard Hawks film. And I defy you to name one other Hollwood director who could move so fluidly and confidently through so many genres as Hawks did and turn out even competent films.
>>The first two are the same movie with different characters <<
You could say much the same for most drama going back to Sophocles.
Functional families (or characters, for that matter) are bereft of drama or comedy …
>>I find “Land of the Pharaohs” excellence to far exceed other films of its type still today.<<
Well, that’s two of us.
Few people are all that taken with this film, but it feels more real to me than any other epic of its day. In other Biblical epics one has the sense that the rich live in total splendor, but here even that splendor is quite simple and stark.
And besides, any movie that buries Joan Collins alive can’t be all bad.
>>what I value in Hawks is the way he creates these very natural-feeling rhythms, both in terms of his images and of the way he directs performers<<
He made a statement some where about deliberately keeping his camera at eye-level. That lack of tricky camerawork alone probably disqualifies him in many people’s eyes.
>>3) Bernard Hermann’s famous score for “Vertigo”<<
>>Painfully obvious, but Herrmann’s scores for VERTIGO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST and PSYCHO are as good as they get.<<
Oh, hell, just about any Herrmann score for any film. His ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM is an amazing work, his GHOST AND MRS. MUIR is glorious (the “Andante Cantabile” is a heartnbreaker), his Harryhausen scores are terrific, his JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH ……………………….
>>But i"d like to add Morricone whose done hundred of scores and most are great even if the film didn’t deserve it.<<
There was a period that’d I’d buy scores by John Barry or Jerry Goldsmith know that I’d like them & also that I should definitely avoid the movie like the plague. But Morricone (whose work I also like a lot) probably has provided great scores to more crappy movies than Goldsmith & Barry put together.
The list of composers, past & present, that I think are terrific is a pretty long (sorry) one. But Herrmann towers over them all … IMHO, of course.
>>His earlier films like 2001 and a clockwork orange had to grow on people.<<
I’ve seen this comment elsewhere & I’m frankly a bit puzzled by it. 2001 was the second top money-maker the year it was released. It was considered a movie you HAD to go to. Likewise CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Now opinions on both may have been divided (and still are) as to WTF they meant, but intial reactions were overwhelmingly positive that these were works of genius. It was with BARRY LYNDON that critical reaction toward Kubrick turned negative.
EYES WIDE SHUT, on the other hand, got almost overwhelming negative reviews when it appeared, and is only now being looked at again for re-evaluation. The only positive review I recall was by Gary Svehla in MIDNIGHT MARQUEE. He noted that the film becomes Tom Crise’s dream at some point (I forget which, but sometime after Nicole Kidman’s confession of infidelity) and only returnes to reality in the scene at the end in the department store. I’ve been watching the film again after acquiring it – what? – ten years ago (?) and putting it on the shelf after one viewing, thinking it was a fascinating mess (& I still dislike Cruise’s performance). And I think Svehla got it about right. Most of the film is set at night; exterior daytime shots are at an abolute minimum. Signs appear and disappear from storefronts (& there’s the changing pubic hair noted in this thread). There’s the very fake, stagey use of VERY blue light coming in through window curtains …
>>I do think that film does feel incomplete, maybe he wasnt finished. He was reknown for being a perfectionist so i think that he himself was not finished with this film.<<
>>The only thing I question about Eyes Wide Shut is the ending, which tidies up the story perhaps more than it should. But I still think it’s a great ending, one that forces us to examine the nature of our relationships instead resigning the film to an exotic murder mystery. Does anyone else find it kind of satisfying that Kubrick’s last word as a film-maker was “Fuck”?<<
I think EWS is deliberately incomplete. We get Cruise’s imagining of Kidman making the beast with two backs with the naval officer, but not ther …er … culminations. And the bulk off the film is Cruise’s unsuccessful attempt to get laid … something he manages not to do even with a hooker! And even though we get Kidman’s suggestion of what needs to happen the film has no climax. Literally.
>> And no, it hasn’t got a happy ending…<<
Well, it does for Alex.
I think this is why Kubrick remains a favorite of mine. There’s always something a teeny bit ambiguous about his films.
I’m a writer. I’ve freelanced for FILMFAX, FILM SCORE MONTHLY, CLASSIC IMAGES, SCARLET STREET and VIDEO WATCHDOG.
Currently editor of VAN HELSING’S JOURNAL and SCARLET: THE FILM MAGAZINE
>>Mike Nichols. I like the Graduate okay, but I can’t think of a single movie he has made since that I would want to watch again.<<
I would have agreed with you once upon a time. Then I saw the absolutely amazing ANGELS IN AMERICA.
>>I had a horrible day today because I couldn’t get the images out of my head<<
This alone is often taken as a sign of great art. It will not leave you alone. And it is not art’s duty to be comfortable; quite the opposite.
>>we didn’t see a lot of difference in our world between the countryside house of the fascist and, let’s say, guantánamo<<
An excellent observation.
>>“The Curse of the Werewolf” totally UNCUT (I saw a French print of this as a lad, and it had the complete scene in the jail where, after being raped, Yvonne Romain kills Richard Wordsworth with a rock to the head) . The UNIVERSAL DVD omits this scene and another of a young LEON limping home after being shot in the leg early in the story.<<
You’re right, neither version is in the Universal Legacy print. Odd that every bit of info I’ve read about the jail rape in CURSE (including interviews with Terence Fisher) simply has Wordsworth expiring (of age & exhaustion, I guess), not from any action on the part of Romaine.
I wonder if the BFI restoration of DRACULA includes the full disintegration scene at the end? Does anyone know? The footage supposedly exists & when Warners did their US DVD release a few year back theyw ere supposedly told exactly where to go to get it. But they didn’t bother. They also didn’t bother to use any of a mountain of material a colleague of mine made available to them for supplementals. Maroons!
How about a Fisher box set? Not only would it salute Hammer, it would also recognize the director who did the most to create the Hammer look. WEREWOLF is amust for that set. So is BRIDES OF DRACULA.
>>But the main difference between these films and traditional porn is that in porn the story line directs the actors to sex, its forced and unbelievable.<<
I’d go a bit further here and note that in porno there’s only as much story or dialogue as is necessary to get to the next sex scene. The sex scenes, in fact are the poinyt of the story, just as the slaughter scenes are the point of films like FRIDAY THE 13TH (one reason I always distinguish such films as “goreno” rather than horror). Also, the sex scenes in SHORTBUS tell us things about the characters, even if sometimes we don’t understand the clues until later (why the sex therapist seems to be approaching sex so frantically, for instance). Could this have been accomplished soft-core? Probably, though I suspect the following dramtic content might have a good deal less edge, and the important thing to remember is that the directors and actors (who were not porno performers) agreed this was the route to go.
Of course the afct that I have no moral or philosophical problems with porno probably allows me to appreciate SHORTBUS more than someone who’s offended by non-simulated sex scenes.
>.The second point to the argument of non-simulated sex in film is that if its ok to paint steamy graphic sex scenes in novels, then why should we not have it in film?<<
An excellent argument.
I’ve never counted, but a couple months ago I emailed my list to a friend who did a quick computation based on average # of titles per page times # of pages and emailed back, “You have over 3000 DVDs IN YOUR HOUSE?” (well, no, I toss ‘em in the back yard…)
Now that includes DVDRs I’ve made off TCM and On Demand … not sure if we’re counting that here (and we won’t even talk about the several hundred off-air VHS tapes still not transferred to DVDR).
(I haven’t counted the Criterions, but they include CARNIVAL OF SOULS, LA BELLE ET LA BETTE, THE RULING CLASS, KWAIDAN, ONIBABA and LES YEUX SANS VISAGE.)
Strangely, perhaps, I don’t consider myself a collector, but I have written for several film publications & currently edit two, so there is the occupational hazard of getting review copies or gathering titles for articles … and then being paranoid about disposing of them in case I might need to consult them again or loan them to one of my writers.
>>I watch as many as I can, but I get so many review copies that many end up filed away for when I need them for research.<,
Isn’t that the truth, Michael.
And in our line of business, there’s always the titles at Walmart or Big Lots or in Used DVD places at such thrifty prices they’re irresistable (hey, I might have to write about them someday!). Most of these, at least, I’ve seen somewhere … though not necessarily on the DVD I purchase.
>>Though I have to say most of the films mentioned I have not seen with the exception of Caligula (which I find rather ridiculous)<<
I don’t think CALIGULA is a good example for a variety of reasons. First, it was planned by producer Bob Guccione to be fairly erotic and exploitative. I think he got Gore Vidal to write the screenplay only to give it a veneer of respectability. Second, the most explicity sequences in the film were made after the fact, when the film was not found to be quite “sexy” enough for Guccione … so McDowell, O’Toole, et al did not sign to do the movie as a triple X feature. It was made into one after their participation was long done.
Admittedly I’ve only seen SHORTBUS and CALIGULA of the films mentioned here, but I would never put these two in the same category.
EQUUS
Richard Burton’s monologues put me right out
EXCALIBUR
Once Merlin is put into stasis (or whatever it is) and Nicol Williamson’s eccentric characterization disappears from the film, it just isn’t all that interesting.
>>Movies are an illusion.<<
But how much? There’s the rub …
There’s a great deal of sniping about CGI (like we’re going to make it go away) on this and other boards. One poster in a remake thread (possibly not on this board) opined that a remake of THE BIRDS would suck because they birdies would be CGI, not “real.” (Actually a lot of Hitchcocks were animated & puppets, but never mind.) And I have to admit most of today’s action movies do little for me because there’s no sense of the stunts being death-defying or even dangerous if they’re created in the computer.
A movie that’s entirely illusion would be, oh, TOY STORY.
So obviously a (live action) movie is some combination of reality and illusion.
>>I find the current uber-violence even more pornographic to be honest……<<
I think the important thing to remember is whether it’s violence or explicit sex or use of the zoom lens, everything depends on the integrity of the artist/director. If you take Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS and hand it over to Andy Milligan you get GURU, THE MAD MONK, don’t you? What is the difference in the level of the violence in any FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel/copycat versus a typical Peckinpah film?
Explicit sex is yet another choice that we shouldn’t deny real artists just because hacks might misuse it.
And if it makes you uncomfortable to view it, there’s a simple solution, isn’t there?
The novel is far superior to the movie. I read this back in the early 1970s & it remains one of the five best novels
Yes, I know Scorcese had a struggle financially getting the movie made (it seems like the reaction against it started before it was even made), but that can’t excuse the dese-dem-and-dose Noo Yawkahs in the cast – it isn’t GOODFELLAS in togas – which constantly pulls one out of the movie. Scorcese really fell down on the casting; maybe he had to call on all his old cronies because they’d work cheap, but that doesn’t mean they were right for the roles.
As I recall the dialogue is often clunky, too.
The score is a beauty; happily it’s on CD (maybe OOP by now, though).
LAST TEMPTATION didn’t play any theaters remotely near me when it first came out, so I had to wait until the late 1990s when a nearby college ran it as part of an art series on censorship. I went witha co-worker who also had wanted to see it for some time. We were both disappointed. I turned to her afterwarda mnd asked, “Just how much slack are you supposed to cut a movie because its heart is in the right place?”
I do have the Criterion DVD, primarily bought to support their breavery in issuing it. I haven’t watched it.
>>the stunt man.. good call.<<
Absolutely. First title that came to mind when I saw the title of this thread.
There’s also the nearly impossible to track down ONCE IN A LIFETIME … maybe someday Universal will get around to making it available …
Judging from the vintage of most of these films you’re talking about me here … (though most of the films mentioned aren’t anything that much grabs me).
Now MY (late) parents would probably cite GONE WITH THE WIND or CASABLANCA.
>>Harry….. it doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all……<<
Actually, Musycks, I’d meant that “you” generically, not specifically you.
I think all of us have films we know in advance are most likely not going to be our cup of oolong and we avoid them.
Underrated Films... over 3 years ago
Probably more under-known than under-rated,
Robert Benton’s BAD COMPANY (1972)
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the old dark house over 3 years ago
>> is “dead of night” available on DVD?<<
From Anchor Bay, doubled with QUEEN OF SPADES.
>>If you like “The Cat and the Canary,” you would probably like Crane Wilbur’s “The Bat” (1959) starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead.<<
If you like Paul Leni’s CAT, then I’d recommend Roland West’s silent 1925 version of THE BAT and his 1931 talkie remake. They’re a lot closer in tone to the silent CAT and Whale’s HOUSE than the Crane Wilbur remake.
Go to Comment
Films with brothers quarreling over 3 years ago
The Darjeeling Limited
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Who else thinks that Howard Hawks is vastly overrated? over 3 years ago
Over-rated? Partly because of his less-than-flashy visual style, I think he tends to be under-rated. But while he may not have produced the best examples of each genre he worked it, he stamped each one with his own personality.HIS GIRL FRIDAY is not merely a screwball comedy, it is identifiably a Howard Hawks film. And I defy you to name one other Hollwood director who could move so fluidly and confidently through so many genres as Hawks did and turn out even competent films.
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2008 - A Horrendous year for film? over 3 years ago
>>The first two are the same movie with different characters <<
You could say much the same for most drama going back to Sophocles.
Functional families (or characters, for that matter) are bereft of drama or comedy …
Go to Comment
Who else thinks that Howard Hawks is vastly overrated? over 3 years ago
>>I find “Land of the Pharaohs” excellence to far exceed other films of its type still today.<<
Well, that’s two of us.
Few people are all that taken with this film, but it feels more real to me than any other epic of its day. In other Biblical epics one has the sense that the rich live in total splendor, but here even that splendor is quite simple and stark.
And besides, any movie that buries Joan Collins alive can’t be all bad.
>>what I value in Hawks is the way he creates these very natural-feeling rhythms, both in terms of his images and of the way he directs performers<<
He made a statement some where about deliberately keeping his camera at eye-level. That lack of tricky camerawork alone probably disqualifies him in many people’s eyes.
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Outstanding Original Score in any Film over 3 years ago
>>3) Bernard Hermann’s famous score for “Vertigo”<<
>>Painfully obvious, but Herrmann’s scores for VERTIGO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST and PSYCHO are as good as they get.<<
Oh, hell, just about any Herrmann score for any film. His ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM is an amazing work, his GHOST AND MRS. MUIR is glorious (the “Andante Cantabile” is a heartnbreaker), his Harryhausen scores are terrific, his JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH ……………………….
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Outstanding Original Score in any Film over 3 years ago
>>But i"d like to add Morricone whose done hundred of scores and most are great even if the film didn’t deserve it.<<
There was a period that’d I’d buy scores by John Barry or Jerry Goldsmith know that I’d like them & also that I should definitely avoid the movie like the plague. But Morricone (whose work I also like a lot) probably has provided great scores to more crappy movies than Goldsmith & Barry put together.
The list of composers, past & present, that I think are terrific is a pretty long (sorry) one. But Herrmann towers over them all … IMHO, of course.
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Best Westerns over 3 years ago
>>can’t get past Joan Crawford’s performance-way over the top-overreacts<<
And this is different from other Joan Crawford performances how?
Two of my favories are HOUR OF THE GUN and YELLOW SKY.
Oh, and THE BIG SKY.
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What is Kubrick's Most Under-Appreciated Film? over 3 years ago
>>His earlier films like 2001 and a clockwork orange had to grow on people.<<
I’ve seen this comment elsewhere & I’m frankly a bit puzzled by it. 2001 was the second top money-maker the year it was released. It was considered a movie you HAD to go to. Likewise CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Now opinions on both may have been divided (and still are) as to WTF they meant, but intial reactions were overwhelmingly positive that these were works of genius. It was with BARRY LYNDON that critical reaction toward Kubrick turned negative.
EYES WIDE SHUT, on the other hand, got almost overwhelming negative reviews when it appeared, and is only now being looked at again for re-evaluation. The only positive review I recall was by Gary Svehla in MIDNIGHT MARQUEE. He noted that the film becomes Tom Crise’s dream at some point (I forget which, but sometime after Nicole Kidman’s confession of infidelity) and only returnes to reality in the scene at the end in the department store. I’ve been watching the film again after acquiring it – what? – ten years ago (?) and putting it on the shelf after one viewing, thinking it was a fascinating mess (& I still dislike Cruise’s performance). And I think Svehla got it about right. Most of the film is set at night; exterior daytime shots are at an abolute minimum. Signs appear and disappear from storefronts (& there’s the changing pubic hair noted in this thread). There’s the very fake, stagey use of VERY blue light coming in through window curtains …
>>I do think that film does feel incomplete, maybe he wasnt finished. He was reknown for being a perfectionist so i think that he himself was not finished with this film.<<
>>The only thing I question about Eyes Wide Shut is the ending, which tidies up the story perhaps more than it should. But I still think it’s a great ending, one that forces us to examine the nature of our relationships instead resigning the film to an exotic murder mystery. Does anyone else find it kind of satisfying that Kubrick’s last word as a film-maker was “Fuck”?<<
I think EWS is deliberately incomplete. We get Cruise’s imagining of Kidman making the beast with two backs with the naval officer, but not ther …er … culminations. And the bulk off the film is Cruise’s unsuccessful attempt to get laid … something he manages not to do even with a hooker! And even though we get Kidman’s suggestion of what needs to happen the film has no climax. Literally.
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what's all the fuss about? over 3 years ago
>> And no, it hasn’t got a happy ending…<<
Well, it does for Alex.
I think this is why Kubrick remains a favorite of mine. There’s always something a teeny bit ambiguous about his films.
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How many of us work in film? (Pro or hobby) over 3 years ago
I’m a writer. I’ve freelanced for FILMFAX, FILM SCORE MONTHLY, CLASSIC IMAGES, SCARLET STREET and VIDEO WATCHDOG.
Currently editor of VAN HELSING’S JOURNAL and SCARLET: THE FILM MAGAZINE
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Who do you think the most overrated director is? over 3 years ago
>>Mike Nichols. I like the Graduate okay, but I can’t think of a single movie he has made since that I would want to watch again.<<
I would have agreed with you once upon a time. Then I saw the absolutely amazing ANGELS IN AMERICA.
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IF WE IGNORE 81/2 AND DOLCE VITA, WHAT'D BE THE BEST FELLINI MOVIE? over 3 years ago
Either JULIET or CLOWNS. I wish I could cite SATYRICON because it’s such an epic work, but it just doesn’t work for me.
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The scariest or most disturbing film you have EVER seen. over 3 years ago
Eraserhead. There’s something so unsettling about this film that I’ve never been able to watch it all the way through.
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Should it be seen? over 3 years ago
>>I had a horrible day today because I couldn’t get the images out of my head<<
This alone is often taken as a sign of great art. It will not leave you alone. And it is not art’s duty to be comfortable; quite the opposite.
>>we didn’t see a lot of difference in our world between the countryside house of the fascist and, let’s say, guantánamo<<
An excellent observation.
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HAMMER FILMS for Criterion over 3 years ago
>>“The Curse of the Werewolf” totally UNCUT (I saw a French print of this as a lad, and it had the complete scene in the jail where, after being raped, Yvonne Romain kills Richard Wordsworth with a rock to the head) . The UNIVERSAL DVD omits this scene and another of a young LEON limping home after being shot in the leg early in the story.<<
You’re right, neither version is in the Universal Legacy print. Odd that every bit of info I’ve read about the jail rape in CURSE (including interviews with Terence Fisher) simply has Wordsworth expiring (of age & exhaustion, I guess), not from any action on the part of Romaine.
I wonder if the BFI restoration of DRACULA includes the full disintegration scene at the end? Does anyone know? The footage supposedly exists & when Warners did their US DVD release a few year back theyw ere supposedly told exactly where to go to get it. But they didn’t bother. They also didn’t bother to use any of a mountain of material a colleague of mine made available to them for supplementals. Maroons!
How about a Fisher box set? Not only would it salute Hammer, it would also recognize the director who did the most to create the Hammer look. WEREWOLF is amust for that set. So is BRIDES OF DRACULA.
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Non-Simulated Sex in Film vs. Pornography over 3 years ago
>>But the main difference between these films and traditional porn is that in porn the story line directs the actors to sex, its forced and unbelievable.<<
I’d go a bit further here and note that in porno there’s only as much story or dialogue as is necessary to get to the next sex scene. The sex scenes, in fact are the poinyt of the story, just as the slaughter scenes are the point of films like FRIDAY THE 13TH (one reason I always distinguish such films as “goreno” rather than horror). Also, the sex scenes in SHORTBUS tell us things about the characters, even if sometimes we don’t understand the clues until later (why the sex therapist seems to be approaching sex so frantically, for instance). Could this have been accomplished soft-core? Probably, though I suspect the following dramtic content might have a good deal less edge, and the important thing to remember is that the directors and actors (who were not porno performers) agreed this was the route to go.
Of course the afct that I have no moral or philosophical problems with porno probably allows me to appreciate SHORTBUS more than someone who’s offended by non-simulated sex scenes.
>.The second point to the argument of non-simulated sex in film is that if its ok to paint steamy graphic sex scenes in novels, then why should we not have it in film?<<
An excellent argument.
Go to Comment
How Big Is Your DVD Collection? over 3 years ago
I’ve never counted, but a couple months ago I emailed my list to a friend who did a quick computation based on average # of titles per page times # of pages and emailed back, “You have over 3000 DVDs IN YOUR HOUSE?” (well, no, I toss ‘em in the back yard…)
Now that includes DVDRs I’ve made off TCM and On Demand … not sure if we’re counting that here (and we won’t even talk about the several hundred off-air VHS tapes still not transferred to DVDR).
(I haven’t counted the Criterions, but they include CARNIVAL OF SOULS, LA BELLE ET LA BETTE, THE RULING CLASS, KWAIDAN, ONIBABA and LES YEUX SANS VISAGE.)
Strangely, perhaps, I don’t consider myself a collector, but I have written for several film publications & currently edit two, so there is the occupational hazard of getting review copies or gathering titles for articles … and then being paranoid about disposing of them in case I might need to consult them again or loan them to one of my writers.
Go to Comment
How Big Is Your DVD Collection? over 3 years ago
>>I watch as many as I can, but I get so many review copies that many end up filed away for when I need them for research.<,
Isn’t that the truth, Michael.
And in our line of business, there’s always the titles at Walmart or Big Lots or in Used DVD places at such thrifty prices they’re irresistable (hey, I might have to write about them someday!). Most of these, at least, I’ve seen somewhere … though not necessarily on the DVD I purchase.
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Non-Simulated Sex in Film vs. Pornography over 3 years ago
>>Though I have to say most of the films mentioned I have not seen with the exception of Caligula (which I find rather ridiculous)<<
I don’t think CALIGULA is a good example for a variety of reasons. First, it was planned by producer Bob Guccione to be fairly erotic and exploitative. I think he got Gore Vidal to write the screenplay only to give it a veneer of respectability. Second, the most explicity sequences in the film were made after the fact, when the film was not found to be quite “sexy” enough for Guccione … so McDowell, O’Toole, et al did not sign to do the movie as a triple X feature. It was made into one after their participation was long done.
Admittedly I’ve only seen SHORTBUS and CALIGULA of the films mentioned here, but I would never put these two in the same category.
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MOMENT OF TRUTH: HAVE YOU EVER GONE TO THE MOVIES AND FALLEN ASLEEP DURING THE FILM? over 3 years ago
EQUUS
Richard Burton’s monologues put me right out
EXCALIBUR
Once Merlin is put into stasis (or whatever it is) and Nicol Williamson’s eccentric characterization disappears from the film, it just isn’t all that interesting.
Go to Comment
Non-Simulated Sex in Film vs. Pornography over 3 years ago
>>Movies are an illusion.<<
But how much? There’s the rub …
There’s a great deal of sniping about CGI (like we’re going to make it go away) on this and other boards. One poster in a remake thread (possibly not on this board) opined that a remake of THE BIRDS would suck because they birdies would be CGI, not “real.” (Actually a lot of Hitchcocks were animated & puppets, but never mind.) And I have to admit most of today’s action movies do little for me because there’s no sense of the stunts being death-defying or even dangerous if they’re created in the computer.
A movie that’s entirely illusion would be, oh, TOY STORY.
So obviously a (live action) movie is some combination of reality and illusion.
Go to Comment
Non-Simulated Sex in Film vs. Pornography over 3 years ago
>>I find the current uber-violence even more pornographic to be honest……<<
I think the important thing to remember is whether it’s violence or explicit sex or use of the zoom lens, everything depends on the integrity of the artist/director. If you take Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS and hand it over to Andy Milligan you get GURU, THE MAD MONK, don’t you? What is the difference in the level of the violence in any FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel/copycat versus a typical Peckinpah film?
Explicit sex is yet another choice that we shouldn’t deny real artists just because hacks might misuse it.
And if it makes you uncomfortable to view it, there’s a simple solution, isn’t there?
Go to Comment
Top 5 De Palma over 3 years ago
Wow, Tom, and I thought I held dePalma in low esteem …
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The Last Temptation of Christ over 3 years ago
The novel is far superior to the movie. I read this back in the early 1970s & it remains one of the five best novels
Yes, I know Scorcese had a struggle financially getting the movie made (it seems like the reaction against it started before it was even made), but that can’t excuse the dese-dem-and-dose Noo Yawkahs in the cast – it isn’t GOODFELLAS in togas – which constantly pulls one out of the movie. Scorcese really fell down on the casting; maybe he had to call on all his old cronies because they’d work cheap, but that doesn’t mean they were right for the roles.
As I recall the dialogue is often clunky, too.
The score is a beauty; happily it’s on CD (maybe OOP by now, though).
LAST TEMPTATION didn’t play any theaters remotely near me when it first came out, so I had to wait until the late 1990s when a nearby college ran it as part of an art series on censorship. I went witha co-worker who also had wanted to see it for some time. We were both disappointed. I turned to her afterwarda mnd asked, “Just how much slack are you supposed to cut a movie because its heart is in the right place?”
I do have the Criterion DVD, primarily bought to support their breavery in issuing it. I haven’t watched it.
Go to Comment
Best Film About Film? over 3 years ago
>>the stunt man.. good call.<<
Absolutely. First title that came to mind when I saw the title of this thread.
There’s also the nearly impossible to track down ONCE IN A LIFETIME … maybe someday Universal will get around to making it available …
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Best Film About Film? over 3 years ago
Phooey.
Double post.
Explorer’s being weird today.
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Movies your parents like over 3 years ago
Judging from the vintage of most of these films you’re talking about me here … (though most of the films mentioned aren’t anything that much grabs me).
Now MY (late) parents would probably cite GONE WITH THE WIND or CASABLANCA.
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Non-Simulated Sex in Film vs. Pornography over 3 years ago
>>Harry….. it doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all……<<
Actually, Musycks, I’d meant that “you” generically, not specifically you.
I think all of us have films we know in advance are most likely not going to be our cup of oolong and we avoid them.
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