posted
I like it when they're at the place an the man goes in the water an he starts melting an he's all like 'Hoawwragh! Help Me!' an Clarence hits him with the car an he flies apart.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
posted
watched The Holy Mountain on Friday night. A good film, very enjoyable. Funded by John Lennon and coming fresh from 1973, It follows Jesus on a quest for spiritual enlightment. After a seriously intense opening 15 minutes featuring a massive amount of dead skinned animals, animal carnage, nudity, blood, and scathing blasphemy, it settled down into a series of portraits of 8 other enlightment seekers, who are all representations of character traits and dimensions of society, as originally assigned to the planets (mars=war, etc). Then they go up a mountain, and some weird shit happens, and the ending is very much an excellent punchline. The film is basically an attack on the corruption of the search for spiritual enlightment, and contains some scenes of social and political satire that are as fresh now as they must have been back then.
The blood, animal death, nudity and general eye fucking imagery carries on through the film, and it does has an effect of transporting you to a different place, a land where whatever is imagined can exist, and that's pretty refreshing. The spiritual metaphors are hard to follow sometimes as very explicit references to spiritual lore are made throughout using literal imagery, and if you don't know what it means then it just comes across as craziness. This can spoil the flow once you find yourself 'digging it', and then all of a sudden completely lost, but perhaps that's the point in terms of the director's desire to produce a headtrip of a film. Confusion is part of it, and makes the clarity seem so much more important.
Basically, I really liked it, and hope to see it again soon after I've done some reading. I will say againt that it's not for the squeamish when it comes to animal death and the manipulation of the subsequent cadavers.
Lots of hipster ***** were at this film, so I imagine that it's been blogged to death by London's new culturati. Bobby Gillespie was hanging around the NFT before we went it. I saw a man take a photo of a light switch.
I also watched Ghostbusters which I didn't like so much. The overall message seemed to be pretty conservative, and I'm sure you could pull all sorts of meaning from the whole extermination of vagrant spirits in new york thing. I noticed too that there was lots of smoking for a kids film. Every other scene, one of the Ghostbusters was lighting up. Also lots of biblical references; it was clear that they were doing god's work by cleaning up New York. I don't know. It just didn't move me like it did when I was a kid, and I found it smug, stupid, and not funny.
One Hour Photo was on last night, which is an alright film. Slightly crass and shameless in the way it manipulates the audience, but still a good scary and then sad film.
[ 30.10.2006, 06:00: Message edited by: Jimmy Big Nuts ]
Posts: 4376
| IP: Logged
posted
I also watched loads of Sealab 2021, which has got to be the most hit and miss thing ever.
Posts: 4376
| IP: Logged
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
Went out to see A Good Year last night - against my better judgement, I wanted to see The History Boys but was overruled.
Don't bother. The City trader stuff is hopelessly overdone and outdated. Jeff from Coupling makes a brief appearance but is a complete snarling stereotype dupe.
The Provence stuff looks pretty but is again unoriginal and moderately dull. There are faux comedy moments that raised a wry liptwitch but that's about it really.
More Tom Hollander would have been good (I love a good Tom Hollander) but he was shamefully underused.
Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott and you get this tedium. What a letdown.
-------------------- i'm expressing my inner anguish through the majesty of song Posts: 4243
| IP: Logged
posted
That film does look pretty awful. Anything set in Provence is likely to be appalling twee horseshit, surely?
[ 30.10.2006, 06:03: Message edited by: Jimmy Big Nuts ]
Posts: 4376
| IP: Logged
Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
posted
I watched Land of the Dead. As usual, I am a whole year behind everyone else. Zombies. Meh.
Posts: 5776
| IP: Logged
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
quote:Originally posted by Jimmy Big Nuts: That film does look pretty awful. Anything set in Provence is likely to be appalling twee horseshit, surely?
Yeah, and from that perspective it wasn't really a letdown as such, as I had no major expectations.
From the trailers last night and general word of mouth, I am sooooo looking forward to The Prestige that I'm practically wetting myself.
-------------------- i'm expressing my inner anguish through the majesty of song Posts: 4243
| IP: Logged
posted
zombies are cool, louche. land of the dead is shit.
seeing little children tonight. looks alright. kate winslet.
Posts: 5190
| IP: Logged
Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
posted
I've never really 'got' zombies, though. I don't find them very menacing. The Dawn of the Dead ones were quite scary, what with them having a good turn of speed on them. But mostly they're all just a bit shambolic, I think. Messy. I am too fastidious for zombies.
Posts: 5776
| IP: Logged
posted
A Good Year looks like it might work as a peculiar nightmarish vision of hell, as though you're trapped at a dinner party with an insufferable c**t croaking on about his culture clash adventures with a load of digusting French peasants. I wonder whether Russell Crowe made the film just to get everyone to start admitting it was a lot more fun when he went round beating up hotel staff. I haven't even seen A Good Year, but the very existence of it makes me puking mad. Everytime I see that fuckawful poster campaign that looks like an advert for fucking... incontinence nappies or something I just want to... gah! I can't bear it.
Anyway, if someone wants to hear me express an opinion on a film I've actually - you know - seen, I watched Bottle Rocket on Friday, which I really enjoyed. It's got a real charm, and a funny idea for a script in which a small town crook attempts to embark on a life of crime using woolly management techniques (5 year plan, performance appraisals etc). It's a little bit directionless in places and feels a bit like a film that was once a short film, and then got extended when the filmakers managed to raise some more cash (90% sure this is what happened). But it's got some great lines and some great visual gags. I recommend it.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
posted
I love the newer Dawn of the Dead. It is awesome, though I kinda missed the mall culture commentary aspect of the original. And yes, fast zombies are better than slow ones.
Posts: 5190
| IP: Logged
posted
what other zombie films do you recommend benway? do you have any on dvd? you should come over and watch them with my new flatmate
Posts: 5190
| IP: Logged
posted
I've got a few Fulci films on dvd. House by the Cemetary, The Beyond, Zombi, and City of the Living Dead, which all appear above. I think I've lent a few of them out though, although I watched City the other day. Good scene where a woman vomits up her entire digestive system (you can see her up there, with bleeding eyes, about to start the fun). There's no social commentary in his films, just gore, bad dubbing, illogical plot devices and bizarre editing. But they can be unsettling.
[ 30.10.2006, 06:50: Message edited by: Jimmy Big Nuts ]
Posts: 4376
| IP: Logged
Ringers- what did you think of Hostel? I was slightly disappointed...expected much more gore.
My brother just saw Saw 3(sounds weird) and said it was by far the best Saw. Said the gruesome parts are very very gruesome. Yay.
Posts: 2918
| IP: Logged
posted
Oh! Another movie that I've seen recently is Duma. It's a story of a boy who (with his father) finds a cheetah cub (my fave big cat) on a road. They take it in, with the knowledge that they'll have to return it to the wild. Here it is on imdb.com
It brought tears to my eyes. (I'm a geek, what can I say)
Posts: 2918
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Amy: Ringers- what did you think of Hostel? I was slightly disappointed...expected much more gore.
I thought it was pretty weak to be honest. The problem with films like Hostel is that, for there to be any real sense of drama or peril, you have to want the main characters to be ok. You have to empathise with them at least on a basic level. Three morons backpacking across Europe hoping to get laid, however, really do deserve to die, and so it's almost disappointing that one of them doesn't. The only scene which had any kind of impact on me was the one where he cuts the girl's eye out, because she's just standing there screaming and you're thinking 'what do you even do in that situation?' but even that is let down by the rather poor special effects. It was like something out of Braindead.
To summarise: Hostel = rubbish. A horror film that'll appeal only to people who don't understand or appreciate proper horror films.
Posts: 12211
| IP: Logged
Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
posted
yes I didn't really like saw 1. Good opening, but then really, where was the film? Just a load of people in traps. Like an extended nine inch nails video with some stupid bollocks tacked on at the end.
Posts: 4376
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by vikram: seeing little children tonight. looks alright. kate winslet.
yeah so alright film. great performances. i want to have an affair with kate winslet! the dude is totally unsympathetic though - grow up. actually, everyone is unsympathetic, apart from maybe the paedophile and his dear old mum. and it is a bit smug liberal upper middle class, not in a good way.
This week I'm gonna go watch You, Me, Dupree, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and Miami Vice.
Posts: 5190
| IP: Logged
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic