Cordelia ,'Lessons'
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I'm about midway through the Salon article on Donnie Darko, and all I can think is that the thing is all about Hypertime!
Bwah! I enjoyed the film, but after reading what the writer/director says it was about as opposed to what was actually evident on screen, I think he should be checking to make sure his meds aren't placebos. Worst failure to communicate the creator's ideas that I've ever seen.
Worst failure to communicate the creator's ideas that I've ever seen.
The new version communicates most of it pretty well.
Most of it.
the thing (and I haven't yet read the Salon piece) is that the half-assed scifi he was trying to make wouldn't have been an eighth as good as the lynch/hughes hybrid DD ended up as.
I thought HB was great in the Dandridge bio-pic. Really. But she's not Storm and she's not Catwoman.
So, on Strega's recommendation, I got Them! from the library. I expected it to be really bad and cheesy, but I was surprised to discover it was... good. I mean, once you get past the fact that the movie is about GIANT ANTS and they're after OUR SUGAR and NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE BAD AND SCARY, it's a very well done disaster pic. It's basically the prototype for every movie of its ilk since, if I'm not mistaken.
The great thing about it is that it's not just an incoherent mess of monsters killing people. It takes a very rational, scientific approach (whether or not you agree with the good doctor every time he says, "Well, that's the logical conclusion"): people are dying and disappearing, and the clues just don't add up. Sure, we can blow 'em up and shoot 'em with flamethrowers, but the real meat of the picture isn't the fighting; it's the finding. It's trying to understand what their existence means, the disaster it spells, and trying to guess their next move. Seriously, I'm sure I've seen a rip-off of this movie in the last five years, except not done as well.
I saw it because it was supposed to be an inspiration for Alien, but it's not very similar, in my opinion. From what I can tell, Alien asks, "What if we took the giant ant and put it in a spaceship, so neither the humans nor the ant could leave?" It does, also, have the same sensibilities about its antagonist, characterizing it as a killing machine capable of wiping out the human race.
In conclusion, James Whitmore looks and sounds freakily like Spencer Tracy.
I personally think the Series of Unfortunate Events trailer looks pretty darned cool. And I really don't like those books, at all.
How did I not know before tonight that Robyn Hitchcock has a part in the new version of The Manchurian Candidate?
How did I not know before tonight that Robyn Hitchcock has a part in the new version of The Manchurian Candidate?
Huh. Well.... Damn.
I didn't know he had ever done any acting.
Ya know. If you were to ask, I'd probably say I was not a fan of the western genre, but damn. I watched Tombstone tonight and just loved it. That and Silverado. Neither one seems western to me. Why is that?