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Started by SmallBlueThing, 04 February, 2011, 12:40:44 PM

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Keef Monkey

Quote from: Professor Bear on 15 January, 2018, 08:48:41 PM
Quote from: HdE on 15 January, 2018, 06:42:30 PMThis has been spun in reviews as a commentary on the indecisive nature of Japanese politicians. But it's not. It's just really terrible film-making.

The non-Godzilla portions of the film I found to be no more boring than usual - the average Big G film usually having a wasteland middle hour where nothing happens - but it wasn't reviewers who came up with that spin: Hideaki Anno said before the film came out that it was a direct commentary on the government's mishandling of the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami and the current trend in Japan's conservative government to suck America's dick.*




* He may not have used this precise euphemism.

Yeah I really enjoyed Shin Godzilla largely for those scenes, they took on a really grim humor. We watched it in a packed cinema and every new piece of red tape or awkward departmental shuffling around got a laugh, felt like it was definitely designed to highlight how ridiculous meetings and conversations like that are in a situation like that, and I found the government bods fluffing the whole thing and being totally unable to react sufficiently to such a bizarre situation was all part of the black humor of it.

I might have been watching it wrong, but that's definitely the way it came across in that screening! It's obviously got some pretty bleak things to say at times too.

pictsy

I watched two horror comedies.  Grabbers and Deadheads.  Grabbers is a nice enough film with the premise and execution being enough to carry it.  Although isn't drunk Irish people a stereotype?  I enjoyed the characters and jokes more than the story itself, which ends in tiresome cliche.

Deadheads is an ok concept that I think has been done better since with the film Warm Bodies.  Deadheads has enough charm for me to find it entertaining and watchable (for the most part).  I enjoyed the Brent and Cheese characters the most, but found the Mike character annoying at times.  Again, it ends in tiresome cliche, but given the context the film provides for the cliche I am more than willing to give the film a pass on that.  I might watch Warm Bodies again as I remember enjoying that one a lot more.

TordelBack

#11777
Quote from: pictsy on 16 January, 2018, 01:03:47 PM
Although isn't drunk Irish people a stereotype?

More of an observation.  Some things become clichés because they happen a lot...

You're spot-on about Grabbers, the concept, characters and locations are fun, and make for an enjoyable film, but the plot doesn't really add much to proceedings.

manwithnoname

Quote from: pictsy on 16 January, 2018, 01:03:47 PM
I watched two horror comedies.  Grabbers and Deadheads.  Grabbers is a nice enough film with the premise and execution being enough to carry it.  Although isn't drunk Irish people a stereotype?  I enjoyed the characters and jokes more than the story itself, which ends in tiresome cliche.


Perhaps raise your issues regarding stereotypes and cliches to the director, who is from Northern Ireland, and the writer, who is Irish. Don't forget to copy in Northern Ireland Screen and the Irish Film Board, who funded it.

Did you find Father Ted equally "problematic"?


TordelBack

Quote from: manwithnoname on 16 January, 2018, 02:04:14 PM
Did you find Father Ted equally "problematic"?

A HatTrick production for Channel 4, that one, so not a great example of self-parody, despite @Glinner and Arthur Mathews on keyboards. Absofragginglutely hilarious nonetheless, of course.

However, there's nobody better at promoting the image of an Irish culture of drinking to excess than we-ourselves, despite obvious negative consequences, so I think Pictsy can be completely forgiven for picking up on a classic example here.   

manwithnoname

mother!

It's....er....different. There's a huge polarity in critic reception, which is always interesting before you watch a film, and you can understand why. I went from loving it to hating it across the space of a few minutes, but while it is certainly an acquired taste, it's not a film you will forget easily.

It was reminiscent at times of someone trying to make a horror film in the style of Peter Greenaway.

pictsy

Quote from: manwithnoname on 16 January, 2018, 02:04:14 PM
Perhaps raise your issues regarding stereotypes and cliches to the director, who is from Northern Ireland, and the writer, who is Irish. Don't forget to copy in Northern Ireland Screen and the Irish Film Board, who funded it.

Did you find Father Ted equally "problematic"?

:)
Surprisingly I was fully aware that the production was Irish and that drunk Irish people is a stereotype.  The question was tongue-in-cheek.

As for Father Ted, it is one of my favourite sitcoms and still manages to make me smile to this day.

The Enigmatic Dr X

A lot of bishops lurk on this board. Bishops love sci-fi.
Lock up your spoons!

von Boom

Quote from: manwithnoname on 16 January, 2018, 02:04:14 PM
Quote from: pictsy on 16 January, 2018, 01:03:47 PM
I watched two horror comedies.  Grabbers and Deadheads.  Grabbers is a nice enough film with the premise and execution being enough to carry it.  Although isn't drunk Irish people a stereotype?  I enjoyed the characters and jokes more than the story itself, which ends in tiresome cliche.


Perhaps raise your issues regarding stereotypes and cliches to the director, who is from Northern Ireland, and the writer, who is Irish. Don't forget to copy in Northern Ireland Screen and the Irish Film Board, who funded it.

Did you find Father Ted equally "problematic"?

That would be an ecumenical question.

DaveGYNWA

Quote from: von Boom on 16 January, 2018, 09:03:18 PM
That would be an ecumenical question.

MATTER, an ecumenical matter. Now feck off or I'll kick you up the arse.
Peas sell. But who's Brian?

von Boom

Quote from: DaveGYNWA on 16 January, 2018, 09:20:15 PM
Quote from: von Boom on 16 January, 2018, 09:03:18 PM
That would be an ecumenical question.

MATTER, an ecumenical matter. Now feck off or I'll kick you up the arse.

Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again?!

darnmarr

QuoteRide me sideways
That was another one

pictsy

Warm Bodies  I definitely enjoy this one more than Deadheads.  It's really soppy.  Really soppy.  [spoiler]The cure is love![/spoiler]  It's quite well made, though.  The inner dialogue adds a lot.  We actually watch the relationship develop over time and that's the real crux of the story.  The zombie context wraps around it nicely and seems to give some weight to soppy nature of the film.  It has some interesting ideas and despite not exactly being an original concept on it's release, certainly feels like something fresh.  I had a blast watching this for the second time and I'd probably have to rate it as one of my favourite zombie based pieces of media.

Theblazeuk

1922 on Netflix. One of the best Stephen King adaptations and in and of itself, a creepy, low-key horror that delivers unease throughout. Tom Jane smashes it as the main character and there's excellent camera and sound in a fashion that ratchets up the horror as the spiral continues.

The Legendary Shark

Dunkirk. You download scores of obscure podcasts, if you're me, and listen to recorded lectures and debates on the most dull topics, delivered by the most diverse proponents boredom can spawn, and you think you're getting a handle on things. You know that war is either a profitable scam run by the 1% on the rest of us or a consequence of small groups of people with too much power acting all like hard-ons in the name of Stupidus, the occult god of stupidity, arrogance and penis envy. Or a mixture of the two. Probably.

Whatever. WWII was no different; a clusterfuck caused by elite douchebaggery of one form or another and paid for with ordinary human lives. Small lives caught like grain between the quarrelling millstones of big lives. All those people, on all sides, who would rather be left alone to live their lives in peace but get pressed into the service of the state whether they like it or not. A clusterfuck aided by the elite douchebaggery of their rape and humiliation of the German people after WWI. A clusterfuck exacerbated by the greed and psycopathy of a pack of ravening bankers and industrialists. A clusterfuck facilitated through the Prussian method of public education and the private trivium method. A clusterfuck ignited by a bigot with an Oliver Hardy moustache and fanned by liver-spotted fists filled with dollar bills. A clusterfuck of clusterfucks. The Perfect Clusterfuck.

Ahem.

So, if you're me, you approach films like Dunkirk with a certain tonnage of cynical baggage.

I enjoyed it.

That last deserved a line of its own because it surprised me. Logically, I know that any depiction of a historical event is a feeble shade of the actual event in itself; shallow and narrow and subjective. All a film of this type can be is a reflection of the mythology woven by the winners. I was surprised at how deeply this British myth still affects me, and what a superb job of reflecting this particular myth the film does. (I should probably clarify that I do not use the word "myth" in a derogatory sense. I am given to understand that myths are lessons in how to be human, and it is in this sense that I call Dunkirk a myth.)

If Dunkirk is a myth, and I think it should be, then it is a myth worth telling. A myth teaching us what happens when the authorities reach the limits of their illusory* power. When we get to your actual ragged edge, what's left, propping it all up? People. People just like you and me, but generally younger. People doing their best to survive the grind of those expensive millstones. And that, to anyone with the stamina to read this far, is worthy of mythologising. This film, I think, does a commendable job in that respect.

I loved the rhythm of the film, the way it progressed from moments of calm to moments of sheer terror. The depiction of the rapidity of encroaching waters is terrifying enough to ensure I suffer disquieting dreams tonight. Kenneth Brannagh stole the show for me. His one line, "Home," brought an actual tear to my eye. Tom Hardy's Spitfire pilot was the heart of the myth, for me. It doesn't matter about all that shit I typed at the beginning of this post novella, this is what matters. To draw a line against the night with every action you take or decision you make and to never, ever give in.

Like I said, a myth worth having.

TLDR: Dunkirk. I thought it was okay.

* trust me. Go on, be brave...
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