I feel like it’s Lawrence of Arabia combined with the rise of OPEC.
7 Likes
That was actually not in the theatrical release and people unfamiliar with the book were even more confused as to why all this political backstabbing is going on.
ETA Frank Herbert was really into ecosystems and how humans interact with them to my best understanding. He creates some really good and interesting worlds but the carry through to further novels in the series falls short.
6 Likes
Watched Polyester in full last night. I had seen some of it before but not the whole movie.
A less ‘shocking’ work compared to earlier works but still full of the crazy and low rent acting fun with a plot that only John Waters could create. Alas there were no Odorama cards.
Good music from Blondie and one of the songs was sung by Bill Murray.
7 Likes
for Pride month they showed a movie called Beautiful Thing. a really nice coming-of-age and coming out film set in late 90s London council estates a.k.a. the projects. the intensity of the young men is palpable, the stakes are upped due to their neighborhood, coming out is a very high-pressure situation. there is the uncertainty of youth, but they handle the new territory of not just dating, but learning to be a gay couple in the council estates fairly maturely, all things considered.
contrast them with the excellent supporting cast; ostentatious, borderline-caricature project denizens, all.
8 Likes
As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago I watched David Lynch’s “Dune” for the first time. So I asked myself, what movie would be a suitable follow-up? And the answer come back “Zardoz.”
After seeing this movie, I can now honestly say that I can explain the trailer.
I have to say I liked this movie a lot more than I was expecting. I was expecting the movie to be a pretentious, over-stylized, vanity project for the writer/director John Boorman. Indeed it was all those things, but it also held my interest.
The story takes during a prolonged period of severe societal decline. Central to the story is a group of people known as “the Eternals,” who live in a largely-self-sufficient compound protected by an invisible force field called “the Vortex.” As their name implies, they cannot die. Or if they do die, they are reborn and their lives resume. Or something like that.
Outside the Vortex are “the Brutals.” Some Brutals are followers of a religion dictated by a large floating stone head named Zardoz. Zardoz commands his followers to exterminate as many other Brutals they can find.
So the Eternals are inside the Vortex living their best lives, but the trouble with immortality is that it is boring. They have nothing new to learn, no need for reproduction and time has no meaning. Their society and evolution have stagnated.
Into this situation comes Sean Connery playing “Z,” a follower of Zardoz who manages to enter the Vortex and shake things up a bit.
Z is the end result of a subtle, multi-generational project cultivated by two Eternals. Z is “the one.” Yes, Z is the one, just like Neo was the one, and Jonnie Goodboy Tyler was the one. In fact, this movie shares certain plot elements that are similar to the Matrix and Battlefield Earth.
The first two-thirds of the movie, when Z and the Eternals are figuring each-other out, are very interesting. But in the final third — after Z punches his way out of a plastic bag and everyone starts running around — the movie becomes a bit tedious.
There are a few ideas in the movie that I really loved, for example: All the Eternals’ knowledge is stored as light inside a large diamond. The technology that allowed to Eternals to be self-sufficient was developed for deep-space exploration, but astronauts never discovered anything worthwhile.
11 Likes
Love this film. It, and other Boorman oddities such as Exorcist II and Excalibur, make me think of a Ken Russell who didn’t realize he was being funny.
6 Likes
6 Likes
David Cronenberg’s follow-up to Shivers / They Came from Within. Not as great as its predecessor or his next theatrical horror The Brood, it’s still a very worthy watch. Cronenberg originally wanted Sissy Spacek in the lead, but the producers objected to her Texas accent. Although Spacek is the better actress, Marilyn Chambers is probably better suited for the part and not just for the meta- involving a porn theater within the film.
There’s a remake coming out later this year. I had trouble getting through its trailer.
ETA: Oh, yeah. I watched this via TCM on Demand and afterwards discovered that the TCMdb (their very own IMDb) omits the lead, Ms. Chambers, from the cast list. Not cool, TCM, not cool.
5 Likes
Wow. Talk about fridging.
4 Likes
Earlier this year I saw the documentary “Apollo 11.” It was such a great movie that soon after I decided to see “For All Mankind.”
Big mistake. I couldn’t stand it.
The difference between the two movies is: Apollo 11 does not insult your intelligence, For All Mankind does so constantly.
8 Likes
I assume you’re not referring to the 1989 documentary?
1 Like
Indeed I am.
1 Like
How does it insult your intelligence?
It’s been a few months, and I’ve tried to forget For All Mankind, but here goes.
First, I noticed they weren’t presenting a specific Apollo mission. They were showing bits and pieces and trying to pretend it all fit together. It didn’t fit together. That was annoying, but I could live with it.
Further annoyance was caused the audio track. There was over-dubbing that was obviously fake, and a variety of astronauts rambling on about nothing of any importance.
Then when they got to space, it all became more painful to watch.
During the initial parking orbit, they edited in scenes of a spacewalk that had no reason to be there. Then they pretended cockpit footage of a Gemini re-entry was the translunar injection.
That’s as far as I got. I couldn’t take it anymore.
The movie was supposed to be about Project Apollo, possibly even Apollo 11, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t about anything. It was the cinematic equivalent of three children on each other’s shoulders, wearing a trench coat pretending to be an adult.
And this scraping a movie together from odd pits and pieces was absolutely unnecessary. The movie Apollo 11 proved that. They had the problem of too much material available. Editing it down was the hard part.
So in short, watch Apollo 11, it’s much better.
8 Likes
Just because it is not the movie you wanted does not mean it is a worthless movie.
The film is a somewhat impressionistic approach to the subject, designed to give an overall feel rather than specific details about specific missions. I don’t see why this can’t be a worthy take on the subject. If one accepts this approach as valid, I feel that collaging various missions is also perfectly valid. As is over-dubbing related audio rather than presenting it in situ. The “rambling on about nothing of any importance” is the essence of everyday life for the astronauts, again a suitable subject for documentary.
The movie wasn’t scraped together, if that means something done haphazardlessly or with minimal materials. It was compiled over many years from a great deal of footage.
3 Likes
I missed it at the first run but I saw it yesterday. I kinda wish I had gone to see it on an IMAX screen. It was well done and I liked how they let the actual film and recordings of the time tell the story.
And before that I saw Gog… which was fun for a robots/computers gone mad story with a bit of cold war paranoia/propaganda thrown in.
7 Likes
Was it in 3-D?
It didn’t work for me.
I seem to remember when the film-makers got to the initial staging, they showed footage of the CSM separating from the third stage. I can’t think of any reason why they would do that unless they didn’t know what they were looking at, or assumed the audience wouldn’t.
It seems to me there is enough confusion in the world without adding more.
5 Likes
Alas it was not a 3-D print. Not sure how much it would have improved the movie though.
2 Likes
Very spiffy, late film-noir, with Vince Edwards as an, on the surface, cool, detached hit man, performing hits to slowly, but not as slowly as his day job, put aside enough money to buy his dream home. The two blacklisted leftists in the film credits might explain the film’s digs at capitalism, a la Monsieur Verdoux. But what can explain the second half, where the protagonist flies to L.A. for a job and the film threatens to turn into a Jarmusch film?
Recommended.
5 Likes
Finally watched The Inglorious Bastards. Not the Quentin Tarantino movie.
Our ‘heroes’ manage to get out of going to the stockade during a German air attack and start making their way to Switzerland when they take out an American commando group in German uniforms… oops. They are then met by resistance fighters and eventually the Colonel heading up the mission and they volunteer to take over. Much gunfire and explosions follow.
Actually pretty good for an Italian rip off of The Dirty Dozen with good production/locations/sets for an exploitation film.
The black guy actually lives or at least is shot in the shoulder and alive when we last see him.
7 Likes