I don't know if John Carpenter's films are considered cheesy.

Yes he did genre movies and some b-movies, but he's most often been compared to Howard Hawks as a guy who mastered many genres and did it exceedingly well.

I mean, hell, Wm. Gibson cites Escape From New York as one of his influences on Neuromancer.

Escape From New York is cheesy in the best way. I adore that movie, and Snake Plissken, and the whole gutted, decayed Manhattan-as-prison thing. We own it, actually.

Yeah I meant cheesy in the way Amy said. But I'm not sure cheesy is the right word. Now that I think about it EFNY is authentically B-movie. Can something authentic be cheesy? It seems like inauthenticy is part of the definition of cheesy not only in denotation but connotation.

There are a lot of cheesy b-movies, authentic or not.

I'm trying to think of what defines cheesiness to me.

It has something to with pandering within the genre. Sometimes that can be good cheese. Melodrama that's way over the top. Gratuitous violence and sex.

But I think Carpenter has more restraint than that.

Escape from LA is much more cheesy than Escape from New York. I didn't know there was a community of people who mocked New York as a thing inherently deserving of mockery. Bits are over the top, of course, but it took itself seriously. There's a lot of dystopianism that is repeated in several other movies.

Anyway, I'm a fan of New York, and I'm taken aback by the use of "cheesy."

Yeah I decided it was a bad word choice. Should have known when I doubted it. I sometimes forget that if I wonder whether a word is the right choice, it is not.

As to mocking. I love the movie. But I'm using it as a metaphor. And specifically I am using a reaction to the movie to be a metaphor. So I was trying to cover the spectrum of reactions my readers are likely to have. I suspect there are people out there who mock all genre movies. But maybe "mock" is also a bad choice, and the spectrum should just be love or hate. (The reaction I am going to use as a metaphor is "aspire to the way NY is run in EFNY as the idea way to run a society". So I'm not trying to diss the movie, but just contrast that reaction to the spectrum of reasonable reactions, while not just assuming "love" is the only reaction everyone will have. )

Ahhh, I love Janet McTeer. Thanks to Kathy finding Precious Bane on YouTube (it's been infamously unavailable on DVD), I've reacquainted myself with Janet McTeer's awesomeness.

Here I present for all the girls who like film of girls kissing girls scenes from Scenes From a Marriage featuring Janet as Vita Sackville-West making the quite amorous, delectable kissing with her lover Violet Trefusis. Romantic girl kissing here.

Here's a section from the middle of Precious Bane if you're curious where you can see Janet as Prue Sarn (who suffers from a hare-lip). You get to see her play off the young Clive Owen (who plays her cruel brother) and off the man she loves, Kester. Rural romance here. It is a very affecting performance in one of the most romantic stories ever.

John Bowe is so frickin' hot as Kestor Woodseaves!! Love that scene of him and Prue watching the dragonflies.

"You and me, Prue, we mun go towards one another, not away." Sigh--so romantic!

re: EFNY and metaphor and all that.

I know people who object to anything remotely SF/Fantasy et al. just on the ground of "unrealistic." Some are simply offended at stories that can't be based purely in the known world, even the projections of a possible future. But I can make an argument that EFNY can be reflected in how New Orleans was dealt with post-Katrina--block it off, don't allow anyone in or out, leave it to welter in its own juices. And there were people who objected to that "Batman" comic series where Gotham had the humongous earthquake and was then cut off as unsaveable as being unrealistic.

Paging Jilli!

Gothic & Lolita Psycho.

It's a horror movie!

"A bloody adventure of an avenging Gothic Lolita girl! ¶ With an umbrella she makes pools of blood, avenging her mother! ¶ Blood sprays and flesh flies! In violence and outrageous gags! ¶ Finally an event movie that will leave the world delirious! ¶¶ I pronounce thee all innocent... so help me God. ¶¶ TOKYO, the Year 20XX A.D. ¶ Yuki (played by Rina Akiyama) lives peacefully with her father Jiro (played by Yurei Yanagi) and mother Kayako (played by Fumie Nakajima). ¶ It all ends suddenly when a 5-member assassin group slaughters Kayako and cripples Jiro. ¶ Why did they kill her mother? What did the assassins want of them? ¶ Yuki turns into a merciless, remorseless angel of vengeance, clad in Goth/Lolita fashion, seeking to uncover the mystery. ¶ One by one she kills the assassins... until she meets an imagination-defying destiny. ¶¶ Go Ohara, the man whose expertise as an action stunt choreographer was used in Chanbara Beauty and Death Trance, has pushed the boundaries of genre with his latest movie! ¶ Yoshihiro Nishimura and his team of special effects artisans were employed for the gore and special makeup effects. Here they outdo their previous international hits, Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl - the international film festival favorite that excited audiences in over 30 countries. Also engaged was Tsuyoshi Kazuno, a visual effects wizard who worked on genre movies such as RoboGeisha and Dogoo, the Prehistoric Girl. Gothic Lolita Psycho is non-stop with Ohara-style gut-wrenching action stunts in Japanese blood-spattering gore tradition."

Check out the killer parasol.