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[Recrewt]

I love that this is a forum where As Good As It Gets* and True Lies are put forward as RomComs.

I don't think I would put forward True Lies as a romcom but As Good As It Gets definitely is.  Its a comedy with a budding romance at the centre of it - what more do you want eh?  I do agree that it is a great film - Jack Nicholson is fantastic.  In fact, he actually won an oscar for his performance in this film.  And that little dog in it is great too - love the scene where he gets dumped in Jack's apartment and is scampering around.  This is the best rom-com film I have ever seen and would recommend that anyone who hasn't see it to go seek it out. 

Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some Panama City "Sailor wanna hump-hump" bar, or is it getaway day and your last shot at his whiskey? Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.

[TordelBack]

Its a comedy with a budding romance at the centre of it - what more do you want eh?

No, you're absolutely right, it fits the category, I suppose I just hadn't thought of it in those terms.  I'd been seeing it more broadly as a film about life rather than love.

In my defence it is, virtually up to the last scene, a one-sided story of illness and obsession where the target has no real interest in her verbally-abusive old-man stalker (which is pretty much how it went for my own courtship, and brother while that may have been a comedy it weren't no romance).

[radiator]

I always thought it was odd that Shaun of the Dead was pitched as a 'Romantic Comedy With Zombies' as it's nothing of the sort. Great as it is, it's sort of a kitchen sink relationship drama with zombies if anything, and doesn't really follow the tropes of rom-coms at all.

It's not just marketing bollocks either - Pegg and Wright themselves coined the term.

It seems so odd that there aren't any good romantic comedies - when one that comes out that someone has spent more than ten minutes thinking about, or has any kind of charm about it they have the potential to be insanely profitable and enduring. You think it'd be a no-brainer.

I kind of think this with other genres - Hollywood seems to be constantly trying for massively risky mega-budget blockbusters aimed at teenage boys, when surely the real money is there to be made by films that have broader appeal - something like Mamma Mia which absolutely raked it in.

[TordelBack]

Great as it is, it's sort of a kitchen sink relationship drama with zombies if anything, and doesn't really follow the tropes of rom-coms at all.

Unless you see the romance as being between Shaun and Ed, with his interest in Liz being largely delusional.  The 'happy ending' doesn't take place on the sofa, but in the shed.

[Dandontdare]

for the first time in many years there's a romcom on release that I'd actually like to see - Enough Said - mainly because it stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini. It's had some great reviews

[radiator]

Great as it is, it's sort of a kitchen sink relationship drama with zombies if anything, and doesn't really follow the tropes of rom-coms at all.

Unless you see the romance as being between Shaun and Ed, with his interest in Liz being largely delusional.  The 'happy ending' doesn't take place on the sofa, but in the shed.

No, not really. Romantic Comedies are generally about people meeting and falling in love - hence the 'romantic' part. They are rarely about established couples who have been together for years (hetero or otherwise).

[TordelBack]

Oddly enough I wasn't being entirely serious. 

[radiator]

for the first time in many years there's a romcom on release that I'd actually like to see - Enough Said - mainly because it stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini. It's had some great reviews

Point.

I've also heard good things about the Before Sunrise/Sunset - though I'm not sure if you could term those as romcoms.

Oh, just thought of another one (if no one else mentioned it already) - The Wedding Singer is another bona-fide romcom I could watch without wanting to top myself. The last good(ish) thing Adam Sandler did except for the odd blip on the downward spiral.

I also like Knocked Up and I Love You, Man but those are more 'Bromance'.

[Recrewt]

Its a comedy with a budding romance at the centre of it - what more do you want eh?

No, you're absolutely right, it fits the category, I suppose I just hadn't thought of it in those terms.  I'd been seeing it more broadly as a film about life rather than love.

In my defence it is, virtually up to the last scene, a one-sided story of illness and obsession where the target has no real interest in her verbally-abusive old-man stalker (which is pretty much how it went for my own courtship, and brother while that may have been a comedy it weren't no romance).

Yeah, it really is a great movie and I suppose it can almost seem like an insult to call it a rom-com as they are often throw-away films.  This is so much more - it tackles prejudice, illness, obsession and is a lot more like real life than a rom-com normally is:

Carol Connelly: Why can't I have a normal boyfriend? Just a regular boyfriend, one that doesn't go nuts on me!
Beverly Connelly: Everybody wants that, dear. It doesn't exist.

[Recrewt]

I always thought it was odd that Shaun of the Dead was pitched as a 'Romantic Comedy With Zombies' as it's nothing of the sort. Great as it is, it's sort of a kitchen sink relationship drama with zombies if anything, and doesn't really follow the tropes of rom-coms at all.

It's not just marketing bollocks either - Pegg and Wright themselves coined the term.

I'm pretty sure they just wanted an excuse to use the zom-rom-com phrase.

[SmallBlueThing]

I will admit to watching and loving anything with Hugh Grant in it- so both Four Weddings and Notting Hill would a) be found on my shelf in the "Rom Com" section, and b) basically make up most of it.

As for recent watches: I bought the New Evil Dead and new Texas Chainsaw (both of which I'd already seen and really liked) for the lady and I to watch upon her return from abroad, along with Frankenstein's Army, which I'd not seen but had been awaiting for about a year, since I first heard of it in the pages of some fanzine or other- only for her to return and say that she'd spent the time in between shows with her feet up in the flat watching... yep, you guessed it, Frankenstein's Army, Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw. So that buggered that idea- and now I have them on the shelf and no inclination to watch them- especially as she hated FA and found myself all uppity and defending it, despite not having seen it, and am now scared if I do watch it, it might turn out to be shit.

In the absence of that one about Liberace with Michael Douglas, which herself and I are so desperate to see I have taken up wigs and piano, but not men's bums, and which inexplicably had sold out in Asda on Monday, I bought World War Z. The extended Blue-Ray edition, obviously.

Now then- the novel is one of my favourite zombie things, and zombie things in general are rather special to me. Much about Brad Pitt's WWZ was clonging and donging my personal cloister bell- and I was reminded of Neil La Bute's comments regarding his "version" of The Wicker Man, wherein he adopted a brutally antagonistic pose against the whole subject of folk music, explaining that "his version" would be far superior to the original because it "wouldn't have any folk music in it- haha- and who the hell liked that kind of shit anyway- haha- I mean, it's fucking folk music ain't it- haha- and we're all boys together and frankly that shit's for losers". The knots that the people behind WWZ tied themselves up in, when distancing themselves from the structure of the novel- and so also the intent of the novel- and indeed just about everything about the novel bar the name, became so tangled, I was absolutely sure Max Brooks would take his name off it, and maybe it'd get released under a slightly different title- '28 Months Later', perhaps.

With fast-running zombies now very much a bum-of-bag that cinema has explored, tipped out, rummaged around in and found little of interest, and 'The Walking Dead' showing those tossers who sneer that the slow-moving "roamers" aren't "in the least scary" the error of their ways... or is there any argument that the biggest tv show franchise in the world right now is massively successful despite the very presence of the "laughable, stupid, easy-to-escape" zombies that the makers of '28 Shits Shitter' and 'Dawn of the Shit' were so positive would not be acceptable to "modern audiences" (maybe buying a cinema ticket is easier for da kidz than pressing a button on their teevees, I dunno.)?... the makers of WWZ doggedly ploughed ahead with speedy-runners in their huge Brad Pitt action movie all the while TWD with its roamers was tearing up the tv charts, and despite the dead in the novel being a tide of slow-moving Romero-esque crawlers and lurchers. I wonder about the meetings they had on this very subject as Waling Dead hit its stride. Were there ever early screenplays where the zombies were done properly?

Anyway- yes, it is fair to say that I had issues with World War Z long before it ever hit cinemas. And then, when it did, the reviews (from people who weren't there for Brad, the 3D or "cos it's just a brainless action movie, innit?") were uniformly terrible. But still... but still... something was teasing me. I don't by any means see every zomflick out there. I pick and choose my way through them- and something about WWZ was singing to me.

So, last night, we sat down and bunged it on.

Two hours and eleven breathless minutes later, I was agog that zombies are now so much a part of the mainstream that every conceivable plotpoint and twist, which throughout my life have had to be patiently explained within the narratives of innumerable Romero and Fulci epics can now be glossed over in seconds in what is likely the only zombie flick most of its worldwide audience have ever seen. It is never even explained what a "zombie" is- the bite/ turn path of infection is alluded to, but gone are graphics of viruses taking over their hosts, gone are lengthy sequences of biting and will they/ won't they peril. These exist in the briefest of pared down forms- Brad chops an arm off, just as Sarah chops Miguel's arm off in Day of the Dead, to stop infection spreading. Here, it works- but within five minutes its forgotten and they're exploding hand grenades in zombie-infested planes and surviving plane-crashes in Wales. The movie is paced like a mad bastard- breakneck speed, no time to think, drag you by the scruff of the neck and pull you through the crowds of utterly convincing cgi extras. Important plot points about a vaccine slow the narrative briefly (and Brad ponders them with his mouth open, like a startled guppy) before we are off again.

And do you know what- it's bloody great!

The end sequence- in Wales (Wales!) sees it pull everything back and play out like an early eighties Euro-splatter (if you're not reminded of The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue, you've never seen The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue) with bleak British countryside and slow "dormant" zombies wandering wrecked corridors as British character actors (Peter Capaldi! As "Doctor, W.H.O") look slightly lost. It's an embarrassment of riches, really.

Yes, it could have been gorier, yes, the po-faced chemistry tries very hard to chinny-stroke "this could happen, it's like SARS you see. Ooh, Bird Flu!" all the while the physics and logic exists in mental never never land- but while it tries to have its flesh and eat it, it never insults the audience and plays with complete conviction at all times.

The much-praised "tide of humanity" idea- the zombies as "tsunami", overwhelming Jerusalem and the world- is breathtaking. And here, unlike in 'I am Legend', the computer creatures are utterly real.

There's a through-line of brave old pock-marked Pitt (looking like Robert Redford did when he was just over the hill of his stardom- still very pretty, but haggard all the same and either two films away from a life primarily behind the camera, or Botox and Mickey Rourke) trying to get back to his family. They don't have a faithful dog that sees off a zombie attack, but they may as well have.

I can't praise World War Z enough. They didn't fuck it up, instead turning it into something different- but as entertaining- as the novel. And that is my quote for the poster: "They didn't fuck it up". A year ago, such an idea would have been laughable.

SBT

[JamesC]

Quentin Tarantino has been saying for years that he'd like to make a genuinely good rom-com.
It's be interesting at least.

I'm not sure how old the term Romantic Comedy is but most of those classic Cary Grant / James Stewart era romance films have a fair bit of comedy and they're nearly all good fun.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Yeah, Cary Grant has done some great ones. I Was a Male War Bride is a good laugh.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

...the po-faced chemistry tries very hard to chinny-stroke "this could happen, it's like SARS you see. Ooh, Bird Flu!" all the while the physics and logic exists in mental never never land...

That comparison bugged me too. Sars and Bird Flu have long incubation times and initially the symptons are very subtle, so it's very hard to tell who's infected. Yet The WHO managed to limit those to half a dozen countries, only a couple of dozen cases and very few fatalities*, but this zombie disease that turns people into crusty ravenous breakdancers within a minute couldn't be detected and contained?

*Full credit to Daltrey and Townsend

[pictsy]

Star Trek IV : The Voyage Home What a stupid story.  It was like Star Trek for tots.  Still, the story was relatively coherent and it wasn't as bad as when Voyager [spoiler]went back in time to 1990's Earth[/spoiler].  Remember that?  That was awful - I can't stand Sarah Silverman.  I was wondering why I was getting annoyed by Vanellope in Wreck-It Ralph everytime she opened her mouth and when I saw the credits it all became clear.  Anyway, back to Star Trek IV.  I did like that it continued on from the previous film again and I thought the change in tone was a pretty good idea as well, going for something more light-hearted.  It was just that [spoiler]time-travelling whale nonsense[/spoiler].  I am becoming more curious about the original series.  I have never watched all the episodes before (probably just seeing one or two now and then).