Last movie watched...

[JOE SOAP]

Fair play BoH is a mopy love triangle about Aragorn's dad, but I found that was why it actually worked.  Just look at all the low-budget SyFy offerings that concentrate on action scenes over their character arcs - BoH rightly concentrates on what can be done well with the cast and the budget available.

I think it works because they never forgot their story. It's the 'oh that reminds me of that scene' factor that brings it down more.

[bluemeanie]

Triple bill movie night tonight :

Bernie : I can now say I like a film starring Jack Black. Great stuff and as always Shirley MacLaine rules. True story and all the talking heads in the film are real people talking about the real...um... people. Def worth a watch

This Means War : Total fluff and a bit of a chick flick but entertaining enough with a few good laughs in it. If you're in the mood for a no brainer you could do worse.

God Bless America : Fucking beautifully written and really well made. Kind of a next gen Falling Down. Loved it

[SmallBlueThing]

NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: THE ELM STREET LEGACY

To be honest, we're only partway through this as it purports to be 360 minutes long(!) and we've only just finished the 'dream warriors' bit, about two hours in.

If you like, or ever liked, the 'nightmare' movies then this is not just a recommended purchase, but it's pretty much essential, and ive never seen a documentary like it. Okay, some of the more famous faces are missing- notably depp and arquette- but who really cares, and anyway it's the likes of chuck russell, kevin yaegher and mark shostrom- mark shostrom! my teenage self can hardly believe i just watched the behind the scenes footage of shostrom's "freddy stretches out of jesse" effect; the effect that first piqued my interest in all things gory, back in the pages of fango- who are really of interest.

As usual with these things there's enormous fun to be had seeing who's aged best and worst (kim myers and 'no running in the hallways' girl respectively), and worrying about the obvious health (cont) 

[SmallBlueThing]

(cont) of a few of the principle faces. This is really an embarrasment of riches- clips, backstage footage, anecdotes, bitching (dick cavett reportedly on zsa zsa gabor, as an explanation of her appearance in 3: "the stupidest person i knew and the one i'd most like to see killed") and a history of how and why they made them and why they became the phenomenon they did. All wrapped around brilliant little stop motion vignettes repeating the series' best bits.

Best of all, so far, was an indepth investigation into just how gay 'freddy's revenge' is. Answer: massively so. This is so gloriously celebratory that really, to still maintain it's the weakest film in the series (as many do to this day) is to invite accusations of homophobia. And this is all disc one! There's a whole disc of extras to come! Ten quid from HMV, and so packed i may have to camply bottom-bang the box closed while wearing elton john shades.

Officially the best dvd ive bought this year.

SBT

[Professor Bear]

I always wondered why they called the second one "Freddy's Revenge" when he was after revenge in all the films.

The Secret of Roan Inish, an Irish all-ages film dealing as with the universal themes of loss and identity through the use of folk tales, most prominently the Selkie myth, which is possibly better known to the world as The Swan Bride or The Little Mermaid, though each is as valid a reading as the last of the basic story and in keeping with the film being based on a novel originally set in Scotland - universal themes, see?  And in keeping with universally-identifiable themes, the characters are readily identifiable as Irish because they're gullible simpletons whose stupidity results in an infant death and then they steal a house.  I have to admit that this is a fair summation of the Irish as a race, though feel compelled to point out that we are also the original Al Qaeda and drunkenly beat our spouses in between frantic bouts of prayer to an imaginary friend.
It's a bit stagey and panto-cheesy in places, but the surprisingly pervasive melancholy keeps the attention.  Admittedly the accents of the cast are all over the place, but on the other hand SEALS ARE ADORABLE and I would seriously think twice about having to club one after seeing this.  If I had to, yeah - but I'd be conflicted much as I am about opossums.

[bluemeanie]

Seconded on Elm Street Legacy. Brilliant documentary, loved it.

[darnmarr]

Robin Hood: Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe.

Makes Kevin Costner look like Errol Flynn: makes Ridley Scott look like Ridley Scott.

[SmallBlueThing]

REVENGE OF THE CREATURE

Finally! My huge stack of dvds arrives from my mate, including most excitingly all the invisible man sequels, womaneater, dracula's daughter (with the lovely gloria holden) and the two black lagoon sequels. Since youngest child is mental for all things gillman, that's where we started.

Revenge is twenty minutes too long- nothing pertinent happens after the creature escapes from sea world and makes for the sea. Up til then its been a surprisingly entertaining and touching tale of science's inhumanity to the poor old gillman; captured, brought to florida and exhibited to the public while being zapped by an electric prodder and taunted with glamour.

Much of revenge is fantastic, from the strong dialogue for the female lead (a undergraduate scientist!) who is then patronised into an engagement ring by the male lead in the space of ten minutes, to the magnificent gillman himself, again utterly convincing (especially when being revived in the pool, 'like a shark' and grabbing (cont)

[SmallBlueThing]

(cont) a heron from the surface of the black lagoon and dragging it under).

It is, though, way too long. It also repeats the ending of the first by splicing in the 'dead creature' shot from the previous film in an attempt to give it closure, even though he'd been seen getting away in the very last cut. Ah well, the boys liked it and id not seen it since the scala in kings cross showed it in 3D back in 1990.

SBT

[Professor Bear]

Still the unfortunate The Creature Walks Among Us to go, though.  After that, Gillman's only significant appearance was in Monster Squad (and the Darkstalkers games and cartoons, I suppose).

Lifeforce: Astronauts find an alien ship in the tail of Halley's Comet and bring the occupants back to Earth with them - unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a terrible idea, but fair play, Mathilda May's boobies are quite lovely and I'd probably take them back home with me given half a chance even if there are thousands of giant humanoid bat creatures floating in the next room that I've seen enough horror and sci-fi to know are almost certainly the true end-form of human-looking beings with perfect boobies and I would absolutely take that chance because the long odds still result in a motorboating I'll be telling the grandkids about.  Anyway, long story short: space vampires, Captain Picard, the end of Quatermass and the Pit.
Admittedly I was going "yes, okay, you've read Dracula so you have the vamps arriving in a ship full of dead people" and there's some dated FX work, but the zombies are still creepy, the bat-creatures - however briefly glimpsed - are still fantastic, and the ambiguous ending seems to suggest the vampires swan off to destroy even more worlds rather than get their comeuppance.  It's a great, garish, gothic slice of fun and doesn't get half the recognition it deserves.

[Radbacker]

Lifeforce: Astronauts find an alien ship in the tail of Halley's Comet and bring the occupants back to Earth with them - unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a terrible idea, but fair play, Mathilda May's boobies are quite lovely and I'd probably take them back home with me given half a chance even if there are thousands of giant humanoid bat creatures floating in the next room that I've seen enough horror and sci-fi to know are almost certainly the true end-form of human-looking beings with perfect boobies and I would absolutely take that chance because the long odds still result in a motorboating I'll be telling the grandkids about.  Anyway, long story short: space vampires, Captain Picard, the end of Quatermass and the Pit.
Admittedly I was going "yes, okay, you've read Dracula so you have the vamps arriving in a ship full of dead people" and there's some dated FX work, but the zombies are still creepy, the bat-creatures - however briefly glimpsed - are still fantastic, and the ambiguous ending seems to suggest the vampires swan off to destroy even more worlds rather than get their comeuppance.  It's a great, garish, gothic slice of fun and doesn't get half the recognition it deserves.

I have memories of this one when i was but a lad of 7 or 8, had never seen so much boob in my whole life to that point and what was that hairy bit down there that was certainly new to me
Very efective movie though and the ending is pretty damn epic (as much as they can manage on the budget) and IIRC you are right the Vamps do get away to do it all again to another planet, cant remember but i think ours had pretty much had it by the end, rampant vampirism spread everywhere, and they are all starving to death because there aint any living left to feed off, bit of a downer of an ending really..

CU Radbacker

[Professor Bear]

The "Budget" for Lifeforce was actually 25 million - which is very respectable for the mid-80s.
SPOILERS for Lifeforce: [spoiler]The space vamps have a two-hour feeding cycle and London was under military quarantine, so by the end the infection had been contained to the city and burned itself out, as you can see when Caine leaves the cathedral and the city is entirely dead (the vamps having sucked the place dry, too).  Basically, London was screwed, but everywhere else was probably fine.  I am also unsure if the ending is as clearly-cut a downer as we assume, as the space vamps' fate is ambiguous seeing as there weren't any male vamps left - the males being needed to collect energy from humans and the females to convert/collect it for the vamp starship - and the female vamp was run through.  I'm not sure if the chamber where the vampire humanoids are originally found was supposed to be some kind of egg hatchery, mind, but that would make sense given the prominence of seeing it energised towards the end of the film, and would explain the vamps being there at the start when all the others are dead.  Well - it does if you ignore that "she's destroyed entire worlds" comment from the middle of the film, at any rate, though again this could be a reference to the vampire race rather than the individual creature.[/spoiler]
Damned entertaining flick, all the same.  I shall have to seek out the director's cut.

[Zarjazzer]

John Carter. I really enjoyed it not terrible, quite fun in a bonkers sci-fi/fantasy pulp type way. I also liked the Moog beastie in it as identified by Noisybast. I even watched bits of it again this morning. Some not so great acting but Lynn Collins was gorgeous! Was it worth $250 million dollars? Um,no, but it wasn't the utter disaster I was expecting.Lots of British actors in it too.

[judgeblake]

John Carter. I really enjoyed it not terrible, quite fun in a bonkers sci-fi/fantasy pulp type way. I also liked the Moog beastie in it as identified by Noisybast. I even watched bits of it again this morning. Some not so great acting but Lynn Collins was gorgeous! Was it worth $250 million dollars? Um,no, but it wasn't the utter disaster I was expecting.Lots of British actors in it too.

I've been meaning to see this....I've always kind of suspected it probably wasnt as bad as people made out - but people really jumped on that film didnt they - that poor guy who played the lead - was also in Battleship and that flopped as well.

[Zarjazzer]

John Carter. I really enjoyed it not terrible, quite fun in a bonkers sci-fi/fantasy pulp type way. I also liked the Moog beastie in it as identified by Noisybast. I even watched bits of it again this morning. Some not so great acting but Lynn Collins was gorgeous! Was it worth $250 million dollars? Um,no, but it wasn't the utter disaster I was expecting.Lots of British actors in it too.

I've been meaning to see this....I've always kind of suspected it probably wasnt as bad as people made out - but people really jumped on that film didnt they - that poor guy who played the lead - was also in Battleship and that flopped as well.

All I can say judgeblake is that I liked it. Didn't feel I'd wasted my £4 or whatever the download price was.