General Movie Questions (and hopefully answers)

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SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Akuma posted:

I watched Kick-rear end last night, and it got me thinking; how often do films use pieces of music from another film's score? I'm sure it must happen a decent amount, but I'm drawing a complete blank.

Every Tarantino film with a score.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2010 21:59

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 12:59

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Akuma posted:

Doesn't count! Too obvious!

Richard Band's score for Re-Animator (1985) is a complete ripoff of Herrmann's score for Psycho (1960). Does that count?

Or how about when a composer quotes his own music, like Jerry Goldsmith using part of his score from Patton (1970) as the theme for Bruce Dern's character in The 'Burbs (1989)?

# ¿ Apr 26, 2010 22:39

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Rake Arms posted:

Though I have to say, Tarantino is a genius at recycling scores, especially Morricone. It's like all the music from Death Rides a Horse and Navajo Joe were just waiting for Kill Bill to be made.

Eh, I find it tremendously distracting, particularly because he tends to gravitate toward very distinctive bits of very distinctive scores. There's no way I can hear a Morricone score without being reminded of the scenes it was first used in, and that's more or less the best outcome. In the big reveal in the restaurant in Inglourious Basterds (2009), instead of punctuating the `oh poo poo' moment I was instead taken out of the picture for a minute or two while I tried to place the musical cue (the `you gone git raped' music from The Entity (1981)).

# ¿ Apr 26, 2010 23:01

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

High Noon was released in 1952.

When someone says that a Western is revisionist, that generally means that it presents a version of the American West that is at odds with the version typically presented in the Hollywood Western of the classic studio era. So the `conventional' Western is something like most of John Ford's Westerns (although some would argue that The Searchers (1956) is a revisionist Western), or Howard Hawks'. These films typically feature clearly delineated good and evil, with the good almost invariably being represented by hardworking, salt-of-the-earth American settlers, lawmen, and so forth. The evil usually appears in the form of either stereotypically villainous bandits that bear more than a passing resemblance to Wile E. Coyote, or equally stereotypically rapacious redski...er, India...er, Native Americans. If there is any moral ambiguity, it's usually in the form of the rakish rogue who decides to fight for The Establishment in the end (Victor Mature as Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine (1946), for example), the outlaw with the heart of gold and who never engages in untoward behaviour on screen (John Wayne as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (1936)), or occasionally the hidebound bureaucrat who makes mistakes out of a misplaced sense of duty (Henry Fonda as Lt. Col. Thursday in Fort Apache (1948)). Underneath all this is a fairly utopian vision of the American West as an embodiment of the Puritan work ethic, the golden rule, and other traditional American ethical nostrums.

Revisionist Westerns are generally considered to be any that present a more nuanced version of history than the rather idealised version seen in the studio era films. Some of this may be done by portraying the American West as a largely amoral and violent purgatory (e.g. Leone's films). Some may do this by questioning the utopian version of the American West as presented in the studio era films (as in High Noon). Some may do it by attempting to present greater historical verisimilitude---and therefore the racism and smallmindedness that characterised much of America in the mid 19th Century---like, I dunno, the television series Deadwood. And so on.

It's not a case where it's a clear-cut set of definitions, and people argue about what is and is not revisionist as much as people talk about the subject at all. But under it all, it's more or less just a comparison between one kind of Westerns (the Westerns of the classic Hollywood studio era) and every other Western.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2010 21:16

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Butthole Prince posted:

Why is The Searchers described as a right-wing response to High Noon exactly?

I don't think it generally is. Are you thinking of Rio Bravo (1959)?

# ¿ Apr 30, 2010 21:44

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Egbert Souse posted:

Yeah, Logan's Run has terrible effects work. I don't know why it's regarded as anything other than a B movie.

The score by Jerry Goldsmith is great.

# ¿ May 1, 2010 00:44

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

NeuroticErotica posted:

Bad movies cheques clear.

I think a lot of composers do the scores for lovely, low-budget films because it gives them the opportunity to try things that would probably get turned down in a big-budget, mainstream release. Or at least it seems like Jerry Goldsmith---who wrote scores for a whole bunch of crappy genre flicks---used to do this regularly.

# ¿ May 15, 2010 07:02

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

[About Sunshine]

Ape Agitator posted:

I figure it's one of those things that sound insane at first but make sense in context, like using explosives to put out fires. At first you go "wait, what" and then the reasoning makes sense.

No, it really doesn't make any sense. This isn't really some sort of bizarre science fiction scenario that will only be considered in the far-flung future or something. This is a practical problem that's been well explored through the entire history of manned spaceflight and the `solution' to the problem in the film is precisely wrong, for all the reasons you'd expect. What you would actually expect is for the ship to have a fire suppression system that actually, you know, works. What would actually constitute such a solution really depends on things we just don't know in the film, like for instance how gravity works; gravity (and momentum) behave erratically and according to rules different than those which apply in the real world.

And in addition to the engineering/design problem I mention above there are similar `wait, what' design choices in the Icarus II that make sense only if you look at them as narrative contrivances. E.g., vital systems that can only be accessed via spacewalk, whose interface involves apparently pushing a button (or the moral equivalent), and an avionics system that apparently is some sort of AI but which doesn't preemptively calculate things vital to the mission---like maintaining the angle of the shields over a course correction.

And as for kapalama's claim that carrying around a bunch of plants makes sense for the mission: no, it doesn't. That's why there aren't gardens on the ISS. To keep a person breathing for a day you need about two pounds of oxygen. To produce this much oxygen you need a couple hundred plants and enough water nutrients to keep them happy. This will weigh a gently caress of a lot more than two pounds. I don't know what the inside/outside was on the Icarus II's cruise time but given that the shielding was supposed to be 30m thick steel or something like that, a bottled oxygen supply for the crew would be rounding error in the overall throw weight of the ship. If they were planning on being in space indefinitely then creating a self-maintaining biosphere might make sense, but that certainly wasn't what the ship was intended to do.

All that being said, the retarded engineering and science isn't a major complaint I have about the film, which is more about woo sparkly transcendent metaphysical horseshit than hard science. But claiming that it's some sort of example of supremely accurate hard science is, simply, bunk.

# ¿ May 21, 2010 00:28

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Ape Agitator posted:

How about if there's a disaster epic of an oil spill launching millions of gallons into a key source of environmental stability?

This isn't a very good analogy, because the sort of things I'm talking about are already solved, well-explored problems.

So I guess the analogy I'd make with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill would be if all of the Coast Guard vessels in the area suddenly started sinking because none of them had working bilge pumps and none of them were designed with bulkheads. Even if we had to design new, special-purpose ships to deal with the spill those aren't the sorts of problems we'd expect to have on them.

I mean you can retcon any sort of rationalisation you want onto the narrative and since the narrative doesn't specifically give us an analysis of any of the (many) failures nobody can say your suppositions are wrong. I'm just saying that they're not real-world plausible, which was the original claim.

# ¿ May 21, 2010 01:39

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

kapalama posted:

Sunshine did not invent this; it was following NASA's research into the matter.

Yeah, and if the Icarus II detonated nukes behind it, that would be based on actual research and it wouldn't make sense in context, either.

If you're interested in the actual research, the current state-of-the-art in real life growing plants in space (at least in the public record) is NASA's Biomass Production System (BPS), which flew on STS-110:

And here's a shot of it in action, to give a more intuitive idea of the scale:

NASA's flack on it is on the mission pages, and you can find a short NASA film on the BPS here.

The two points being that 1) this sort of system is absolutely not prone to the sort of failure we see in the film, and 2) the fundamental weight problem is still there, for the reasons I originally mentioned---in order for this to be feasible for a life support system you'd need so many of these (several hundred per person) that conventional oxygen generators would weigh less.

But leaving all that aside, the weight argument is more or less moot because, as I said, from the stated design of the Icarus the weight of any oxygen generation system would be rounding error.

And leaving that aside, any habitat that remains in space for an extended period would be expected to have more than one source of oxygen. The ISS does. Hell, even the loving Mir did. Even if for some reason whoever designed the Icarus II decided to use things that could die as the primary oxygen production system, do you really think it's plausible that they wouldn't include a chemical system (e.g. chlorate candles or LiClO₄), an electrolysis system, a ceramic system, or something else like that as a backup?

The tl;dr version of this is: yes, the general idea of using plants in space is a `real' idea, but it doesn't make sense in the context of the film, and the system presented in the film doesn't make sense as an implementation of the general idea.

# ¿ May 21, 2010 04:58

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Ape Agitator posted:

If the special purpose coast guard vessels encountered a catastrophic explosion which affected key systems would you really be so totally incredulous that their bilge pump systems added to these custom built ships might encounter a failure? Let's not forget, the entire reason for the failure was damage to critical modules. This wasn't a forgotten cigarette on an oily rag that failed to engage the sprinklers.

Let me put it this way: I would expect a PE who put his seal on the plans to lose his license over those sorts of failures.

Ape Agitator posted:

Also, for what it's worth, the value of the indefinite life support scheme is somewhat justified by way of the Icarus I remaining stable seven years after mission "failure".

Doing something that isn't part of the mission goals isn't a justification for a design decision that makes no sense in terms of the mission goals.

Anyway, I'm about done arguing this because a) I really don't feel that motivated toward dissecting the design of a fictional spaceship, b) I haven't seen it since it first came out so I can't recall all the specifics, c) all of the other silliness in the script is enough to contradict the assertion that it's a good `hard science' science fiction film (in addition to everything I've already mentioned, I also remember the completely stereotypic and inaccurate portrayal of the effects of vacuum, low gravity, and so forth), and d) this is a really silly derail.

# ¿ May 21, 2010 10:58

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

kapalama posted:

Most Japanese people have never seen what we in America think of as Japanese cinema classics, for that matter.

Yeah, but that's really irrelevant to the question Green Crayons asked. The kind of films he's talking about were a hugely popular form of mainstream Japanese cinema through much of the '60s and '70s.

Short version of the answer to that question is: what you might call samurai costume dramas---the term of art for this is jidaigeki---had been popular in Japan for about as long as Japan had a native film culture. These ran the general gamut of dramatic modes---romances, character dramas, morality plays, and so forth. The typically didn't feature much in the way of action, and certainly none of the limbs-flying, blood-spraying action you're asking about.

That first started showing up in post-war Japanese films. Postwar Japanese cinema is a big subject, but overall a lot of films of this era featured a rather bleak and nihilistic view of the world, and a cynical view of the hallmarks of virtue as embodied by the traditional Japanese values as presented in the earlier jidaigeki films. These films tended to feature a lot of violence (often arising quickly and spontaneously and ending gruesomely) and tended to involve characters which were a lot more morally ambiguous than the heros in most jidaigeki. The general term for this kind of film---with a lot of over-the-top swordfighting---is chanbara.

In broad terms, it's more or less what you see happening between the classic era of Hollywood Westerns and the revisionist Westerns of directors like Leone. On the one hand you have a vehicle for morality plays which presents a fairly idealised version of a historical era, and on the other hand you have an intentionally darker version of the same era which explicitly questions the ideals of the earlier films.

If vertov is around he could probably comment on greater length on the subject.

# ¿ May 24, 2010 23:44

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Green Crayons posted:

Wow, thanks for all of this. Perhaps this should go in the Recommend Me thread, but since we're on this subject: Are there any suggestions for follow-up reading for a film plebe (pertaining to chanbara, which just sounds interesting) or must-see movies to watch (darker revisionism for any genre, actually)?

If you're interested in the `important' films of this sort you could do worse than watch the titles by Gosha, Okamoto, and Kobayashi that are available from Criterion, Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962), plus however many of the Zatoichi films you care to watch.

If you're just interested in the gratuitous and over-the-top aspects, I think the Hanzo the Razor flicks are available in R1 now; they're to most chanbara the way the Django films are to spaghetti Westerns, if that makes sense.

# ¿ May 25, 2010 03:04

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

codyclarke posted:

Do yourself a favor and check out Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy as well. It's a really engrossing saga chronicling the duels of Miyamoto Musashi, a famous Japanese swordsman who wrote The Book of Five Rings. I have no idea how historically accurate the movie is, but Mifune is brilliant and the first film in the series is one of my favorite films.

They're fine films, but they're neither chanbara nor are they remotely revisionist.

# ¿ May 25, 2010 08:20

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

LtKenFrankenstein posted:

The Lone Wolf and Cub movies also really took the climactic blood-spray in Sanjuro and just ran with it. They were decently big crossover movies too, I was under the impression they popularized the 'ridiculous-blood-spray' thing among American audiences at least.

I think the whole arterial spray visual aesthetic for violence first saw currency in American film with Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), which in turn owed a lot to the depiction of violence in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

And in terms of gratuitous blood with your chopsocky, most Americans got into that via Hong Kong action films in the '70s more than by anything exported from Japan. The baby cart films and---I think more notoriously---the Sonny Chiba Street Fighter films were definitely over-the-top violent and saw some play in the US, but I think that kind of violence really got mainstream traction on American screens when Hong Kong kick flicks became `mainstream underground' successful. You know, they didn't exactly become `mainstream' in the way that the latest big-budget Hollywood films were, but everybody saw a couple of them.

The development of this sort of violence in Hong Kong films owes a lot to the Japanese films we've been talking about. Hong Kong didn't have much of a home-grown film industry until the mid to late '60s. Most of what was produced were screen versions of Chinese opera and costume historical dramas. Martial arts epics were certainly part of this, but it wasn't until films like Da Zui Xia/Come Drink With Me (1966) that you see something like wuxia (with crazy wire-fu and a lot of footwork and fighting but mostly bloodless) in its recognisable, modern form. Hong Kong films up to this point were seldom seen outside Hong Kong itself.

Then in 1967 Chang Cheh made Dubei Dao/The One-Armed Swordsman with Jimmy Yu Wang starring. It was the first major success for Shaw Brothers outside Hong Kong, and it proved hugely influential on the structure, themes, and visual aesthetics of subsequent Hong Kong martial arts films. It (and its sequels) were a lot more overtly violent than the films that preceded it. The reasons for this are complex, but the thing that I'll call out here is that it was produced and released in a period of intense social upheaval in Hong Kong. And whereas earlier martial arts heroes were typically Establishment heroes---good guys working for the local government fighting bandits or whatever---the titular one-armed swordsman was wronged by the Establishment and was taking revenge against authority figures. This is a big subject and I'm not covering it adequately here, but it's interesting to note because subsequent audiences have watched Hong Kong action films of this era mostly as exploitation films---for all the crazy martial arts poo poo---but audiences at the time saw them as fight-the-power populist empowerment.

Anyway, following the huge success of the One-Armed Swordsman films Shaw became a major player, Chang Cheh their major director, and Jimmy Yu Wang a major star. At which point Yu Wang decided he had artistic differences with Shaw, and set off on his own to make the completely artistically different One-Armed Boxer films which totally weren't a ripoff of the One-Armed Swordsman character, the most famous of which being Du Bi Quan Wang Da Po Xue Di Zi/Master of the Flying Guillotine (1975). These were almost pure low-budget chopsocky, with the emphasis definitely being on the lurid aspects of all the violence. This sort of film became a staple for other Hong Kong studios attempting to replicate the success of Shaw---like Golden Harvest, who went on to have great mainstream success in the west.

# ¿ May 25, 2010 21:40

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

I like Sanjuro more than Yojimbo because I really appreciate the sending up of Mifune's character. Both are great, but I've watched Sanjuro more times just because it's got a much lighter tone.

They're both good films, but Yojimbo is one of the best-shot films I've ever seen. It's like a two hour course in visual composition and cinematography.

# ¿ May 26, 2010 22:55

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

bad movie knight posted:

Most of those are bad examples because they show actual penetration, but it has happened in the past -- unfortunately, any specific examples are escaping me. I'm sure a more knowledgeable goon could chip in here.

Both of the people involved (David Carradine and Barbara Hershey) have said they actually hosed in Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha (1972).

# ¿ Jun 7, 2010 15:50

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

anticake posted:

I guess no one cares how fake that poo poo looks, but me.

The first time I saw Reservoir Dogs (1992) I wondered whether or not the fact that Harvey Keitel really obviously isn't actually smoking the cigarette he's holding when he's talking with Steve Buscemi was supposed to be a clue or something.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2010 08:08

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Keanu Grieves posted:

Lumi�re and Company should be right up your alley, although I haven't seen it yet.

The Lynch film in that is loving astonishing.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2010 06:21

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=147636485853600786

The Lynch segment is here for anyone who hasn't seen it. It sends chills up my spine every time I watch it.

It's really remarkable, particularly if you're watching the rest of the films in the anthology. You have all these directors from all ends of the film spectrum and they're really all just phoning it in, making these little `someone waving at the camera' sort of shorts and then Lynch does that, in one continuous take, using a camera made in, what, 1894?

# ¿ Jun 23, 2010 20:42

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

euphronius posted:

I think it was 3 takes, but, yeah, it was amazing.

Nope. The first couple things that look like cuts are the camera operator putting his hand over the aperture while the camera pans. The last couple of `cuts'---the smoke and then the fire---are practical effects obscuring the fact that what is being filmed is a small stage on a large lazy-susan sort of thing that's rotating during the `cut'.

A link to the short prefaced by Lynch directing the film in one take.

SubG fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jun 23, 2010

# ¿ Jun 23, 2010 21:02

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

Frankly, I love it when a dolly zoom is used effectively, but it's done badly so often that it has to be really, really exceptional to work because the audience will automatically associate it with all the lovely times they've seen it used.

NeuroticErotica posted:

It's called SnorriCam

I think Spike Lee is under some sort of contractual obligation to use this at least once per film.

Edit: What was the first use of the more general moving point-of-view shot? I can think of scattered examples---the beginning Dark Passage (1947) and driving sequence in Gun Crazy (1950)---and I think of very early examples of static POV shots (like the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

SubG fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Jul 2, 2010

# ¿ Jul 2, 2010 19:50

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

FitFortDanga posted:

There's Lady in the Lake, which came out a few months before Dark Passage. There's probably an earlier example, though.

Yeah, that's what I figure. I mean you could argue the final shot (in most prints of) The Great Train Robbery (1903) is a POV shot (albeit a static one).

There are motion POV shots in Vertov's Chelovek S Kino-Apparatom/Man With A Movie Camera (1929), aren't there?

# ¿ Jul 2, 2010 20:36

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Peaceful Anarchy posted:

That sequence isn't static

Isn't it? I haven't seen the film in years but that's how I was remembering it.

FitFortDanga posted:

While I'm not sure exactly what shots you're referring to, I would consider that to be debatable since there are no real subjective characters in Man With a Movie Camera. Unless you consider the camera a character, and that's a whole other can of worms.

I don't think you normally expect a POV shot to be literally from the point of view of one of the characters. The in-car camera shot in Gun Crazy is behind both of the characters (the camera being in the back seat), for example.

In Man With A Movie Camera I was thinking of the sequence where the two cameras, both in cars, are filming each other.

The reason I started thinking about it was that Johnnie To has done a couple of things like SnorriCam but different, often involving multiple characters on a platform that's moving with the camera. There's an (awkward) example of this in (if I'm remembering it correctly) Hak Se Wui/Election (2005) where there are two guys at a table in a restaurant and as they're negotiating their big important Triad deals, they and the table are on some sort of swing arrangement with the camera, so the restaurant in the background is sorta rocking in the background. I remember the shot better than the film, because it was really distracting---in general as a `hey, dig me!' sorta shot, but also because all the poo poo on the table wasn't stabilised or anything, so everybody's drinks were sloshing around and so forth.

Anyway, I was thinking that the SnorriCam shot as such can't predate the steadicam, but the general idea (camera on a moving platform with one or more of the actors) has to go back further.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2010 21:23

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

NeuroticErotica posted:

Spike actually uses a different method - Under a snorricam the camera moves with every step the actor takes - left right left right, etc.
Spike sits them down on a dolly that has a camera mounted to it so that they glide instead of move with the camera.

Is that uncommon? Before the internet was around as a font of all wisdom I actually assumed that this was usually the case; in fact when I first saw it assumed that's what Scorsese did for the `Rubber Biscuit Shot' in Mean Streets (1973) and for the longest time I was trying to figure out how he handled it when Keitel keels over at the end.

Peaceful Anarchy posted:

I just watched Wings and there's a shot where two characters are on a swing and the camera moves with them. I'm not sure if this is what you mean.

Yeah, that sort of thing. I don't really have a thesis I'm working here. It's one of those things that seems like a really obvious (if easily overused) element of the grammar of narrative film. Just wondering how far back it goes and if it's one of those things that was thought of very early on and then was more or less not used for years.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2010 21:43

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

kapalama posted:

That seems wrong because the first Star Wars had tie-ins and it come out first, right?

It says `the first notable', not `first'. But yeah, it's bullshit.

For example part of the marketing of Fantastic Voyage (1966) involved a novelisation (written by Isaac Asimov) which was released in advance of the film. And if novelisations count as tie-ins (and they should) then that practice goes back to at least the '20s.

Edit:

According to wikipedia, Photoplay novelisations date back to `around 1912'.

SubG fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jul 10, 2010

# ¿ Jul 10, 2010 00:52

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Toebone posted:

I get the feeling he was asking more about obviously promotional stuff that has nothing to do with the film, like Limited Edition Star Wars Coca-Cola and Shrek Pancakes and IHOP and stuff like that. Soundtracks and novelizations don't seem quite as blatant.

Okay, so a tie-in novelisation isn't a tie-in? Then how about the Charlie Chaplin merchandise produced by Essanay starting in the teens? If not that, then what about things like the Royal Doulton figurines produced for Disney films since at least the '40s?

# ¿ Jul 10, 2010 03:15

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Egomaniac posted:

In Japan people generally think of watching "old" movies as something akin to willingly driving an old beater car when you've got a shiny new Corvette parked in the garage.

I think this is equivalently true if you remove `in Japan'. Especially if the emphasis is on the word `in'.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2010 12:08

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Egomaniac posted:

Anyway, having lived there most of my adult life and in the States growing up, I don't think that's true at all.

You're welcome to disagree. But I think that in the States watching `older' films is very much something confined to the enthusiast market, a few `classics' excepted. Studios certainly behave as if this is true in their approach to releasing films on DVD and Blu Ray. I'm not sure if there's any way you could collect more meaningful data on the subject short of conducting some sort of large opinion poll.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2010 05:56

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

kapalama posted:

The other terminator movies (and the series) always played with interesting ideas.

If the third Terminator film had any ideas I must've missed them.

And what I've seen of the series (only part of the first season) features some absolutely appallingly terrible writing and equivalently bad acting. It's almost fascinating how bad the drat thing is. What I find particularly interesting is how every bit part seems to be played by a better actor than the principles, which are just really awful. It's like an optical illusion or something how bad they are. I don't think I've ever seen acting so uniformly terrible except when on-screen penetration was involved. Is the series really well regarded? Watching it I figured it was so punishingly wretched that even fans of the franchise would have backed away from it in disgust, kinda like the equally reprehensible AvP flicks.

I mean I don't want to go on about it but the series was bad. Like really, really bad. What am I missing? Does the entire cast get wiped out in the second season and replaced by something more entertaining, like sock puppets or something?

# ¿ Jul 23, 2010 12:05

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Tender Bender posted:

I just watched Chinatown and I don't think I "get" it. It was enjoyable enough with good performances from its leads, but I always see it mentioned as A Great Movie and I'm just not seeing it. I don't really see any depth to it or any meaning beyond "Things aren't always what they seem; also incest." Am I just bad at movies?

It's not a puzzle to be figured out. It's considered a great film because of craftsmanship: Towne's script, Polanski's direction, Goldsmith's score, the acting, the production design, and so forth. It evokes a certain time and more particularly a certain genre of fiction, and it does this superlatively and without either being merely a pastiche or engaging in revisionism.

I mean we could get into deconstructing the story if you want, but that's not really at the heart of why it's considered a classic.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2010 03:31

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Ninja Gamer posted:

Garret Dillahunt was the best.

He is not one of the things about the show I absolutely hated. You know what is? When you're watching the first two Terminator flicks if you find yourself thinking, `Hmmm, killer robots from the future. I'd like to see killer robots from the future...' there are a couple of different ways you might finish that thought. `...riding a motorcycle while poo poo blows the gently caress up behind him.' Bam, you got it. Or maybe you'd think, `Yeah, shooting the poo poo out of something with a shotgun that he cocks like fuckin' Chuck Connors on The Rifleman.' No problem, there it is. Maybe you just want to see robots shape-shifting and getting covered with liquid nitrogen and getting shattered or getting crushed in hydraulic presses or melted in steel foundries or I don't even know what the gently caress else. You know what you wouldn't find yourself wishing the killer loving robots from the future would do more of? Dancing. But nope, that's what the makers of the TV series figured you wanted. Killer robots from the future loving ballet dancing. Ballet dancing. For like five goddamn minutes. I just wish I was making that up.

I mean there's lots of other problems. Like I said, the acting is on the whole execrable. And it's not like Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, and Edward loving Furlong are exactly a thespian braintrust. But they're the goddamn Royal Shakespeare Company compared to the cast of the series.

And the writing. Bleeeech. Sarah Connor's psychiatrist recalls, breathlessly, the time she's rescued from the asylum by a terminator by, no poo poo, comparing the scene to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He straight up I poo poo you not says that the terminator reaching out to Connor is like God reaching to Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. While the music swells dramatically. And then he says, `The Hand of God,' breathlessly. You can hear all the caps in there. This gets repeated a couple of times in case you might have missed it. `The Hand of God'. Breathlessly. With music cues.

The writing is just dire. I mean I know I'm going on about it, but it's almost mesmerising how bad the drat thing is.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2010 12:40

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

A Futbol Injustice posted:

Crazy.

Yeah, just imagine if commentary tracks had become commonplace a little earlier. We could've had a track of Klaus Kinski just ranting insanely about wanting to kill Herzog. Kinda like the Hunter S. Thompson commentary for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, only more guttural and intense.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2010 22:12

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

The Machine posted:

You're thinking of the wrong Solaris.
The 1972 Tarkovsky is the loved one.

I kinda dig Tarkovsky but I think it's a tedious film. I'd love to see blu rays of Stalker (1979) or Offret (1986), though. I sorta think Solaris is the entry-level Tarkovsky because apart from the length (goddrat that drive through the tunnel goes on forever) it's a pretty straightforward and accessible film.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2010 06:29

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

I thought Gamer was one of the dumbest films I've ever seen; it's certainly the most painfully ugly film I've seen since Speed Racer (2008). And while I get the fact that it's trying to use all of the over-the-top stylistic twitchiness to make a point, all of its observations about consumerism, gaming, and pop culture were utterly facile.

It was about one lolcat away from being the film equivalent of 4chan.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2010 01:56

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

codyclarke posted:

Any recommendations on where I should go after this one? Should I just continue chronologically, or try a few from each era, or what?

I think the canonical answer is chronologically, and skip everything from about 1968 to about 1980, unless you're into political screeds.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2010 06:14

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

...of SCIENCE! posted:

The thing to keep in mind is that the footage at the beginning and end is a case of unreliable narrator, since it's documentary footage from a media conglomerate that is in the weapon corporation's pocket (as shown by the speed and ease with which they manipulate it to turn people against Wikus) as well as being prey to human biases and ignorance.

Wait...so you're implying some people take it at face value? When I was watching it I thought it was so ham-handed it was a little off-putting, like there might as well have been a big flashing red intertitle reading Social Satire or something. Like a Verhoeven film, only without the sense of humour.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2010 23:22

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

...of SCIENCE! posted:

If there's one thing the "Crazy film interpretations" thread has shown me it's that there's no message to hamfisted or meant to be taken at face value that it will be overlooked.

This is more or less exactly what I was thinking.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2010 01:11

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 12:59

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

(In Ghost Writer) I assume that we're meant to question whether or not there is any conspiracy in the first place.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2010 07:49

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > General Movie Questions (and hopefully answers)

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