Seen any good films lately? [3]

That does look excellent. Great reviews too.

laughed out loud when the body fell out the window, its the way it hit the rubbish bin

watched Passport to Pimlico quintessentially Ealing comedy, and Follow the Fleet with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, so effortless and lovely

The last samurai is really good!

Worth the watch, if you havent seen it yet: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325710/

That was interesting Id watch that. And yes, he was a great painter, look at the pearl earring that girl is wearing in the famous picture of the same name.

Oh my goodness, I watched the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers last night with my sister.
Honestly she was a bit more scared of it than I was, but the damn movie kept getting worse and worse!
At one point I thought, OK, I've seen the scariest thing this film has to offer, and it's not so bad. And then all these other horrible things started happening and it just wouldn't end!

The 1980s are, to me, the quintessential era for body-horror. For the usage of prosthetics and pre-CGI effects to creep the heck out of audiences.
Body Snatchers is going up there with The Thing now for me. Well, the latter film is still scarier, but they both have similar value I think.

I'm curious if you saw the original film Forest from the 1950's. More of a B movie but I have always preferred it over the remake. Although no small part of that is the typecasting of Leanord Nemoy as an emotionless alien! They should have just called him Spock.

Haha, it was indeed quite the typecast, even his human counterpart is emotionless and pragmatic. (Unless we never see him as a human?!?!! )

I haven't seen the original 1950 version, but I don't think it would have as great an affect upon me, for I believe it veers away from the nitty-gritty of the invasion, does it not?
And if it does not, then the 1950 B-movie monster effects will absolutely not have as much of an affect on me.
I don't want to judge prematurely, but there it is.

The effects work fine in the original, it not effect heavy, big seed pods, waxy unfinished clone people, and then finished people- not too much to screw up.
It has some very nice shots in it too, a particular favourite of mine being the scene where they are hiding the surgery and witness the town organising the distribution of the pods

Its worth a watch-



-if you just want to see he scene I mentioned above its at 55mins 10 seconds.

Even on Columbo Leonard Nimoy played an emotionless alien.. for all intents and purposes.

Weird thing is the same character in the original is very human, very emotional and very relatable, not in any way distant, which makes his turning all the more horrible when it happens. But for some reason Spock, sorry Nimoy's version of him is distant and cold before he gets pod peopled.

I wonder if that's something that is more present in the original. In the '78 version, society never actually feels normal to begin with. When the change begins to be more apparent, there is no solid familiar backdrop to begin with. The city is filmed in a rather claustrophobic style that is unsettling from the beginning. Obviously that unsettling factor begins with the introduction sequence, but the point is that there is no clear transition from healthy normal San Francisco to screwed up San Francisco. Things grow steadily worse, but they're never good to begin with.

I think because the original is set in a sort of idealistic 1950's small town America, all friendly neighbours and everyone knows everyone else, the lead is the friendly and trusted local Doctor, it has an immediate sense of community and normality about it that the remake does lack.
Perhaps moving it to a city lost a big chunk of that.

You know, it is partially the move, but also the time-change.
In the remake we have all this post-Vietnam angst about rebellious anti-social groups, while in the original it is perhaps more of a general fear of Cold War realities that we are dealing with.
To put it simply, the original contains a communal fear of outside forces corrupting American society (communism, to be painfully obvious) while the remake contains a fear of internal forces breaking apart American society from within.

Thats a good point. The allegory is different.

Indeed.
I humoured a relative of mine and watched the fourth Transformers film with him and my nephews yesterday.
It was truly as terrible as they said.

The Transformers films are conclusive proof that Spielberg fell off (or more likely that he just doesn't give a fuck anymore).

It's big money. That's all he cares about.

Watched Fargo the other night (been meaning to for a while now because of the show), what a strange movie. Liked it alot, though, great characters Loved the cops, and Steve Buscemi of course, been a fan of him since I first saw him on The Sopranos. Says it was based on a true story in the beginning, which it appears isn't entirely true after doing some googling and wikipedia searching. And frankly, I'm glad it isn't

Ringdrotten wrote:Watched Fargo the other night    (been meaning to for a while now because of the show), what a strange movie. Liked it alot, though, great characters  Loved the cops, and Steve Buscemi of course, been a fan of him since I first saw him on The Sopranos. Says it was based on a true story in the beginning, which it appears isn't entirely true after doing some googling and wikipedia searching. And frankly, I'm glad it isn't.

As a Norwegian you may have had a little extra inclination for it to tickle your funny bone: the accent and culture they subtly poke fun at is derived from the strong Nordic influence in the region.

Then again you might not.  My relatives are from there, and they simply don't get the joke.

It was the "yeah" thing I thought was funny   And I guessed they were basing it on some accent or dialect, we've got our share of funny dialects too, mine being one of the comedians' favourites

A number of people seemed to like Excalibur here, so I gave it a go. Meh. Arthur never once convinced me he was a king worth so much as a sack of potatoes. Too close to Monty Python without intending to be.

azriel wrote:I dont like clowns either Bungo, nasty demonic child snatching things that have no identity & are revolting to look at. They are neither male or female in appearance so, makes it hard to trust them, not that I would. ( not bloody funny either) but this guy was the creepiest   

Scared the crap out of me when i was little.

Lollipops children

halfwise wrote:A number of people seemed to like Excalibur here, so I gave it a go.  Meh.  Arthur never once convinced me he was a king worth so much as a sack of potatoes. Too close to Monty Python without intending to be.

yep I get what you are saying about Arthur. But I love the 70s hippy theatrical vibe, some of the scenes are iconic now specially Merlin stuff, plus the music is epic.