Last movie watched...

[Spaceghost]

I saw Cannibal Holocaust for the first time last night. The only film that has ever made me want to turn my head away. Still traumatised now.

I felt sick all the next day after watching this. Funny really as it's not particularly graphic (unless you watched the uncut version with all the animal butchery intact).

[TordelBack]

A persistent cough and a headful of stressful thoughts have moved me to insomniac nights on the couch in front of a TV I normally shun*.  Like the not-man says, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. 

Exhibit A:  Passchendaele.  Evokes the horror of the trenches by presenting a viewing experience that is even more horrible.  The Canadian John Barrowman Paul Gross trots out an appalling unholy mismatch of Legends of the Fall, Saving Private Ryan and Blackadder Goes Forth-played-straight that seems to want Ypres to be the backdrop for some kind of redemptive magical-realist romance featuring everyone's favourite comedy Mountie.  Impressive vistas of shell-pocked landscapes aside, this was a vile mess of ludicrous coincidences, moustache-twirling English baddies, noble Bosch, endless repetitions of gag-inducing dialogue and ugly, ugly lighting.  Say 'neurasthenia' again, I dare you.  Made all the worse because the central character is 'based' on and named for Gross' grandfather, who must surely be rolling in his grave.  Avoid, avoid, avoid.


*conventional non-Board usage.

[Hoagy]

Why oh why are we up for using WWI as a backdrop for  melodramatic romances??? Atonement, I can stand but shit like Passchendaele? I tried watching 2 minutes of it and switched over. I tried this about 3-4 times and decided it was all tripe and no silver lining.

[DeFuzzed]

Have you seen The Bank Job, more of a crime drama than an outright action movie, he's pretty decent in that... it's also the first film shot in digital that I thought looked shot on film, it was then I realized that film was doomed.

I have seen it - (pretty much seen everything he's been in except for the more recent ones, including In the Name of the King which was *shudder* SO SO BAD. So bad. You will look at the cast names and get intrigued and watch it - and you will regret it forever. Don't do it!!) - but I have no eye for film/digital so had no idea about all that. You're right about the less action, but I'd still like to see him in a completely non-action jobby, some serious thinky drama where he doesn't flex his muscles at all. Doesn't even play tough.

Saw John Carter of Mars recently too. I think marketing really was to blame for this being a flop, because it was entertaining all the way through whereas when I saw the trailers, I wasn't in the least bit interested in seeing it in the cinema. However, it didn't leave me hankering after a sequel - even though Taylor Kitsch was amazingly confident, and good, for someone new to being a lead man.

Caught Passchendale last night too! About ten seconds of it - enough to make me get meself to bed instead and this despite loving Due South. Loved that show.

[I, Cosh]

Willem Dafoe attempts to track down the Tasmanian Tiger in The Hunter. Plenty of long slow shots of wilderness, heaps of intense brooding, a smidgen of unwanted emotional awakening and a nice line in wry dialogue. Add to this a couple of child actors who manage to avoid being twee or irritating and you've got a pretty good film here.

Wolfhound, a medieval fantasy-ish romp which seems to be Eastern European of some sort - not sure which part...this isn't entirely shit.

It's Russian and, while quoting yourself may be the worst form of vanity, I always like to point out the coolest thing about Wolfhound..

He is so hard, he always takes a minute to tie his hair back before getting stuck into the battle, safe in the knowledge that nobody will try to fuck him up until he looks his best.

Damnation Alley with George Peppard and Baby Rorschach: who knew?

I watched that via YouTube after learning of its similarities to Cursed Earth and thought it was rubbish but fun. Well worth watching as a piece of Judge Dredd trivia.

Never seen the film, but the book is well worth a look. It's in the best "shot glass of rocket fuel" tradition of 60s/70s sci-fi. A short novel, probably knocked out in a couple of weeks, with a strong central idea, an unpleasant lead and more concern for telling a rattling yarn with plenty of incident than building a cohesive fictional world.

[Ghastly McNasty]

I saw Cannibal Holocaust for the first time last night. The only film that has ever made me want to turn my head away. Still traumatised now.

I felt sick all the next day after watching this. Funny really as it's not particularly graphic (unless you watched the uncut version with all the animal butchery intact).

That's the one. Don't mind watching humans get sliced up but didn't really enjoy the killing of baby animals.

[Tiplodocus]

Passchendaele - This did indeed suck mightily - and not in a good way. I was dragged in by the opening sequence where the cuddly mountie bayonets a helpless soldier but after that it was very, very poor.

It's a while since I glanced up at ATONEMENT while reading a comic but wasn't it set in World War II? I'm pretty sure I remember an epic tracking shot across Dunkirk beaches.

My review of ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES disappeared when history was rewritten but short version: really enjoyed it with many great gags (sight and dialogue). Raul Julia was fantastic.

[Fisticuffs]

I enjoyed John Carter Or Mars, but I think it suffered from two major problems, the first being that it was about 20 minutes too long, and the second being that although it was written decades ago, the ideas it contained have been pilfered so much since then that despite being the original it looks like the derivative.

[Hoagy]

Passchendaele - This did indeed suck mightily - and not in a good way. I was dragged in by the opening sequence where the cuddly mountie bayonets a helpless soldier but after that it was very, very poor.

It's a while since I glanced up at ATONEMENT while reading a comic but wasn't it set in World War II? I'm pretty sure I remember an epic tracking shot across Dunkirk beaches.

My review of ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES disappeared when history was rewritten but short version: really enjoyed it with many great gags (sight and dialogue). Raul Julia was fantastic.

Ah, yes. Right you are Tips. followed later by the bombing of London. pfft.

[SmallBlueThing]

SALEM'S LOT (TV, Tobe Hooper version)

Continuing the education of the boys, we moved on to this two-part 1979 mini-series, starring David Soul and James Mason. This must have been broadcast over here around 1980, and like everyone who saw it at that age I've never forgotten the vampire kid at the window or Mr Barlow himself, played by an underused but iconic Reggie Nalder.

In truth, it's a bit slow. Hooper has difficulty juggling the many characters and their plots- despite the script scything through King's novel and ripping the heart and soul, and most of the people, from it. But for once, none of that matters, because the TV Salem's Lot is its own beast, not reliant upon the book whence it sprung. King wrote this as a retelling of Dracula, just upped and moved to his part of America. As such, it's as proof against screen-friendly tampering as Stoker's original, and the slimmed-down narrative just makes it more resonant for its intended audience.

There are some misfires- Boom-Boom Bonnie and her affair sticks out as a grafted-on attempt to make it more "adult" and is therefore unnecessary, adding nothing but extra minutes to the first episode. Even the payoff is only half as scary and jump-inducing as the earlier attack upon the Glick brothers. Remove Bonnie and her protestations of rape, and there's almost nothing in the three-hour running time that pushes Salem's Lot out of 'Goosebumps' territory. Or at least, 'Goosebumps' if people like me made them and didn't pull back from each and every vaguely scary scene or idea in case they offended someone.

Kids love scary stuff. They love it more than just about anything else in the world. My two giggled and jumped and screamed and cuddled up to us throughout. After part one last night, when I went out into the yard, gaffer-taped one of our giant bats to a ten-foot bamboo cane and knocked it against their bedroom windows, I got shrieks of delight and and cries for more, not nightmares and wet beds.

They remade this in 2004 with Rob Lowe, making many of the same changes to the narrative, but removing much of the stuff that made the original so memorable. Mr Barlow was no longer a snarling beast, but more akin to the character in the book. As a result it lost nearly all the greatness of Hooper's version and memorable sequences. King's book is one of his best, and a must-read for anyone interested in the man or the genre, but like Stoker's novel it works best on screen when fiddled with. They'll eventually do it again and do it 'like the book'- I wonder if it'll have an ounce of the impact the '79 version had on those of us who saw it?

SBT

[TordelBack]

After part one last night, when I went out into the yard, gaffer-taped one of our giant bats to a ten-foot bamboo cane and knocked it against their bedroom windows, I got shrieks of delight and and cries for more, not nightmares and wet beds.

No chance you're looking to adopt?  I'm more-or-less toilet trained and I'll eat almost anything.

[Goaty]

Dammit! I was watch Crash on FilmFour for first time! and that Mexican's daughter with shooting scene.... that got me cried like a river, that was powerful scene! That girl got same age as my niece, wow....

And the film looks crap anyway!

[SmallBlueThing]

No chance you're looking to adopt?  I'm more-or-less toilet trained and I'll eat almost anything.

Haha! It was a fantastic gag- and my wife's suggestion, so she takes the credit. I'm in the process of ordering a Zumi doll off the internet, for similar shenanigans once 'Trilogy of Terror' has been watched.

Amusingly, our neighbours (our house is backed onto by the houses of the parallel street, and overlooked by many windows) had earlier in the day watched my wife and I take our black eight foot by five foot rug out into the yard, hang it over the washing line, then stand underneath it like a tent and rhythmically beat it with our hands while loudly chanting in the American Indian manner popularised by the medicine man in Poltergeist II, in just our underwear. I have no excuse for this, other than it was very funny at the time and our hoover had packed up.

SBT

[The Legendary Shark]

I always wondered whatever became of Tom and Barbara Good... Do you still keep in touch with Margo and Jerry?

[JOE SOAP]