Last movie watched...

[Tiplodocus]

THE ALAMO
John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Frankie Avalon (ffs) and 7000 Mexicans dress up and create a myth about what really happened in Texas in 1836.

Having not seen it for forty years (when I'd have been playing "Best Man's Fall" as Jim Bowie or Davey Crockett), I was expecting to be able to pick out more historical inaccuracies but I wasn't quite prepared for how overlong and talky the whole exercise was. How did this excite me as a kid?

Even the action scenes come out a bit flat; they don't take much time to establish the layout of the Alamo so things just tend to happen and you get little or no feel for strategy or tactics used. People seem to be able to wander in and out of the surrounded mission as and when they please.

And various characters (Wayne in particular) speechify so much about what it means to be patriotic and republican that I thought it must have been written as a pro-Vietnam propoganda piece*but it's too early for that.

In future I'll just stick with ZULU. At least when we Brits are mytholigising battles we have the decency to make it entertaining. (And "Men of Harlech" tops all three Texican ditties).




* Or an early draft of the Star Wars prequels.

[Tiplodocus]

ALIAS Season 2
About half way through this and blimey this is fantastic stuff.

Just when you think they've settled down, they pull rugs out underneath you in two episodes in a row and it looks like they change the battle lines for the rest of the season.  I kept having to check we weren't watching a season finale it had so many changes.  great character moments, masses of twisty turney plot, great one on one fights, torture scenes, Rutger Hauer guesting for 26 seconds, decompressing Jumbo jets with bad guys being sucked into exploding engines, all out assaults on the bad guy's base and Jennifer Garner in TWO sets of lingerie.

[HdE]

You had me up until that last part, Tips.

[Professor Bear]

Well, if we're talking about telly now, I finally got to get stuck into the second season of Scooby Doo:Mystery Incorporated, and it's a cracker so far, with some good additions to the cast such as Community's Jim Rash and Clone Wars' Matt Lanter, but Linda "Velma from the live action films" Cardinelli is probably best as Daphne-replacement Marcy, whose "close friendship" with Velma should be a first for kids' cartoons if it actually goes where it seems to be going and isn't some wussy fake-out like they're really sisters or something, and a few episodes in I decide to not make it a marathon and spread the series out over the coming weeks seeing as I only have 1-15 on the PS3 hard drive and don't want to be stuck waiting for the last few to actually air like I was with season 1, so I decide to keep the merriment and good atmosphere going by finally sitting down to watch the whole of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, as I have recently become a bit of a fan of Donald Sutherland in comedy roles where he plays hippy dropout characters and Kelly's Heroes was a total hoot, so when I heard he played Jesus Christ in this anti-war film, I sought it out thinking it was probably a bit like the film MASH, but it's actually more like the TV series MASH.
A meditative journey through the lifetime of silent and anguished denial experienced by Joe (future George W Bush impersonator Timothy Bottoms) as he tries and fails to comprehend what is reality, memory and delusion in the aftermath of becoming a non-responsive multiple amputee, between his despairing probing of what's left of his head with what's left of his tongue and describing what he feels to the viewer in a detailed monologue and screaming in silence at the nurses not to cut off his arms and legs, or at his dead mother to wake him from the nightmare he's having and even the dead themselves to take him with them and not leave him behind as "what I've been cut down to and still allowed to live," things pretty much can't get any worse for poor old Joe - and then the trench rats come in the lonely night and gnaw on his face.
Aforementioned Donald Sutherland plays the aforementioned part of the Jesus Joe calls to many times over the years of silence and madness that follows - though there are aspects of Joe's dad (Jason Robards) in his weary character - and he converses with Joe between trips to ferry the dead to some unknown destination on a train he drives like a madman, all the while screaming and wailing at the dark.  Occasionally they play games of chance, but Jesus is a bit of a bummer to be around and resigned to the whims of fate, while the dead don't seem to like to be around Joe and look at him with sadness and pity, so Joe eventually seeks refuge in happier - fabricated - memories of when he managed to become close to the mostly-absent father whose coldness and distance haunt Joe in a way that prevents him from creating even the fantasy of an emotional bond with the man.
It's not all grim, though, as Joe experiences some moments of happiness over the years, such as when someone finally opens a window in his room and he feels the sun on what's left of his face, or when he feels the sensation of water on his skin when a new nurse weeps at the sight of what he's become.  Eventually Joe communicates through morse code his desire to either be put on display as a freakshow attraction, or to be euthanised, but a visiting general refuses and forces Joe to live on, the film ending with Joe begging an empty room for the mercy of death.
I've sugar-coated it a bit, but that's the basic plot.  It's not one of Sutherland's funniest.

[SmallBlueThing]

"A devil inside, a devil inside, every single one of us has a devil inside" sung michael hutchence from that band inxs, shortly before he died. But if every single one of had THE Devil Inside it would only mean a crappy entry in the 'found footage' horror boom had unexpectedly sold seven billion copies. Thankfully, there's not THAT much money in old rope, and with any luck i'll be the only one with THE DEVIL INSIDE, having stopped you lot from buying it by my scathing words here.

This is the movie "the vatican didnt want you to see"- and no, dont worry i'll resist the obvious jokes about why that could be, largely because child abuse is a far more horrifying subject than this piss-poor attempt to get us all flocking back to The Church, terrified that some mustachioed cloven hoofed goat man is after our souls. Given the choice between satan and ratzinger, i know who i find the scarier.

The plot here finds Isabella researching her mum's mental condition after mummy murdered three people while being (cont)

[JOE SOAP]

Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun

Ah, the Metallica film. I read the book and the film's not bad. Low budget and a bit too talky but has the colour to black & white thing which I like.

[SmallBlueThing]

(cont) exorcised twenty years ago. She's been moved to a psychiatric hospital in rome, so off goes isabella and couple of renegade priests, and a cameraman- natch- to find out if old nick is living inside. I will run the risk of incurring the wrath of spoiler-phobes: he is.

There are two main exorcism sequences, neither are at all frightening and both present a demon who has obviously seen 'The Exorcist' and is a bit of a fan- either that, or demons have a very limited repertoire.

Inerestingly, for a movie that tries to convince us 'this is how the vatican does it' (the movies pays toe-curling lip service to proving priests know the difference between possession and mental illness), one of the indicators of demonic possession is literally a Britain's Got Talent-style contortion act. I know this because the contortionist in the film is on my wife's friendslist.

Anyway, it's a load of shit. The nun on the poster is glimpsed for a fraction of a second on a bridge, and the very last thing (cont)

[SmallBlueThing]

(cont) the movie does is try to get you to go to some shitty website theyve set up to continue 'investigating the rossi case'. Yes, it's that blatant. Im not going to the site, but i'd imagine there's much there about the english priest and the bits of his story that werent explained and probably a chance for you to spend money.

Just like the real thing, then.
SBT

[JOE SOAP]

I love slipping between SBT's cont.

[maryanddavid]

Take it to a room boys!

[MR. ELIMINATOR]

Watched expendables 2, pretty funny.

[mygrimmbrother]

Livid (or 'Livide', to give it it's proper French name). Visually stunning and, for the first half, genuinely creepy and eerie. A great set-up but somewhat disappointing third act. Would definitely recommend it to horror fans though, it had some neat ideas and memorable imagery. I know it's from the directors of 'Inside' and have heard good things about that but haven't seen it yet. On the strength of this I'll be tracking that down pretty soon though.

[NapalmKev]

The last 2 films I watched were-Cabin in the Woods & Expendables 2.
Both films were a load of crap!

Cabin was especially bad; twists that could be seen coming from a mile away, and generally a stupid story altogether.

Sorry to those that liked it, but for me it was a lot of hype instead of substance.

Cheers 

[TordelBack]

The Quiet Man (1952).  Why?

[Tiplodocus]

John Wayne? Big fist fight?