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.
Sometimes I miss having powers... Oh. Oh! I know what this is! This is peer pressure! Any second now you're gonna make me smoke tobacco and--and have drugs!
Anya ,'Showtime'
Buffista Movies 3: Panned and Scanned
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.
P.M. Marc - Jul 23, 2004 1:32:42 pm PDT #1280 of 10001
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear
Jim - Jul 23, 2004 1:40:08 pm PDT #1281 of 10001
Ficht nicht mit Der Raketemensch!
Jim - Jul 23, 2004 1:41:24 pm PDT #1282 of 10001
Ficht nicht mit Der Raketemensch!
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.
erikaj - Jul 23, 2004 2:21:32 pm PDT #1283 of 10001
Always Anti-fascist!
I thought HB was great in the Dandridge bio-pic. Really. But she's not Storm and she's not Catwoman.
Polter-Cow - Jul 23, 2004 3:46:54 pm PDT #1284 of 10001
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
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.
Gris - Jul 23, 2004 4:38:01 pm PDT #1285 of 10001
Hey. New board.
I personally think the Series of Unfortunate Events trailer looks pretty darned cool. And I really don't like those books, at all.
sumi - Jul 23, 2004 4:45:26 pm PDT #1286 of 10001
Art Crawl!!!
How did I not know before tonight that Robyn Hitchcock has a part in the new version of The Manchurian Candidate?
tommyrot - Jul 23, 2004 4:53:17 pm PDT #1287 of 10001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.
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.
beekaytee - Jul 23, 2004 5:18:29 pm PDT #1288 of 10001
Compassionately intolerant
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?
Steph L. - Jul 23, 2004 5:28:36 pm PDT #1289 of 10001
Unusually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe
I liked it, but I'm a comics geek.
Without getting into a thing about it, this sentence pops up every time we discuss Unbreakable here, and I still don't know what it's supposed to be about, other than putting the comics geeks who didn't like the film (of which there are a fair number) on the defensive.
Hmmm. Well, I don't know what other people have meant when they've said it, but what I meant was that, since I'm a comics geek, the comics element of the story really grabbed me; also, the way that color was used in clothes seemed a very comics thing to do, and I really liked it.
I think that, had the comics-related elements not been in the movie, I wouldn't have liked it. So that's what I mean when I say it. This just uses more words, and a globe.