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Here's a question about Visitor Q: ...Okay, my question is basically about the entire movie. Why did the stranger hit the father on the head? Why did the father let him home? Did the father know it was him? Why did the stranger go there in the first place? If it's as the son said, why did he want to destroy the family? Did the father have sexual relations with the reporter? If not, why is he talking about his premature ejaculation when he rapes her? Why is the mother so ecstatic about lactating? Why doesn't she care when she catches her husband with his dick in a corpse? Why was the stranger so apathetic to what was going on? Why did the stranger hit the daughter? Why was the sister going back home? Why did she and the father decide to nurse from the mother? If a movie's that disturbing, I want it to be at least half as good as it is disturbing. It seemed to make no sense.
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Sep 21, 2008 22:45
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trapped mouse posted:Here's a question about Visitor Q: I always took the visitor as the agent of change. The family was hosed up because you had the dad being a failure at work, mom being abused by her son and whoring herself out to buy drugs, the son getting attacked by bullies and the daughter being a prostitute. The visitor hitting the dad upside the head with the rock was the start of the change. The visitor caused the dad to well... i guess get better at work by killing the woman who got him fired. Got the mom to embrace motherhood and being a supportive wife by helping hubby get dick out of dead woman and cut up the bullies, and the son to be better to his mother by i guess hugging him, and got daughter to stop whoring by knocking her upside the head with a rock. But all and all, I don't think Visitor Q has any real deeper meaning, it just seemed like a shock movie.
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Sep 21, 2008 22:56
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BooDoug187 posted:I always took the visitor as the agent of change. The family was hosed up because you had the dad being a failure at work, mom being abused by her son and whoring herself out to buy drugs, the son getting attacked by bullies and the daughter being a prostitute. The visitor hitting the dad upside the head with the rock was the start of the change. The visitor caused the dad to well... i guess get better at work by killing the woman who got him fired. Got the mom to embrace motherhood and being a supportive wife by helping hubby get dick out of dead woman and cut up the bullies, and the son to be better to his mother by i guess hugging him, and got daughter to stop whoring by knocking her upside the head with a rock. But why? There's almost no motivation for the characters to do anything they do in the whole movie, especially the stranger. It has no meaning. I almost want my money back. I think I'm starting to regret my purchase of Ichi the Killer. Hopefully, it won't be as bad as the rest of the Miike movies I've seen.
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Sep 21, 2008 23:01
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trapped mouse posted:Here's a question about Visitor Q: The Visitor doesn't destroy the family---the family is already dysfunctional in pretty much every way it could be. He shows up to restore proper social order in the house. If you look at the film as a sort of surreal (and scatological) morality play, all of the seemingly bizarre elements take on pretty mundane meanings (e.g., the mother's lactation being a re-awakening of her maternal nurturing). Feel free to re-ask more detailed questions, but I think this is pretty much what you've been `missing'.
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Sep 21, 2008 23:04
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Desiato posted:Kinski dubbed himself in the German version. Think about it, a very distinct sounding German actor being dubbed in German by someone else, it makes no sense. And regarding Visitor Q I agree with wikipedia (and SubG): The Visitor leaves the family. Later, finding the prostitute daughter on the street, he hits her in the face with a rock. Beaten and bleeding, she comes back home to the family and finds the father suckling on the mother's breast in the garden. The final shot of the movie is of the daughter suckling on her mother's other breast, symbolising the return of family order. All scars on the mother have disappeared as have those on the daughter, shown seconds before (caused by being hit with the rock), suggesting a symbolically healed family. That's it really. A return to traditional family values through the Miike filter.
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Sep 22, 2008 17:03
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Hedenius posted:A return to traditional family values through the Miike filter. And rocks upside people's heads. gently caress you Dr. Phil!
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Sep 22, 2008 17:57
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When they say an actor "chews the scenery" in a film, what are they saying exactly?
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Sep 24, 2008 19:46
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That they're melodramatically over acting. With gusto. It's not necessarily referring to a poor performance, as the character could be a vigorously extravagant one with a highly affected manner, and so have the same lack of subtleties. But it's generally used as a negative. Its origin isn't well established, but it's certainly a theatrical term from at least the 1890's.
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Sep 24, 2008 20:32
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Binowru posted:When they say an actor "chews the scenery" in a film, what are they saying exactly? Imagine a stage play, with fake props that represent trees and buildings and stuff. Obviously it's fake but proper actors treat them as real and kind of operate in that way. The audience enters a contract with the actors that say, "you treat them like real trees and I'll sort of pretend they're trees". A bad actor doesn't operate in that way. They overact, they destroy the illusion the audience is willing to create for themselves. They go up to a "tree" and eat it because it's just cardboard, forgetting that it should represent a tree. Whenever an actor is not even trying to "act" but is rather just outlandish, it's usually scenery chewing. At no time are you able to concentrate on anything else onscreen but the guy flipping out and hamming it up. You're just like "that's Jack Nicholson reading lines and flipping out". Christopher Walken has been scenery chewing for a bit now and does it "better" than most anyone else. Because while he's destroying the illusions, he knows it and the audience knows it and he's cast for that effect. The filmmakers are going "we could hire an actor to play a south american exploiting opportunist, but we'd rather put Walken in and let him entertain the hell out of you".
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Sep 24, 2008 20:34
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Binowru posted:When they say an actor "chews the scenery" in a film, what are they saying exactly? I've always thought heard to mean that the actor was horribly overacting in a scene, to the point where it gets ridiculous. If the script says something like "( characters are visibly sad at the funeral,) and the actor portraying the mild mannered accountant takes that as his cue to rend his shirt and climb on top of the casket screaming, "Life isn't worth living without you in it," then he's chewing the scenery. Ape Agitator posted:You're just like "that's Jack Nicholson reading lines and flipping out". Christopher Walken has been scenery chewing for a bit now and does it "better" than most anyone else. Because while he's destroying the illusions, he knows it and the audience knows it and he's cast for that effect. The filmmakers are going "we could hire an actor to play a south american exploiting opportunist, but we'd rather put Walken in and let him entertain the hell out of you". I'd say that's a separate beast from chewing the scenery, that's basically a case of typecasting. Actors like Christopher Walken, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Jack Nicholson, and Dennis Hopper are all good actors who have gotten known for a particular persona, and are willing to pickup an easy paycheck basically playing up their public image. Most of them are also at least still willing to go for smaller paychecks for better movies. Call it the Michael Caine effect. Good actors are willing to be in crappy movies for large paychecks. Walken is probably the worst offender, but you can't tell me that Pacino wasn't pretty much on auto-pilot for The Devil's Advocate, or that De Nero was method acting for Rocky and Bullwinkle. Also, come on, Walken's ridiculous South American opportunist was one of the best parts of The Rundown. "Do you people even know about the tooth fairy? OK, Never mind, just go kill that guy." thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Sep 25, 2008 |
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Sep 25, 2008 05:18
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thrakkorzog posted:
Yea but Walken is just...I mean there's basically no role he's ever had in recent years when he wasn't being Christopher Walken more than he was being his character. In most cases, the audience doesn't even remember his character's name, because they don't have to, he's loving Chris Walken and that's really what's important here.
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Sep 25, 2008 08:14
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dinosaurtrauma posted:Yea but Walken is just...I mean there's basically no role he's ever had in recent years when he wasn't being Christopher Walken more than he was being his character. In most cases, the audience doesn't even remember his character's name, because they don't have to, he's loving Chris Walken and that's really what's important here. I thought he was great in The Rundown. Case point: The villain's name was Hatcher and he was characterized by his god complex.
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Sep 25, 2008 08:26
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thrakkorzog posted:Walken is probably the worst offender, but you can't tell me that Pacino wasn't pretty much on auto-pilot for The Devil's Advocate, or that De Nero was method acting for Rocky and Bullwinkle.
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Sep 25, 2008 11:17
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On the topic of "chewing scenery," see Superman Returns if you haven't: pay attention to Kevin Spacey's performance. Even if you can't put it to words, you will understand after that. You will believe a man can ham it up so good it almost makes the rest of the movie worth it.
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Sep 26, 2008 05:55
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dinosaurtrauma posted:Yea but Walken is just...I mean there's basically no role he's ever had in recent years when he wasn't being Christopher Walken more than he was being his character. In most cases, the audience doesn't even remember his character's name, because they don't have to, he's loving Chris Walken and that's really what's important here. Its been a while since I've seen it but I would counter this with Catch Me If You Can.
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Sep 26, 2008 06:22
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That's a good one to point out, yea. And don't get me wrong, I love Chris Walken, even when he's just Chris Walken, and as you pointed out, he has the legitimate role every now and then. I still think the scene with him and Dennis Hopper in True Romance is probably in my top ten favorite scenes of any movie ever.
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Sep 26, 2008 17:55
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Maybe this was already answered somewhere, but I just saw a commercial for a movie called Quarantine that had scene-by-scene recreations of [rec]. Is it going to be the same movie reshot with different actors in English or is it just a spin-off or what? And isn't [rec] a little new to be remade?
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Sep 29, 2008 05:35
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Nimec posted:Maybe this was already answered somewhere, but I just saw a commercial for a movie called Quarantine that had scene-by-scene recreations of [rec]. Is it going to be the same movie reshot with different actors in English or is it just a spin-off or what? [rec] is a foreign movie. Foreign movies are game for American remakes as soon as they go into pre-production.
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Sep 29, 2008 05:38
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Nimec posted:Maybe this was already answered somewhere, but I just saw a commercial for a movie called Quarantine that had scene-by-scene recreations of [rec]. Is it going to be the same movie reshot with different actors in English or is it just a spin-off or what? Its a scene by scene remake. I'm a little wary because from what I've heard the director of [rec] pulled some fuckery with the cast by messing with their heads. As in he would tell them the wrong cues for when people would jump out to get better reactions. Which doesn't transfer at all when they're doing it shot for shot.
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Sep 29, 2008 06:07
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I watched There Will Be Blood again recently and it occurs to me: What exactly happened during the oil rig fire scene? - Did they hit a natural gas vein or something in the area where they were drilling for oil? Some guy screams "It's gas! It's gas!" and everyone runs away but they never elaborate on what exactly happened. - What happened to make H.W. deaf? The pressure of the gas shooting out of the ground around him burst his eardrums? - Why did the oil rig catch on fire? Did the gas react with the outside air and spontaneously ignite or something?
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Oct 2, 2008 20:23
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Encryptic posted:- Why did the oil rig catch on fire? Did the gas react with the outside air and spontaneously ignite or something? I think the oil was shooting out of the ground so fast that it caused enough friction against the rocky ground to ignite. There's a similar phenomenon where fire hoses will actually catch fire if the water pressure gets high enough.
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Oct 2, 2008 21:37
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I know Bonnie & Clyde was pretty groundbreaking in terms of its portrayal of violence, but what about it's portrayal of sex? I only ask because notwithstanding Clyde's impotence issue, the sex scenes seemed extremely awkward and I got the impression that the actors really didn't know what to do. In Saving Private Ryan there's a scene in the beginning where Mellish is handed a hitler youth knife. He says something before he starts crying but I can't find a quote nor decipher it, and I always wondered if it related to the preceding battle or to the holocaust.
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Oct 2, 2008 22:24
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Jive One posted:In Saving Private Ryan there's a scene in the beginning where Mellish is handed a hitler youth knife. He says something before he starts crying but I can't find a quote nor decipher it, and I always wondered if it related to the preceding battle or to the holocaust. The line is "Now it's a Shabbat challah cutter, right?", which is a jewish bread. Making it ironic in that sense, hitler youth knife used as a Jewish Sabbath bread knife. As for Bonnie and Clyde, the 60s were an awesome time and there is a lot of experimentation going on. That covers nearly every facet of filmmaking, including sex. I wouldn't say that Beatty and Dunaway didn't know how to act in a sex scene at the time, more that they were going for a particular immediacy and improvisation to the sex scene so it intentionally comes across unstructured and kind of anti-Hollywood. That's just my opinion though.
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Oct 2, 2008 23:38
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Ape Agitator posted:As for Bonnie and Clyde, the 60s were an awesome time and there is a lot of experimentation going on. That covers nearly every facet of filmmaking, including sex. I wouldn't say that Beatty and Dunaway didn't know how to act in a sex scene at the time, more that they were going for a particular immediacy and improvisation to the sex scene so it intentionally comes across unstructured and kind of anti-Hollywood.
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Oct 3, 2008 02:55
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I think that was wise though, in the end. B&C had a mythology behind them as a great love affair that going that route would undermine (just like any form of love triangle) that myth. It's a big part of the appeal of the duo.
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Oct 3, 2008 03:33
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Jive One posted:
I always thought Mellish was crying due to battle stress/fatigue for what he just went through. I don't really think 5 minutes after the battle of Omaha would be a emotional trigger for the Jewish genocide, and didn't Americans not really know the full extent of the Final Solution in 1944?
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Oct 3, 2008 22:43
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e: doh!
AcrobaticTenement fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 4, 2008 |
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Oct 4, 2008 00:03
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Is Rules of Engagement as militaristic and racist as the reviews say it is (the documentary, Reel Bad Arabs considers it one of the most infamous Hollywood moments out of every depiction of Middle Easterners)? My buddies and I tend to like to watch infamous or bizarre films just to see what insanity people have when given some celluloid (Story of Ricky and The President's Man 2: A Line in the Sand, for instance), and it just sounds so ridiculous (apparently a 4 year old Muslim child pulls a gun on the Embassy?) If anyone could think of any other overtly militaristic/fascist/racist films to recommend, let me know (we've already seen Norris' Missing in Action trilogy, Delta Force 1+2, and Invasion USA; not to mention Rambo 2 and 3, Death Wish 2-5, and probably a few other I can't recall.)
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Oct 10, 2008 00:07
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timeandtide posted:Is Rules of Engagement as militaristic and racist as the reviews say it is (the documentary, Reel Bad Arabs considers it one of the most infamous Hollywood moments out of every depiction of Middle Easterners)? My buddies and I tend to like to watch infamous or bizarre films just to see what insanity people have when given some celluloid (Story of Ricky and The President's Man 2: A Line in the Sand, for instance), and it just sounds so ridiculous (apparently a 4 year old Muslim child pulls a gun on the Embassy?) Where did you get this idea from? It shows an angry mob taking throwing molitovs and taking shots at a US embassy in Yemen. I really don't understand how that would be racist. Things like that have happened in many countries around the world. The story was written by a current Democrat US Senator, Jim Webb.
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Oct 10, 2008 01:44
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timeandtide posted:Is Rules of Engagement as militaristic and racist as the reviews say it is (the documentary, Reel Bad Arabs considers it one of the most infamous Hollywood moments out of every depiction of Middle Easterners)? My buddies and I tend to like to watch infamous or bizarre films just to see what insanity people have when given some celluloid (Story of Ricky and The President's Man 2: A Line in the Sand, for instance), and it just sounds so ridiculous (apparently a 4 year old Muslim child pulls a gun on the Embassy?) It's really only as racist as practically every movie that deals even tangentially with terrorism, perhaps slightly more. Most of them boil down to the "and the good one" approach, where all of the foreign characters are either evil, complicit, or incompetent except for "the good one" (usually literally one guy) who is honorable, capable, and helps Americans. Rules of Engagement only really varies in the sense that "the good one" is a guy from the North Vietnamese Army and tells the rather unvarnished truth. The thing is that the arab people have almost no face that I can recall (outside of maybe a Doctor, I think), which was a bit of a departure. Not only are they kind of an anonymous boogeyman, that exist only to be potentially a threat (I don't think they even bother to give mention for what the mob was protesting), but they're kind of Schrodinger's Arab Mob, always both armed and unarmed and can only be found to be either (in equal probability) by the end. What's sort of brilliant about the film is how it works so hard and adds cheating characters so that an audience is influenced to want the mob to be armed, if only so they will stop being so unfair to poor Sam Jackson. But really, it's only as racist as all the other ones (which in my opinion are). The only real difference is they don't try to humanize Arabs via the "good one" character mechanic and essentially makes them kind of like The Balrog, a motiveless plot device around which tragedy occurs). Edit: I remember a crippled kid in the clinic that Tommy Lee Jones visits but I can't bring to mind a specific crippled kid in the crowd. I do think I recall kids with weapons, however. Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Oct 10, 2008 |
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Oct 10, 2008 03:09
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Ape Agitator posted:It's really only as racist as practically every movie that deals even tangentially with terrorism, perhaps slightly more. Most of them boil down to the "and the good one" approach, where all of the foreign characters are either evil, complicit, or incompetent except for "the good one" (usually literally one guy) who is honorable, capable, and helps Americans. Is it true that even a young crippled girl (I think they mention her as being legless or without one leg) opens fire on them? Also, it sounds worse mostly due to the fact that the beginning is apparently a Vietnam "can't believe we lost that one!" so we get the double-header of both Vietnam and the Middle East (other than the noble North Vietnamese, who also...salutes Jackson?)
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Oct 10, 2008 04:46
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Ape Agitator posted:It's really only as racist as practically every movie that deals even tangentially with terrorism, [...] But really, it's only as racist as all the other ones (which in my opinion are). I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you are saying that every movie that deals even tangentially with terrorism is racist. Is that what you meant to say?
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Oct 10, 2008 06:27
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We Are Citizen posted:I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you are saying that every movie that deals even tangentially with terrorism is racist. Is that what you meant to say?
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Oct 10, 2008 11:40
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We Are Citizen posted:I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you are saying that every movie that deals even tangentially with terrorism is racist. Is that what you meant to say? Hollywood's terrorism movies, yeah, they pretty much are. The Kingdom, Rendition (where I think the four primary foreign characters are a daughter, a torturer, and a suspected terrorist, and a terrorist), even Syriana. That was both good and kind of interesting in that it showed how someone could be recruited for terrorism, but then again you just get mastermind terrorist and dimwitted dupes to work with for that particular plot aside. It's kind of fundamental to basic scriptwriting in that you've only got a limited time to work with, so there's not much time in the budget to deliver anything that shows Arabs in anything but the worst possible light. So nobody can really afford to do anything but pay lip service to balance, but that doesn't make them un-racist, just encouraged to do so in the interest of time. The "one good one" mechanic is what they can afford to do. It's kind of a lose-lose. If they try to be fair to their subjects, the action pictures suffer by being slow and painfully PC. If they stick cardboard "terrorists" in there the audience automatically understands because middle eastern is movie shorthand for terrorist so it's wonderfully efficient, but that's pretty racist. Hollywood has no mandate to educate or be fair, and I don't expect them to do be really. They're supposed to be storytellers and entertainers and that's their priority. But as a rabid consumer of Hollywood's products, I'd have no good opinion of Arabs at all if I weren't curious about the world and explored other resources. But right now Arabs are equal to Martians, forces of evil that at best you can only hope one breaks with the pack and tries to help you. But they make good bad guys.
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Oct 10, 2008 16:03
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I saw a movie a long time ago when I was young, and all I remember was that a guy was having to inhale some sort of oxygen supplying gel into his lungs so he could survive a deep-sea diving expedition. Anyone have a clue what movie this was?
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Oct 10, 2008 21:43
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buildmyrigdotcom posted:I saw a movie a long time ago when I was young, and all I remember was that a guy was having to inhale some sort of oxygen supplying gel into his lungs so he could survive a deep-sea diving expedition. Anyone have a clue what movie this was? The Abyss? I could be wrong, though. I haven't seen that movie in a long time.
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Oct 10, 2008 21:44
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I haven't seen the movie Abyss, but I read the book recently and that is definitely in there. They explain it most simply by saying its like going back to breathing in the womb. "You breathed water for 9 months, son. Your body don't forget."
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Oct 10, 2008 22:30
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Ape Agitator posted:racist Hollywood So do you think it is possible for Hollywood to make a good movie about terrorism that isn't racist? If so, how? If not, then how is it fair to call most Hollywood terrorism movies racist if they are already as non-racist as it is possible for them to be without sucking?
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Oct 10, 2008 22:31
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We Are Citizen posted:So do you think it is possible for Hollywood to make a good movie about terrorism that isn't racist? If so, how? If not, then how is it fair to call most Hollywood terrorism movies racist if they are already as non-racist as it is possible for them to be without sucking? There are other terrorist groups in history and the world today that aren't Arabic that have had movies made about them (see: Michael Collins and The Wind That Shakes The Barley - both about the IRA). Admittedly, neither of those qualifies as a major Hollywood terrorist movie.
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Oct 10, 2008 22:57
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We Are Citizen posted:So do you think it is possible for Hollywood to make a good movie about terrorism that isn't racist? If so, how? If not, then how is it fair to call most Hollywood terrorism movies racist if they are already as non-racist as it is possible for them to be without sucking? United 93 was pretty drat good.
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Oct 10, 2008 23:05
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