tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-140629602024-03-13T16:52:50.759+00:00Junk Monkey- the only Blog with a free CD glued to the front cover.Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.comBlogger805125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-53463330982533656272024-01-31T22:13:00.005+00:002024-01-31T22:37:03.475+00:00Film Diary 2023<p>Great Zot! This thing still works!</p><p> Every movie I watched in 2023 and lived to tell the tale:<br /></p><p>
</p><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.5cm;">January</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Vampyros Lesbos</b>
- Starting the year as I mean to go on. No "I'll be good and
only watch proper films this year" instantly broken, New Year's
Resolutions round here thank you very much! <i>Vampyros Lesbos</i> -
low rent Eurosleeze has Jess Franco at his most coherent - by which
I mean the film almost had a story (albeit lifted and partially
gender-swapped from Stoker's <i>Dracula</i>) and most of the film
looked like it was shot on the same film stock throughout - though
they don't seem to have hired a focus puller for the shoot. A lot of
Franco's trademark zooms started or ended well on the fuzzy side.
The usual Franco nonsense: Lots of half-hearted 'lesbian' writhing,
lots of establishing shots which included pans and zooms of building
that were obviously not the places where the following scenes took
place. The film is set in Istanbul - for no reason related to the
plot in any way - so some of these are a bit more interesting than
usual. Lots of scenes shot in the director's hotel bedroom.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Room</b>
(2003) - Dear Mother of all the Gods! I had been warned. My kids
warned me. I still wasn't prepared. I decided to watch this tonight
because I just bought a copy of the book one of the actors wrote
about the making of the film - The Disaster Artist - and figured it
might be a good idea to actually see the film before I read the
book. I feel a very more lot less smart for having watched it.
Hahahaha!
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Cheech and
Chong's Up in Smoke</b> - Ok. That was about as funny as an unfunny
thing that wasn't very funny. Scrolling through the extras I find
it's probably the only film ever to have completely cut out one of
the screen's greatest actors Harry Dean Stanton. He played a cop and
his whole scene got chopped.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Cheech and
Chong Still Smoking </b>- in an act of depressed masochistic
laceration that I can only liken to the kind of self-harming that
upset teens can get hooked into, I watch ANOTHER Cheech and Chong
movie which turns out to be considerably shitter than the one I
watched last night. Last night's at least had a vague narrative
structure - and, it must be said, a pretty groovy soundtrack. This
one had no plot AT ALL. It was just a bunch of sketches strung
together in a Three Stooges-like mugging and slapstick framing
device while they wandered around some of the less photogenic parts
of Amsterdam. The latter part of the film was a recording of a live
performance. The sketches included a blackface routine and a
pointless, punchlineless sequence where they dressed up as a pair of
'faggots' trying to decide what to wear for a night out. It was
stupid and offensive, but worse unfunny with it. Stupid and funny is
OK. Offensive and funny is OK (but more difficult to do). Stupid,
offensive, and funny is even harder but possible. Leave funny off
the list and you just end up with self-indulgent abuse. The film,
and their stage show, climaxes with them on their hands and knees
pretending to be dogs having a shit in a restaurant. Ho bloody ho.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Island at
the Top of the World</b> (1974) - formulaic second string Disney
live action adventure with some clunking, undeliverable dialogue,
and special effects that varied wildly from being really impressive
to really shonky - sometimes within the same sequence. The music by
Maurice Jarre was terrific and some of the design stuff was
impressive.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Asphyx</b>
(aka 'The One With the Immortal Guinea Pig') had some clunking
editing moments. There were some really awkward transitions. Some
were seamless and one I thought particularly good but others were
real stop... and then start the film somewhere else. Gave a very odd
rhythm. But it's such an odd film it got away with it.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Them</b>! - probably plays better in the
memory than on the screen. Some nice sequences, but some really
clunking dialogue and a clunky lecture about ants in the middle of
the show which just ground the film to a total dead stop. There was
one moment in it that though that gave me a genuine shudder. It's
fairly early in the film too. They'd just put the comatose,
traumatised little girl in the back of the ambulance when our heroes
hear the strange sound that they heard earlier. They turn to look
out into the desert wondering what it can be and behind them, unseen
by them, the little girl just sits up and stares out into the
distance too - before lying back down again as the noise abates. I
don't know why but that moment <i>really</i> jolted me. And, in a
blink and miss it part, Leonard Nimoy was in it too
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br />Note to self: Stop using 'clunky'. Find
another word.<br /><br />February</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Escape From
Earth</b> (original title <i>Future Justice</i> 2014) - In some
ill-defined future a prisoner who glories in the name of 'Python
Diamond' (I kid you not) is shipped from a holding facility around
Saturn (where for some inexplicable reason he has been held in
cryo-sleep for five years before being shipped to Earth for
execution). When the ship arrives home the crew finds a nuclear war
has taken place in their absence - without them noticing, or being
informed, or anything. How? It's not as if these people had gone
anywhere where some form of two way communication with Earth was
impossible - especially for a military vehicle. No one listened to
the news? No one at Ill-Defined Military High Command sent them any
kind of updates? Orders? Warnings? Anything? Another film that
assumes the audience is as stupid as it is. Anyhow - blah blah blah
hand wavy stuff- the whole of civilisation gone to pot so our crew
go down to investigate. No one at the script stage thought to think
there might be any off world bases or any other infrastructure to
check out first? No manned orbital facilities? no Lunar bases?
anything? No. Just a prison on a moon of Saturn and Earth. That's
it. Anyhow the five members of the crew and their prisoner shout at
each other a lot and get all testosterony at each other and the
director gets so excited by his actors shouting at each other that
he sometimes forgets to point them at each other so they seem to
have shouty conversations with the backs of each other's heads. They
arrive to find a group of survivors in a warehouse who stand about
and fill them in on all the back story that we should have got
earlier in the show. Blah Blah... nuclear bombs... blah blah...
waves of refugees... blah blah... everyone sterile... blah blah...
more bombs... end of the human race... blah blah... but suddenly!
the Mad Max Appreciation Society from the next block turn up and
everyone gets to play <i>Assault on Precinct 13</i> for the rest of the
stupidly long 80 minutes.<br /><br />Starring a whole bunch of actors
you have never heard of before (and hope you will never see again)
playing 'characters' you don't give a shit about, spouting dialogue
that sounds like it was written by a 17 year old Warhammer player.
I'm not not sure what kind of deal the actors had but everyone of
them in mentioned in the opening titles and not ONE is mentioned
anywhere on the DVD case in front of me here. Front or back. The
Production Assistants get on-case credits - all three of them, and
the both the costume designer's assistants but none of the
cast.<br /><br />Another waste of... well I didn't actually pay for this
one; it was free in a 'help yourself bin'... and I still feel ripped
off.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Salute of
the Jugger</b> (aka <i>The Blood of Heroes</i>) - Rutger Hauer and
Joan Chen in a post-apocalyptic sports movie. Low on dialogue and
high on violence and shared with Number 2 Daughter who loved it.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Spaceballs</b>
with Number One son. Slightly funnier than I remember it - which is
damning with faint praise because I remember it being a complete
dud, but the boy enjoyed it and giggled his way through it. (He is
only 13.)
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>De vrais
mensonges</b> (2010 aka<i> Beautiful Lies</i>, and <i>Full Treatment</i>) - silly
bit of Franco-fluff Romcom that kept me entertained for 100 or so
minutes. I doubt if I will remember any of it in a week but it was
enjoyable.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>TRON </b>(1982)
- one of my favourite films of all time. Storywise it's nonsense,
and structurally it's very very odd. (The hero protagonist of the
first part of the film becomes the comedy relief - albeit with
supra-normal powers - in the second, while the minor sidekick
character of the opening becomes the active hero.) This watch, with
Daughter Number Two, was prompted by the realisation that the music
was by Wendy Carlos, one of D#2's heroines.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The 39 Steps</b>
(1935) - Hitchcock really was a genius director wasn't he? A total
arsehole of a man by many accounts but a genius director. Watched
with Number Two Daughter who mentioned the other day she had never
seen any of his films. As I'm reading the book at the moment (which
is awful, and taking me far longer to finish than it should) this seemed an ideal place to start. She enjoyed it
immensely. I had forgotten how funny it was and as I deliberately
didn't mention the fact that scenes were shot just up the road from
where we live the sudden appearance of familiar local scenery came
as a pleasant surprise to her as well.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Colette</b> (2018) - minor biopic of the
French writer which didn't really engage me. It felt too much like
one of those BBC Classic adaptations of yesteryear for me - albeit
with more gay sex than pre-watershed BBC used to allow. The film
ended with her divorcing her husband and her living with a woman
with whom she was in love. The movie (even in its copious end title
cards) side-stepped the fact that Colette married two more times,
leaving the implication in the viewers mind she and her lesbian
lover, Mathilde de Morny, lived a long and happy life together - the
relationship lasted 6 years and ended a year after the divorce
became finalised - and it neatly ignored the fact that Colette wrote
articles for pro-Nazi magazines during the Occupation.<br /><br />The
film also included one of those little screenwriting writing
tricks/clichés that is really starting to annoy me. Here's the
scene: a character says: "Never! I will never <i>NEVER </i>do X
Yor Z / Be seen dead in... / go to..." - or whatever. The
details differ but the character makes some emphatic statement to
another character that they will never do something - and
then...<br /><br />It has become tediously routine and obvious that this
declaration will <i>always</i> and <i>immediately</i> be followed by
a shot of them doing / having done the very thing they swore they
would never do. This time it was Colette who swore to her husband
she would never cut her waist length hair short in the fashion of
her character Claudine.... Followed by a shot of her,with her hair
cut short, accompanying her husband at the theatre.<br /><br />In the
extras on the DVD was a dropped scene that was obviously intended to
go between these two shots. It shows an uncomfortable, unhappy
Colette getting her hair cut then screaming at her husband that she
hated it and she would never forgive him for making her do it. The
scene worked. Many times it's obvious why scenes get cut - there's
another on this DVD which clearly didn't make the cut for many
obvious reasons: the "Thank heavens for..." joke was
totally misplaced; the actress in the scene was utterly unconvincing
(a minor part which was, I suspect, cut to give her the barest
minimum possible screen time); and it didn't tell us anything that
was vital to the story. It was a pointless, badly played little
scene. It had to go. The haircutting scene would have added so much
more and sidestepped a tedious cliché.
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western">March</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Every now and then
I like to recalibrate my critical faculties by scraping round the
corners of the crud barrel at JunkMonkey Mansions and watching
something irredeemably bad. Something so awful that it's not even
enjoyable in a 'So bad it's funny', Ed Woodian way. Something so bad
it's MST3K proof. Something that is just... crud. I don't know <i>why
</i>I have this compelling need to flagellate myself like this but
it does make anything I watch for months afterwards look a LOT
better. 1970s British Sex Comedies are my usual go to genre when I
need something to reset my jaded pallet. For months afterwards,
halfway through some godawful 1980s Italian Mad Max clone, I will
find myself thinking, "Christ! this is <b>dreadful</b>!... but
it's still better than <i>Confessions of a Dental Hygienist's
Mate!</i>"<br /><br />Last night the crud bucket was spectacularly
empty of British Sex 'Comedies' (the word sex there should be in
heavy sarcasm marks too but it just looks silly). Not a one. But
there was a DVD of a film called <b>Son in Law</b> starring someone
called Pauly Shore. I had no idea who Pauly Shore was but I had a
vague idea that I once heard some really awful film being described
as being 'only slightly better than a Pauly Shore movie'. I shoved
it in the player.<br /><br />I lasted less than 40 minutes. (If you had
asked I would have said I had been sat there for at least an hour).
It was painful! Like having teeth pulled. In the end I just couldn't
take any more.<br /><br />I think the next time I find myself needing to
do this reset thing and I end up watching some <i>Bawdy Adventures
of a Traffic Warden</i> type unfunny, unsexy (but definitely
British) piece of shit , I will find myself thinking "Christ!
this is <b>dreadful</b>!... but it's still better than a Pauly Shore
movie."
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Lone Ranger</b>
(1956) - TV spin-off movie. Routine, plodding western with all the
usual clichés. The only 'Indians' with speaking parts were played
by white actors sprayed brown and talking in simple pronoun-less
Noun Verb Noun sentence structures. Some impressive stunt work
though.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Jewel of
the Nile</b> - vastly disappointed to find my memories of this film
were utterly wrong. I remembered it as a jolly, silly, funny
adventure romp with the drop dead gorgeous Kathleen Turner. As it
was, it was a plodding bore with a drop dead gorgeous Kathleen
Turner, some nice scenery and a dreadful score. I now have Billy
Ocean's Go and Get Stuffed stuck in my head.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea</b> (or <i>20000 Leagues Under the Sea</i> - if you
believe the opening title card) - The Disney one - which I really
wanted to like a LOT more than I did. I enjoyed it, but not as much
as I was expecting. Some of the design work was great, James Mason
was sexy as hell but the plot was thin (though given the original
material that is hardly a surprise; I can see why Verne was popular
in his day but I find his books dull as ditch-water. Very heavy on
the travelogue and lectures, regurgitated, I presume, from
contemporary encyclopedias, about the marvels of nature and science,
held together with paper thin plots and characters.<br />A film with
no speaking parts for women. Not one. Some of the effects and
travelogue/wildlife shots seemed strangely (distractingly) widened
too which was distracting.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Message From Space</b> - Oh my dear
gods!<br />There is a scene I remember in <i>Midnight Cowboy</i> where
a couple are energetically banging away on a bed and their feet are
whacking a remote which keeps changing the channels on the bedroom
TV. This allowed director John Schlesinger to edit in a montage of
TV footage that showed up the vapidity and shallowness of
contemporary American life (or, at least, the vapidity and
shallowness of American television). It was the sort of thing
European film makers, given a chance to spend vast amounts of
American money on an American film liked to do in the 60s. Cynically
I could think this made them feel like they hadn't sold out and were
still artists - but it was the 60s. (BTW I really like <i>Midnight
Cowboy</i> - it's one of those unrequited love stories that makes me
cry.) Anyway... I was reminded of that scene while watching <i>Message
From Space</i> because I had this idea, half way through, that
that's how <i>Message From Space</i> was made.. One Saturday morning
in Japan in the 70s, a film producer was Weinsteining some poor
wannabee actress, and the video recorder he had set up to
immortalise the event for his own sordid purposes had got
accidentally wired up to the TV... and the remote was in the bed. He
mistook the resulting 90 odd minutes of channel hopped kids'
Saturday Morning TV that he later found on the tape as a production
he'd forgotten he'd made and released it quickly to cash in on the
<i>Star Wars</i> craze that was sweeping the world. There is no
other way this... <i>thing</i> could ever have been made.<br /><br />The
only other critical thought I had during it was that the huge set in
which a lot of the action took place looked exactly like what you
would get if you asked Philippe Druillet to design a Chinese
restaurant.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="200" name="graphics1" src="https://i.ibb.co/LJBzXvM/vlcsnap-2023-03-25-22h51m25s487.png" width="400" />
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>eXistenZ</b> - The best Philip K Dick
adaptation that wasn't based on a Philip K Dick story.
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br />April</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>J-Men Forever</b>
- a very silly movie made by chopping up lots of old Republic
serials and adding silly voices. Like <i>The Staggering Stories of
Ferdindand de Bargos</i> but with a couple of filmed inserts and a
slight plot.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Cargo</b> -
German film which I watched - dear gods! over a decade ago! - and
remember thinking it wasn't very good despite getting a lot of good
word of mouth at the time. I found a copy cheap in a charity shop
yesterday and thought I would give it another go and see if I was
wrong.<br /><br />I wasn't.<br /><br />The plot holes were even more glaring
than before and my attempting to fix them by paying attention and
seeing if I had missed something first time failed. I hadn't.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Swing Time</b>-
creaky RKO Fred and Ginger 'musical' (the 6th of 10) which had some
real bravura crane and dolly shots camerawork going on a times (and
given the size of cameras back in 1936 some real engineering must
have been going on behind the scenes), and some slick sets but
plot/story wise pretty dull, by-the-numbers stuff just there to hang
a few dance numbers and songs onto. And Fred Astair in blackface
which was uncomfortable.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Robot Holocaust </b>(MST3K) - after a long
break the son and I rediscover the external hard drive stuffed full
of MST3K goodness and enjoy some of the worst acting I have seen
since... since the last time I watched <i>Robot Holocaust </i>back
in 2007. We had fun.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Mulholland Drive </b>- with D#2, me for
the fourth or fifth time, her for the first (her first David Lynch
too). Still my favourite Lynch - it strikes just the right mix of
Lynchian weird and understandable narrative structure. This time,
maybe because I was watching it with someone, or because it was the
4th or 5th time I have seen it, I found the narrative part more
obvious than I had remembered..
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br />May</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Hundra</b> -
for the first time in something like its original widescreen format.
A very funny film.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Evil Cult </b>-
a stonkingly incomprehensible full throttle whatthefuckisgoing on?!
93 minutes of Kung Fu madness with an uncountable number of
characters, belonging to a bewildering number of factions, rushing
en mass every which way and beating the crap out of each other for
utterly inexplicable reasons.<br />But with some wonderfully mangled
Engrish subtitles.<br />"I have had adultery with his wife for
three years!" being a favourite.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Strippers Vs
Werewolves </b>- I only managed to get 30 minutes into this before I
gave up so this is one of my Public Service Broadcast posts.<br /><br />If
you ever get a chance to see this - don't even bother considering it
<i>for a second</i>.<br /><br />It. Is. Terrible. It's not 'bad'. It's
not 'so bad it's funny'. It's not got a "Wow! We know it's
dreadful but we're going to have fun making fun of how bad it is and
let you in on the joke!" shtick going on. It has none of that
or any other of the other possible ways some bad films have of
endearing themselves to a receptive audience. It's. Just. shit.<br /><br />In
an attempt to disguise just HOW shit it is, a lot of the time the
'film' (I suppose I have to call it that) uses split screen. I like
split screen. You can do great things with split screen (<i>The
Phantom of the Paradise</i> and <i>The Thomas Crown Affair</i> being
good examples) all it managed to achieve here was let the audience
watch badly directed actors deliver banal underwritten,
uninteresting dialogue in two locations at the same time. (Sometimes
I suspect it was only there to hide the fact that the footage within
a scene wouldn't cut together in a comprehensible manner). Short
pointless 'scenes' follow one after another linked with stripper
silhouette-shaped, and clawed flesh shaped wipes, and what looked
like Powerpoint presentations made up from stills run through
Photoshop's Graphic Pen filter and coloured in with
crayons.<br /><br />Everything looked cheap, tatty and
pointless.<br /><br />According to the trivia section of its entry on
the IMDb it 'took in only thirty-eight pounds at the UK box-office
when released' - so the backers probably got their money back.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Visitor </b>-
And I have to thank forum friend Victoria Silverwolf wholeheartedly
for pointing me in the direction of this one - one of the more
gloriously bonkers bits of film making I have seen for a long time.
More WTF?!s per minute than I though possible. It's not all crud
though. This thing obviously had a budget and, as Victoria says,
there are some moments (usually single shots) that are superbly
done. I have a sneaking suspicion that there times when the director
was busy doing other stuff and the DP had time to set up a beauty
shot or two for his showreel.<br />Thank you, Victoria.
</p>
</li><li><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">"Sugar
gets what she wants... when she wants it! Her machete isn't her only
weapon.<br />Their world... a plantation Their battleground... a
tropical inferno.<br />They're women... They're Warm... They're
Wildcats.<br /><b>Sweet Sugar</b>"</p><p align="CENTER" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/Sweet_Sugar_(film).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="256" height="389" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/Sweet_Sugar_(film).jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />Boy! there sure is
a lot to read on exploitation posters of the seventies.<br /><br />In an
unnamed South American country, big-breasted bombshell Sugar is
busted for narcotics and ends up on a forced-labour sugar plantation
- it's a 'Women in Prison' movie and pretty lacklustre one. Directed
by a sometime art director for Russ Mayer it plods along ticking off
the required WIP checklist of catfights, shower scenes, rape,
whippings, escape attempts and 'lesbian' seduction (guess who
doesn't make it to the end of the film) but all in a very
half-hearted manner with some of the worst choreographed fight
scenes I have seen for a long time. A slight leavening of the stodgy
pudding (gratuitous nudity aside) was the rather odd turn from the
actor playing 'Doctor John', the sadistically deranged owner of the
plantation, whose line in experiments included throwing drug enraged
cats at semi-naked women. His performance was weirdly watchable.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Steet Fighter</b>
- well, that was a lot of fun.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Taking of
Pelham One Two Three</b> (1974) - I watched this many years ago and
had memories of it being a pretty good film. I was wrong. It's not a
good film. It's a fecking brilliant film!
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Morgan</b> -
yet another in the 'is it sentient? or just trying to kid us?',
emerging AI stories in which the AI in question is housed in the
body of an attractive young woman. Why are they always women?
(Speilberg's <i>A.I.</i> is the only one I can think of off the top
of my head where the emerging sentience isn't housed in a hot babe's
bod or a clunky robot.) And this one is all a bit shit for many
reasons despite a great cast (none of whom are really given a lot to
do - most of the big names only get one scene: Brian Cox doesn't
even get out of his chair!). The AI goes rogue, kills a lot of
people before the the shadowy corporation behind its creation
finally kill it. The only feelings of 'love the AI expresses are for
one of the woman scientists who - backstory fills in - has spurned
the advances of the only heterosexual male worth bonking in the
cast. Oh boy. Evil lesbian trope box ticked but with an organic
robot. It's all very predictable.<br /><br />It's got one of those
irritating, echoey piano ambient soundtracks. And the 'twist' ending
pack-shot was so heavily foreshadowed it would have been more twisty
if they hadn't done it; it was so obvious.<br />Seriously - from the
first moment the AI and the corporate 'risk assessment consultant'
sent to evaluate the project appear on screen together you could
have written the ending before they said a word even before all the
tricksy reflections and double images the director layered on the
glass wall separating them.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Shattered Glass</b>
- I am a sucker for intrepid investigative newspaper stories. I like
the myth of the honest reporter unearthing hidden secrets and
fighting against all odds to bring the truth to the people. It's
about as true as the myth of the heroic cowboy in the white hat
cleaning up the town single handed, but I like it.<br />I especially
like intrepid investigative newspaper tales when they are based
(even if only loosely) on real events. <i>Shattered Glass</i> is
based on the real life story of journalist Steven Glass who worked
for the prestigious The New Republic for three years back in the
late 1990s... and made up most of the stories that appeared under
his by-line. The great scandal here to be uncovered is the
dishonesty of the central character.<br />The film feels a little
unfocused, the film never seems quite sure if it was a character
study of the fabulist writer or the systematic unravelling of his
fantasies. It's a bit messy in the way characters appear, contribute
their part of the unmasking before sliding out of the story to let
someone else pick up the thread. It's messy like that, I suspect,
because I suspect the real events were messy like that.<br />I found
it difficult to really identify with any of the characters - in a
nutshell, I couldn't work out who I supposed to be rooting for.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>A Bizarre Love Triangle</b> (original
title: Cheoleobtneun anaewa paramanjanhan nampyeon geurigo taekwon
sonyeo - it's Korean). Co-Written by Park Chan-wook. Feckless
Eun-hee has a child who needs a life saving operation, the child
dies and she marries the celebrity (the world's unfunniest comedian)
who raised the money to try and save him. Then she meets up again
with a schoolgirl friend, Keum-sook, who has been in love with her
for years. They start an affair. The comic finds out about it and
blackmails Keum-sook into sleeping with him. Once. And she gets
pregnant. They all live happily ever after. A very long 93 minutes
which was billed as a comedy but the only genuinely funny moment is
the one where the comic tells a joke to the wrong audience and no
one laughs. For me the film suffered from an overly-complicated
narrative structure which kept going back over itself (and not
adding anything much each time it did), and arsty tricksy
freeze-framing and speed-ramping (while at other times clumsily
buggering up perfectly simple line of action stuff) all housed in a
"30 years in the future" framing device which kept popping
in to interrupt the flow.<br /><br />The subtitles had annoyingly
obvious spelling mistakes and typos.<br /><br />But hey, the lesbian
couple get to live happily till the end of the picture - so that's
something.
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br />June</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Hell Bent for
Leather - </b>which would be a hell of a good name for a gay porn
movie but is in fact a workmanlike Audie Murphy cowboy movie. I've
never seen an Audie Murphy cowboy film before. It was very
predictable. The scenery was nice.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Shaft</b>
(1971) - I wish I'd liked this more than I did. It's such an
important piece of trash movie history I just wanted it to be so
much better.<br /><br />I got irritated by the uncertain camerawork in
some places. The first scene between Shaft and the Harlem boss is
full of odd little zooms in and out that just don't seem to make
much sense and don't really appear anywhere else in the movie (that
I noticed). I got totally distracted by the fact that Rowntree was
wearing a radio mic in that scene. (Note to future movie director
self: Tight fitting jumpers - even sexy roll necks on hunky bods -
are not a good place to try and hide recording equipment.)<br /><br />Though
I did admire the virtuoso way the director managed to make his
obviously tiny studio sets look bigger by shooting diagonally across
the space into the corner whenever possible. And why did the quality
of the film degrade so much in the wide shot of the café where
Shaft drinks the espresso? It looks like a second or third
generation dupe. Almost as if they'd lost the negative, which is
possible I suppose, and had to cut in the workprint. (Which,
thinking about it, makes loosing the negative a less likely option.
When the lab lost half of a Russ Meyer film - I forget which one,
does it matter?they're all pretty interchangeable), they lost it
before they developed it and made a dupe.)<br /><br />And why was
Shaft's bed just inside his front door? Is this normal in two storey
New York apartments? And why did he have that GODAWFUL painting of a
clown over it? I spent far too much of the movie in over-analytical
mode asking myself things like that. (It really is a terrible
painting.) This is what happens when I watch a really bad film. But
this wasn't a really bad film It just didn't give me enough. So I
started spotting the cracks.<br /><br />On the up side the minor gay
character was (for the era, and the type of movie) pretty
sympathetic and underplayed. The guerilla style shooting on the
streets gave it a rough edginess that worked at times - pity they
didn't do a Larry Cohen and play out some dramatic scenes on the
streets. And the opening theme is still one of my favourite pieces
of movie music.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Mon Oncle
</b>(1958) - The first of Jaques Tati's films to be released in
colour, Mon Oncle won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language
Film, a Special Prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, and the New
York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film,
receiving more honours than any of Tati's other cinematic works.
works. (Wikipedia).<br /><br />I fell asleep.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Vera Cruz
</b>(1954) - Post Civil War western set in Mexico with Burt
Lancaster chewing the scenery as the leader of a bunch of
mercenaries and Gary Cooper as the loner who joins his band.
Together they take on the job of escorting a countess to the titular
port. The coach also contains a hidden $3 million in gold and EVERY
character with a speaking part conspires to get it. It's sweaty, for
the time very violent, and stuffed full of immoral and amoral
characters. It's a Spaghetti Western ten years before its time but
suffering from it's being made in the Hollywood system and its stars
being too big for the roles. Clint Eastwood was a TV actor before A
Fist Full of Dollars; Lancaster (who also produced here) and Cooper
were A listers. Lancaster (because he was the producer) gets the
plum part and nicely plays against type, lending his wonderful grin
to a right evil bastard of a sociopath killer. Made 15 years later,
when the doors had been opened wide, this would have been a much
nastier, more complex, and far better film. As it is it's a mildly
interesting toe in the water of things to come.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Twins of Evil
</b>(1971) - Nice sets, great furniture... (seriously there was some
really great furniture in this movie; either extremely good fakes or
genuine antiques) but mostly the usual by the numbers Hammer vampire
stuff, 'based on characters created by Sheridan Le Fanu' . (I.E.
there was someone called 'Karnstein' in it). Lots of running around
in the woods in broad daylight holding flaming torches, lots of
dolly shots and zooms and lashings of clearly enunciated British TV
acting. All just a bit... dull really. As I said. The most
interesting thing about the show was the furniture. (And the tits.)
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Some Like it Sexy</b> (aka <i>Come Back
Peter</i> and <i>Seducer</i> 1969) - described by the director as
"Alfie... with more sex" . Pretty pointless succession of
seemingly unrelated scenes in which an obscure British actor (who
looks a bit like Anthony Booth but with even less charisma) beds a
series of women. The women are broad brushtroked 'types': a German
Au Pair (played by an incredibly bad actress with an unintelligibly
thick accent), a suburban housewife, a dolly bird fashion model, a
rich, unhappily married rapacious older woman, a Black hippy chick
etc.). Since there are sometimes long earnest dialogues sequences
between the obscure British actor and the woman about life and
happiness and meaning and stuff before the inevitable humping I have
the suspicion they thought they were making a semi-serious movie.
What ended up on the screen looks like a joke free, dry-run at a
Confession of a ... type schlock . The sex scenes are interminable.
In the end the implication is that all the events of the film are a
daydream had by a butcher's boy on his delivery round.<br /><br />One of
those, "Why am I watching this crap?" movies.<br /><br />This
was the first film to feature Mary & Madeleine Collinson, the
twin sisters from Hammer's <i>Twins of Evil </i>which I watched last
night. And yes they did the 'good twin / bad twin' thing in this one
too - even to the point of one wearing black and the other white.
They fight over our hero and when he tells them to 'kiss and make
up' they go the whole hog and fulfilled a lot of dirty old men's
lesbian incest fantasies - without the use of the body doubles which
litter the rest of the film.
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br /><br /><br />July</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Ishtar </b>(1987)
- Oh dears gods! What were they thinking? What was I thinking? That
was... painful.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Mutiny in Space</b>
(1965) - in the first few minutes of this low budget sf film (which
I'd never heard of till yesterday) we get mentions of how the
discovery of ice, in caves on the Moon, would make the construction
of the second base on the moon so much easier, an orbiting space
station having to adjust its trajectory to avoid an obsolete,
forgotten satellite - which the captain of the satellite refers to
as 'Junk' (just when did the term 'space junk' first get used I
wonder?), there are capable women crew members onboard, there's
mention of solar power being used on the moon, The space station had
inner and outer hulls with self sealing capabilities... (someone has
been reading some popular science magazines!). Later on in the film
a pivotal plot point turns on the fact that guns are internationally
outlawed in space (and, what's more, the American military honour
this agreement!)... There's some pretty forward looking stuff in
here.<br /><br />Sadly things got pedestrian pretty fast and soon the
base is covered in killer space fungus and newspaper headlines are
spinning across the screens as papers around the world tell their
waiting readerships about just how incredibly doomed Space Station
X-7* is (though some of said readerships must have been a little
confused as to why their papers were suddenly publishing in English
- or even, in the case of what I suspect was a Russian paper, a
latin alphabet). Just as things are about to get even doomeder for
our gallant crew (who in addition to rampaging space fungus had to
deal with their commander doing a Queeg and needing relieved of
command - thus justifying the movie's title), they discover that the
fungus thrives on warmth, so they lower the temperature on the
inside of the ship to 'zero' (Centigrade, Fahrenheit or Kelvin?)
which makes all the fungus shrivel up and vanish with a horrible
screeching noise not unlike my car's brakes (I must get them looked
at). Sadly, lowering the inside of the ship's temperature to zero
(anything) doesn't get rid of the fungus growing all over the
outside of the station which is thriving in the warmth of the sun's
rays. The military send up a rocket which, when "successfully
destructed"(sic), sends a cloud of freezing ice crystals to
block out the sun long enough for the whole station to become as
"clean as a newborn star". Oh dear. It started out so well
too.<br /><br />The sets were good the acting better than was expected
and some of the writing when it got away from the plot was pretty
good. There were a few oddities in the special effects - some of
which obviously came from bigger budget (possibly Eastern Block)
films - including one jarring moment where the editor cut between
two different angles on the moon rocket in which the star field
background was the same - the model hung in front of it had
obviously just been turned between shots. I guess the assumption was
that no one in the audience would remember the exact starfield
behind the ship in shots seen several minutes apart. I don't think
for a second they were expecting two of these shots to be used
consecutively. It looked like crap.<br /><br /><br />*or "7-X noitatS
ecapS" in one insert shot where the film was flopped for some
reason. As the name of the place was written in big letters round
the outside it was pretty hard to miss.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Neil Simon's
California Suite</b> four uninterlocking stories set in the same
time frame, in the same hotel, with a few good lines, some great
performances (Maggie Smith being more than usually wonderful) and
some downright embarrassingly awful 'comedy' from Richard Prior and
Bill Cosby that looked like it wandered in from another studio. The
music was bloody awful too.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Cherry 2000</b><br />Me:
"Do you want to watch the most 80s thing I can think
of?"<br />Daughter #2: "Sure."<br /><br />Not the greatest
film in the world but it has more than the average, run of mill
movie's quota of weirdness and oddness in it. It deserves to be
better known. Falls a little flat in the third act (like a lot of
action movies) as the characters run through their set piece hoops
to get to their standard Hollywood resolution - though, even then,
there is the odd moment. During the climactic firefight the innocent
sex robot Maguffin's "This is fun but I'd rather be watching it
on television!" is a genuinely funny line.<br /><br />Daughter #2
loved it.<br /><br />"Oh, you guys go ahead. I have to straighten
out the extension chord situation in sector five."
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Blue Hurricane </b>(1991) - if you're
kinky for shots of fighter aircraft taxiing around and taking off
(and landing again, and taxiing to a standstill) then this is the
movie for you.<br /><br />In between all the taxiing, taking off,
landing and taxiing we get to watch REAL MEN saluting each other a
lot.<br /><br />A seriously dull movie in which nothing much happens. A
Nato base 'in Europe'. Two American best bud fighter pilots (one of
them played by Dirk A-Team 'Starbuck' Benedict) are scrambled to
intercept a 'bogie'. Five minutes of taxiing and taking off later
toy planes are thrown around in front of the camera for a few
minutes to show us what hot shot pilots these guys are. The bogie is
an 'enemy plane' and after they chase it about a bit it 'crosses the
line' and the hot shots are ordered to return to base before they
cause 'a diplomatic incident'. They almost disobey their commanding
officer but the power of David Warner's acting (for it is he) forces
them to turn around.<br /><br />After a brief interlude showing us what
a perfectly happily married man with two cute children (and
therefore doomed to die before act one is out) guy our hero's best
bud is, the dynamic duo fly out to some mountainous area to
consummate their buddiness by practising some sort of super jet
fighter plane tactic that hero has come up with. Nearing a
mysterious mountain they are surrounded by mysterious lights and
hero returns to base alone. Best bud's plane's wreckage is found but...
(three dramatic chords, please!)... there's no body to be
found!!!!<br /><br />Hero does a sad acting montage while the producer's
girlfriend sings a REALLY bad (but thankfully utterly forgettable)
song as he wanders about doing moping 101 (desultorily flipping
through channels on the TV, leaning against a door frame and staring
up into the night sky, etc.).<br /><br />The court of enquiry clears him
of any wrongdoing. His best bud's pilot error is to blame. Hero has
crisis of confidence about flying again and starts babbling about
UFOS. David Warner gives him two days to get his shit together. Hero
gets his shit together by seducing UFO nut Patsy Kensit.<br /><br />Convinced
by the righteousness of his cause he out-acts David Warner and
convinces the Powers That Be to mount some highly overly complex, split
second operation to fly four jets at the mountain from four
different directions before meeting up in front of it. To get the
proof he needs his jet has a TV camera glued to the front. Just
quite why they are trying to sneak up on a mountain instead of just
going there is never quite explained (if, indeed, it was ever
considered by the scriptwriters). Lots of saluting, taxiing, taking
off, and flying about later they arrive at the mysterious mountain,
which far from being mysteriously in the middle of mysterious
nowhere has a very unmysterious looking hydroelectric scheme half
way up it and a 'pipeline' bridge for them to fly under for no
reason other than the hero has told them it's crucial that they do
fly under it.<br /><br />As they get to the mountain there is a blinding
light and everyone flies around like loonicans and two of the planes
crash and the hero hero returns to base convinced the lights were
trying to communicate with him. Nonsense! his superiors say, that
was just 'ball lighting' we saw on the monitor. Sulking our hero
walks away with his UFO nut girlfriend while the military top brass
stand around wondering why none of them have the courage to mention
the several million quids worth of fighter plane (not to mention the
pilots) who didn't return from this weirdly pointless
mission.<br /><br />After a brief conversation with his girlfriend's UFO
nut mentor he decides he has to climb the mountain alone. Let me go
with you says Patsy Kensit almost acting for a moment. No, says the
hero. "This is something I have to do... alone."<br /><br />Cut
To:<br /><br />Hero and his best buddy's dad (who has climbed the
mountain before) walking up the slight slope that is doubling for
the impressively steep, near vertical, cliffs used in the long
shots.<br /><br />'Alone'... you keep using that word. I do not think it
means what you think it means....<br /><br />Dad twists his ankle hero
goes on alone alone. This mysteriously mysterious mountain, it now
transpires, takes only a day to walk into and ascend without any
specialist climbing or even hiking gear - our hero is wearing his
everyday clothes.<br /><br />Near the top there is a sudden light show.
Lights! Lights! more lights!... and then some more! Lights! ... and
then there's best buddy standing there! They hug. And head off down
the mountain (in the dark).<br /><br />The end.<br /><br />So Top Gun Meets
Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a budget of tens.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="576" name="graphics2" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZGYzZTMwYTAtYzRjZi00NDJhLTk3Y2YtY2IxMDIyZjZlMzlhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNzEyNjE5NzM@._V1_.jpg" width="364" />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /><br />I am starting
to reassess my 'watch anything with David Warner in it' policy.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Night Train to
Murder</b> - TV Movie 1985. Morecambe and Wise were a part of my
childhood. Eric Morecambe was one of those great comedians who could
make you laugh by simply doing nothing. And Ernie Wise was a great
straight man. They worked well on TV in a variety format but towards
the end of their career wanted to break away from the same old same
old. Their move from the BBC to ITV in the early 80s included an
agreement that they would make what were essentially TV movies. This
is the only one that got completed before Eric Morecambe died. It's
not very good. A few nice gags but it doesn't hold together at all
as a story and there are some very very clumsy, amateurish shuffling
about with experienced actors seeming unsure what they are supposed
to be doing next. Part of the problem was, I suspect, that this show
was originally cut to accommodates a laugh track. When released on
DVD it didn't have one. Anyone who's ever seen any of those 'Friends
with No Laugh Track' Youtube videos will know how weird that makes
things.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Judge Priest</b>
(1934) - big box office in its day, a little hard to watch now, John
Ford directed slice of Post Reconstruction Old South hooey with Will
Rogers giving an odd performance. Both strangely naturalistic and
mawkish (very John Ford) but Rogers delivered an awful of of his
lines with his face turned away from the camera. 'Upstage' in
theatre terms.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Four
Feathers </b>(2002) - The seventh film version. Looked beautiful in
places but boy did it go on. Outstayed its welcome by a good 20
minutes after seeming to take an age to get started.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Jules Verne's
Rocket to the Moon </b>(1967) - lumberingly unfunny entry in <i>Those
Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, The Great Race </i>territory.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>R.I.P.D.</b> -
I'd heard it was shit. It was shit.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Seventh Son</b>
(2014) - by pure fluke coincidence the second film in a row to
feature Beau Bridges being an almost unintelligible whiskery
curmudgeon. <i>Seventh Son</i> is of those by the numbers heroic
fantasies where The Farm Boy With a Destiny saves the world from
being overwhelmed by evil on a certain date by virtue of his being
The Farm Boy With a Destiny and just happening to have the
all-powerful Talisman of Ghetouttagaol...<br /><br />All pretty meh -
with the added challenge of trying to work out what Beau Bridges was
actually saying half the time (I think he was trying to do an
English accent) and wondering why the hell Julianne Moore (who I
consider to be one of the finest actors of her generation) was doing
in this kind of crap. I suspect she must have been wondering too,
because there were times when she seemed to be less than invested in
some of her lines than others. There was a real "Do I <i>really
</i>have to say this? Okay, let's get it over with..." feeling
from her at times.<br /><br />Another thing I found dubious was the fact
that ALL the soon-to-be-overwhelmed-by-unspeakable-evil people
appeared to be white, and ALL the villains hanging around waiting
for the 'Blood Moon' to be at its height and their 'powers' to be at
their full, were women and Black and Asian. The interior decor of
the witch queen's palace was full of Islamic geometric patterns and
other blatant Orientalisms. The subtext wasn't very sub.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Return of
Captain Invincible </b>(1983) - I think I have a new favourite movie
of the week! The late great Alan Arkin - always worth watching -
plays a burnt out bum superhero who is called on to save the world
when a secret 'Hypno Ray' is stolen from a US research base in
Australia<br /><br />"Australia? is <i>that </i>where I've been all
these years? I thought it looked weird; I thought it was the
booze!"<br /><br />It's a messy, scrappy, film that lurches from
one scene to another without much connecting tissue, stupid, OTT
slapstick sequences and is one of the funniest things I have seen
for a long time. I can't wait to share this one with the kids.<br /><br />And
it's a musical!
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Relative Values</b> - Jeanne Tripplehorne
is in it. That was all I needed to know.
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br />AUGUST gets off to a really bum start</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Vampires'
Night Orgy</b> (1973) - A bus full of people on their way to a
remote employment get trapped in a deserted village when their bus
driver dies. Spanish vampire / ghoul rubbish which I baled out of
after 30 minutes because it was as dull as hell.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>L'Ennui</b> - a
depressed French philosophy professor has an affair with a young
girl - which I baled out of after 60 minutes because it was as dull
as hell. One of those art house films which endlessly lurch from one
unconvincing overly-analytical conversation or monologue about sex /
love / boredom / despair / existential angst / freedom (sometimes
all in the same sentence - sometimes / and /or during sex) to
another - all in that fairytale intellectual Paris setting of overly
huge flats with ceiling-high book cases.<br />The girl had a nice bum
though which kept me hanging around a little longer than I would
have otherwise given it.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Return of
Captain Invisible</b> (1983) - again. I herded my daughters into
room and made them sit down and watch it with me. They loved it.
Half way through Number One Daughter turned to me and said, "Dad,
they just filmed the inside of your head, didn't they?" which I
took as a great compliment.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Planet of the
Apes</b> (1967) - with Number 2 daughter who dug it.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Sleeper </b>-
my annual attempt to find out what the hell it is people find
interesting/funny/watchable in Woody Allen's films.<br />Despite some
very dated references - like the Nixon ones - this one is still as
silly and fun as I remember.<br /><br />My 14 year old boy liked it too.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Ghost Rider:
Spirit of Vengeance</b> (2011) - I remember the first one being awful
but this one was even awfuller. Laughably bad. Daughter Number 2 and
I were in fits of giggles all the way through as one overcooked
cliché after another thudded onto the screen.<br />And it went on
forever. For a film with practically no plot. It just went on and on
and on.<br /><br />Some great locations - the Turkish Tourist Board must
have had their hands full with this production, one halfway decent
joke with a Hostess Twinkie (not very well delivered), and Idris
Elba almost looking like he believed his lines - but dear gods! the
rest of it was shite. One to avoid.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Focus</b>
(2015) - Margo Robbie and Will Smith (both easy on the eye) are
conpeople. I like conman movies but they are a bugger to get right.
Pile on too many twists and turns and you over egg the pudding and
it starts jumping sharks - don't provide enough and it leaves the
audience unsatisfied, expecting more. This one almost gets away with
it but it won't linger long in my memory. Still a shedload better
than <i>Now You See Me</i> though.<br /><br />One sequence though threw
me completely out of the movie. There's a scene in which our two
protagonists are sat at a roadside cafe table with pedestrians
passing. Alternating matching OTS (Over the Shoulder) shots in turn
of each. The passing pedestrians were too close to the actors. They
became too noticeable. An obvious, brightly dressed extra would
appear walking across the frame towards the camera in one shot, just
clear frame and then disappear on the cut and not be walking away
from the camera as you would expect in the reverse angle. I'd bet a
lot of the money that the editor was not a very happy chappy cutting
that scene.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Batman Returns</b> - which was the first
DVD to hand that didn't, on the surface, seem to require any
intellectual input from me (I'd had a very long day; I just needed
something as stupid as I felt to watch).<br /><br />Given my usual...
um... how shall I put it? 'aggressive indifference' to Tim Burton's
movies I wasn't surprised to find I hadn't seen it before. Of all
his films I've seen to date only Ed Wood had wowed me. What did
surprise me though, given my aggressive indifference, was how much
fun this film was. I loved it. Some genuinely funny stuff going on.
It has, at a single bound, leapt to being my third favourite Batman
film. The 1966 version, the animated <i>Batman Vs. Two-Face</i> then
this.
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br />Sept.</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Kin-dza-dza!</b>
-with daughter number 2 (she for the first time me for the third or
fourth) I still have no idea what it's about and she couldn't help.
One of these days I will find a better copy than the pillar-boxed
(and - I hope! - clumsily translated) copy I currently own. Maybe it
will make more sense with the sides on and legible subtitles.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Idiocracy</b>
(a rewatch - not as funny as I remember but I knew what to expect
this time)
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Rumble in the
Bronx</b> - Daughter Number Two and I could watch Jackie Chan
hitting people with furniture all day and not get bored.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Alien</b> -
with Daughter Number 2 - who is leaving to go to college at the end
of the week! Boo hoo! - and I are frantically watching stuff that
we've been meaning to watch together for ages before she has to go.
She'd never seen Alien before (and it's been many years since I
have) her opinion: it holds up incredibly well. She is familiar with
the outlines of the story and the character of Ripley etc. (anyone
growing up with the amount of comic con / geek culture she has been
exposed to could hardly avoid knowing even if only by osmosis) but
loved the look and the atmosphere and the time spent on character -
'a great scary movie'.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Spider-Man : Once Upon a Time the Super
Heroes</b> - (originally <i>De Superman à Spider-Man: L'aventure
des super-héros</i>) A bland, pretty uninformative, whistle stop
through the history of American superheroes. I.E. Superman &
Batman, and Spiderman (with vague mentions of the Flash and Captain
America, Daredevil and the X-Men) which fails to tell anyone who
knows even the slightest bit about American Superhero comics
anything. For one thing there is hardly any mention of any women;
characters or creators. One mention of Marie Severin (over a static
library photo) and one or two passing mentions of Wonder Woman and
that's pretty much it. And watching this you wouldn't get the idea
that there were any Black or Asian superhero characters either.
Mention is made that Marvel's business model in the 60s involved
keeping up with current events and trends - artists were admonished
not to make their comics look like thay had been drawn ten years ago
- so things like student unrest on the campuses was incorporated
into story lines, as well as drug use, but where was the Civil
Rights movement? Where were the Black characters who were invented
in response? The Black Panther, The Falcon, Luke Cage? Nowhere. Not
even in the endless rostrum camera panning and scanning of the
endless number of comic book covers that seemed to take up 50% of
the films running time. (Though artist Jim Lee turns up as a talking
head so we know comics weren't only created by old White men.)<br /><br />On
the upside it was interesting to see the likes of Lee, Mike Kaluta,
Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, and Dave Gibbons talking - names I
know from their signatures on their art but couldn't put a face to
before now (even if what they had to say most of the time wasn't
very informative)</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br />October</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Thing from
Another World </b>(1951) watched with Number One Son who, at the
tender age of 14, doesn't like modern scary movies or horror. His
sisters would have been happily watching eyeball popping slasher
movies by his age - Number One Daughter was heavily into
Cronenberg's movies - this is just about his limit. I love the fast
paced talkiness and generosity of the script which doles out the
heroics and inventiveness to characters almost at random; sometimes
leaving the nominal hero scrabbling to catch up as his crew and the
scientists identify, and come up with solutions to, problems before
he can work out what's going on.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Guardians</b>
(2017) - Here's how I think this movie happened. Some Russian
oligarch's youngest son watched a couple of the Avengers Movies,
thought, " I could do that!" and spent his pocket money
for the next three weeks finding out he couldn't.<br /><br />It is
beyond terrible.<br /><br />Shedloads of CGI, tons of bombastic music
and a script that looks like it was ripped straight from the pages
of some1980s self-published, black and white, piece of shit comic
from Wyoming. (Have a scroll through <a href="https://misterkitty.net/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics823.html" target="_blank">MisterKitty.net</a>
for some choice examples.)<br /><br />The Plot: Soviet era superheroes
are reunited by a SHIELD like organisation to fight big nasty guy
who everyone thought was dead but isn't and can now control
machines. (The onscreen backstory/briefing lecture we got took a <b>lot</b>
longer to say that but that's what they meant.)<br /><br />Finding the
disbanded heroes that no one has seen for years and someone has
randomly decided is the only way of stopping our villain (whoever he
is) is stupidly easy. It takes SHEILDSKI's assembled fashion models
in black Lycra (lead by a blonde, expressionless plank of wood)
minutes to scroll through newspaper archives on their transparent
CGI monitors - hell one of the missing heroes is working as a high
profile circus performer in Moscow. How hard was that? There can't
be <i>that</i> many women who can become invisible in the former
Soviet Union territories.<br /><br />The other members of the team are
Asian Guy who can move REALLY FAST (and, because he's Asian, knows
Kung-Fu and ends every fight in a crouched, down on one knee manga
pose), Big Hairy Guy (who is a scientist and lives in a shack in the
woods because he turns into a BEAR and can't control himself - not
the Hulk - not Wolverine somewhere between the two: 'Hulkerine'?)
Hulkerine is secretly in love with SEETHRU GIRL who has lost her
memory from some never-explained reason and is getting more and more
bearlike every time he transforms. Towards the end of the movie he
goes the whole way and transforms into a humongous bear (with an
automatic, thought-controlled machine gun strapped to his back). How
he gets his pants back after running around like that for a while is
a mystery the film doesn't even think to question.<br /><br />And
bringing up the rear, lonely older guy who has telekinetic abilities
- confined to rocks. He can telepathically control rocks. That's his
power - Rocks. That and the ability to recite the whole of the
Lord's Prayer with his back to the camera in his establishing scene.
(WHY???) Later in the movie, having realised there might not <i>always</i>
be a ready supply of small rocks to hand for him to telepathically
control, SHIELDSKI makes him a costume.... with a pile of rocks
built in.<br /><br />So heroes get whupped. A lot. The world is doomed
because big nasty guy has an army of clones and has moved some
important piece of Soviet Era Moscow architecture to another bit of
Moscow because he needs a really big tower to act as an antenna to
control some hitherto unmentioned Cold War, Reagan-era Star Wars
space lasers to... erm... something... I'm sure the writers would
have come up with a reason for all this but OH NO! the end of the
movie was coming up sooner than they were expecting (or the budget
was running out even faster) because suddenly a plot rabbit is
pulled out the magic plot top hat and somehow, for some reason, the
defeated heroes can <i>combine their powers</i>!<br /><br />Sadly they
didn't do a Supermegatron Rangers Combino-Powerbot thing and become
a Huge, Rock Throwing, Invisible, Kung-Fu Bear but merely gripped
each other's shoulders and did some superhero constipation grimace
acting before unleashing a bolt of pure high octane CGI at the
villain several miles away. (My bet is on the budget was running
out.)<br /><br />Lots of stuff blew up.<br /><br />Heroes get to stand and
look noble while Nikitachka Furi (AGENT OF SHEILDSKI) gets to
deliver a line-promising a sequel.<br /><br />Well that was another 33
pence well wasted in the '3 discs for a quid' pile at my local
charity shop.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>The Adventures
of Buckeroo Banzaii Across the Eighth Dimension </b>- for the
umpteenth time. Sharing it this time with Number One Son, who hadn't
seen it before and got it.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Puma Man</b>
(MST3K)
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Untamed Youth</b>
(MTS3K) Both with No 1 Son. Both terrible films but <i>Untamed Youth
</i>had the slight disadvantage of being a little more than boring.
Joel and the Bots were really having to work hard to find material
to play with.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>The Black Scorpion </b>(MST3K) Pretty dull
monster creepy crawly movie with far far above average SFX. Willis
O'Brien put a lot more effort and care into animating the scorpion
monsters than the film was worth.
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western"><br />November</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Octoman</b> -
very dull 1971 <i>Creature From The Black Lagoon</i> wannabee that
went on and on and on and on. And then on. Jeff 'The Giant Claw'
Morrow's name was on the credits to add some B movie heft but
appeared in only one scene before disappearing from the plot.
Obviously low budget, but if you <i>are </i>shooting a movie mostly
set at night you would have thought someone would have coughed up
for the hire of a couple of lights and a generator.<br /><br /><br /><br />I
have a winner! No really! It makes The Room look good!<br /><br />Sitting
comfortably?</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>Double Down</b> (2005). I'm only 35
minutes into it and I Know I KNOW that this is it. This IS the worst
film I have ever seen. For the first fifteen minutes producer /
writer / actor / director / editor / production designer /
production manager / casting director and music director Neil Breen
does nothing but wander around in a desert landscape in jeans and an
undershirt. (His is the only name on the opening
credits.)<br /><br />Sometimes our 'star' stops wandering around bits of
Nevada that don't quite look like those rocks from Star Trek, climbs
into his Mercedes and drives to a different piece of desert, driving
past the same human skull lying in the ground to show it is a desert
- "Couldn't get you a cow skull, Neil, got you a human one.
Will that do?". Sometimes he types on two laptops and two cell
phones at once while wearing surgical gloves, then he poisons some
fish.<br /><br />In between all this pointless wandering (which was
probably shot in a day) there is a lot of stock footage. Some of the
stock footage makes very little sense in context. Some of it almost
does. All the time a monotonous, never ending, badly-delivered back
story is dribbled into our ears about how this pathetic figure is an
international soldier of fortune with wizzo computer skills who
could bring down governments if he wanted to.<br /><br />An
international man of mystery who lives in a car, eats tuna out of
the tin while driving, and gives away all the millions he makes
renting his skills out to anyone who will pay him (while "supporting
our troops") to children's homes and helping the victims of
natural disasters. He is bitter and cynical because years ago 'they'
killed the love of his life. (Cue flashback of middle-aged man actor
snuggling up to much younger actress in the world's most
uncomfortably awkward nude scene - eeeew! a single shot rings out.)
This maybe a dream sequence. (The whole movie may be a dream
sequence!)<br /><br />The pacing is leaden!<br /><br />VO: "I'm
constantly changing my identity."<br /><br />Cut to: 30 second
locked off wide shot of him changing the rear number plate of his
car.<br /><br />Cut to: 10 second slow pan right, down angle on the junk
in the boot of his car.<br /><br />Cut to: 15 second long shot of his
climbing into car and driving - camera pans left and the shot is
held far too long after the car is out of sight. (The second time
this shot has been used.)<br /><br />Cut to: 35 second wide shot of a
public toilet with the desert in the background - car draws up
background left, he gets out of the car, shoes and a bundle of
clothes in hand, and slowly walks into the toilet. Jump cut. He
exits toilet in black trousers and blue shirt and slowly walks back
to the car, gets in, and reverses right out of frame.<br /><br />Cut to:
6 second (stock footage?) "Welcome to Las Vegas"
road-sign.<br /><br />Cut to: Camera car footage in front of Mercedes
showing Mercedes driving down Las Vegas street. The number plate on
the front of the Mercedes matches the one we saw him take off five
shots ago!<br /><br />International man of mystery identity changing
action at its finest!<br /><br />This is genius stuff.<br /><br />I did
point out to myself at this point that this is not, technically, a
continuity error. We only saw him take the back numberplate off his
car. He might have left the front one unchanged to confuse people.
(It confused me.)<br /><br />At the 25 minute mark we get the first
'dialogue' of the movie. In a extreme long shot taken, I would
hazard a guess, without obtaining a permit and from the back of a
car parked across the street, our hero walks his bald spot to meet
someone outside Caesar's Palace. Their conversation is played out in
one shot close ups with up angles that show only only sky behind
them. These could have been shot anywhere; out in the middle of the
desert, in the crew's motel car park, anywhere. None of the towering
Las Vegas scenery we've just watched being established is anywhere
in sight.<br /><br />With a budget-saving line of dialogue about not
wanting to go into Grey Suit's "office buildings because I know
they're all bugged -- not to mention the skeletons that are in
there" they stand outside and 'talk'.<br /><br />Grey Suit is from
'The Agency' He needs hero man's help because blah blah evil
terrorist attack planned "chemical biological, the worst kind,
that will take out half of Las Vegas strip in one week".
(Whether the attack is going to take place in one week, or the
attack, once it had taken place, will take a week to kill half the
strip is open to interpretation. I'm pretty sure the guy who
delivered the line had no idea either way.)<br /><br />Hero man delivers
long irrelevant speech about nuclear weapons being the least of
people's worries.<br /><br />The page on "Establishing an Eyeline"
was missing from the director's copy of The Idiot's Guide to Movie
Making Colouring Book.<br /><br />After a long montage of Las Vegas
nightlife - I mean LONG...... with a couple of insert shots of black
clad terrorist types doing preparing terrorist things - we get to
see our hero wake up by the side of his car back at the desert
location he drove away from earlier, dressed as he was before we had
the "I'm constantly changing my identity." sequence - and
the car's rear numberplate is back to the one he took off. Hot dang!
He's good! I wonder who he is now? (And does he still smell of
tuna?)<br /><br />He gets "GPS directions" over his laptop. He
goes to... somewhere and, gun in hand, sees an old silver haired
bearded man who "doesn't look like a terrorist" sitting in
a hole in the rock. The old man falls over. There is blood all over
his head. Hero man helps him up. There is no blood anywhere on his
head. (Now that IS a continuity error.)<br /><br />"I was drawn to
him - I felt I knew his spirit!"<br /><br />Old man dies while
giving Hero something that looks like a chunk of iron pyrites. Hero
makes pile of rocks that's supposed to be a grave over the old
geezer's body but looks as if it would just about cover a Barbie
doll. (There's a heavenly choir singing in the background.) Stock
footage of an American Eagle looking confused as the audience. Hero
man pats rocks on the Tomb of the Unknown Character as his voice
over tells us: "I am your spirit." He climbs a hill.
Stares into the sun. Stock footage Eagle (Again). "I am your
spirit." (Again.)<br /><br />Stock footage of homeless looking
bearded man feeding pigeons on some large urban church entrance.<br /><br />I
think this is supposed to be symbolic. Of something.<br /><br />Hero
wakes up beside his car again.<br /><br />"I'm so alone!"<br /><br />There
is blood on the side of the car.<br /><br />"But never
lonely."<br /><br />Kneeling Agonised shouting: "Where are
you? Where are you? Whaere are youuuuu?" Cut To Kneeling at a
graveside in a well tended cemetery. Cut to: meets his white clad
Mom and Dad on the side of a lake and asks them if there is an
afterlife... "I need to know... I need to know..."<br /><br /><br /><br />I
need a rest....
</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.5cm;">December</p>
<ol><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Black Dragons</b>
- A 1942 Bela Lugosi cheapo in which he played a Nazi plastic
surgeon killing American industrialist 5th columnists who he had
surgically duplicated from Japanese fanatics. Pretty routine stuff.
Though "He injected me with an insidious serum that transformed
me into the hideous monster you see before you !" is not a line
I'm going to forget in a hurry.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Shock</b>
(1946) - A psychiatrist takes charge of a young woman who has fallen
into a state of catatonic shock after having witnessed a murder. A
murder he committed.<br /><br />I'd guess this minor noir was riding on
the coat tales of Hitchcock's Spellbound of the previous year -
there was a very Hitchcocky feel to some of it. Nice performance
from Vincent Price as the troubled guilt-ridden psychiatrist (though
he didn't have much competition, the rest of the cast were pretty
limp), off the shelf 40s noir lighting with one standout set up in
front of a fireplace and a not badly done little nightmare dream
sequence which, for one moment had me convinced I'd found a very
early rack focus shot (what was the first use of this? I must find
out) but I quickly saw that it was the character stood in front of a
back projection of a zoom shot.<br /><br />The plot resolved with a
couple of characters jumping to conclusions out of nowhere and
rushing to the rescue. But on the whole far better than I was
expecting. The sort of interesting second feature Val Lewton was
producing at RKO - but just not as good.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Cat People</b>
- bloody awful, overlong, over sexualised, over everythinged
needless remake of a bloody genius minor little chiller. I love the
original. It's creepy, understated, low budget film making at its
finest. They implied, and disguised, and hid all the stuff that they
couldn't afford to show - and made it all the more creepy because of
it. This was just painful to watch. Everything in your face and when
all else fails jump scare the audience awake again. Some of the gags
from the original were just shoehorned in because.... they were in
the original? The indoor swimming pool scene, the hand dragged down
the material leaving scratches, the bus (one of THE great jump
scares of all time) all were just so badly done it made me wonder
why they had bothered.
</p>
</li><li><p class="western"><b>The Corpse Vanishes</b> - MST3K version
with #1 Son. Which apparently I hadn't seen before. I could have
sworn I had but somehow I had it swapped in my head with another
Bela Lugisi film, <i>Scared to Death </i>which is narrated by a
corpse.<br /><br />With the unerring eye for random connections my film
watching habits throw up, I recognised actress playing the countess
in this cheapo mad doctor flick as the same actress who had the
memorable "my sister" one line appearance in the original
<i>Cat People</i> - the bloody awful remake of which I watched last
night.</p>
</li></ol>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-74424915085544272392023-05-21T18:53:00.004+01:002023-05-21T21:43:11.753+01:00<p><span style="color: #fcff01;">Mon email pour Francis: junkmonkeydaddy@gmail.com</span></p>Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-232960295304684702023-05-21T00:01:00.006+01:002023-05-21T00:09:26.498+01:00A Woman in Space by Sara Cavanaugh<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a4I3GEhzE3s/T_QyuH3bbGI/AAAAAAAAAMo/fDo6K_GUBkA/s1376/lbl55.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1376" data-original-width="835" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a4I3GEhzE3s/T_QyuH3bbGI/AAAAAAAAAMo/fDo6K_GUBkA/s320/lbl55.jpg" width="194" /></a></div> <p></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">'She's young, she's lovely - she's an astronaut! And she's been
assigned a dangerous mission: to discover the whereabouts of four
missing male astronauts who had preceded her to the Moon. Carol's space
ship is mysteriously caught up in a force field that draws her
inexorably into outer space. Carol's mission is in great danger, as is
her life and that of the man she loves!'</p><p>So. When I'm not watching crappy movies or reading crappy comics I occasionally get round to reading crappy books: And this, my friend, is an INCREDIBLY crappy book. Probably the worst book I have read that the author didn't pay to have printed.</p><p>I'd heard about <i>A Woman in Space</i> from time to time over the years, always described in glowing terms as one of those books SO bad it was beyond awful. In short, just my kind of thing. Trouble was that every time I saw a copy for sale the seller was asking a very silly price. A while back I found a copy on eBay that was within my price range for this kind of masochistic self indulgence. Tiara were a short-lived Romance title and this appears to have been their only SF book. <i>A Woman in Space</i> was "Sara Cavanugh"'s only published work. I don't think Sara Cavanugh was a real person. Or even a woman.</p><p> </p><p>So here's the story </p><p></p><p>Young beautiful feminist astronaut Carol is
sent on a make-or-break-the-whole-of-NASA expedition to the moon. The
publicity of a WOMAN going to the moon has the whole world glued to
their TV screen. Will she explode? The previous missions to scout a
possible moonbase location have failed when the ships all MYSTERIOUSLY
DISAPPEARED. Taking no precautions to avoid exactly the same thing
happening again (other than sending a male chauvinist bloke along with
her - who has to be mildly blackmailed into going because, as his boss
puts it, people might think him a bit '<i>queer</i>' (not my italics) if
he didn't want to share an enclosed space with an attractive woman for a
few days) they blast off. Carol and the reluctant, "I'm STRAIGHT!"
hunk do 1950's crappy SF movie astronaut stuff for a couple of
chapters... they 'clomp' about in magnetic boots... avoid near misses
with noisy space debris that makes whooshing noises as it passes by...
eat concentrated food out of tubes... do press-ups (in zero G?) to keep
themselves toned... get naked and not have sex.<br />
<br />
When they get to the Moon they arrive at the landing site in their
'plane' lander and they too are suddenly wheeked from the Luna Bermuda
Triangle by an unknown force. Before you can say, "I wonder just how far
I can throw this book?" they are taken onboard a huge alien space ship. Actually they fly into the landing dock, following radioed
instructions. Following orders they cut their engines just as they
arrive and come in with 'the flaps down'. Inside the vast ship they
meet the sole survivors of a planet that had an uncannily parallel
evolution with Earth. So parallel is this evolution that the other
previously wheeked astronauts (the ones she was sent out to look for)
have already impregnated a couple of the nubile young 'space bunnies'
that make up most of the ship's compliment. They're all as happy as
Larry with all the sex they are getting, have no desire to return to Earth, and are going to head back to the aliens' home planet to
repopulate their 'brave new world'.<br />
<br />
The author like the phrase 'brave new world'. She (if it is a she - I
have my doubts) uses it a lot for a couple of chapters in an attempt to
sound like she's actually read any SF, before dropping it and latching
onto another SFishy sounding phrase: 'lost in space' is one. That gets
used a few times in close succession.<br />
<br />
Not wanting to spend the rest of her life on an alien planet watching
'male chauvinist pigs' rutting with 'space bunnies' as they repopulate
the place (with 'male chauvinist bunnies' and 'space pigs'?) she demands to allowed to leave and return to Earth. They
won't let her because she now knows too much and will be able to easily
reproduce all the aliens' hyper-advanced technology and soon earthmen
will spoil their Playboy Mansion in the stars lifestyle. The commander
of the men does make her the offer though that, if she can convince any
of the men to go with her, he will let her return home.<br />
<br />
And here, as Carol sets out to entice... <i>anyone</i> to go with her,
the book suddenly lurches from gushy, awful romance book set in a 1950's
kids television SF serial into the sort of crappy, low rent, pulp
paperback porn which, if you were generous, you could imagine the lads
from <i>Weird Science</i> writing before they got round to building Kelly leBrock. </p><p>She sets out to seduce one of the astronauts who's studying the alien's ship weaponry:<br /></p><div style="margin-left: 40px;"></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“There’s more plans for weapons in those books?” Carol pointed to the dozen, or more, volumes on the nearby shelf.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“Plans
for weapons, electronic gadgets and mechanical things beyond your
wildest imagination.” Ed was enthusiastic. “I’m in the process of
transcribing that language to English with the help of Annissa.” She was
the red-headed space girl.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“You already know quite a bit about what’s in those manuals, don’t you?”</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“Hell
yes! The girls, especially Annissa, have been quite helpful in teaching
me the Eritan language. I’m getting so I can read this stuff like a
native Eritan,” he bragged.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“Good.” Sucking in a deep breath, Carol took the plunge. “How would you like to take a few of these rayguns, the cannons and the manuals back to Earth?”</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">He eyed her suspiciously. “What are you suggesting?”</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“I’m suggesting that instead of going to Erita, you return to Earth with me—taking along some of these items and the manuals.”</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“You're crazy! Bob would never let you go back.”</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">Carol
slid from her stool, eased over and leaned on his bare back. He had on
only a pair of swim trunks. Her firm breasts were pressed against his
shoulders.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“Bob
will let me return to Earth,” she murmured, “if I can find someone to
go back with me.” She slid her hand down and tweaked at his man-sized
nipples and gently massaged his hairy chest.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
</div><div style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;">“Bob
said that! H’mm.” Placing the dismantled ray gun on the work bench, Ed
swung around on the stool. Drawing her lushness to his nakedness he eyed
her thoughtfully, his mind filled with lust and his swim trunks filled
with passion.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 40px;"></div>Carol exhausts herself (and us - it took me weeks to read this very short book, there is only so much badly-writted, 'sexy seduction' and angst-ridden, rhetorical question-laden, self doubting, internal monologue a man can take at once) she exhausts herself working her way through the male, Earthborn members of the crew trying to seduce one of them (any of them!) into returning to Earth with her. A couple of them have their wicked way with her before turning her down.<br /><br />The cads!<br /><br />She can't even persuade the doctor (whose access to, and understanding of, the alien medical treatments that are millennia ahead of Earth's means that he could wipe out most of humanity's bodily ills for ever and, as a result, probably become the most famous and revered man in medical history). Hippocratic Oath and being hailed as the savoir of humankind... or sex with a few space bunnies? Hmmm... conundrum....<br /><br />Finally Carol hits on the idea that all she <i>really </i>needs is someone to open the magnetic field that is stopping her flying her ship back to the Moon. (As the alien ship is going 'faster than light' how this actually works is open to question and another of the many SF illiteracies that clutter this book). No point in trying the boss alien, Korvin. But what about the other one; Marcus? She's noticed he doesn't take part in the daily orgies...<br /><br /><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">"I notice you don't take part in the fun and games at poolside, even though your wife does. Do you care to explain why you and Korvin do not engage in the goings on?"</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><br />"Me! Make love to the girls?" A horrified expression came to the chubby face, along with a flush. "I can not do that!"</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><br />Carol sighed. Her worst fears seemed realized. Marcus must be a homosexual. A gay. To her way of thinking, no man. not even one Marcus's age, could resist chasing around after the nudies unless he was a queer. "Are you some kind of a nut? A homo? Allergic to women?" she asked bluntly.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><br />"I am not!" The flush on his face deepened. Giving her a baleful look he snapped, "Earth people! All they ever think of is sex!"</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><br />Revealing more of her sex and giving him a better view her beautiful breasts by loosening her blouse, she said, "What's wrong with sex? I would think a virile man like you would chase after the girls."</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><br />Eyeing her coldly, he said, "Those girls are like daughters to me. I helped raise them since they were babies. If made love to them, it would be like making love to my daughters!"<br /></div><br />Next page:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">"I do not like you. I will not be tempted."</div><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><br />"Aw nuts!" Carol with an impish gleam in her eyes, slid from the high stool, Standing before him he slowly took off her blouse and miniskirt and was soon bare assed naked. Fondling her melons and snatch she murmured, "all yours for the taking, Marcus...."<br /></div><br />Needless to say....<br /><br /><div style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Chapter sixteen<br />The smile came back to Carol's face an hour later when she headed toward her clothes closet to change into her astronaut fatigues. This time the smile reflected the contentment of a woman who had been well sated. Marcus had proven to be quite a man. A well endowed, great lover. He had surprised her. He had been more than adequate. He had been superb. On a scale of one to ten she would rate him as an eight and a half, which was approximately the size of his hot rod.<br /></div><p><br />In a vague page of handwavium Carol is in the lander module and finally free of the alien ship. Marcus cuts the magnetic field and releases Carol above the Moon... BUT TOO CLOSE!<br /><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">With the plane in full reverse, she pulled back on the control wheel and let out full flaps. Hopefully this would maneuver the ship into an upward sweep before crashing.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">It did!<br /></p><p><br />Phew!<br /><br />She docks her Landing Module / Cessna light aircraft into the NASA mother ship which is (please note) <i>still on the Moon's surface</i>,<br /><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">She was still trembling from the ordeal. but with each passing minute she was getting back to normal. To being Carol Collins, ace woman astronaut. The self-assured, efficient woman pilot. Upon entering the mother ship, she clicked switches to close the hatch and repressurize the compartment. Then with the indicator reading at a safe level, she deplaned from the lander module with a happy smile. Immediately she zoomed upward, almost bumping her head on the upper bulkhead.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Weightlessness!</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">She had forgotten her special boots. They were still on the Erita in the closet. She had no need for them in that weird vehicle. Climbing around like a monkey on a bar, she managed to climb up the ladder, open the hatch and get into the main control room. Still groping from item to item, she went to her locker and got out her spare pair of boots. She could now maneuver around the compartment. She rummaged around and checked things. Everything was like she had left it. She refreshed herself, went to to refrigerator and got a snack. Then, after a last look around. she prepared herself for the big step.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Return to Earth!<br /></p><p><br />For some reason left unexplained Carol decides that her best course of action is to return in secrecy to Earth and confide her incredible story to the only human male character (so far) in the book who she hasn't tried to have sex with, kindly, irascible father figure, cigar smoking General Jameson.<br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Putting the craft in a holding pattern she was ready for her next move. It was dusk on Earth. The mid shift at Ground Mission Control would be on. The Four to twelve shift. With a handkerchief over her mouth to disguise her voice she flicked the radio transmitter to the emergency frequency. Then sucking in a deep breath* she said slowly and distinctly, "Mission Control. Come in, Mission Control."<br /><br />*and, presumably, not inhaling and choking to death on the handkerchief.<br /></p><p><br />So she secretly talks to the general, secretly lands the moonrocket on the space centre runway and secretly is whisked away to tell her 'incredible story'. No-one notices. No-one spots a mysterious craft flying around over a military base? No one wonders who this strange female voice on NASA's emergency channel might possibly be...? Anyone?<br /><br />No one believes her - well the general does but everyone else (including the president) is 'yeah, yeah, right.... whatever...' about the whole thing until Carol is so fed up with it all she goes home to her family farm where Bob (the nastiest and most sexist of the human astronauts with whom - of course - Carol is madly, disastrously in love) suddenly turns up in the alien ship (which, again, is totally unnoticed by anyone). Bob has had a change of heart and promises Carol he will, henceforth, not be the totally abusive, offensive dick he has been up till now.... (and we've all heard that one before haven't we?)... Carol is still not sure... but in a stroke of, 'Hey! This is a crazy idea that might just work!' proposes the aliens land their ship on the White House Lawn (sic - seriously!) and then everyone will believe her incredible story and we can all be friends.<br /><br />The aliens land on the White House Lawn and everyone believes her incredible story and everyone is friends.<br /><br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">The President nodded. "I understand, sir, but I would like to extend an invitation for you to feel free to visit us any time. You will always be welcome." He thrust out his hand.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Shaking the hand, Korvin smiled wryly. "I also extend an invitation for you to visit our planet Erita, Mr. President." He added mischeviously, "You simply head your space ship toward your sun for about three million miles, take a sharp left turn and go about five or six million miles and there we will be. Please do come visit us when you build your space ship."</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">The President, also a humorist between making agonizing decisions, smiled, and said, "Will three years from now be soon enough, my friend'?"</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Korvin chuckled. "That will be fine, sir." With a final shaking of hands of those assembled, the groups separated. Korvin and his people slowly walked up the gangway, waving their hands to the assembled crowd.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Carol, standing at the foot of the runway at Jameson's side, hesitated. She was torn between two desires. An uncertain, dangerous future with the man she loved, or staying behind to become rich and famous under the guidance of Sheilia.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Decision time!</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Reaching into her purse, she pulled out the letter of resignation she had written the day before. Thrusting it into Jameson's hand, she impulsively hugged and kissed the father figure. "I'm sorry, sir," she whispered, "but my future is with Bob. I'm going with him."</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Jameson sniffed and nodded. "I understand, Carol. I want to thank you for saving NASA. Goodbye and good luck."<br /></p><p><br />[stops reading]<br /><br />The Grandson: What? What?<br /><br />Grandpa: Ah, it's kissing again. You don't want to hear that.<br /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">the end</p><p style="text-align: center;"> </p><p style="text-align: center;"> </p>I can (and do) recommend A Woman in Space to all lovers of really bad books. It's a stone gone classic.<br /><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><br /><br /><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p>Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-46441227589088349632023-03-19T15:00:00.003+00:002023-03-19T15:01:23.033+00:00<p> Three months into '23 here's my <b>2022 </b>film diary:</p><p> </p><p>Jan.<br />
</p><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Independence Day</b> - for the first time
and it was pretty much as I expected, a 1970's disaster movie with
aliens. And, because it was a Roland Emmerich flick, a by-the-numbers
improbable aircraft chase through a narrow canyon. One thing I was
impressed by was the slick transitions. Getting from the end of one
scene to the start of another in a movie (a 'transition') is always
problematic; getting somewhere else in the narrative without leaving the
audience too far behind is a skill and many a director and editor has
floundered and fudged their way through by fading to black at the end of
every scene or drifting the camera away from the actors and fading into
an establishing shot somewhere else but here it was pretty much
seamless. For instance, the president orders the military to "go to Def
Con 3" : cut to yellow flashing light : pull back to reveal the
flashing light is on a microwave from which Dave the science guy pulls a
mug of coffee in his office in New York. I spent most of the movie
watching stuff like that. The way the show moved from scene to scene
was good.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Eskimo Nell </b>1975 - one of my
occasional, recalibrating the critical faculties, watch of a British Sex
comedy. (It's like a setting a benchmark. Everything, no matter how
shoddily-made, badly-acted, and underfunded, looks infinitely better
afterwards.) Unfortunately for my recalibration exercise <i>Eskimo Nell</i>
turned out to be quite a funny film. For one thing it has a story
(which is rare for this genre), a pretentious, fresh out of filmschool
director is given his only chance to direct by a porno producer. But
first they have to raise the money; which they do from three different
backers... promising each of them in turn a different version of the
story. The writer of the film is a shy, penguin-obsessed virgin:<br />
<br />
"I can't do it! Look I am not capable of writing the first all-British,
pornographic, Kung-fu, musical western - especially when three different
girls and a drag queen all seem to think they are all playing the same
part!"<br />
<br />
And that's before the producer absconds with all the money, leading our hapless heroes to have to find <i>yet another</i>
source of funding - this time from a Moral Majority organisation which
means they now have to make a fourth, family-friendly version.<br />
<br />
There is some seriously funny writing here with the scriptwriter
obviously taking deeply felt swipes at the absurdities of the film
business.<br />
<br />
The tyro director was mercilessly written earnestly telling the black
actress, chained faced-down to the top of a canvas igloo while her bum
was being powdered by a make up girl:<br />
"Now... I want you to remember your motivation - psychologically you're
about to suffer the rigours of sexual and conceptual imperialism.... and
so forth..." before waving over the guy with the vegetable marrow....<br />
<br />
Everyone on screen is having great fun hamming everything up in several different directions at once it's hard not to like it.<br />
<br />
And it's got Beth Porter in leather. I've had a crush on Beth Porter ever since Rock Follies.<br />
<br />
The film runs out of steam in the last few minutes when, because of the
inevitable moment of mistaken identity, the Family Friendly version
(which is due to get a royal charity premier) and the Hard Core Porn
version get swapped. The final reel could have come from any unfunny
British running-around-in-a-panic film from the era with our heroes
arriving just too late to stop the first lines of dialogue playing on
the screen in front of the queen:<br />
<br />
"Hello, Eskimo Nell. Want to f*ck?"</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Howling IV: The Original Nightmare</b>
(1988) - Straight to video fourquel. Set in California, shot in South
Africa, and dubbed who knows where - the whole film was shot without
sound and totally dubbed in post production - this cheapo mess managed
to end up looking Italian. There were moments when I felt really sorry
for the production designer. The number of times he must have sat
watching the rushes cringing thinking: "Christ! if I'd known they were
going to shoot it from that angle I would have made the back of it look
like a real roof / wall / ceiling / stairs / whatever".</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Extraction</b> (aka <i>Extracted</i> 2012)
- interesting little SF movie. Lone researcher and assistant develop a
way of accessing memories and determining if they are real or not. The
people paying for the research want to use it to determine the guilt or
innocence of crime suspects. The scientist reluctantly agrees to a
trial run... the inevitable Something Goes Wrong and he gets stuck in
the perp's head. He's trapped in this jailed junkie's memories while
his own body lies in a coma. Four years later the perp starts to
remember seeing the scientist in his memories in places he could not
have been. They establish a dialogue. The hows and why of this are a <i>leettle</i>
vague and handwavium but not enough to sink the film. There are twists
and revelations which, for the most part, work. There are a leaps of -
well that was lucky... and okay, movie, I'll let you off with that...
but on the whole this is a movie that punches well above its weight and
sidesteps the worst of the clichés of the genre - ferrinstance: the
mysterious funder of the research is not your usual, off-the-peg Evil
Corporation, or Mysterious Covert Black Ops Unit but a law enforcement
official with political ambitions. He's not painted BAD but just sees a
use for the tech that pushes ethical boundaries. He sees an opportunity
to move the boundaries to accommodate it and make a name for himself.
It's credible. He's not a villain. When the tech fails he drops it fast.
Only to pick it up again when the problems are sorted and the
extraction of the title achieved. <br />
<br />
There a few annoyances that I could have done without. The pointless,
endless, hand-held reframing of just about every shot got tedious very
quickly as did the standard low budget timeless, tuneless, ambient
plink... plang.... one-note-at-a-time echo-chamber piano and gongy-thing
'music' which played under every scene smudging the lack of any real
sound design. <br />
<br />
And it did contain one of my personal pet hates. <br />
<br />
Junkmonkey SF Movie Clichés to Avoid #36<br />
The GIANT SYRINGE. In any Hollywood SF movie any experimental drug,
nano-technology or other plot device injected into our hero will be done
by the medium of a Giant Silver Syringe with a pistol grip and a
transparent bit so you can see a (usually greenish) liquid gurgling in
it. Nine times out of ten this Giant Syringe will be taken out of a
specially padded, metallic, briefcase case just before the procedure.<br />
<br />
BUT, having got those minor gripes out the way, it's a better and more
intelligent film than a lot of vastly more expensive movies.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>My Dinner With Andre</b> - a New York
actor/play-write and a theatre director meet for a meal and talk. The
theatre director endlessly goes on about his existential crisis and
search for the meaning of just 'being'.... and the
actor/play-write/audience substitute tries not to laugh/get angry/argue
with the pompous prick as he prattles on and on and on like some
condensed version of every self-obsessed artistic wanker you have ever
had the unfortunate experience of meeting. It is strangely funny. Even
strangely funnier is seeing the names Lloyd Kaufman (director of such
delights as the <i>Toxic Avenger </i>movies and<i> Class of Nuke 'Em High</i>) as the Production Manager and a thanks to Troma Studios for use of facilities in the end credits.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Jumanji 2: The Next Level </b>- with the
kids. Didn't enjoy it as much as I was expecting - too long since I had
seen the first one and the film assumed a little more intimate
knowledge of the backstory than I had readily to hand but there were
some nice gags and Karen Gillan and Dwayne Johnson are both easy on the
eye. Suffered from a real flapping-about not quite sure how to end the
film ending which felt like it went on forever.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Star Trek the Motion Picture</b> - with
number one son who devoured the original series and is liking TNG but
has a strange aversion to watching full length movies (of any kind). So
when he suggested we start to watch all the Star Trek films (in order) I
jumped at the chance to get him watching 'real' movies at last. I did
warn him beforehand that the first one was a ponderous bore.... and was
proved right. See, dads DO know stuff. I've assured him they get the
plot to long, slow, effects shot ratio sorted out for the next one. <br />
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Star Trek 2 : The Wrath of Khan</b> - with
number one son. Which he agreed was much better than the 'motion'
picture. (I haven't the heart to tell him it's all downhill from here.) </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Banquet </b>- Lavish, lush Chinese reworking of Hamlet with Hamlet sidelined and Gertrude taking centre stage.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Funny Face</b> - I adore Audrey Hepburn but by the gods! she was in some dreadful films</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Star Trek III - The Search for Spock</b> - which turned out to be even more boringer than I remembered.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Assassinaut</b> - a group of four
teenagers go to meet the president of earth on a space station orbiting
an alien planet. There is an assassination attempt on the president.
The space station is destroyed and the kids find themselves alone on the
alien planet. <br />
I'm sure this movie made sense to someone at some point in its
development but they somehow forgot to let the audience in on the act.
Technically it was good, the acting, for the most part decent, but the
backstory was all over the place and guess what! The implied lesbian
(hard not to read the way she was playing the part as anything but) who
fancied our lead turned out to be evil; then dead. I thought we were
past that kind of s**t. Some people on the IMDb, where this film is,
for the most part, slated, were annoyed by the slow pace and long
arthouse-like staring into nowhere stuff. I didn't mind that. There was
a strange vibe to the film that almost worked. And it would have
worked too if there had been a coherent plot - or a plot SO disjointed
it would tease you into figuring it out what was going on - but, as it
was, this is a film that does some arty disjointed stuff just to get a
bunch of kids into a (YAWN!) wandering around in the woods with a killer
on the loose plot. It's so annoying when people go to all that effort
and put all that energy into making something so fundamentally flawed in
the script stage.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Chronical 2076</b> (2020): In the near
future all the plants have died and people are breathing 'synthetic
oxygen' manufactured by a powerful corporation that also does time
machine research. (I think in business this is known as 'synergy'.)
But things are getting worse by the day. Humanity is doomed unless...
The first message that comes through from the future demands they send a
specific low-grade service engineer... who we find out a bit later in
the movie is the son of the (dead before the start of the movie) lead
scientist of the time travel research - oh and he has an unremovable
dingus on his wrist his daddy put there before he disappeared... and a
sick wife. <br />
<br />
You now have most of the information you need to reconstruct this movie in its entirety.<br />
<br />
Pretty predictable if you have read any time travel stories but not
badly done for all that. The hero was a bit of a snivelling wimp but
that made him more human and real and believable. Some of the SFX was
pretty. Some of it was pretty good. And, as this was an Australian
film, the woods our protagonists wander around in for a great chunk of
the movie are lush and green and far more interesting than the deciduous
woods most low budget American films' protagonists get to wander
around in. <br />
<br />
The second film in a row in which the main character wanders around
woodlands on an uninhabited planet, eats unknown fruit, and has
hallucinations.</li></ol>ABANDONED IN JANUARY - (Films I genuinely intended to watch all the way through... but couldn't manage.)<br />
<br />
<b>Bram Stoker's Legend Of The Mummy 2</b> <br />
What I don't understand is the business model behind so many bad films. <br />
<br />
I can understand why sequels to successful films get made - especially
if the above the line costs are low, with sets, costumes, rights etc all
secured from the first film. (The Harry Potter series springs to mind.)
And why people would, following Feinman's principle - "Milk the cow
till it's dry, then make hamburgers and wallets", churn out sequel after
sequel of things like <i>Resident Evil</i> till they make a loss -
then stop; then somehow contrive to set that loss against residual sales
of the previous films so you don't have to pay cast and crew who worked
on them their points.... Movie accounting is such that many World-wide
box office smash hits have, if you juggle the numbers (and they do),
never made a profit when it comes to paying the actors' residuals. But
how does something like <i>Bram Stoker's Legend Of The Mummy 2</i> which I attempted to watch last night* get made? How?<br />
<br />
By the by, the only connection I can see that this film has with Bram
Stoker is that it has his name in the title. (It is not, for instance,
included in his list of writer credits on IMDb when obscure shite-like
things such as Filipino comedy <i>Batman Fights Dracula </i>(1967) does. <i>Bram Stoker's Legend Of The Mummy 2</i> was originally called <i>Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy</i>. <br />
<br />
I can see why the actors would take any part they can get; especially
not very good actors at the start of their careers (for seven out of the
nine credited players this was their first or second screen credit -
for a couple it was also their last). Everyone has to start somewhere.
Even well-connected from the start, and extremely good George Clooney
has <i>Return of the Killer Tomatoes!</i> and an episode of <i>Murder She Wrote</i> on his CV. <br />
<br />
The director (David DeCoteau, a Corman alumni) currently has 176 directorial notches on his bedpost including such classics as <i>Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988), Beach Babes 2: Cave Girl Island </i>(1995), <i>My Stepbrother Is a Vampire!?!</i> and <i>A Talking Pony!?!</i>
(both 2013. In one year he directed two movies with '!?!' in the
title; I bet Steven Spielberg can't say that.) So he's obviously doing
it for the money. And doing it well enough to keep getting work. No one
directs five or six feature films in a year as a hobby.<br />
<br />
But where does the money come from? Who bought this Piece of s**t? [
(That's a genuine technical Hollywood term by the way: 'Piece of s**t').
For that matter who bought <i>A Talking Pony!?!</i>? Where does the
money ultimately come from? Us the punters. We buy tickets, we buy
DVDs, we buy subscription packages but I cannot see how enough people
could have been conned into buying hard copies of this (it never got a
cinema release) to make anyone a profit. And I can't really believe
that there's an endless stream of people wanting to throw their money
away making crud like this. Somewhere along the line things like <i>Bram Stoker's Legend Of The Mummy 2</i> must <b>make money</b> for.... someone. Somehow. I wish I knew who they were because I've got some brilliant crap film ideas I'd like to pitch them.<br />
<br />
<b>The Other Guys</b> - After half an hour I realised there was just no
way that it was ever going to get funny. The 'jokes' (that I could
see) the film thought were funny were just puerile shite. For the most
part grown men bullying and insulting each other like 12 year old boys.
<br />
<br />
(*I was tired, all right?!)<br />
<br />
<br />
February<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Batman Vs Two-Face</b> (2017) - a straight
to DVD animated movie which was a whole lot of fun. Camp and funny.
Cleverly and lovingly riffing on all the old 1966 TV series jokes
without going over the top. Some nice voice work. Adam West and William
Shatner in one movie!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Star Trek IV: The Whale One</b> - Number
One Son's favourite so far - certainly the most fun. Not sure that it
made any more sense than any of the others but there were more genuinely
funny jokes, some interesting visuals and, as #1 Son pointed, out the
first Star Trek adversary which has no real understandable motive beyond
simple curiosity.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Infinitum: Subject Unknown</b> - shot in
the first Covid lockdown on an iPhone with a crew of two - one of whom
doubled as most of the cast. From that point of view it is technically
interesting and I can see why they did it - but the story would have
struggled to fill a 20 minute short - stretched to an 86 minute feature
length I'm sorry to say it became a bit of a drag.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Cell </b>- apart from the costumes by Eiko Ishioka (which was the main reason I watched it) meh!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Great Silence</b> - Violent Spaghetti
Western with a hell of a downbeat ending: The Hero, The Girl and just
about EVERYONE ELSE who appears in the film (apart from the bad guys)
gets massacred. Klaus Kinski was the head bad guy and Ennio Morricone
provided one of his his usual wonderful scores.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Le guetteur</b> (The Lookout) - I have
some general rules of thumb about watching movies. One of them is "If X
is involved I'll watch it at least once" X is variously Rutger Hauer,
Eiko Ishoka, Ennio Morricone, Alan Arkin etc. <i>Le guetteur</i>
starred Daniel Auteuil. I'll watch anything with Daniel Autuil in it at
least once. I don't ever want to hear him 'sing' again but I find
something strangely compelling about his screen presence. <i>Le guetteur</i>
is a violent French slice of cops and robbers that starts off well but
ends up wandering all over the place before coming to one of those
unbelievable ambiguous endings which makes you wonder why you'd bothered
with the previous 89 minutes. (It felt a lot longer).</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Cybertracker 2</b> - BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
KABLOOOM!! "Let's get outta here!"... BLAM! BLAM! BLAM "Let's go!" Blam!
Kaboom! Blam Blam! "Let's get outa here!" Blam! Kaboom! BLAM! BLAM!
BLAM! - for 90 minutes . Then it stopped. And everyone laughed like the
end of an episode of Police Squad - in color! The End.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Skulls </b>(2000) - I was prompted to BUY this (not just watch it but actively go and find a copy and <i>pay money for it</i>!)
by a terrible review I read in an old copy of Empire Magazine which,
among other harsh words, described it as "almost mesmerisingly bad", and
"simply the most ferociously stupid movie that Hollywood has disgorged
in a long time", with performances that are "of such stupefyingly
lumber-like uselessness", and "uniformly dismal".<br />
<br />
They weren't wrong.<br />
<br />
I must get a grip on my masochistic movie watching urges and stop doing
this to myself - but then so do a lot of others; because enough people
went to see this shiny turd to make a 2002 sequel (inventively called <i>Skulls 2</i>) look like a good idea... And then a threequel!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Lady from Shanghai </b> - My favourite Welle's film (until I watch <i>Mr Arkadin</i> again) shared with Number Two Daughter who dug it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Curious Female </b>(1971) - In the
distant future where the world is run by a master computer and Los
Angeles is an island, a bunch of semi-naked people in Star Trek fetish
clothes sit around and illegally watch a film from the days when the
world <i>wasn't</i> run by a master computer, and Los Angeles was still
part of the mainland. The film they watch is a desperately unfunny,
unsexy sex comedy about three girls losing their virginity. From time
to time the film either breaks down (or there is a reel change; they
only have one projector) and the future people get to comment on, and
lecture each other about, the quaint and outmoded habits of their
ancestors. A few interesting visuals - the obligatory for the era drugs
trip sequence was pretty groovily done and the stripey, gobo lighting
during one of the 'deflowering' sequences made it look like there were
two Bridget Riley paintings having sex - which is an image I'll have in
my head for a while. The woman in question played by the rather lovely
Charlene Jones, realises she didn't like being humped by an insensitive
Pop Art painting and finds happiness in the arms of a woman called
Andie who drinks beer in bars with topless go-go dancers. Not
recommended.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>City Beneath the Sea</b> - awful Irwin Allen TV movie/pilot. Too dull and stupid to be any kind of funny.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Star Trek V : The Final Frontier</b> - oh dear.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol">John Carpenter's <b>Christine</b> based on the Stephen King book. I was underwhelmed.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Run, Lola, Run</b> which has been on my 'I
need to justify (to myself as well as the rest of the family) keeping
these huge piles of DVDs cluttering up the place... by actually
rewatching one occasionally' list for a while now. It is as good as I
remember. I watched it with #2 Daughter - deliberately telling her
nothing about it so the novel structure would come as a complete
surprise to her.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Star Trek VI: The Scooby-Doo One</b> -
when Kirk and the crew (literally) unmask the assassin at the end I
really really really wanted him to scowl "And I wudda gotten away with
it it too if it wasn't for you meddling starship captains...." A film SO
full of holes and random plot rabbits pulled out of characters' arses
it barely holds together from one scene to the next - and more grist to
my theory that every SF film with a penal colony / prison planet in it
is is automatically crap. By being crap. And having a prison planet in
it.</li></ol>March<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Plank</b> (1967) - well that was a
vast disappointment. A short 50 minute, near silent, slapstick comedy
about two guys trying to get a plank of wood from a builder's yard to
their site. An obvious homage to the silent era comedies (Laurel and
Hardy being an obvious inspiration) The Plank, which I had never seen
before but had heard recommended from time to time over the years as
being very funny, turns out to be a badly dated, unfunny chore to watch.
Some parts have dated very badly indeed - the only Black characters in
the film are bunch of dustbin men who barely register on screen before
doing the whole wide-eyed scaredy "feets don't fail me now!"
running-away shtick when someone emerges, zombie like, from the back of
their truck after he falls in. And the sequence with the girl hitcher is
just creepy horrible.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Shadow of the Vampire</b> - described on Wikipedia as a 'metafiction horror' film <i>Shadow of the Vampire</i> plays with the silly idea that the vampire in W F Murnau's <i>Nostferatu</i>
wasn't played, like the history books tell us, by an actor called Max
Schreck but by a real vampire. I'd seen it before but was a little
disappointed; it looks a bit thin on a second viewing. That's not to say
there is not some good stuff in there. Love the setting and ambience,
and the re-enactments are great - John Malkovich and especially Willem
Dafoe are really good. Nice to see Udo Kier (for whom I have a lot of
time) get to do some proper acting for a change instead of just being
Udo Kier getting paid to turn up and be Udo Kier for a bit. Though Carey
Elwes (ditto) was wasted in a do-nothing part. But the show was really
let down by a script that just doesn't... I don't know... do whatever a
script is supposed to do to distract you from really big holes in the
story, I guess. For instance, the 'suddenly everyone on the shoot was
doing drugs' sequence came out of nowhere and why (apart from some
strange misplaced notion of historical accuracy) did the Count's
Heligoland sequences HAVE to be shot on the island of Heligoland when
all they did when they got there was shoot one scene, on a closed set,
inside a building? All his ship sequences had been faked on land or with
doubles. Why did he have to get taken to an island to do something that
could have been done much more easily on the original location? Just to
get a shot of a coffin on the back of an aeroplane? Didn't believe it.
Pity.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Stoker</b> - Park Chan-wook's first English language film. A lot of people have mentioned the obvious homages to Hitchcock - especially <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i> (one the characters in <i>Stoker</i> plays a similar role as the Uncle Charlie character in <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i>,
and is himself called 'Uncle Charlie' which is a bit of a giveaway).
But at the end of it, the amorality and ambiguity of all the characters
(still alive at the end of the film) left me feeling that Park Chan-wook
was as influenced by Claude Chabrol (another Hitchcock devotee) as much
as Hitchcock himself. <br />
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Raven </b>(2012) - Edgar Allan Poe on the
trail of a serial killer who has kidnapped Poe's fiance and, using Poe's
stories as inspiration, is leaving a complex series of clues (and
corpses) to her whereabouts. As stupendously crap as that sounds... the
movie was even worse. It's a problem for actors playing real life
historical characters. Especially when those real life historical
characters are iconic and LOTS of peopl know what they looked like.
Apparently Poe was quite short and some people thought it absurd that
the very tall John Cusack would play him but that was the least of my
problems with the film. (After all, short American actors play tall all
the time. Why not the other way round?) What really annoyed me about the
physical portrayal was Cusack's facial hair. Poe in real life had a
chunky moustache but no beard. Certainly not the raffish, dark goatee
that Cusack sported. I guess the production didn't pay him enough to
shave it off. But there were all sorts of other howlingly WTF?
awfulnesses. Poe has a (made up for the movie) pet racoon that appeared
for one scene - presumably it was there because it would look good in
the trailer?* Poe denys he had ever written about a sailor when his only
novel <i>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket</i> is about a
boy who stows away aboard a whaler and becomes.... a sailor. The
script that lurches awkwardly between modern Americanisms and 'period'
dialogue. But the worst. THE worst moment for me was when Poe rails
against our methodical, procedural police inspector who is diligently
searching for clues in ships' records after a sailor is murdered to
provide one of the killer's hints. That's all well and good. Plodding
policework does in real life solve more crime than daring rooftop chases
- but all that scene did was raise the question,"where was the plodding
procedural policework after the second murder which emulated the famous
descending blade from the Pit and the Pendulum?" Not a SINGLE second of
screen time was spent on asking, "Who actually owns or rents this vast,
empty, four-storey warehouse?", "Who constructed the bloody big, cast
iron gear-wheeled device?" Some of those gear wheels were huge! They
must have weighed close on to half a ton. Someone must have cast them,
transported them, assembled them. All good solid potential leads to
follow up I would have thought. Not in this stupid movie they weren't. I
think we are, at the end, supposed to imagine that the whole thing was
whittled up on his weekends by a weedy printer's clerk.<br />
<br />
And I still can't work out how Emily could see the wall, desks and books
the other side of the cellar from where she was buried in the floor
when she poked the hole trough the 'coffin'.<br />
<br />
And wasn't it convenient that there was a hammer lying around every time
anyone needed to smash something open? Baltimore - Casually Discarded
Hammer capitol of the world.<br />
<br />
It wasn't even so bad it was funny. Just bad.<br />
<br />
*Not that the racoon made it. I went and checked.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Sexmission</b> (1984) - I finally found
the answer to a question that occasionally occurs to me (usually half
way through some masochistic watching of some godawful 1970s British Sex
comedy.) "Is there," I ask myself, "anything less erotic or funny than
British sex comedies?" The answer is - Yes, Polish sex comedies.
Sexmission is a Polish, science fiction, political satire, sex comedy
and it misses of every count. Apart from the Polish bit. I think they
got that right. They might have got some of the satire bit right too,
thinking about it, but I suspect you would have to be a serious student
of 1980's Polish history to even recognise any of the satirical jokes as
jokes - let alone find them funny.<br />
<br />
Plot: Two men get themselves cryogenically frozen and wake up in a
post-nuclear war, underground world, populated entirely by women. Many
of whom take their clothes off. <br />
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<br />
<br />
Possibly the only film to end with an extreme close-up, freeze frame of a
newborn baby's penis which filled the screen as the end credits rolled.
As I watched complex looking Polish names and their equally complex
looking Polish job titles scroll past I realised somewhere in Poland
there is a 38 year old man whose greatest claim to fame is that his
penis filled the screen in the longest single shot of what turned out to
be a very successful (in Poland at least) film. I wonder if he's on the
Polish talk show circuit?</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>A Fish Called Wanda</b> - which I had seen
before and, though I remember I'd found it mildly amusing. I also
remember thinking I couldn't work out why people thought it was so
funny. It wasn't. Hey-ho sometimes it happens that a film just misses.
Happened again tonight. </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>8 Femmes</b> (8 Women) - not sure that
this was what I expected. 1950s . Eight women trapped in a house with a
murdered husband/father/lover (various combinations of above). Secrets
are revealed. Gorgeous frocks are worn. Seduction and attempted
murder follow. Most of the action is confined to one room. Very set
bound - it looked like a stage play expanded.... slightly. (Which a
quick keek at IMDb confirms.) And why did they keep bursting into song
at weird moments? I think I can see what was being attempted but I'm
not sure it worked. Pedro Almodóvar would have nailed it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Rams </b> (2015)- in a remote valley in
Iceland, two bothers, sheep farmers working on the same land and living
separate houses a couple of dozen meters apart, haven't talked to each
other for 40 years. They communicate, when they have to, by messages
delivered by one of their dogs. One of their rams gets scrapie (a
horrible brain-rotting sheep disease) and every sheep in the valley has
to be killed. The film is very slow. Very real. And sometimes very
funny. One of those films where you had no idea where the story was
going to go. There are no subplots, or romantic interest. Just two guys
who hate each others guts facing up to the fact that their way of life
is coming to an end. I liked it. <br />
<br />
There is, I have just discovered, an Australian remake. starring Sam
Neill which from the look of the trailer has turned the story into an
identikit feelgood 'quirky' comedy where everyone will know <i>exactly</i> how the story will end from the start of the second act.</li></ol><br />
April <br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Robot Monster</b> - MST3K - with Number One Son. There were giggles. "I am surrounded by idiots of my own creation!"<br />
Catching up. Over the last few days:</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking</b>
- BBC Made for TV starring Rupert Everett doing even less than usual. I
only kept watching because of a standout performance by one of the
younger members of the cast who I had not come across before and was
giving much more to the show than the material deserved. 'She's got
something' I thought. Perdita Weeks has chanked up a lot of credits on
the IMDb since. . </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Star Trek : Generations</b> - which was less awful than I remember.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Florence Foster Jenkins </b>- What a sweet film. Streep was wonderful. </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Summerland </b> - A gentle, touching gay
love story with a happy ending. A little overlong and Mills and Boonish
but I will forgive it for having a happy ending and giving the world
Penelope Wilton telling small children to bugger off.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Memento</b> - for the second time with
number two daughter who loved it. Watching the end credits I spotted a
name that was familiar. One of the drivers (not an on-screen stunt
driver but one of the ' pick up mister Pearce at his hotel at 4am and
take him to the location' drivers) was John 'Bud' Cardos, the director
of the oddly brilliant William Shatner eco-disaster flick Kingdom of the
Spiders. I love reading the end credits of movies. You discover all
sorts of odd connections.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Inception</b> - with #2 Daughter who,
sadly, didn't fall asleep half way through, as she sometimes does when
we watch films, thus depriving me of the opportunity of tipping her
chair and waking her up.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Encounters in the Deep </b>-(1979) -
hypnotically dull Italian Spanish co-production set in the Bermuda
Triangle in which nothing happens... then nothing happens again... and
then again... and then, just in case you missed it the first couple of
times, the whole cast diligently go through the motions of doing nothing
again - again, sometimes underwater... and then the film just stops
after an extremely boring sequence of nothing happening which may (or
may not) be the climax of the show. Probably the least interesting film I
have ever watched twice.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bulldog Drummond's Bride</b> (1939) -
slick, fast paced B-feature with not a single wasted second. Everything
clips along merrily at a breathless pace. Another piece of Hollywood
production-line film making. A churned out simple adventure yarn with
familiar characters (there had been eight Bulldog Drummond films in the
preceding two years) but somehow it's wonderfully fresh and lively. It
looked like they were having fun.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bulldog Drummond Comes Back </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bulldog Drummond Escapes </b>- On and off
over the last few years I have been buying DVDs on the slightly dodgy,
and now defunct, 23rd Century label. I keep buying these things. I very
rarely seem to get round to watching them. I'm not sure who 23rd Century
were but for many years their DVDs cropped up in boot sales and markets
all over the place. They had a very odd collection of titles most of
them public domain but sometimes maybe not. In the early internet age
they were one of the few ways that some of the titles could be found.
There's something interestingly 'wrong' about them. Their transfers were
often terrible - often obviously from VHS copies with visible tape roll
and other interesting WTF?s . As far as I know no one has ever complied
a list of all the titles they released (though I am working on it). One
estimate I have seen on line suggests 150 titles but I know of at least
200.<br />
<br />
One of their releases was a collection of three Bulldog Drummond films
which, having owned for several years, I finally got round to watching
over the last couple of days - and they are terrific! Real rip-roaring,
page-turning melodramas with some terrific writing and camped up
knowingness.<br />
<br />
"This beehive of industrial skulduggery must quieten down sometime!" being a favourite line from Bulldog Drummond Escapes.<br />
<br />
I need more!<br />
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Sweet Charity</b> - Bob Fosse walks on WATER! I've loved <i>Cabaret </i>for
years but never looked at anything else he'd done. I found a copy of
his first feature Sweet Charity in our village swapshop shed. It's a
real curate's egg. Some bits are well naff but others...<br />
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I don't know who the girl in the white gloves is but I want to have her babies!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> Asteroid</b> - an incredibly awful
cliché-dense TV disaster movie (Why are ALL disaster movies set on, or
just before, holiday weekends?) edited down from a three-part
miniseries. There was only so much of it I could stand at any one
sitting so I paced myself. Helping myself to slices of rich Hollywood
hookum pudding when the mood took me over several days. Seriously there
is not a single movie cliché they haven't managed to sidestep. It's a
film made of some kind of scriptwriting Lego. "Hey, do you have the
'Dad! Turn on the TV!' and it's already tuned to the the relevant news
channel piece' I need two of them"?)<br />
<br />
The most inspired piece of random jumbling of the blocks :<br />
<br />
Our shouty boss hero has just rescued two fireman and an injured
civilian from their vehicular accident. Trying to outrun the raging
torrent released by an asteroid fragment striking the HUGE dam just
above the city. He drives frantically across town. The firemen sit in
the back of the open truck with the civilian. "Head for the bridge!"
shouts one. They're half-way across the bridge when a flood of matted
water and shoddy model work wash over them. Frantic camerawork. Water is
thrown over the actors. The flood subsides. Hero gets out of the cab.
He walks round the back, to the firemen.<br />
<br />
Hero: "You OK?<br />
Fireman One: "Yeah. We Made it! We actually made it!"<br />
Hero (Nodding at the patient): "How is he?"<br />
Fireman Two: "He didn't make it"<br />
<br />
Hero actor does sad acting. (Why fireman actors aren't doing CPR acting
is a question that the movie doesn't even bother to ask because as soon
as we saw the dropped bottle of HARD LIQUOR the civilian driver actor
was supposed to have been glugging, he was obviously never going to make
it to the 'getting any lines' stage.)<br />
<br />
On paper that is a pretty good joke written in a standard "One.. Two..
Elephant!" format but it was played in deadly full on soap opera
earnest. The whole film was like that. Every clichéd, hackneyed line
delivered with glossy soap sincerity. It was like a Zucker Brothers
parody of a disaster movie but with all the humour sucked out of it. <br />
<br />
"When you took over the agency, Jack, I was on the point of leaving...
You wouldn't let me quit then; I'm sure as hell not going to let you
quit now!"<br />
<br />
Needless to say our shouty hero rescues the sexy, lone mom, scientist's
son from almost certain death from something precarious just before it
fell into something deep and exploded - I must admit I watched the last
15 minutes on fast forward.<br />
<br />
When my retro gamer obsessed #1 son saw the DVD case he said -
"'Asteroids'? They made a film of the Atari game?!" He was a little
disappointed when I said no. But I wish they had. It would have been
more amusing.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Wonderwall</b> (1968) - a dithery
withdrawn older 'professor' obsessively spies on his 'with it',
'happening', 'swinging cat' neighbour couple - and calls for help when
the girl attempts commit suicide. That is the entire plot. Lots of
groovy lighting, and way-out fashion shoot, running around, dream
sequences. Not a lot of dialogue - most of the major story points are
delivered by psychedelic inter-title cards. The odd nice moment but
mostly horribly creepy and pointless. Some of the music (by George
Harrison of the Beatles) was interesting.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mad Max 2 : The Road Warrior</b> - with
number 2 daughter who had a big stupid grin on her face at the end of
it. A genuinely exciting film. Some of the stunt work is terrifying.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bulldog Jack</b> (1935) - Jack Hulbert
(one of those baffling British stars of the 30s) plays a chap who
imitates Bulldog Drummond when the real Bulldog Drummond is laid up in
hospital. Fay Wray is the girl and Ralph Richardson is the villain. Both
effortlessly steal the movie from the lead without breaking sweat.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back</b> - these films are so much fun.<br />
<br />
"Perhaps we can come to some agreement. If you'll stop kidnapping people
from my house - I promise to stop breaking into yours. Otherwise this
sort of thing could keep up all night!"<br />
<br />
I'm wondering if the books are written in a similar vein or it was a
Hollywood makeover - I may invest a few quid in a couple of the books
to find out.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Wonder Woman 84</b> - I presented #2 daughter with a choice tonight: <i>Wonder Woman 84</i>or <i>Cabaret</i> . "How can I choose!" Don't make me choose. Such great legs! Both of them!"<br />
<br />
I wonder what it's like having straight kids.<br />
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome</b> - better than I remember but nowhere near as good as number 2. </li></ol>MAY:<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Mummy</b> - The 2017 damp squib
kickstart to Universal's 'Dark Universe' concept in which all the
Universal monsters live in the same shared universe. In this one, in
addition to The Mummy, we met a Dr Henry Jekyll who was the head of a
super-secret government agency dedicated to fighting evil and passing
visual references to The Creature From the Black Lagoon and Dracula.
And it was AWFUL! I am so glad I didn't have a drink in my hand or a
mouthful of popcorn when the underwater zombie chase happened.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Outpost 37</b> aka <b>Alien Outpost</b> aka <b>Mankind's Last Stand</b>
- Men. Guns. Lots of explosions. More guns. Lots of swearing. Guns.
"Go! Go! Go! Go!" Low budget (most of it went on Kaboom!) American vs
Aliens 'found footagey' pseudo-documentary that had a paper thin plot
but really floundered by relying on characters being 'interviewed' to
tell us all the backstory stuff. The backstory stuff that would have
been such common knowledge it wouldn't have needed explaining in the
world the film was pretending to be a part of.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Callan</b> (1974)- movie version of the
British TV show of the same name. Downbeat and low key. A sanctioned
government assassin is bought out of retirement to kill an arms dealer -
which he does. There aren't a lot of complications along the way and
chunks have dated really badly but strangely compelling for all that.
Spot the actor fans will have fun ticking off at least two actors in the
speaking parts who appeared in Star Wars a couple of years later.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Shaolin Soccer </b>- silly fun.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Les femmes de l'ombre</b> Literally 'The Shadow Women' but released as <i>Women Agents</i>
in the anglophone world. WW2. Female Special Operations Executive agent
in occupied France have to extricate a British geologist from a German
hospital before the Germans: A: Find out he's British and B: Figure out
that he was probably taking samples of beach sand in preparation for the
Allied Invasion which they were expecting... but not on beaches in
Normandy. Needless to say things go wrong. Then get worse. Then even
worse. I wanted so hard to like this film. I can't fault a performance,
any single particular line of dialogue, or edit, or costume choice. I
couldn't put my finger on what it was but it didn't quite gel for me. I
could admire it, and it is an admirable film in many ways, but it didn't
engage me as it should. it was only the next day I realised it was the
plot. The Maguffin doesn't work. After the gathering of the team
sequence, and the daring rescue sequence, comes the serious something
goes wrong moment. The geologist, via the medium of a written note bound
to be found at an inconvenient moment later in the story, tells them
that the SS officer who interrogated him knew about part of the secret
D-Day invasion plans. So our heroines are coerced into staying in France
to kill him, instead of returning home with their mission done. The
rest of the movie is them and the Maquis going to extraordinary lengths
to do just this. The German high command, we have been told, are
dismissive of this officer's ideas about a Normandy beach landing. It's
not as if he had the only copy of this idea in his head and he has a
loyal sidekick who shares his opinion.. There were plenty of other
characters who had seen the evidence he'd gathered. Surely having the
entire resistance movement doing their damnedest to eliminate him would
raise their suspicions that perhaps, maybe, he was right?</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Les émotifs anonymes</b> (aka <i>Romantics Anonymous</i>)
(2010) - short (74 minutes) beautifully played, wonderfully shot,
sweet, funny, polished gem of a feel-good romantic comedy. Two timid
people fall in love. And they make some chocolates. That's about it
plotwise. You know from the start how the film is going to end. There
are very few complications, though it does contain what the director
described as "the slowest car chase in cinema", and it's a sheer bloody
joy to watch. I loved it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mad Max </b>- Number 2 Daughter and I finally get round to watching the first Mad Max film before we get round to finishing off by watching<i> Fury Road </i>(though I'm going to make her watch <i>The Cars That Ate Paris</i> first). <i>Mad Max</i> was very Australian. Structurally very odd.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Cars That Ate Paris</b> (which just
gets better every time I see it) with Daughter Number Two. I drive a
shabby white van. I've told her if it passes its MOT this year she can
paint it. I may live to regret this.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Elle </b>- I think I'm getting to really
dislike Paul Verhoeven's films. I've not seen one I've enjoyed (and a
couple I've loathed) but this one did have Isabelle Huppert giving a
great performance (as she always does) to leaven the biscuit - but I
didn't believe a single frame of it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Too Many Crooks </b> (1959) - sub Ealing
British farce with all the elements in place but missing that elusive
ingredient X. Nice moments but it lumbered in places too.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Out of Sight </b>(1998) - I like the way
Steven Soderbergh makes movies. I don't necessarily like the movies
themselves but I like the way he makes them.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Happiness of the Katakuris</b> - which
was 2 hours of Miike Takashi throwing sh*t at the screen and hoping
something stuck. Not the worst of his films I have seen. I didn't
dislike it as much as his <i>Visitor Q</i> (mind you I don't think I have I have actively hated any film quite as much as I hated <i>Visitor Q</i> ) but I doubt if I will ever want to watch any of this one again.</li></ol><p>June<br />
</p><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Attack of the Giant Leeches</b>(MST3K) </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Horror of Party Beach </b>(MST3K) both with Number One Son.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Dolor y gloria</b> (<i>Pain and Glory</i>)
- Almodóvar. Autobiographical (even more than usual) slow elegiac
wonderful. Banderas was beautiful. A hell of a performance. Loved it.
Loved it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Colony</b> (2013) - after an okay (but
not great) start with a bit of scene-setting world building showing us a
tiny group of survivors huddled against a new (man made) ice age, the
film rapidly sinks into the usual 'running around corridors as <s>zombies/monsters</s>/cannibals kill the cast members one by one'. <br />
<br />
An expedition leaves their sanctuary to find out what happened to another group of survivors sending a distress signal. <br />
<br />
I should have given up on the movie at the moment when, crossing a huge,
crumbling road bridge, our heroes took a running jump and leapt across a
barely leapable hole in the road surface - trusting that the chunk of
road they were about to land on wasn't going to crumble and fall into
the abyss like the bits next to it obviously had. They only jumped
across because they were action movie characters. Real people would
have edged across on the HUGE, clearly visible on screen, steel beam
holding the road surface up - the one next to the heavy metal crash
barrier that would have been easy to hold onto or belay off. <br />
<br />
I <i>should</i> have given up when beating a hasty retreat from the (as
yet unseen) cannibal hoard our heroes quickly ransack the storage
cupboard they are holed up in and happen to find a whole drawer full of
dynamite tied in neat bundles with their fuses all tied up together. <br />
<br />
I <i>really should</i> have given up on the movie when, out of
ammunition, our rearguard hero (Laurence Fishbourne doing his usual
substantial and workmanlike job) wrests loose the metal ladder that
leads up to the only exit he is defending and throws it down to ground
just before the cannibal hoard arrive. Ha! That will thwart them! He
was right. None of the cannibal hoard thought, "How we gonna get up
there? Hey look! There's a ladder! Give us a hand lads!" No, once the
ladder had disappeared out of the frame line it disappeared from the
movie, and presumably the consciousness of anyone dumb enough to take
the film seriously. I watched most of the rest of the film on Fast
Forward stopping only for the dialogue (of which there was not a lot,
and was, for the most part, totally predictable). <br />
<br />
Towards the end, as you would expect, there was a crawling along stupidly huge air-ducts sequence.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>After the Sunset</b> - one of those harmless undemanding Buddy/heist/romantic comedies with a few nicely timed jokes.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Valdez is Coming </b>- 1970 American post-Spaghetti/Paella Western in which blue-eyed, blond Burt Lancaster played a Mexican...<br />
<br />
Um... Okay.... <br />
<br />
Once I'd got over that hurdle it turned out to be pretty good. There
was lots of riding around very familiar bit of Almeria and one of those
great endings that film-makers are too scared to do any more. Basically
the film ends <i>before</i> the climactic shoot out between the hero
and the villain. It just stops with them facing each other the villain
finally abandoned by his goons and facing up to his adversary alone.
Long shot freeze frame. End titles. Loved it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Invasion of the Neptune Men </b>(MST3K) - with the kids. There was much hilarity and ice cream</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Devils of Darkness </b>(1965) - sub Hammer
studio-bound British horror nonsense which wobbled about between being a
vampire movie and a Dennis Wheatly type satanism movie without making
its mind up which it wanted to be and failed to be at all interesting in
either direction. There was something achingly familiar about every set
up too. It looked like it was shot in standing sets in Pinewood studios
. The day after this crew was out Diana Rigg as Mrs Peel would be
wandering around in the same sets on the trail of some eccentric
megalomaniac. There was one moment tough that I will remember. Nothing
special really to look at but a beautifully timed edit. One character
walks out one of those double-hinged doors that swing both ways (oeeer!
missus!). He exits. The door swings back and just as the door swings
back into the room, as we know it's going to - there is a cut to a
different character entering a different location through a different
door. The action matches perfectly. The editor must have been pleased as
punch when he got that one right.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Prototype </b>(1983) - a far far above
average TV Movie . I would even go so far as to describe this as a
little, forgotten gem. I'm very fond of emerging sentience, "where's do
you draw the the line between 'humanoid machine' and 'person'?" stories .
<i>Ex_Machina, Ghost in the Machine, Blade Runner, The Machine </i>
etc. But rarely have I seen it played out so lightly and carefully as
this. There are, no handguns, no explosions, very little in the way of
special effects, characters that behave in character all the way through
and don't do randomly stupid things just to keep the plot going. The
central performances are strong. It works. Grown up SF.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Crimson Pirate</b> with the kids - Number Two Daughter wanted to watch a Pirate Movie.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Kung Fu Hustle </b> with Number Two Daughter who really liked <i>Shaolin Soccer</i> but agrees that this one is better.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Zombie Lake </b>(Le lac des morts vivants)
1981 - dear mother of the gods that was dreadful. A very very long
painful 83 minutes. co-written by Jess Franco and co-directed by Jean
Rollin it managed to combine the worst elements of both and produce
probably the woodenestly acted, least coherent , most boring zombie
movie I think I have seen.<br />
<br />
Just outside a small village in France a lake "Lake of the Dammed" is
strangely attractive to nubile young women who have a seemingly
irresistible urge to take all their clothes off and splash about in it.
Then after an interminable time spent with the camera underwater,
getting as many crotch shots as the market will bear, the Nazi Zombies
living at the bottom of the lake eat them. The Nazi Zombies, the victims
of a Maquis ambush, invade the village. Then they go back to the lake,
Then they invade the village again, and then go back to the lake, and
then they invade the village again... and by now everyone is very
familiar with the same bits of footage used over and over again.
Eventually the pre-teen daughter of one of the zombies (I kid you not)
gets a bucket of blood and lures them all to the old mill where she was
conceived - before her dad was machine gunned and zombified obviously.
(Once she's safely out of the way the villagers wheel in their home made
flame-thrower and incinerate the lot.) The end.<br />
<br />
Highlights included (but not limited to):<ul><li data-xf-list-type="ul">Spotting the camera operator in a mirror - I
think he had just reframed the hand held shot to avoid showing us any
more of the lighting cables he'd just been showing us and didn't notice
he'd managed to include himself in the picture .</li><li data-xf-list-type="ul">A huge piece of blackout material suddenly
appearing across another mirror in the same scene - presumably there to
avoid showing us the lights the cables were attached to.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ul">A background extra in one dramatic scene catching someone else's eye and having a fit of the giggles.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ul">People leaving a building, rushing across the
village, and arriving at exactly the same building which was now,
supposedly, somewhere completely different.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ul">And more shots of under-rehearsed people
standing about uneasily being not quite sure what to do than I thought
humanly possible to cram into 80+ minutes.</li></ul><br />
Another one for the big book of <i>1001 Films No One Should Have to Watch Beyond the Opening Credits</i>.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery</b>
- At some point while watching this I came to the realisation I had
seen it before. I wonder if I thought it at all funny last time? What a
tedious bore. The originals it was 'spoofing' were far funnier - and a
lot more inventive.<br />
</li></ol><br />
Abandoned in June:<br />
<br />
<b>Betty Blue</b>. I was not impressed and hated just about every
character who appeared. Halfway through I needed a pee so I paused it.
On the way back from the bathroom I stopped and looked to see if <i>Betty Blue</i> was listed in the <i>1001 Films You Must See Before You Die</i> book.<br />
<br />
It isn't.<br />
<br />
So I won't.<br />
<br />
<b>Tokyo Gore Police</b> - two minutes in I had firmly formed the idea
that it was crap. Three minutes in I'd come to the conclusion it was
also the wrong sort of crap. That's as far as I got. I suspect the
director was 15 and had been given a film crew for Christmas.<br />
<br />
July <br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Frida</b> (2002) - sometimes you watch a
film and realise this is the role the actor had been born to play. Salma
Hayek was born to play Frida Kahlo. She is wonderful. A lot of films
about artists are painful to sit through as they oversell the tortured
genius theme - leaving the audience thinking, 'oh just shut your whining
and get a job'. Frida doesn't. Frida's torture is physical; the art is
her way of coping. For a film about a famous and iconic woman artist,
probably the most famous, or at least instantly recognised, in the world
it really scores badly on the Bechdel test - nearly every conversation
between two women in this film is about Diego Riviera.<br />
<br />
I watched it with my Number Two Daughter* and only noticed the next day
that I didn't suffer any bouts of the squirm when the sex scenes played.
(Straight or same sex.) Any parent who has watched a film with 'naughty
bits' in while sat next to their kids will know what I mean by 'the
squirm'.<br />
<br />
This time? Nada.<br />
<br />
Possible reasons:<br />
A lot of the film dealt with Frida's body and her relationship with it.
'This Judas of a body' she calls it late in the film. The sex she has is
important in showing that relationship rather than any relationship
with the people she beds.<br />
<br />
The film was directed by a woman. The film was totally lacking in male gaze.<br />
<br />
*Who apparently, likes the paintings of that other Mexican painter,
Leonora Carrington better - amazing what you find out about people you
know really well when you watch films together.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Arabian Adventure</b> (1979)- pale imitation of <i>The Thief of Baghdad</i>
directed by Kevin Connor (Warlords of Atlantis etc.) Some interesting
filters and the odd nice moment but for the most part pretty dull stuff.
Emma Samms' tummy was nice.<br />
<div class="lbContainer lbContainer--inline lbContainer--canZoom" data-lb-container-zoom="1" data-lb-id="_xfUid-2-1679237511" data-lb-single-image="1" data-lb-trigger=".js-lbImage-_xfUid-2-1679237511" data-xf-init="lightbox" title="">
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</div>
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Revenge of the Pink Panther</b> - nowhere near as funny as it used to be but Number One Son enjoyed it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Black Box</b> (2020) - I started to watch <i>Black Box</i>
a while back on some Free to Air bit of Amazon. But didn't get to the
end for some reason and then couldn't find it again. Last week I came
across a DVD copy in a charity shop for 50p. It was made in 2020 and
less than two years later is already in the 'three for a quid' bin at my
local charity shop? When will I ever learn?<br />
<br />
The first part, the part I saw on Amazon, is pretty okay. A valiant
effort to make a low (zero) budget movie with an intriguing idea. A man
wakes up in a tumbling escape pod with no memory of how he got there and
a gaping wound in his side. He calls for help and the ground crew try
to talk him back down to Earth. Good start but sadly the film is let
down by an vastly overly wordy script - I have heard radio plays with
less dialogue. And more 'erm... whoever wrote this doesn't read much SF
do they?' moments than any SF film can reasonably bear. The technobabble
is totally undercooked, trying, I guess, for some sort of realism but
just displaying ignorance all round. The defining race against time
element of the 'will he won't he make it ?' is whether there is enough
charge in the ship's battery. The implication is that the ship will stop
if the battery goes flat. Not that the telemetry will die, or any
number of systems will fail, but somehow the engines will stop. There is
no Apollo 13 like attempt to jury rig a way of recharging this all
important battery or any attempt by ground control to do anything other
than than talk to the pilot and take his word for what's happening.
The film doesn't even bother going through the motions of telling us any
data link between the pod and mission control is buggered in any way.
It just simply doesn't exist.<br />
<br />
Technically the film looks good. For the money they had, the designers
did a pretty good job of making the small, enclosed, escape pod set
that, I presume, could be dismantled into sections to enable the camera
to get in from different angles. The zero G bits aren't embarrassingly
awful. Initially the relationship between the main protagonist and the
flight control girl is interesting. But after a while the plot holes,
and the 'wait! That doesn't make sense!' moments just kept on coming and
by the end I really was itching for it to be over. I hope the long list
of people listed as 'crowdunders' (sic) on the end credits felt their
money was well spent.<br />
<br />
For the rest of us worth watching only as a useful exercise in spotting
'How not to do things'. For-instance if your central character is going
to be on screen for 95+% of the film - it might be a good idea to hire
someone with some sort of charisma and screen presence. Or maybe ask
yourself, if the exploding mining operation is taking place in the
Asteroid Belt what, realistically, are the chances that an amateur
astronomer on Earth would have a telescope powerful enough to make out
and identify individual ships attached to the exploding mining station?
(Though, in fairness, the film didn't actually say the astronomer was on
Earth, the astronomer could have been on the Moon, or Mars or an
orbital - but if that's the case, and there are populations large enough
to support amateur astronomers scattered around the Solar System, why
are the escape pods heading all the way from the Asteroid Belt to Earth
instead of some nearer habitation? I don't think the writer realises
just how BIG the space between planets is. And as for putting on a
balaclava, wrapping duct tape around your head, and jumping across
several thousand meters of interplanetary vacuum towards a spinning
target... and expecting the audience to heave a sigh of relief when a
jump cut cheats him inside? Forget it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Glass Bottom Boat</b> (1966) -
stupendously unfunny Doris Day romantic comedy with slight SFish
flavour; the male in the romantic pair (played by Rod Taylor) has
invented a kind of electronic anti-gravity and the Russians want 'the
formula'. The one vaguely funny joke in the whole sad 90+ minutes was,
of all people, delivered by Dom De Luise .<br />
<br />
"Two questions!"<br />
(Looks at folded piece of paper in his hand)<br />
"Who are you? and Who are you?"<br />
(Turns over piece of paper)<br />
"...working for?"<br />
<br />
Dreadful music. Everything was Micky Moused to death including a brief snippet of the <i>Man From Uncle</i>
theme to reassure the less attentive members of the audience that yes,
that really is Robert Vaughn (in Napoleon Solo mode) propping up the bar
for a few wordless, "is that...?" gag frames.<br />
<br />
The only time Ms Day came alive was during a short scene (which looks
like it may well not have been scripted but added during the shoot) in
which she, and her on screen dad sit around and sing a couple of songs.
They fluff lines and pick up and carry on. It has an improvisational
feel totally at odds with the rest of the film. For a few minutes the
people on screen look as if they are actually having fun.<br />
<br />
Avoid.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Skyline</b> - Dreadful. A real pile of
poo. Seriously not good. Aliens ships hover over Los Angeles and hoover
up people. Our 'heroes' are arseholes. When people spoke they spoke in
short sentences. The dialogue was all in very short sentences. With gaps
in between. The thing the previous person said was often not responded
to in any meaningful way. If at all. Then jumbling them up. As if the
dialogue had been written by cutting lines from other films.<br />
<br />
It was s**t. There was a sequel. It will be s**t too. I own a copy. I will watch the sequel.<br />
<br />
Obvious 'influences' I thought about while watching: the harvesting aliens were The Wraith from <i>Stargate Atlantis </i>driving the semi-organic looking robots from the <i>Matrix </i>movies which arrived in the Bloody Big Ships with Huge Shadows we have grown to know and love from<i> V, Independence Day, Childhood's End</i> etc..<br />
<br />
The structure was odd. After an opening of people waking up in the
middle of the night with bright lights outside the window and one of
them getting sucked out and everyone being terrified, the film rewinds
to the previous day to introduce us to these characters - and they're
all twenty-something dicks. I hated every single one of them. One of
them announces she is pregnant. (As if anyone needed telling because
that had been telegraphed in the pre-flashback sequence by her getting
out of bed and sticking her head down the bog.) Two are having an
affair. And then, after what seems like an eternity in the company of
these people , we are back to where the film started without having
really learned anything about anything. When the first half of the film
is padded out to such an extent you know the script is in trouble. The
film also had that cheap 1950's morality that I thought 'Hollywood'
was growing out of. Cheap laughs at gay characters. The 'slut' - she is
referred to as that in the film - being one of the first to die -
followed by the only black character. (The fact that he was the most <i>believable</i>
and sympathetic character, played by the best actor in the film didn't
help the proceedings.) They even managed to squeeze in 'the character
getting themselves killed trying to rescue the pet' moment - happily
(for once) the pet got eaten too which was probably the only novel
moment in the whole script. (Sadly, the little yapping dog didn't get
eaten on screen. It would have been a much better film if it had.)</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Beat the Devil</b> - I just wanted
something to keep me sat still for 90 minutes and not tax my poor old
brain too much so I picked something out of the Safe Old Movies shelf
(I.E. nothing likely to have too much sex and violence in case the kids
walk in) of my To Be Watched shelves. Beat the Devil , starring Humphrey
Bogart and directed by John Huston, turned out to be a lot better than I
was expecting. Very odd in places and very funny too.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Cat Women of the Moon</b> - for the umpteenth time but for the first time with Number One Son who thought it was hilarious.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Revenge of Dr X </b>(1970) - I have a
phenomenally high tolerance level for bad movies (as superpowers go it's
pretty s**t but you take what you're given in this life) but <i>The Revenge of Dr X </i>
really stretched my endurance to the limits. It gets off to an
incredibly bad start. Two people stood around in a room with their backs
to the camera looking at a picture of Cape Canaveral stuck to the
studio wall just outside the set's window. They take it turns to
mangle their lines:<br />
<br />
"Liftoff to countdown now at three hours and sixteen minutes!" being the best.<br />
<br />
"Could be? Could be? There is no room for 'could be's in this project!
(pulls something from his pocket ) See this? - A mathematical error
the width of this small coin in space could represent the distance
between New York and Tokyo! The (indistinguishable) dimensions of space
it could throw our rocket a million miles of its targets! Dr Stanley,
'could be's I cannot use!"<br />
<br />
Our grumpy, unappealing, unsympathetic lead is convinced to take a
holiday - it will be months before his space probe arrives at...
wherever it is it is going - no one bothers to tell us. He drives
somewhere and digs up a Venus Fly-trap then takes it to Japan where,
with a not unattractive lousy actress as an assistant, holes up in an
abandoned hotel (which has a Christian graveyard in the garden) and
grafts the Fly-trap with a carnivorous chunk of seaweed he gathers with
the help of a bunch of topless women. When not being incredibly rude
and obnoxious to anyone within shouting distance, the doctor expounds
his incredibly loopy theory that humans are descended from plants.<br />
<br />
When there is no one around to be rude and obnoxious to or shout at, the
doctor is rude to and shouts at his 'creation' instead, "The soil was
your mother - the lightning will be your FATHER!" (The scriptwriters
were so chuffed with this line they used it at least two more times)<br />
<br />
It takes a whole HOUR before the doctor's creation is revealed to the
audience and then it just stands around in a pot getting feebler and
feebler... till it eats a convenient puppy! (That's two movies this
week with Monsters eating dogs!) and then only gets into full
Frankenstein rampage mode for a few brief incoherent minutes as it
meanders about a hitherto unmentioned nearby village. In the final few
moments of the movie the maddened doctor - who, inexplicably, is somehow
himself turning into a carnivorous plant - uses a goat to lure the
monster up the side of, and then into, a conveniently active volcano and
they both die off screen. The goat survived. So did I. (Just.)<br />
<br />
The music was AWFUL!<br />
<br />
You can watch the whole thing here:<br />
<div class="bbMediaWrapper">
<div class="bbMediaWrapper-inner">
</div>
</div><br />
(The topless women turn up around the 48 minute mark.)<br />
Daughter Number two and I have an Animated Batman double bill with the okay, but slightly disappointing,</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Batman: Gotham by Gaslight </b>(2018) which has a Victorian Batman battling Jack the Ripper<br />
and the frankly hysterically funny </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Batman vs. Two-Face </b>(2017 ) which has
Adam West, Burt Ward, and Julie Newmar reprising their 60s TV roles as
Batman, Robin, and Catwoman - joined by William Shatner as Harvey Dent. <br />
<br />
Checking my facts (and spelling) on Wikipedia afterwards I spotted
another joke I'd missed while watching. In the film a female public
defender, Lucilee Diamond, tells the imprisoned Catwoman that she hasn't
got parole. She is then knocked out. Catwoman swaps clothes with her
and makes her escape from jail. The public defender wakes up, tries to
raise the alarm but is not believed. She turns back into the cell and
catches sight of herself in a full length mirror, decides she looks
pretty darn sexy in the leather Catwoman costume and preens. It's a
funny visual gag. It's funnier when you realise that public defender
Lucilee Diamond is played by Lee Meriwether - who replaced the TV show's
Julie Newmar as Catwoman in the 1966 movie.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol">Okay. This a weird one. <br />
<b>Infestation</b> (2020) - a short, 77 minute - though it felt longer - vague wander into <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers / Santaroga Barrier</i>
territory in which a UFO-sceptic radio producer fitfully ambles into
the slow realisation that the world is being taken over by somethings
from somewhere else... Maybe... <br />
Then the film stops. <br />
End credits roll.<br />
Then it starts again for a moment... <br />
And then stops again.<br />
<br />
Looking at IMDb I see that <i>Infestation</i> appears originally to have
been called 'Sound' or 'Waves', or 'Soundwaves' and is described (by
its makers) as "A split feature film that follows the story of two
separate individuals whose lives are turned upside down by an ominous
sound from the sky."The film I just watched only followed one character -
everything we see in the film is seen through her perception of events.
(Apart from the short scene in the end credits with a character we
haven't seen before* talks straight to camera.) There are photos on
IMDb that show scenes that weren't in the movie I just watched so I'm
presuming the other half of the film has been shot - but never completed
or released. I suspect the idea was that the films could be watched in
any order but how this would work with the unresolved ending that this
film ends with I have no idea. <i>Infestation</i> was <u>just</u> about
good enough to make me want to see the other half and find out what the
hell the film makers thought they were trying to do. <br />
<br />
There were interesting moments, and the lead was credible- but I can't honestly recommend it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
*Though he might have been one of the bodies our radio producer
protagonist walks past at the end of the film. It's the same location.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Nine Queens </b>(original title <i>Nueve reinas</i> 2002)<br />
Two small time Argentinian con men meet cute when one of them rescues
the other from a petty scam gone wrong. They team up for the day and
then the chance of a lifetime falls into their laps. Like most
con/scam films one is never sure who is conning whom and everyone's
motives are always shifting (or appearing to) but, as always, nothing
is quite as it seems until the end and there are plenty of twists before
you get there. Some of the twists, it has to be said, stretched my
credulity somewhat - are we to assume, for instance, that these small
time scammers faked the whole bank collapse, or they somehow knew it was
coming and worked it into their scheme? It zipped past and was fairly
entertaining.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Cosmic Sin </b>(2021) - well that was....
crap. Which is a pity because, somewhere in the history of the genesis
of this movie someone did, at some point, have an idea that there were
some kind of moral and philosophical questions to be answered about what
to do when Humans and Aliens first meet.<br />
<br />
And then at some point during the writing of the film 98% of it got
thrown out and they shoved in lots of running around and shooting and
standing about not really saying anything (LOTS of that) and more
shooting and then then let's do a weird dreamy bit, and then some more
shooting and then Oh, I know a bar fight! and then... Oh, how about one
of them promises a cute little girl everything will be all right?<br />
"What cute little girl? There's no cute little girl."<br />
"She's one of the people hiding out in the Orbital Cannon place."<br />
"What? Wait.... I thought this planet was totally uninhabited! apart
from the two miners who got infected by the aliens in the opening
sequence!"<br />
"Hell, that was twenty pages ago, you think anyone is gonna remember that far back in the story!"<br />
"Guess not."<br />
"Hey guys! How's the script going?"<br />
"Ok. We got most the boxes on the Big Book of Crap Movie Cliche Bingo spreadsheet filled in."<br />
"Good... well I got some GREAT News. We got Bruce Willis for next Tuesday."<br />
"Wow! That's great! For how long?"<br />
"Next Tuesday. That's it. Don't give him any long lines and my cousin
Ralph's gonna shave his head so we can do all the reverse shots over his
shoulder that'll save a few hours...".<br />
<br />
After a while I gave up trying to work out what I thought the film
makers thought they were trying to do. It made no sense whatsoever.
Zero.<br />
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Blake of Scotland Yard</b> an utterly
bewildering 72 minutes spent watching people skulking in doorways,
opening secret panels. sneaking down secret tunnels, opening more secret
doors and then peeking on someone sneaking out of wherever that was,
before sneaking back again - and being spotted sneaking back and being
sneakily followed by other people. 90% of the time I had no idea who
was sneaking where. But I had an idea why. Early on in the film some
of these sneaking people had stolen The Death Ray That Was Going to End
All Wars by Making Armies and Navies Obsolete. The inventors of The
Death Ray That Was Going to End All Wars by Making Armies and Navies
Obsolete somehow deduce (no idea how) that the stealers were hanging out
in a dingy dive in Paris. So they all trooped off to Paris to sneak
around the dingy dive for a couple of reels before coming back to London
and sneaking about in a dingy boarding house in the East End of London.
Most of the running time of this film was of people walking,
sneaking, and lurking up and down the same three corridors with precious
little explanation of who why or what was going on. Hell it took me
till nearly the end of the movie to work out <i>which</i> of our small bunch of hero sneakers <i>was</i>
Blake of Scotland Yard! I managed to deduce it wasn't the girl and the
one called 'Doctor' something wasn't him but that still left me three
or four characters to chose from. In the end though there's a Scooby
Doo moment and one of the innumerable characters who had been less good
at sneaking was unmasked as The Scorpion! And everyone was happy that
was all over.<br />
<br />
Halfway through watching it I had the thinks that this looked awfully
like one of those 12 part Saturday afternoon kids' matinee serials
chopped into bite sized pieces and shoved in a tin. Turns out I was
right. The serial ran for 303 minutes. The film was 72 minutes. You
would have thought whoever was given the job of cutting it down would
have left <i>some</i> of the exposition in.</li></ol>Unfinished in July<br />
<b>From Dusk Till Dawn</b> - a 'horror comedy' produced by the combined
talents of my two least favourite working film directors (Robert
Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino). I'm always open to the possibility
that I am wrong and that I have been missing something obvious in
people's work, so do keep trying with as open a mind as possible. (And
this one had Selma Hayek in it. How bad could it really be? ) I baled
after the opening scene. Loathed it. I fast forwarded to Hayek's entry
- gods! that woman has beautiful hips! and then tossed it in the Back
to the Charity Shop pile.<br />
<br />
August <br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"> <b>Anonymous</b> (2011) - once I'd got past
the nagging wondering how director Roland Emmerich would work in his
signature helicopter chase through a canyon sequence into a film set in
Elizabethan England I really quite enjoyed this. The central idea is the
old idea that the plays we know as Shakespeare's were in fact written
by Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford and how this came about. I'm sure the
film plays fast and lose with history - but then 'Shakespeare' wasn't
one to let historical accuracy stand in the way of a good story - and it
looks gorgeous, with some top talent doing a great job. The structure
left me behind from time to time as we had flashbacks within flashbacks
and then "Forty Years Earlier" captions which left me scrabbling to
catch up from time to time - especially earlier in the show when I was
really floundering trying to remember who was who and who grew up to be
whom - but by the end I was on top of it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"> <b>Occupation</b> (2018) - Aliens invade
Australia! Well, they invade the rest of the world too but, for a
change, we get to watch heroic Australians save the human race from
extinction instead of Americans. Overlong and a little confused in the
third act - what was the McGuffin of Doom why was it so badly guarded
in the abandoned factory? But it had its moments. Someone in production
design, and whoever was in charge of wrangling the background artists,
needs to get an award for creating a credible-looking makeshift
encampment. (Though from what I've seen of rural Australia the whack it
together out of a couple of sheets of corrugated iron and an old bed
end school of building is the local vernacular architecture.) Some nice -
if predictable - character development. But it could have done with a
serious trimming during the action sequences which do take up a stupidly
large proportion of screen time.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Timechaser</b> (MST3K) - not one of the
show's best but they didn't really have a lot to work with. I spent a
lot of my time watching the director crossing the line and - for the
first time that I can recall (this may be unique in the annals of movie
history) crossing the line in a face to face dialogue between an actor
having a conversation with himself. Going back in time, the lead meets
himself and, with the standard double in the same costume with his back
to the camera setup, has some meaningful OTS conversation with himself.
Only the director, who obviously has no idea of the concept of the Line
of Action makes a confusing situation worse by flip flopping across the
line between, shots making a bit difficult to keep track of which
version of the bad actor is actually talking at any moment.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Crawling Eye</b> (aka <i>The Trollenberg Terror</i>)
- which was even more considerably crapper than I remember Joel and the
MST3K bots just about made it just about watchable for #1 Son and
myself on a cold, wet Sunday afternoon.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Project Ithaca</b> (2019) - a lowish
budget Canadian SF film which had some almost interesting ideas going on
in it but dropped the ball by nailing its characters down - almost
literally - so all they could do was talk. And talk they did. Endlessly.
Sometimes they talked in flashbacks and sometimes in "where is this
place?" sequences that took place in virtual realities (inside people's
heads). In the end one of the characters realised it was the the last
act of the movie, decided she had superpowers after all, and took
everyone back in time. The end. I've seen worse. But I have seen a lot
that were better.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Now You See Me</b>(2013) - Meh! One of
those would be complex twisty turny, 'who do you trust?', layers upon
layers movies which was about as substantial and flimsy as house of
cards on a trampoline. A group of street magicians are recruited by a
mysterious stranger to perform a series of heists in plain sight. Heists
which have a deeper meaning behind them. And then another one behind
that and then... The movie jumped the shark about three minutes in and
kept doing it regularly for the rest of the film - in the end
(metaphorically) pole vaulting over huge dancing Busby Berkley pyramids
of the things - while the director swooped and swirled the camera around
all over the place in Steadicam / drone/ cgi shots that tried
valiantly, but failed, to distract from the paper-thin characterisation
and tissuepaper-thin plot. All the way through the film we were
exhorted to look closer to see beyond the surface and ask yourself what
was the bigger trick being played. The biggest trick was convincing
enough people to actually watch this pile of poo without walking out of
the cinema. To a degree I guess they must have succeeded. They conned
enough people to make it worth their while making a sequel. </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Aquaman</b> - I've been saying for years
that CGI has killed movies. I think I just watched the corpse dug up and
several acts of necrophilia committed on it. What a godawful,
undercooked mess!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Total Recall</b> - the original, not the
utterly crappy remake. It's at least 25 years since I last saw it. And I
was surprised to find it is a lot better than I remembered but a lot
more violent.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Armageddon</b> - absurdly terrible. I'd
never seen it before - as far as I can recall I have never seen any of
Michael Bay's films before. I kept nearly turning it off because it was
so crap but then it would suddenly pull an even more amazingly dreadful
piece of stupid out of the plot bucket and I would have to give it a few
more minutes while I checked my brain was still functioning. They can't
really be expecting us to accept THAT? Can they?? It just kept piling
on the awful to such an extent that I was hypnotised.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Phantom Planet</b> (MST3K) - I was tired. I fell asleep. I didn't miss much.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Robot Vs the Aztec Mummy</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Danger!! Death Ray</b><br />
- Both MST3K with Number One Son.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Brides of Dracula</b> - 1960 Hammer
nonsense with a thinner than usual script, and an underwhelming villain
but some wonderfully OTT performances, terrific lighting (gorgeous
Technicolor!), and the fascinatingly beautiful Adree Melly:<br />
<div class="lbContainer lbContainer--inline" data-lb-container-zoom="1" data-lb-id="_xfUid-3-1679237511" data-lb-single-image="1" data-lb-trigger=".js-lbImage-_xfUid-3-1679237511" data-xf-init="lightbox" title="">
<img class="bbImage" data-url="https://www.notrecinema.com/images/usercontent/star/andree-melly-photo_102574_11872.jpg" data-zoom-target="1" src="https://www.notrecinema.com/images/usercontent/star/andree-melly-photo_102574_11872.jpg" />
</div>
<br />
Not a bad way to spend 85 minutes.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Sinister Urge </b>(MST3k) - with Number One Son. Twenty minutes in he said, " I don't know what's going on." It was an Ed Wood film.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Iron Monkey</b> - with Number Two Daughter.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Dish</b>- on the day that the NASA
scrubbed the Artemis 1 launch at T minus 40 minutes it seemed
appropriate to share this wonderful little Australian film about the
first moon landing with Number Two Daughter. If you haven't seen it rush
out and buy a copy. It's a perfect little gem of a film. There are no
car chases, no explosions, only the slightest hint of
interpersonal-conflict, the character story arcs are small and personal,
you know exactly how the film will end because you saw the TV pictures
of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon, there's no knockabout comedy,
though it is very funny. Just a beautifully drawn little film about
people doing their jobs at an extraordinary moment in history.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Prophesy 2 </b>- Christopher Walken IS the
archangel Gabriel!... Eric Roberts IS the archangel Michael!... Trapped
between their warring tribes of angels Jennifer Beals IS pregnant with
the child that will decide the destiny of .... bleeech!..... you get the
picture. Well you don't quite, but that's the plot. To get the total
picture you have to play that plot out using outtakes from some of the
lesser Highlander movies with every other angle dutched and everywhere
filled with swirling mist lit by One Bloody Big Light just behind the
building in the centre of the frame. (The one with men in long black
coats perched on its roof.) Then add Christopher Walken tuning the camp
menace up a notch every other line, and then for some reason, set the
climax in the Garden of Eden (which for the purposes of heavy-handed
metaphor is played by that bit of an oil refinery in Long Island that
doubles as just about everything in Straight to Video tosh like this).
Almost terrible enough to be great but missed by a whisker. There were
two more. Maybe next time....</li></ol><br />
Abandoned in August <br />
<b>Battle Star Wars</b> - #2 daughter and I lasted nine and a half
minutes of this Asylum masterpiece. Even our MST3K style riffing mojo
couldn't save it... there wasn't enough material to work with. It
wasn't even bad.<br />
<br />
<br />
September<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Star Trek : First Contact</b> - Still
working my way through them with number One Son. (Two more to go.) He
thought the Borg stuff was scary. I thought Jonathan Frakes's wig was
scarier. Third time I've seen this one and I have to say it's
beautifully lit. Probably the best lit of all the Trek movies.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Conspirators of Pleasure</b> - strange
very arty (avowedly so) film about several people with oddly overlapping
lives living out their masturbatory sexual fantasies. I don't think any
of the characters actually deliberately touch another character during
the course of the film. One of the chapters is called 'The postwoman
performs her pleasure ritual'. It involved two rubber tubes shoved in
her nostrils and an enamelled bowl full of the little balls of bread she
had been surreptitiously rolling on her rounds. The little balls of
bread are then given to the television newsreader who feeds them to her
carp which she keeps under her desk in the TV studio and which suck on
her toes as she, in turn, is watched by the electronics expert/newspaper
shop owner who has built a multi-armed robot that caresses him as he
watches her read the news. At the start of the film he's the one who
sold the girly magazines to the man who engages in some really weird
chicken voodoo wardrobe related long distance sadomasochistic stuff that
eventually gets investigated by the police inspector who gets his
jollies from rolling pins covered in fur with nails driven into them.
He's married to the newsreader...<br />
<br />
It's Czech.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Watcher in the Woods </b>- which has
been on my 'must get round to see' list for a while as one of those
'Interestingly Dark' movies that Disney made in the early 80s: <i>Dragonslayer, Return to Oz, Something Wicked This Way Comes</i>...
And it's not bad. Some of the acting is a little too earnest and
Disneyish but the atmosphere and art direction is terrific, and the
camera work is astonishingly good.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Electric Man</b> (2012)- which wasn't
good. It could have been - and it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good -
no matter how hard I tried to convince myself it was. It's a low budget
Scottish film about two young (broke) comic-book shop owners who find an
ultra-rare, super expensive 1930's comic in their shop and are
threatened by various heavies and gorgeous women claiming ownership. The
film started to go really wrong for me the moment the valuable book
appeared on the screen.. A Mint 1938 first edition of Electric Man -
worth, we were told, 100,000 dollars, stolen from the collection of a
famous collector, and it was just bagged and boarded like a copy of last
month's Uncanny X-Men?! Get out of here! It got worse when they opened
it - actually before they opened it, because it looked to be the wrong
size/shape for a 1930s comic - as the artwork inside looked NOTHING like
1930's comic art. But even if it <i>had</i> looked old, and even if the
MacGuffin book had been slabbed like it would have been if it was real,
the script wasn't good enough. Too much vague yada yada yada waffling.
And I didn't believe the two central comic book guys at all; too vague
and wishy washy. There was no passion there. Not enough pop culture
references. These guys should have been popping off in-jokes and
allusions in every scene. The eyelines went spectacularly wrong in the
final showdown - the editor must have had a hard day cutting that scene.
A few nice lines though - One of our heroes on the run from the heavies
panting: "We need to find somewhere safe! - with Wi-Fi" being one.
There are five reviews of this film on IMDb. All of them from the year
it was released and four of them from reviewers who thought it was
wonderful in well-written, carefully-crafted prose... but who, strangely
enough, never again commented on any other film. </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>My Darling Clementine</b> - John Ford's
finest film and possibly the Greatest Western of all Time. But then I
think every film by John Ford I've just finished watching is John Ford's
finest film and possibly the Greatest Western of all Time. But <i>My Darling Clementine</i> really is both.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Skeletons</b> (2010) - and this is what
I've been looking for every time I pick up a DVD I've never heard of.
Skeletons is a low budget British film about two bickering men, working
for a mysterious Colonel, who provide a service for people. A service
that changes their customers' lives in not altogether expected ways. I
won't say more because discovering what they do is part of the fun of
the film. And it's just wonderful: very funny, mysterious, touching and
odd. Very very odd. (One of the characters turns Bulgarian it it's an
occupational hazard apparently.) I love watching films where I have no
idea what is going to happen. Some films you know exactly how they are
going to play out before the end of the first scene; the rest of the
watching is a matter of appreciating (or not) the interesting, skilful
way way the film makers arrange their well-worn dominoes and tip them
all tip over. With <i>Skeletons</i> I was guessing right up to the last
scene. I loved it. One of the out-takes in the extras on the disc is
entitled, "Cat-Faced Women of the 1940s" which I think is the best title
for a deleted scene I have ever seen.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>La Princesse de Montpensier</b> (2010) -
Ravishingly beautiful, technically wonderful, beautifully costumed
romantic tragedy set in 16th Century France but, somehow, just a little
antiseptic. I never once forgot I was watching a movie.<br />
</li></ol><br />
OCTOBER<br />
<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Riddick </b> - Vin Deisel gets stranded,
sweaty and beaten up, and chained up and kills people - a lot - on
ANOTHER planet where the entire ecosystem is made up of vicious
carnivores which only come out at night. I mean what <i>ARE</i> the
chances? I was almost on the point of giving up on it when Katee
Sackhoff took her shirt off. Spoiler - She puts it back on again and
it stays on.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Alita Battle Angel </b>- which I found, to
my surprise, I really quite enjoyed for the most part. I seem to
remember it getting pretty 'meh' reviews at the time but, not having
read the source material, I had no real baggage to bring to it - apart
from not particularly liking any of Robert Rodriguez's movies. But the
eye-candy /design stuff was rather beautiful in places.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Man Who Cried</b> (2000) - again a
film which had everything going for it, a great cast giving sterling
performances , great production values, beautiful camera work, terrific
music and some ravishingly composed shots - everything except 'it'.
Whatever 'it' is. It didn't click. I could admire it from all sorts of
angles but it didn't engage - a bit of a pity really as writer /
director Sally Potter's <i>Orlando</i> is one of my all time favourite movies.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol">Project 'Gemini' (2022 Original title:
Zvyozdniy razum) - released this year and already in the '3 for a quid'
bin at my local charity shop. And understandably so.<br />
<br />
It. Is. Terrible.<br />
<br />
After a few minutes of THE most dreadful "The Earth is doomed because a
killer virus is destroying all life on earth and we're all doomed
because we're all doomed... and stuff" voiceover expositionising we get
yet another bunch of expositioning from some REALLY BORING, PERSONALITY
FREE, SCIENCE GUY who tells a bunch of other science types (they're all
wearing white coats) and military people types (they're all wearing
jumpsuits with patches) that the alien sphereish dingus thingiemebob
they'd discovered in a cave, and have been working on for years, holds
the hope for all mankind because it's a superdooper spacewarper and a
"creating life where there was none before" dingus and it's been sitting
in this cave for 4 million years and was probably how life started on
Earth....<br />
<br />
(Hands up if you just worked out the rest of the movie's plot... Yup. I thought so. )<br />
<br />
...Anyhow... a robotic probe test flight to another star system has
found a suitable test planet and off they jolly well go - Why he
telling these people this is a really good question because they already
know this stuff and the audience is suffering from serious infodump
overload. Five minutes of solid infodumping is hard to sit through.<br />
<br />
Opening credits.<br />
<br />
Then the first (of many) crashing disappointments. The REALLY BORING,
PERSONALITY FREE, SCIENCE GUY turns out to be our HERO!? You're
shitting me! They go through the superdooper spacewarper and don't
arrive where they are supposed to. They can't work out where they are
but decide to use the Starting Life Sphere Dingus anyway because the
planet they have arrived next to is even better for the experiment than
the one they were heading for - audience at this point starts throwing
things at the screen, and making lewd and derisory comments. (Well my
daughter and I did.) Unbeknownst to the crew a bit of the superdooper
spacewarper dingus detaches itself and decides it's the alien from
Alien. The first manned interstellar mission to an uninhabited planet
remembered to pack automatic weapons - and a bomb. The only female
member of the crew gets to walk backwards down a dark corridor in her
underwear. ("How", asked number 2 daughter, "can you make a girl walking
down a goo filed corridor in her underwear sequence boring?") One of
the crew members goes wrong and tries to help the alien. Painful
mechanically delivered dialogue that sounded like it came from a cheap
1980's anime. It's Alien bookended by a plot straight out of one of
those 'unexpected twist ending' comics of the late 50s.<br />
<br />
Oh my GOD! It was Earth all along!!!!!!!<br />
<br />
Anyway all turns out well in the end because REALLY BORING, PERSONALITY
FREE, HERO SCIENCE GUY pulls one of the films many many many unexpected
plot rabbits out of his arse and is somehow able to communicate across 4
million years with his INSANELY BORING PERSONALITY FREE (but pregnant -
of course!) SCIENCE GUY GIRLFRIEND and give her 'the formula' for
destroying the virus. He'd found it in the blood of the crew member
who'd been infected by the alien - or something. The writing really was
that crappy. People suddenly pull plot miracles out of thin air at
every turn. This film generated more "Wait?! What?!" moments than any
film I can remember having seen for years.<br />
<br />
The final shot is of SCIENCE GUY GIRLFRIEND in her no longer infected by
virus but now full of flowering plants greenhouse rocking a pram. A
pram with the hood up. Because the film couldn't afford to hire a baby
for one shot.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Orlando</b> - for the umpteenth time. An utterly beautiful film.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mad Max Fury Road</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> Fellini's Casanova</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol">Tonight I rotted my brain (what's left of it) with <b>Starship Troopers 2</b>.<br />
When I watched <i>Starship Troopers 3: Marauder</i> - I noted in my film diary "apparently this was better than the sequel?!"<br />
I think whoever's opinions I'd been reading was understating things. This was AWFUL!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> Mildred Peirce</b> - one of the great
Sunday afternoon pictures (I know was Saturday but it felt pretty
Sundayish at JunkMonkey Mansions). Soap Opera Noir at its finest.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Spanish Prisoner</b> - entertaining piece of fluff from David Mamet.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> Cyborg 2087</b> (1966) - a cyborg is sent
from a dystopian future to prevent a professor from creating the
technology that will create that future. He is pursued into the past by
two other killer cyborgs. The film plays fair : the science fictional
elements are worked out, but it's dreadfully thin and cheaply made. the
"comedy" elements are pitiful. One for Jo Ann Pflug completists only and
they can stop watching after three minutes.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Black Panther </b>- not seen before. Loved
the design, loved the strong Black characters, lived the strong female
characters, but dears gods! the wall to wall Daddy Issues were hard
work.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> Hercules Against the Moon Men</b> -
trapped on the sofa, where for logistical reasons I am sleeping until I
can walk more than a few metres, this kind of hypnotisingly dull
fever-dream stuff is just what I need to fill in the time before I have
take some more painkillers. No thinking required.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> Hercules and the Captive Women </b>- same disc as the last one. (I now need to get one the kids to put something new in.)<br />
Much of the same elements as the last one; lots of sweaty muscleman
stuff, an evil queen who tries to kill a close female relative and slips
Hercules a potion which he doesn't drink, children sacrificed to evil
up a mountain, lots of running around in caverns. But this time with
what must have been a pretty stupendous budget. Indoor studio sets big enough to
casually have a 12 horse chariot (with horses six abreast) arrive
through the archway at the back, and then an underground horse chase
sequence with that chariot. Some great design stuff too and all served
up in a dreamy "this doesn't really make any frigging sense at all"
manner. The heroes win. Atlantis sinks. Stock footage of Mount Etna
erupting gets run through the moviola, heterosexual young love and
muscly hero bromance live to fight another day. Not much in the way of
'Captive Women' on display though. A real clickbait of a title.<br />
I'd love to see a unpillar-boxed decent print of this one.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules</b> - which had absolutely NOTHING to do with Hercules (and nothing to recommend it) beyond the gloriously OTT title song.<br />
<div class="bbMediaWrapper">
<div class="bbMediaWrapper-inner">
</div>
</div>The rest of it is routine Sinbad style desert adventure with very obvious lifts from <i>The Crimson Pirate </i>and
one of the odder things to find in a shoddy Arabian Nights adventure - a
rip off of the hall of mirrors sequence from Welles's<i> The Lady from Shanghai.</i><br />
<br />
All very missable.</li></ol>November<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Archive</b> (2020) - interesting. A
researcher works in secret to build a perfect robot replacement body to
house his dead wife. Beautiful to watch with some really nice design and
location work, convincingly acted but not quite enough material to
justify its length I thought. One of those films that feels too much
like a short padded out to feature length. <i>Archive</i> just got about
got away with it but it did feel slightly too long to me. I'll keep an
eye out for writer / director Gavin Rothery. For a first feature this
was pretty damn good.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mad Monster</b> MST3K 01.03 - Early MST3K
and much as I love this show Joel and the bots really hadn't got into
their stride yet. The film itself is pretty dull but I did clock
another appearance of my favourite stock costume spacesuits in the
supporting episode of the 1952 <i>Radar Men From the Moon</i> serial:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div></div>Originally (I think) made for <i>Destination Moon</i> in 1950 these suits regularly cropped up in low budget SF films for years afterwards.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The History of Time Travel </b>(2014) - a
short (72 minute) feature mockumentary about the history of the world's
first time travel machine. Watched with Number 2 daughter who had the
same.... <i>"wait? What!?"</i> at the same moment as I did when I first
watched it a couple of years ago. The film plays as a History
Channel-like documentary with lots of voice over, static pan and scan
rostrum shots of 'archive' pictures, talking head experts and those
'recreations of events' which don't show the actors heads or faces -
but...<br />
<div class="bbCodeSpoiler">
</div></li></ol><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol" value="3"><div class="bbCodeSpoiler">
</div>I'm sure it wouldn't hold water if you really examined it closely
enough - what time travel story ever does? But this is as good and
entertaining a paradox mind-bender as I have seen and shows what you can
do with a tiny budget and a small cast if you have a bloody good,
well-tailored script to start with.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Time Travelers </b>(1964) Daughter Number 2 and I are only watching Time Travel movies this week.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Predestination</b> (2013) - second time
for me, 1st time for Number 2 Daughter who didn't know what was coming
and had great fun working it out. I was pleased she enjoyed it so much
and happy to see the film stood up to a second viewing. Finding the
original story (which she now wants to read) in my disorganized shelves
took almost as long as watching the movie but I eventually discovered a
copy in a a battered 1963 Pyramid paperback three layers back in a
bookshelf.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure</b> - which was like totally awesome!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Time Bandits</b><i> - </i>Me for the
godsknowhowmanyieth time, Daughter Number Two for the third time, and
Number One Son for the first. Neither of us are now talking to him
because he thought it was merely "All right!"<br />
"All right?! <i>All Right!</i>" we both indignated in our best Frankenfurter voices, "I think we can do better than THAT!"</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The 12 Monkeys</b></li></ol><br />
<br />
<b>December</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><i><b>Women of the Prehistoric Planet </b></i>(MST3K)
- a film which, as I have noted before, confirms my theory that
volcanoes in movies only explode when white people turn up - by having a
volcano that starts to erupt when white people turn up... which then <i>stops</i> as soon as they leave.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b><i>Project Moonbase</i></b> (MST3K) - both with No1 Son.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>La Maldicion de Frankenstein (</b>aka <i>The Curse of Frankenstein, The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, </i>and probably<i> Several Other Things of Frankenstein </i>too
1972) Jess Franco at his most incoherently incoherent. Every other
shot is a wobbly zoom into a slightly in focus pan, to something not
very interesting, before zooming back out again to where the shot
started, before the camera tilts down and zooms into something else in
the foreground - quite often in this film, running water. Then a cut to
an actor waiting for the director to shout 'action'. A line or two
(which may involve reaction shots from someone who is in the room with
the speaking actor but which may well be taken from a different scene),
followed by three or four establishing shots of a "where the<i> hell</i> are we <b>now</b>?" location followed by a cut of someone, somewhere else, laughing maniacally. etc. etc. etc. for 90 minutes.<br />
<br />
There are apparently several different cuts of this film. I managed to
get hold of the one which contained the smallest amount of nudity but
did include several scenes of Jess Franco's girlfriend wandering about
in a wood reacting to off-screen direction that looked like (and
probably did) come from a completely different movie.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Count Dracula </b>aka (<i>Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht, Nuits de Dracula </i>etc
etc.) Fairly faithful (as these things go) but plodding adaptation of
Bram Stoker's story. Jess Franco had a bit of a budget for this one. He
could afford to hire Christopher Lee to play the count, and Klaus Kinski
to play Renfield* - though not enough to get him to speak. Franco's
usual wobbly zooms and odd pans are kept in check and performed with a
bit more fluidity than usual. The film will linger in my memory longest
though for a most blatant bit on on-screen groping. In the sanatorium,
as Lucy (Soledad Miranda) faints, Dr. Seward (Paul Muller) does a heroic
job of stopping her hitting the floor by stepping behind her and
manfully grabbing both her breasts.<br />
<br />
*Here renamed 'Reinfeild' if you trust the credits, 'Renfeird' if you
believe the IMDb, or just plain 'Renfield' if you listen to the cast.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Coherence</b> - for the third time. This
time with Number One Daughter who pointed out a couple of things I
hadn't thought about before - which means I will probably have to watch
it again soon to work out if she was right.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson </b> - slightly informative, but hardly riveting, overlong for the content biog of the trash film director.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Blood From the Mummy's Tomb </b>(1971) - I
spent a lot of this movie admiring the way the costume designers and
lighting guys got as much production value out of Valerie Leon's breasts
as possible.<br />
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</div>
<br />
<br />
The rest of it was pretty ho-hum Hammer nonsense.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Carry-on Teacher</b> (1959) - an early
(3rd) of the Carry-on films. If it had been released under a different
title this film would have been long forgotten or only remembered as a
mildly amusing piece by those aficionados of British School Films of the
40s and 50s. There must be some, I can think of no other reason why a
piece of crap like Fun at St Fanny's got a BFI restoration.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d'espions </b>(<i>Cairo Nest of Spies</i>) - amusing, but not as funny as I had hoped, 2006 Bond spoof with Jean Dujardin hamming up it up deliciously.</li></ol><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> </b></li></ol><p> </p><p> </p>Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-59282991938099135032021-09-05T12:41:00.010+01:002021-09-05T14:00:54.784+01:00<p> January<br />
<br />
</p><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bloodsuckers</b> - Tonight I strapped #1D into her chair and slid <i>Bloodsuckers</i>
into the DVD player. She was suspicious at first but perked up when she
saw Peter Cushing's and Edward Woodward's names on the opening credits.
Lulled into a false sense of security, the full on assault of crash
bang wallop "we'll get a movie out of this fucking footage if it kills
us!" editing that starts the movie left her wide eyed in terror. This is
a TERRIBLE film. Apparently (and if this was the film I would now be
doing a British 1960s advertising voice over some random footage of
Greek fishermen) the money for this baby ran out during principle
shooting in Greece and various attempts were made to get a coherent film
out of what they had - new sequences were were shot with new actors
(including someone adding a seven minute druggy hippy orgy sequence) and
it didn't work. The film is a glorious mess and D#1 and I had the most
fun MST3King the hell out of it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Night of the Living Dead</b> - #1D
finishes her whistle-stop introduction to zombie movies by finally
getting me to watch which she's been trying to do for years. It's not
bad.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Volver</b> - Almodóvar watched with #1D who loved it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>X-Men 2</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Angry Red Planet</b> - a rewatch of a strange little film that alternates between being <i>really boring</i> and <i>very trippy</i> with brief interludes of <i>almost good</i>
in between. Some of the techno-babble in here makes sense and shows an
understanding of, if not hard science then, at least, hard science
fiction. One of the crew of the First Manned Earth Expedition to Mars
that Goes Horribly Wrong (it's one of those films) is a woman who, in
the final scenes comes up with the solution to the Horribly Wrong bit.
(Though points are deducted because - as D#1 who watched it with me
pointed out - she has her explanation of the solution is immediately
reiterated by a male scientist in case the audience didn't believe it
coming from a mere female - even if she <i>was</i> wearing the ubiquitous, "I'M A F*%KING SCIENTIST!", white lab coat that all scientists wore back then.)<br />
<br />
<br />
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</div></div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Kingdom of the Spiders </b>-
another rewatch. Directed by another of my small stable of
interesting, but strangely overlooked, directors. This time John "Bud"
Cardos, a man whose career is littered with films full of heroes who
fail. It's better than I remember, a low budget monster movie with <i>Jaws </i>echoes
(The mayor want to keep the story of the Spider invasion out of the
news because the upcoming State Fair is the towns big annual money
maker) which segues into a low budget disaster movie with an ecological
message (there's one, rather impressive, low budget aeroplane crash - a
seriously well executed bit of practical effect work) before one of
those downbeat endings which Hollywood is too chickenshit to do any
more.<i> Kingdom of the Spiders </i>is one of those films in which, in
the end, everyone dies - or it is implied that they are about to die.
Our hero here is the wonderfully named Rack Hansen, a country vet,
played by William Shatner who spends the entire movie doing the wrong
thing and ending up with himself, the hot lady scientist, the tough
female bar owner, his little niece and a couple of passing tourists
about to become spider food, trapped in a giant web, with no way out.
There's no producer's ending here. No - "Hang on lads, I've got an
idea." They're all well and truly fucked. Every speaking part in this
film ends up dead. The biggest name in the show, Shatner does a
reasonable job - he is a much better actor than people give him credit
when he wants to be - but it does contain one glorious piece of Peak
Shatner. His character, bitten by multiple swarming spiders whose venom
is 'five time more toxic' than the usual tarantula bite, struggles up
the cellar steps. He's been down in the cellar trying to fix the lights
after the spiders had fused them. As he struggles up the steps spiders
crawl over him. Some are obvious fakes but there are some real one too.
He's brushed off many and is struggling to retain consciousness as he
goes for help, he keeps a firm grip on his flash-light but, true
Thespian that he is, manages to make sure it is pointing at his face the
whole way up so we don't miss a moment of his "I'm in AGONY!" acting as
he goes. Kudos to the film makers too for having strong female
characters capable of doing sensible things, and doing them without
being told too by a man, and kudos too to Cardos for some colourblind
casting, black actors Woody Strode, and Altovise Davis play a couple of
regular farmers.</div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Finding Fortune</b>
- another masochistic wallow in the tedious world of Robbie Moffat's
"tell not show" home road movies. Like most of Moffat's films I have
watched this one was mostly amateurish travelogue footage interspersed
with a car pulling up somewhere and the occupants spending the next few
minutes telling each other mostly irrelevant backstory stuff because it
says to in the script. To be fair to Moffat he (or his DP) did manage to
get his eyelines under control and I don't remember any the egregious
line-crossing which often clutters his films. <i>Finding Fortune </i>was made <i>slightly </i>more
interesting to me than the usual because the film crew drove past my
village a couple of times and shot footage which the editor slid in at
random anytime anyone in the film went anywhere. Which they did... A
lot.... From one ill-defined location to some other ill-defined location
by driving up and down the same road past my house. Anyone with even
the smattering of local knowledge could be baffled how people heading
'north' to Loch Ness would head Over Rannoch Moor through Glencoe,
Through Tyndrum (30 odd miles back the way they'd just come) and then
end up in Oban which is to the south of any of those places - though, to
be fair, the next shot did have the heroines parked at the side of the
road with a map spread out over the bonnet of their car. At the 40
minutes mark I was almost interested to notice that one of the
characters was wearing hand-crafted earrings made by my ex and the
second most interesting moment of the film came in the end credits which
I had to rewind to confirm that Script Supervisor, Carl Rexter, had
managed to get his credit in twice on the end title crawl - once just
after the Story Editor's credit and (again as Script Supervisor) after
the Set Construction credit. That's some going. I don't ever think I've
seen that before. (Mind you he didn't manage to get his name in the
IMDb, so maybe he was getting his compensation in first.)</div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Elvira's Haunted Hills - </b>not as funny as the first one but it still had its moments.</div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Rocketeer</b>
- watched with Number One Son (11) which turned out to be a lot more
fun than I remembered. It still sagged a little in the middle but was
fun to watch with the lad.</div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Torture Chamber of Doctor Sadism</b> - (aka<i> The Blood Demon</i>)
a 1967 German Horror based on Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Pit and the
Pendulum" (Yeah. Right) Almost plotless and strangely dreamlike.</div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Frightmare </b>- and</div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Adventures of a Plumber's Mate</b> - Number One Daughter and I have a double bill of the High and Low points of British 70's film making.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Outerworld </b>aka <i>Beyond the Rising Moon - </i>1987
SF film full of (by today's standards) lumbering computer effects,
minimal cast with sketched in characters, and a meagre plot but somehow
it held my attention for 84 minutes. It almost worked. Some nice
visuals though the direction was a bit floppy. Lots of standing around
not sure what to do acting, odd eye lines, and line crossing but written
by someone who has obviously read a few SF books and didn't insult the
intelligence too much.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Women's Prison Massacre</b> aka <i>Emmanuelle Escapes from Hell</i> - Utter s**t.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow </b>- for the umpteenth time. Silly fun shared with Number One Son and Daughter.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Thirt13n Ghosts</b> - #1D shares her
peculiar obsession with Mathew Lillard by making me watch a remake of a
William castle film. Some nice set design and good to see the only black
member of the cast's character make it to the end of the film. Apart
from that... meh.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Horrors of the Red Planet</b> - Yet
another of the endless number of 'The First Manned Expedition to Mars
Goes Horribly Wrong' movies. This time a crew of four really bad actors
spend 10 minutes sitting in nice chairs in their spaceship doing
meaningless, endless, technical babbling at each other before
crash-landing on Mars. Once the dust has settled they find they only
have four days worth of oxygen and their only possible hope of salvation
is the main-stage of their rocket which they jettisoned earlier and now
lies lies in a desert somewhere to the south of them. What's IN the
'main-stage' and how it is going to help them survive is never explained
but I'm happy to take their word for it. After ten minutes of watching
these bozos sitting in comfy chairs reading gyro compass readings at
each other, I'd accept anything to get them out of the ship and start
encountering some of the horrors of the movie's title.<br />
<br />
For the next 50 minutes (though it seems like forever - the irony of
which will become apparent later) the four of them wander about barren
landscapes following the faint signal that's leading them to their
ill-defined salvation. Sometimes they wander about in very small
inflatable dingies, sometimes in vast (very well lit) cave systems,
sometimes edging along crumbling paths by the side of an active
(underground) stock footage volcano, but ALWAYS stopping every few
minutes, mid frame, to have inane conversations like, "I wonder how deep
this cave is?" "I don't know - but well soon find out." Given the fact
that most of the actors' lips were obscured as they delivered these
pointless lines by the cunningly placed suit mikes (I would hazard a
guess that this film's exteriors were shot without sound and were looped
later and could have been made to say anything without anyone noticing)
it is unbelievable that during the whole of scriptwriting shooting and
post production <i>no one</i> came up with anything better than variations of, "I wonder how deep this cave is?" "I don't know but we'll soon find out.".<br />
<br />
Eventually they stumble upon a decayed ancient city and the movie
suddenly becomes strangely, weirdly interesting. The city is a mausoleum
populated by the giant-brained, superintelligent members of an ancient,
galaxy-spanning civilisation whose collective mind (personified by the
disembodied head of John Carradine floating over some stock astronomical
photos) explains that they managed to screw up a bit by stopping time.
(This explains why the crews' watches have all stopped and why the
previous 50 minutes of the film felt like two and a half weeks). Having
stopped time, the ancient, big-brained ones are unable to fulfil their
destiny because.... well, actually I got lost a bit here - as did the
scriptwriter - because it got all mystical and 'Laws of the
Universe'-ridden but, essentially, unable to take corporal form, it's up
to the four gallant crew (being physical beings) to put the Dingus of
Doodaa back into the Whatsit of Eternity and get time started again -
and all will be well. So they do. And it is. And they all wake up back
on the ship dirty, dishevelled, and sporting beardygrowth make-up (apart
from the girl) and only TWO minutes have passed and they haven't
crashed at all... Yet... Or something...<br />
<br />
The star of the show - as always - was John Carradine whose ability to
deliver screeds of semi-mystical info-dumping bollocks, as he was so
often asked to, is a wonder to behold. He has a wonderful voice. Years
of stage training and gallons of booze rich, deep and sonorous, and
always, somehow, so sincere. I don't know how much he was paid for this
gig (more, I hope, than the rest of the cast put together) but he was
worth every penny.<br />
<br />
Apparently the film was originally called <i>The Wizard of Mars</i> the
only female crew member is called Dorothy, they reached the decayed city
by following the ruined remains of a 'Golden Road' and encountered a
giant floating head... I think someone thought they were being arty.</li></ol>Abandonized in January<br />
<b>48 Weeks Later </b>- known as <i>Last Rites </i>and <i>Gangs of the Dead</i>
in the US and renamed to cash in on the Danny Boyle films with similar
names. We lasted about 10 minutes before giving up. DTV shite.<br />
<br />
Februararary<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Tenabrae</b> - Dario Argenta</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The 10th Victim</b> - long on my list of
trash films I have needed to see and now knocked off. A slick piece of
60s Italian pop culture that was the first Murder as Televised Sport
film and so the great grandpappy of<i> Battle Royale </i>and all those other films which took the idea far too seriously.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Voyage of the Rock Aliens</b> - for the
third time! ( I have no shame.) This time Number One (who has seen it
before) and I had the sadistic enjoyment of watching Number Two
Daughter's slack-jawed incredulity and disbelief.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Scooby Doo </b>- Daughter Number One gets her revenge for <i>Voyage of the Rock Aliens</i> by A: singing the bloody awful songs from it at me all day and B: making me watch <i>Scooby Doo: the Movie</i>. (Truth be told she lured me into it by waving the promise of a real life Velma Dinkly at me.)<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div></div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Parallax View</b> - as good as I
remember. As i get older I really appreciate how darn GOOD so many
movies made in that weird little early 70s grown up golden age (between
the calamitous failure of <i>Hello Dolly</i> and the stupendous success of <i>Jaws </i>and <i>Star Wars)</i> actually were.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed</b> - apparently this was in revenge for having "made" D#1 watch <i>Starcrash</i>
"more than 5 times" (a fib). A pile of stupid nonsense made bearable by
one or two semi-decent jokes and the distracting hotness of Linda
Cardellini.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>
Jinkies!</div>Second film in a row to have Peter Boyle in.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Unbelievable Truth</b> - Hal Hartley's first feature.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Q The Winged Serpent</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Les parapluies de Cherbourg</b> - I've
been wanting to share this with Number 2 daughter for a while and
tonight, as she has her French homework to do, I somehow manage to
convince Number One Wife that watching a French film with me would be
just as good as actually doing what she was supposed to do, to help her
get her ear attuned to the subtleties of pronunciation. I neglected to
tell either of them the film's dialogue was entirely sung. Daughter#2
liked the film and I was in tears at the end of it... again. I
promised her we'd watch something violent with explosions next time...
Bloody girls.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Hellboy</b> - with #1D</li></ol>March<br />
<br />
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</div></div><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Meeting at Midnight</b> - a mercifully
short (though it felt like a lot longer) 61 minute Charly Chan movie in
which Sidney Toler (as Chan) grimaced weirdly from time to time as he
solved a crime involving frozen bullets made from human blood,
incredibly powerful, made up hypno drugs (and their handy but not widely
available antidote) and last minute Explainogrammes from Scotland Yard.
Supporting cast Mantan Moreland and Frances Chan outshone all the rest
of the tatty goings on.
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Wild at Heart</b> - Half way through I
realised this looked like a Cohen Brothers' movie that had been
accidentally directed by David Lynch. Much as I love David Lynch's odd,
dreamlike films this one just didn't work. I felt like he was phoning it
in and just adding Lynchy bits to an otherwise unLynchy flick. Pity
because Laura Dern was pretty terrific.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Desperately Seeking Susan</b> - not sure
why his was in my To Be Watched pile but it isn't any more. It had its
moment but not as dreadful as I was lead to believe. I gave myself
Brownie points for intantly recognising <i>The Time Travelers</i> as the
film within the film and then spent the rest of the film trying to work
out its significance and failing. I guess it was just cheap.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Double Dragon</b> - Jackie Chan x 2</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Transcendence</b> - better than rubbish
bit of SF that lost its way a bit at the end. Looked great, and had a
stonking cast that gave it all they had but, when it came down to it,
the script just wasn't good enough.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>L'eau à la bouche</b> - a 1960 French film
in which six people swan about in a huge house and eventually have sex.
Fifteen years later this film would have been a soft core romp shot in
colour with Brigitte Lahaie, men with moustaches and tight jeans, lots
of very soft focus bonking with curtains billowing everywhere, and, of
course, an obligatory lesbian scene played out by half-hearted actresses
trying not to actually touch each other. That or it would have been
one the endless number of pointless, plotless, demi-angsty messes that
Eric Rhomer turned out. <i>L'eau à la bouche</i> had some nice fluid
camerawork to admire and some interesting architecture to look at... but
that was about it. Available to watch free here for a few weeks: <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.tv5mondeplus.com/details/vod/redbee:105875824_74079A" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.tv5mondeplus.com/details/vod/redbee:105875824_74079A</a></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>After Earth</b> - I had read at the time
of its release that this was not good but had this memory of most of the
bad things I read about it being to do with Will Smith being deluded in
trying to kickstart his son's stardom. I wasn't sure whether this was
all part of some celeb backlash (or even lash) thing at the time because
I don't do celeb stuff. I'm pretty sure I sat down to this with an open
mind. Less than two minutes in I knew that Will Smith was being deluded
in trying to kickstart his son's stardom. Even when Will Smith (who I
generally like) reined back his performance down to zero - then took a
step back - he still out-acted Jaden Smith who had all the screen
presence of a paper cup. It didn't help that the script was paper thin.
Enough to have made an interesting student 20 minute short but nothing
like enough to sustain a feature.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Lost in La Mancha</b></li></ol><b>April</b><br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Flash Gordon -</b> Over the dinner table
the other day my my 12 year old son looked blankly at me when I
mentioned the name Flash Gordon during the telling of some geeky gag.
"Who?" Blank incomprehension. "Ming the Merciless? Dale Arden?
Professor Zarkov?" Nothing. Total blank. Not a flicker of recognition.
Realising I had been a terrible parent and neglected my kid's education I
remedied the situation as soon as possible.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Big Empty - </b>David Lynchesque meh.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Brazil - </b>I watched <i>Brazil </i>with
#2D (16). About half way through I realised what the film was about.
It's not about overwhelming totalitarianism, or media manipulation, or
out of control mediocrity liked I'd previously thought - it's just about
being an adult and being scared of growing up into one. I nearly said
as much to my daughter but wisely, I think, stopped myself in time.
(This is why I love watching movies with people - they play differently
when watched with an audience. It's not the same movie.)<br />
<br />
The central character, Sam, unlike most Hollywood heroes still has a
relationship with his mother - with (as becomes obvious the end sequence
when his mother turns into his lover) all sorts of Oedipal issues that
I'm no way qualified enough to fathom. He goes to lunch with her,
resists her attempts to fix him up with a 'nice girl', resists her
attempts to get him a good job. He's still a kid really. He's grown out
of the short trousers and knitted tank tops that kids in the movie wear
and lives in a flat by himself but he can't yet really look after
himself, can't feed himself properly (it was joked up by the machines
making soggy toast and coffeeless coffee but it's there.) Doesn't know
how to buy his own clothes - 'not in that suit'. He's coping but he's
not happy. Hasn't met the girl yet (I assume he's a virgin). His dreams
of rescuing the unobtainable girl by fighting monsters is pure pre/early
adolescent sexual fantasy.<br />
<br />
I've always thought of Gilliam as essentially a child trapped in a grown
up body. And that Brazil felt like his most personal film. Sam is his
alter ego dealing with the banal complexities of being a grown up and
dealing with people just not letting you do the things you want to do to
make yourself happy - like shagging your recently attained dreamgirl
without her being gunned down by storm troopers.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Get Smart -</b> meh.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Tristan and Isolde -</b> some nice camera
work, some seriously pared back writing, one pivotal scene had something
like 10 words of dialogue - which I liked.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Click -</b> I got given a huge pile of
DVDs the other day and while I was sorting through them I realised I'd
never seen an Adam Sandler movie. I still haven't. About 30 minutes in I
thought 'this is crap' and turned it off.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Moulin Rouge</b> - with #2D who has seen Baz Luhrman's <i>Great Gatsby</i> more times than is humanly possible and loved <i>Romeo + Juliet</i> but we'd never got round to watching this before. She loved it. So do I.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Love on the Side</b> - a kind of Canadian <i>Local Hero</i>
without the budget, any of the charm, by the numbers 'follow your
heart' Rom Com character development, and a vague mix of gay subplots
that didn't really go anywhere. Far too long.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>High-Rise - </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Beastmaster - </b>don't tell anyone but I really like the <i>The Beastmaster</i>. It's one of my favourite 1980's Sword and Sorcery semi-naked warrior epics. As daughter #2 remarked "This is like <i>Cleopatra 2525 </i>isn't it? You're not actually watching it are you? You're just looking at it..."<br />
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</div></div>yep!</li></ol><br />
Abandonised in the Month of April:<br />
<b>Jane and the Lost City </b>- ploddingly slow and unfunny British Comedy which was hurting hurt too much at the 30 minute mark to go on with.<br />
<br />
May<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Black Hole</b> - never seen it before
and don't think I'll ever find the need to see it again. There were
some nice visuals- some seriously impressive modelwork and some pretty
nifty 'zero G' wirework to admire from the days before CGI made all that
stuff redundant. But a dreadful story - how many times <i>did</i> Disney try to rework <i>20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea</i>?
The film ended up in the usual explodofest - followed by a slightly
trippy journey through some heavy handed religious symbolism to an
unresolved ending promising some sort of... what? redemption...? hope...?
sequel...?</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Jane and the Lost City</b> - The film I
abandoned last month. I had a fit of the stubborns and decided that no
damn movie no matter how bad was going to get the better of me. So I
ploughed on. It took me several days but I got to the end of it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Isle of Lesbos</b> - Amazon's algorithms
decided that I might want to watch this. Fool that I am I succumbed.
It's a cheap, shot on a soundstage the size of a school gymnasium (with
sets and costumes built by the kids), gay musical with a plot you could
write on the edge of a postage stamp. (Not that there's much time for
plot as most of the film's running time is taken up with musical numbers
directed straight to camera like it was a TV show.) It is utterly
tacky, tasteless, and slightly fun - in an utterly tacky and tasteless
way. I now have this:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="bbMediaWrapper">
<div class="bbMediaWrapper-inner">
</div>
</div></div>stuck in my head: <a href="https://youtu.be/8K06roaI8yc">https://youtu.be/8K06roaI8yc</a> </li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Adolescents</b> (2019 last night's Teach
yourself French by watching French movies with French subtitles exercise turned into a bit of a chore with this bum-numbing 2 hrs
15mins documentary watching stroppy French teenagers being petulant and
arguing with their mums.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Animal Crackers</b> - I found a 8 disc box
set of Marx brothers films in a charity shop yesterday for pennies.
Happy bunny. I could watch Chico Marx play the piano all day.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The legend of Tarzan </b>(2016) - I'd never heard of this before buying it a charity shop the other day. (Since I stopped buying <i>Empire</i>
magazine a few years ago I have very little idea about anything
released after 2014.) About halfway through watching it I thought, "I
hope this lost a <i>shitload </i>of money when it was released."</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>La Cérémonie </b>(1995) - My first Claude
Chabrol film (I think). Not sure I liked it exactly but Isobel Huppert
was bloody brilliant - as always.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Inside Man </b>(2006) - smart twisty-turny heist thriller which I thoroughly enjoyed.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Ella es Christina</b> - slight Chilean tale of friendship.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Santa Claus Conquers the Martians </b>(MST3K)</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mystère au Louvre</b> (2017) - French TV
movie set in a not very well-defined turn of the 19th/20th Century about
a beautiful gentlewoman thief - a kind of female Arsène Lupin - who,
with the help of a poor street acrobat, heists a priceless necklace from
the Louvre. Not very complex. I had no trouble following the plot and
most of the dialogue without subtitles (in any language). The only big
twist was clumsily signalled well in advance and then over-explained
afterwards when our relentless villain, the murderous Inspector Thénard,
realises how he has been duped.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Carry-on Matron</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The History of Mr Polly</b></li></ol>Abandoned in May <b> <br />
Jason X </b>- I think I gave up half way through the opening credits but
stayed long enough to note Lexa Doig playing a human against Lisa
Ryder's android. Roles they would reverse in their next acting gig
together, the better than most people give credit, <i>Andromeda Ascendant</i>.<br />
<br />
June<br />
<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Magnificent Seven</b> - hard to
believe but we're twelve days into June and this is trhe first film I've
watched this month. And what a bloody good film it is too. I must get
round to watching the original some day.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Crazy, Stupid, Love.</b> - A slightly
engaging tale of love which would have been a lot better if it had been a
bit shorter and the protagonists hadn't been upper-middle class
successful Californians in the first place. I'm afraid I'm fed up with
the First World problems of rich Americans. Halfway through I came to
the conclusion that this would have worked much better with a lower
budget and relocated to somewhere less photogenic even with the
Hollywood bullshit ending - basically the "Follow your heart and stick
in there and all will come good in the end" ending - though in this case
that comes pretty close to (and possibly steps over the line) our male
protagonists stalking the women who have rejected them. Next day I
wondered if it was a much better European film remade (Carrell, the
producer star of <i>Crazy</i> has form in his fecking awful rehash of <i>Diner pour cons</i>) but it wasn't. Great cast.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Still Crazy</b> - a seventies rock band get back together. Mildly amusing fun.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>What Planet are You From?</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Captain America: The First Avenger</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Captain Marvel</b> - Daughter Number One
and I start an assault on the MCU movies we plan on watching them all in
order.... I wonder how long we'll last. I was fun far better than most
of the MCU movies I've seen and Co-incidentally the second film I've
watched this week with Annette Bening playing a 3D computer projection,
and a planned alien invasion of earth. She was also in <i>What Planet are you From?</i> .</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Iron Man</b> The MCUathon part 3</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>CQ - </b>A film I had seen before and
filed in the 'umm... okay?' drawer in my mind but, on a second viewing,
has gone into the Aww! what a sweet funny little film drawer. A love
letter to 60s European film making with lots of knowing nods and
allusions to films like<i> Danger Diabolik </i>and <i>La Dolce Vita</i>
which I may well have missed the first time I saw it. I wonder how many
more I'll see the next time I watch it a few years down the line?</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Fire </b>- occasionally in my endless searching through the DVD shelves of my local charity shops, between the endless<i> Harry Potter</i>s, and <i>Pirates of the Caribbeans</i>,
and Jason Statham's entire back catalogue I'll spot something that I've
never heard of before and know no one who appears in it. (I try not
look at the back too much so I'll have as little idea about what I'm
going to watch until I'm actually watching it.) <i>Fire </i>is the
story of two Indian women ( Sisters in Law) who have dreadful husbands
but find they love each other so leave them. A simple lesbian love
story with a hopeful ending. Despite the heavy foreshadowing (and the
title!) of the story within the story of innocent Sita coming unscathed
from the trial by fire I was really upset that I was in for a bout of
Dead Lesbian Syndrome at the climatic house fire. I guess a film that
throws that much foreshadowing at you - the Sita & Ram, trial by
fire story is played out twice on screen; once as a TV show, once as a
live performance that takes up a LOT of screen time - and <i>still</i> has you guessing at the end must be doing something right.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Iron Man 2</b> - The MCUathon part 4</li></ol>Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-10062786734029606742020-12-17T09:25:00.007+00:002021-06-14T16:37:43.013+01:00October November Film Diary<p> October<br />
<br />
</p><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Addams Family</b> - with kids 2 & 3<b>.</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Demolition Man </b>- Stupid comic book fun, never seen it before. I enjoyed it. A lot smarter and funnier than I was expecting.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Addams Family Values</b> - with kids 2
& 3. One of those rare films that is better than the original - or
at least funnier. Number 2 Daughter agrees that<i> Values </i>funnier but maintains that the first one is a better film.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Magnificent Ambersons </b>- which, despite my love for Orson Welles, I had never seen before. I was bowled over. Loved it.<br />
<br />
Got slightly thrown out of the movie when the thought, "where the hell
have I seen that staircase before?" crashed into my head...<br />
<br />
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</div>
<br />
<br />
... it took me a few minutes to work out it was used in <i>The Cat People</i> and then settle back into the film.<br />
Hate when that happens.<br />
<br />
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</div>
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Valentin</b> - Argentinian film set firmly
in Cinema Paradiso / Amalie feelgoodland (it said so on the case) - and
it just didn't quite work for me. To much talking and every sequence
seemed to end in a fade out, or a cross-fade. Fades to black (or should
that be 'fade to blacks'?) and crossfades are useful useful tools but
at the end of <i>every</i> scene?</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Men in Black 3</b> - it was a Men in Black movie.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Inkheart</b> - I wanted to like this so much more than I did. It was okay but seriously lacking <i>something </i>(and had too much of <i>something else)</i>. I wish I knew what. All the pieces were there for a Sunday afternoon escapist movie but it just didn't work for me.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Dune</b> (1984) - Dr. David Lynch then...</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Dune</b> (1984) - Dir. Alan Smithee.
Back to back, with only a break for a pee and a stretch of the legs, I
watch two different versions of the staggering work of genius that is<i> Dune</i>.
The 130 minute cinema release, and the 183 minute TV edit from which
Lynch had his name removed. Five hours of my life well spent. The Longer
TV edit has a lot more exposition. Some of it clunkingly bad. The
opening is different instead of Virginia Madsen's face filling the
screen we are straight into the opening titles followed by a shot of the
book Dune by Frank Herbert followed by what seems an eternity of badly
painted, not so badly painted, and downright shoddy artworks (pre
production design studies?) under a rostrum camera. While we are looking
at this lot - as male voice over gives us a quick history of the known
universe and the current situation - sometimes going over the same
points several times and giving every character their full title each
time they are mentioned, before sliding into the same 'secret report
from inside the guild' that the shorter version opens with.... And then
we're back into the film proper. Some scenes are longer some neatly
explain what is going on some you can see why they were excised. A few
shots are used well out of context - the arrival of any ship anywhere
that wasn't in the cinema cut is signalled by the use of a shot of a
ship arriving in Arrakis very late in the movie, and the brief 3 shot
insert of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam nipping off planet to
examine Paul is achieved by using a close up of Sian Philips sitting in a
chair taken from a scene set in her character's destination and a
couple of shots of ship's crew taken from the much later James Bond
villain's fatal error "stupidly not killing your enemies straight away
while you've got them helpless" sequence. What really clunks things up
is that every time a new character is introduced on screen a voice over
tells us who they are and what they do. This really shows when Piter De
Vries, Thufir Hawat, and Gurney Halleck all walk into Paul's room
together and things just stop for a couple of minutes as we get a line
up of close ups and voice over - only for Paul (as a character point) to
immediately tell us who they are all over again. The fade to black at
commercial break slots are a bit obvious too. And because this was
originally aired on TV the pretty boy, heartplug murder sequence was
cut. That scene ends with the Baron getting his black oily shower. Not
the only cut but the most obvious. It's not all bad. More Jack Nance for
one thing and a few other characters get to do a bit more than than
just appear on screen and get their names in the credits. Virginia
Madsen as Irulan still only gets the one line right at the start and
then gets to stand around looking decorative a couple of times. Linda
Hunt's screen time doubles and Sian Philips gets to do some more grade A
nostril flaring - but, on the down side, there is more Sting. I don't
think I'll be doing that again.</li></ol>Abandoned in October <b>Jesus' Son</b> - "an edgy and often
excruciatingly funny story of a young man's journey through Seventies
American Drug culture"... I guess all the edginess and excruciatingly
funny stuff comes later on, after the 15 minute mark because that's all I
could stand. I find stupid, self-indulgent, drug-using arseholes a pain
in the arse in real life I don't need to wallow in their squalor in my
fiction.<br />
<br />
November<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The First Great Train Robbery -</b> RIP Sean Connery<b>.</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Les bronzés 3: amis pour la vie</b> (aka <i>French Fried Vacation 3: Friends Forever</i>)
- As part of my ad hoc teach myself French by immersion (or at least
'by sticking my toe in') method I buy DVDs of French films with no
English subtitles and watch them with the French subtitles on. Les
bronzés 3: (as the '3' in the title might suggest) is a threequel (un
troiquel ?). The previous film in the series was made 27 years before.
It wasn't good. Apparently the people in it are famous - one of those
angry young comedy groups that changed the face of French Comedy before
going their own way and getting old, fat and unfunny like most angry
young comedy groups the world over. From what I can gather the film was
critically roasted in France. No one liked it. But it made a shitload of
money because everyone went to see it. Whether the enjoyed it or not
when they got there I don't know. I know I didn't.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Highlander</b> - I finally convinced number two daughter to sit down and watch <i>Highlander</i> with me. The open-mouthed What the F&*K <b><i>is</i></b>
going on? expression she wore for the whole show and whimpers of "What?
What? I'm confused..." made my night. Number One Son (aged 11) who
joined us said, "This is going to give me nightmares for years... all
that head chopping off - and snogging!"</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>National Lampoon's Vacation </b>- I was surprised at how unfunny this was. Painfully slow and laboured and was Chevy Chase<i> ever </i>funny? I guess some people must have thought so but this hasn't aged well.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Who was that Lady?</b> - Tony Curtis, Dean
Martin and Janet Leigh in a farce that started out being almost mildly
amusing but soon sank under its own weight. Another one of those films
bought for 50p from a charity shop because I had never heard of it and
watched in the hope that I would discover some forgotten gem. Ah well.
One of these days.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman</b> (2003) -
Holy crap that was a lot of fun. Insanely violent. sometimes very slow
and beautiful and funny - and it ended in a tap dance routine!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Joneses</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>You'll Never Get Rich</b> - Heaven is watching Rita Hayworth dance.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Paris When it Sizzles</b> - Bingo! "One of
those films bought for 50p from a charity shop because I had never
heard of it and watched in the hope that I would discover some forgotten
gem..." (see <i>Who was that Lady?</i> four movies up this list) and
this is it, paydirt! William Holden is a scriptwriter with a deadline and
Audrey Hepburn is the typist he hires to type the script he hasn't
written. Holed up in a swanky Parisian hotel room they hammer out, re
write, tear up, and start again a dozen or so scripts which play out as
we watch the scripts getting everso more absurd and overwrought and
funny as they go along - in the end it gets very metafictional and
Pirandellolike with one character starting to speak but being told he's
"only the Third Policeman and shouldn't even have any lines - shut up!".
Coincidentally this also has Tony Curtis in it, hamming up it
wonderfully in one version and then later in another,critiquing his own
acting, and, co co incidentally, the second film this month in which
characters read pages which contain what we see on screen. I had the
most fun with it I have had with a film in ages. Definitely on the
rewatch with the kids list.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Caine Mutiny</b> - it seemed an
appropriate film to watch with the American Election fiasco finally
grinding towards its obvious from weeks ago conclusion. I was surprised
to see it was in colour. I've seen it before but that must have been
back in the days when I only had a black and white TV. Which is a
LOOOONG time ago now. I met the director once. He signed a book for me.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Fantastic Mister Fox</b> - Number 2 Daughter refused to watch anything with me <i>ever again</i>! (after I conned her into watching <i>Highlander</i>) unless I watched this with her first. So I did.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Importance of Being Ernest</b> -
second film in a WEEK which I would have sworn was in Black and White
but is in reality in colour. Very funny and probably one of the most
perfectly cast films in history.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Lucy </b>- D#2 get our movie watching back
on an even keel. Both of us liked the ideas in the first half but
thought Besson ran out of ideas and just filled the screen with SFX (and
second-hand car stunts from <i>Taxi</i>) till it was time to go home.</li></ol><br />
Abandoned in November:<br />
<b>The Very Brady Sequel</b> - Don't tell anyone but I really like the <i>Brady Bunch Movie</i>.
It's one of my guilty-pleasure, feelgood movies. It's just silly. So
I've been kind of looking forward to the sequel for a while now. I
lasted about 30 minutes.<br />
<b>The Passionate Stranger </b>- 1950's British film in which a terribly
respectable writer leaves the manuscript of her racy romance novel
(which bears an uncanny resemblance to real life as a starting point)
where her chauffeur can read it. He reads the fictionalised account of a
romantically repressed woman falling in love with her chauffeur as a
roman à clef and tries to seduce her. I never found out what
complications ensued because I was bored rigid by the time they hove
into sight. There was a nice idea in here. The central section, where
the novel comes to life as the chauffeur reads it, is in colour while
the 'real life' is in black and white. The opening section is light and
whimsical - no more or less than any number of British 'Comedies' of the
day - but the central section is so bloody DULL. It's played, and
filmed, too straight. It just looks like a bad British movie instead of
the parody of a bad romantic novel that it supposed to be. It would have
worked better if they had cranked everything up to eleven and really
gone for it. Piled on the cliche, turned up the acting to the kind of
sweaty overwrought levels that would make Gainsborough films look like
Noel Coward and had FUN with it. The best bit of the whole film was
Patricia Dainton's dual role as timid Scottish maid in the Black and
white sections to sultry 'no better than she aught to be' seductive
English maid in the book sequence. If they had taken that performance as
a benchmark and ramped it up from there...<br />
<div class="lbContainer lbContainer--inline" data-lb-container-zoom="1" data-lb-id="_xfUid-6-1608196898" data-lb-single-image="1" data-lb-trigger=".js-lbImage-_xfUid-6-1608196898" data-xf-init="lightbox" title="">
<img class="bbImage" data-url="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/37/6f/0a/376f0afb51b86d81a6fb5dfdebd2822a.jpg" data-zoom-target="1" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/37/6f/0a/376f0afb51b86d81a6fb5dfdebd2822a.jpg" /> </div><div class="lbContainer lbContainer--inline" data-lb-container-zoom="1" data-lb-id="_xfUid-6-1608196898" data-lb-single-image="1" data-lb-trigger=".js-lbImage-_xfUid-6-1608196898" data-xf-init="lightbox" title=""> </div><div class="lbContainer lbContainer--inline" data-lb-container-zoom="1" data-lb-id="_xfUid-6-1608196898" data-lb-single-image="1" data-lb-trigger=".js-lbImage-_xfUid-6-1608196898" data-xf-init="lightbox" title="">December<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Jonah Hex </b>- well that was s**t.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Money Monster</b> - engaging, tense
thriller that pushed all the right buttons for me - pulled a few
convenient magic plot rabbits out of the hats the end right enough, but
for 90% of it's running time had me hooked.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Maltese Falcon</b>.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>A Man Called Ove - </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Black Coal Thin Ice</b> - overlong Chinese
cop noir which I wanted to like a lot more than I did - which is to say
'at all'. The atmosphere was great, cold, nasty, cheap and very real
looking but the pace of it was sooo slow and the fact that our hero was a
total misogynistic dick didn't warm me to the film at all.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Barbarella</b> - for the umpteenth time. I
just needed to watch something I didn't have to think about and as I
know this film inside out and backwards - not that that takes a lot of
doing - I pulled it down from the shelf.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>X-Men </b>- I finally convince Number 2
Daughter (MCU fan that she is) that she had better catch up with the
whole X-Men saga (12 films) before they get (possibly) integrated into
it pretty soon. And so it begins...</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol">Daughter Number One is home for the Christmas Holiday - so we get in the Christmas Groove by watching <i><b>Die! Die! My Darling!</b></i> (aka <i>Fanatic) </i>which
was great OTT camp fun. It starred Tallulah Bankhead (in her last film)
and the stunningly gorgeous Stefanie Powers (just before her Girl from
U.N.C.L.E. gig). Donald Sutherland was in there too as the lumbering
village idiot. The star of the show though was the production designer
the sets were beyond great.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Six Degrees of Separation</b> - I
introduce #1D to one of my favourite Donald Southerland films - she gets
it and likes it and has a minor revelation in discovering that Will
Smith <i>can</i> act.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>28 Days Later </b>- One of those films I
have not been watching for ages because I don't like zombie movies. I
don't get them. Number One Daughter keeps telling me I'm wrong and this
was one of the films she has been trying to share with me for the past
year of so to try and prove it despite me ducking out of watching it
with her every time it has been mooted. She cornered me tonight and....
she wins. I was wrong. It's a pretty darn clever movie. If she'd
mentioned that Alex Garland had written it I might have given in sooner.
Damn! I hate finding out I've been wrong.</li></ol><br />
Abandoned in December<br />
<b>Frenemy</b> - Got 15 minutes in and thought, 'I can't stand these arseholes any longer'.</div><div class="lbContainer lbContainer--inline" data-lb-container-zoom="1" data-lb-id="_xfUid-6-1608196898" data-lb-single-image="1" data-lb-trigger=".js-lbImage-_xfUid-6-1608196898" data-xf-init="lightbox" title=""> <br /></div>
<br />
<br /><br />Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-65463814674656860642020-12-16T22:27:00.002+00:002021-06-14T16:38:58.164+01:00I Love French Comics<p>One of the great annoyances of life as a comic book fan are those moments when you are enthusing about a page to someone. You have the book open in front of them. You're waffling on about how much Mike Royer's inks work so well on Jack Kirby's pencils when you realise that the person you are showing the amazingly brilliantly composed and drafted page of art is more interested in the full-page advert for sea monkeys on the page opposite.</p><p>Lots of people are like that.</p><p></p><p>Turns out I'm a bit like that. Because, yesterday, reading this 1974 Pilote Mensuel</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.bedetheque.com/cache/thb_revues/Revue_24932.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="170" src="https://www.bedetheque.com/cache/thb_revues/Revue_24932.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I found myself totally captivated by this advert in the back pages:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.ibb.co/y8n3TXT/holster.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="491" height="320" src="https://i.ibb.co/y8n3TXT/holster.jpg" width="196" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">Nothing in the hands</p><p style="text-align: center;">Nothing in the pockets </p><p style="text-align: center;">Everything in the HOLSTER!</p><p>It's a teeny-weeny handbag - BUT MACHO!</p><p>The most wonderfully 70s thing ever. I want one. </p>Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-43209300945895322922020-10-05T23:32:00.002+01:002020-10-05T23:32:34.115+01:00<p>Part Two...<br />
<br />
August<br />
<br />
</p><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b><b>Siren</b> (2010) -</b> three horrible
people, played by actors you've never heard of, go on a boat trip
somewhere in the Adriatic(?) You can work out the rest given you know
the title of the film - and then, once you have, take out all the
interesting stuff you came up with and add an evil lesbian
because....erm... just because.... Ho hum. Another straight out of the
DvD player and into the bin job.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Ator: The Fighting Eagle</b> (1982) -
deadly dull Italian barbarian movie which contained the obligatory tribe
of Amazons, the obligatory nude bathing scene and more pointless
wandering about past the same three bits of vaguely ancient architecture
than most films. Like all films of the type the villains wore an
interesting selection of face covering helmets with pointy bits on, the
women wore their clothing slit to the thigh and the hero had a mullet
the size of Bristol Zoo. Half way through I realised I had seen (and own
on VHS) the sequel <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086972" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Ator the Invincible</a> (1982)... that was boring too.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Incredible Melting Man </b>(MST3K)</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Leopard Fist Ninja</b> - More incomprehensible chop-socky from Godfrey Ho</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"> <b>Revenge of the Drunken Master</b> - which I
think has surfeited me on Godfrey Ho WTFery for a while. The moment
where our - I want to say 'hero' but he's a mercenary rapist so it's a
bit hard to think of him as that - sticks his finger in the other
(slightly more heroic) protagonist's belly button for an extended period
of time during the prolonged 'climatic' fight with our villain has to
be one of the weirdest things I have seen for a while. I really have no
idea what kind of Monkey Magic was supposed to be going on but it was
fecking surreal.<b> </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>French Kiss</b> - an amusing piece of fluff.<b> </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Orange County</b> - after a bizarre and surreal start to the
evening - the first film I put in the DVD player was a brand new, still
sealed copy of minor Ealing comedy <i>Champagne Charlie. </i>I sat back... only to find the animated French feature <i>Asterix and Cleopatra</i>
appeared on the screen. I made sure the TV input was pointing at the
player I had put the disc in. (There's a Blu Ray player a DVD, a
Firestick, a VHS and several games consoles all capable of playing
movies it can choose from.) Yep, Blu-ray player. I took the disk out.
Looked at it. It said <i>Champagne Charlie</i>. I put it back in. <i>Asterix and Cleopatra</i>. I took it out again and made sure there wasn't another disc <i>under</i>
the one I had just put in. There wasn't. Very odd. So, not really
wanting to watch an animated Asterix adventure, I shoved in the first
thing from my unwatched pile that didn't have chainsaws, a spooky house,
or Will Smith on the front cover. <i>Orange County - o</i>ne rich kid's struggle with minor adversity which teetered on the edge of being naff with<i> just</i>
enough nice moments to keep us interested - until, at the last moment,
it fell right off the branch into a deep pool of mawkish
sentimentality. In the end our rich kid hero decides that, after all,
he <i>doesn't</i> want to go to the prestigious collage he has been
frantically desperately disastrously trying to get into for the whole
movie and, instead, is going to stay home because he has found that the
true meaning of happiness is in the bosom of his family.... at which
point Daughter Number One (who is leaving home to go to college next
week) snorted "What a total f***&^ing idiot!". And I have to agree
with her. It was an MTV production. There was lots of totally
unmemorable music shoehorned in at regular intervals. I'd guess they got
at least two soundtrack albums out of it. Coincidentally the second
Kevin Kline movie in a row.<b> </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Serial Mom </b>- D#1 has been wanting to see this for ages. She's a
big John Waters fan. I'd seen it before and was less than enamoured.
But I got her a copy. A bit of a dud I thought - the scrappy, endearing
amateurism of his earlier movies just got weighed down by the budget.<b> </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Journey to the Seventh Planet -</b> My third or fourth watching of
a film that always surprises me by its sheer bloody weirdness. It
starts off conventionally enough with a shedload of stock footage as, in
the far flung future of 2001AD, the UN world government (who know how to
avoid people sniggering at its space program) send a mission to 'Ur<i>aah</i>nus'
to discover the source of strange pulsating radiation. When the crew
arrive they find a lush green environment populated by beautiful women
plucked from their memories. An alien being, capable of manipulating
their environment by thought alone, is planning on hitching a ride back
with them and conquering earth. Unless....<br />
Its an odd one. Strangely eerie and dreamlike. I'm a great fan of the
writer/directors Ib Melchior and Sid Pink who among other delights were
responsible in part or whole for <i>Deathrace 2000, </i>Bava's<i> Planet of the Vampires, </i>the very odd <i>Angry Red Planet, The Time Travellers, Robinson Crusoe on Mars </i>and - jings! the IMDb is a dangerous place to poke about in - <i>The Man from O.R.G.Y.</i> a 1970 <i>Man from U.N.C.L.E. </i>sex comedy spoof which I didn't know existed till three minutes ago but now need to see with some urgency.<b> </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Incinerators</b> (1973) - Holy cow! What a dreadful film. The screenplay-writer of <i>It Came From Outer Space</i> and <i>Creature of the Black Lagoon </i>takes less interesting bits of both of them, using a story that previously served as <a class="link link--external" href="https://archive.org/details/tales_of_tomorrow_15_the_dune_roller" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">an episode of early 50s TV show <i>Tales of Tomorrow</i></a>,
and decides he's going to direct with zero budget actors and a really
dodgy day for night filter. From what ended up on screen I would guess
our director would have been hard put to direct a toothpaste commercial
without fucking it up. One of those movies which endless showed you the
same shot of the full moon to tell you it was night again - after only a
three shot sequence of someone getting into a car in daylight since the
last time it was night. It always puzzles me in movies how it can get
to be full moon for so long. The Moon only looks really full for one
night - three if you push it and don't look too hard - so when a film
shows you <i>yet another </i>full moon shot are you supposed to assume
it's the next night? or a month later? (That is if the script doesn't
explicitly tell you - "The almanac, Watson. Yes! tomorrow night! The
moon is full. I shall meet you on the moors and we shall track the beast
to its lair!" I have NO idea how long the action of this movie was
supposed to have taken.<br />
11.<b> Journey to the Seventh Planet</b> - again. Twice in one day. This time with Number Two daughter who is sold.<b> </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Time Travelers</b> (1964). Another Ib Melchior - he directed
this time too. I watched it with Number One Daughter - me for the
umpteenth time and, for her, the first. She liked it. I'd agree (so
did she) that the 'comedy' bits were forced and really could have been
done away with. The film looks dated but, for the time it was made, it
was pretty forward-looking stuff - compared with the run of the mill
SF films that had preceded it. One thing I really noticed on this
viewing (possibly because I was watching it with my butch, non-girly,
teenage daughter) was the positivity of the female characters. The
running-away sequence when our hero scientists are escaping the mutants;
the only woman in the group out-paces the men. IN HEELS! None of this
lagging behind, and tripping over a twig, twisting her ankle and getting
rescued crap. When she's threatened by the mutants in the lab she
doesn't scream or shrink away but grabs a fire extinguisher and blasts
them in the face. When the girl from the future (the one making the
eyes played by Playboy model Delores Wells) invites the comedy relief to
her cubicle (presumably for a good old shag - given the later dialogue
in the nude bathing scene about how she's looking forward to the mini
baby boom they will have to create on 'New Earth'). That's incredibly
liberated for 1964. The interstellar ship propulsion system is
explained to our time travellers (two Ls- we spell it differently in
Britain) by the chief female scientist. Thinking about it, there was
very little sex differentiation in the jobs people were doing in the
future.<br />
<br />
And I still think beating Arthur C Clarke to the realisation that
Advanced Tech would be Indistinguishable from Magic by a decade is
pretty impressive - you got to admit some of the sleight of hand stuff
was fun. I went frame by frame over the moment where the kids picks the
instantly-growing orange and passes it to our hero scientist, who then
peels it and passes the segments around, a fair few times before I
finally got it worked out how that gag was done.<br />
<br />
I like this film - Ib Melchior (the writer director) is one of those guys whose works needs rediscovered.<br /><b> </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>UP!</b>, a late (1976) Russ Meyer movie with all the usual
elements: huge-breasted women, rape, murder, lots and lots of energetic
improbable sex and some seriously demented sound editing. The first Russ
Meyer movie in which I think he finally got the line of action sorted
out in his head and didn't criss-cross it all the time. It was a bit
boring. I think I've seen too many of his films. The novelty has worn
off.<b> </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Woman in the Fifth</b> - elliptical French / Polish / British
produced arthouse with an American star... and I really no wiser about
anything at the end of it. The director seems like an interesting bloke.
I watched an interview with him afterwards, the only extra on the disc,
in the hope of finding out what it was I was supposed to have got from
the film other than, "well that was all very 'arthousey' wasn't it?". I
didn't come away any wiser apart from noting his observation that
arthouse films have become as stylised as Hollywood films. There are
arthouse conventions. "If a character enters the frame you can't cut
away until he has left it" being one that I shall watch out for from now
on.<br />
<br />
September<br />
</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Sisters Grimm</b> - another masochistic
wallow in the oeuvre of Robbie Moffat who, along with Richard Driscoll,
ranks high among the worst directors working in Britain today. <i>Sisters Grimm </i>(not
to be confused with the series of kids books by Michael Buckley) is the
strangely unengaging tale of two women pirates returning to their
ancestral home sometime in the vaguely, ill-defined, early 19th
century-ish sort of era ("Ye Olden Days"!) - who find themselves the
subjects of a vastly uncomplicated plot by other claimants to scare them
off. Plodding and flatly written, delivered with some enthusiasm but
not much conviction by Moffat's stock company - the most fun to be had
watching this bore was counting the times the director flip flopped his
camera across the line of action - even in straightforward, one on one,
conversations where both characters stood stock still - and spotting
the anachronisms - the close up of the zip on the back of one of the
girls' dresses was a classic. As were the speed limit sign in the
village street, a tractor in a field in the background, a chain link
fence, and the inevitable fitted carpets and electric light switches in
the interiors (at least he managed not to shoot any of the hire vans
this which he managed to do in one film). My favourite though was the
surprised cry of "Gordon Bennett!" that one of the sisters let out at
one point. I suppose Moffat (who also writes his tedious films) thought
'Gordon Bennett' sounded a bit Jane Austenish.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Happy is the Bride</b> - Ye Gods! the
British cinema-going public were easily amused in 1958. A middle class
family have some minor inconveniences planning a wedding before
everything is made to turn out all right because the judge, in the final
minor inconvenience, turns out to be a friend of the family - the old
boys network and all that! - so everyone is jolly nice and English it
all gets sorted out.<br />
All the standard tropes of this sort of piffle are trotted out. Bolshy
working class characters who drop tools and go on strike at the drop of a
hat, the family cook who's always threatening to leave, the bumbling
vicar, the slow, plodding country policeman....<br />
<br />
The film is full of setups for gags, situations, or plot complications
that never arrive. For example: Our entitled hero twit's only source of
income comes from writing record reviews under a pseudonym (we are told
this - we never see him actually do it or indeed see him listen to any
records or show ANY interest in music whatsoever). Another character - a
flighty young hepcat swingin' chick is dumped into the mix and name
drops the twit's pseudonym. "But I am he!" says he. "Man! that's the
grooviest!", says she.... and that's the end of that pointless
diversion. The film is full of go nowhere moments like that. The other
driving force behind the plot is everyone's ability to instantly come to
the wrong conclusion or willingness to accept the word of someone who
has. So we get the groom's father turning up at the wedding just as some
minor crisis is being sorted and because he doesn't get a word in
edgeways for a few minutes goes and sits down till things are a bit
calmer - this by the way is the only recognisably sensible thing anyone
does in the entire film - once the crisis is sorted there is a long
painfully unfunny sequence where everyone tries to work out who he is.
No one thinks to ASK him. Oh the hilarity.<br />
<br />
The only funny moment that I could find comes near the end when, in the
court scene, the policeman dutifully reads out the inane blabberings of
our hero from his notes. He's reading them out in a pedantic monotone
with pauses as he turns the pages of his note book. It come s across as
near incomprehensible rubbish. There's a long pause as the judge tries
to digest this information before he turns to the constable and says,
"Would you mind repeating that please!" for a moment there was a bit of
genuine comedy on screen.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Frank </b>- I like!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Historias Minimas</b> - after spending 20
odd minutes flipping through my 300+ pile of unwatched DVDs and finding
dozens and dozens of films I wasn't in the mood for I did the obvious
and pulled out the first film I came across I knew<i> absolutely nothing about</i> (and therefore had no preconceived opinions on*) and watched that. It turned out that I<i> was</i>
in the mood to watch a gentle Argentinian road movie in which an old
man sneaks away from home and hitchhikes 200 miles to see if his dog
will forgive him, while a girl from the same town goes to the same city
to take part in the cheapest game show ever produced, and a travelling
salesman has a continuing anxiety attack about a cake her has bought.
Most of the cast had never appeared in a film before. It was slow, and
As the title suggests) not a lot happened but it was lovely.<br />
<br />
*Other than I had obviously, at some point in the last 5 or so years, considered it worth buying.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Space Captain: Captain of Space! </b>(2014) - my second zero budget sf comedy in a row (after the abandoned <i>Time Lord</i>
- see below). This one was genuinely funny. It had the advantage in
that it wasn't an original story but a parody - a very affectionate one -
of the Buster Crabbe <i>Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers </i>serials of the
30s. Easy targets yes, but these guys came up with some new and funny
twists to well mined material. And used their incredibly limited budget
with wit and invention. Some of the jokes you could see coming a mile
off but they still ended up making me laugh because this film had what
Time Lord didn't. Timing. Space captain Captain of Space is based on a
produced play - I don't know how long it ran for however far off
Broadway it ran, but playing gags in front of a live paying, audience
is THE best way of finding out what works and what doesn't and allows
you to tweak things and get them right. I would guess <i>Time Lord </i>went
from screenplay to camera without a lot of rehearsal. No one told them
how bored they were getting by twitching and shuffling around in their
seats and NOT LAUGHING till it was out of the editing suite.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Hawk and the Dove</b> (2002) - another
tedious piece of s**t from the tone dead brain of Robbie Moffat. I
really can't understand how anyone could make a film as bas as this and
not want to bury it. Let alone claim it had a budget of a million quid.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Die Welt der Wunderlichs </b>(2016) - as
part of my 'Teaching myself French by just doing it' thing I watched a
German film with French subtitles and, given that my German is totally
non-existent and my French has been learned from reading comic books in
one hand and a dictionary in the other, I managed pretty well. I'm sure I
missed some of the jokes - well, no, I KNOW I missed some of the jokes
(unless Germans are prone to fits of mass spontaneous laughter for no
reason, which I doubt) but I did get some and I never felt lost. The
film was okay: a single mother struggles with her VERY dysfunctional
family and takes part in an X-Factor type talent contest. A bit twee and
convenient in places but not saccharine. I didn't know any of the faces
involved which is always nice. Katharina Schüttler as Mimi - the
protagonist mother was wonderful!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Taxi 3 </b>- in French with French subtitles.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bon Voyage</b> - with #2Daughter and
English subtitles! I had no option really the disc only had English
subtitles and they weren't switchoffable. Fun film. A straight farce.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>North by North West </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Event Horizon</b><i> -</i> oh. boy. That
was considerably stinkier than I remember - though I seem to remember I
baled out of this one about halfway through the first time I tried to
watch it may years ago. The Soundtrack CD (Michael Kamen + Orbital) is
pretty good has had a lot of play round JunkMonkey Mansions over the
years. But having spent 33p of the sucker in a charity shop's "3 for a
quid" DVD shelf the other day (the other two were Maiwenn's<i> Polisse </i>and the two disc, second half of Kieslowski's <i>Dekalog -</i>
kaching! Best pound I spent all week!) I felt it was time I gave it
another go. Stinky but, f nothing else, watching it confirmed a
resolution I made many years ago that, if I ever got to make a bad film,
I would avoid including any overt references to other films. Twice
during this sucker I was presented with very blatant references to SF
movie classics - <i>Forbidden Planet </i>and <i>Solaris</i> - and both
times I thought: 1: "Yeah, OK, right thank you, mister director, we know
you've watched some films before you got a chance to make make one."
and 2: "Why am I watching this s**t when I could be watching <i>Forbidden Planet -</i> or <i>Solaris</i>?". Some of the set design is pretty groovy.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Charade</b> - with Number Two daughter. Now Number One Daughter has left home my movie watching habits have had to change. Things like<i> Tokyo Gore Police</i> and<i> The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i> are just going to have to wait on the TBW pile till she comes home on holiday as Number Two just likes 'nicer' films.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Thor: Ragnarok</b> - Number Two Daughter
gets to chose a movie. I've not seen it before - I think this was her
third time. And it was a blast. I loved it. I'm pretty much done with
Superhero movies (about two thirds the way through <i>Guardians of the Galaxy 2</i> at the cinema I thought, 'That's it. I'm fed up with this bollocks') but this was just <b>so</b> funny!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>L'appartement</b> - A rewatch. On a second
viewing after a gap of several years I'm not sure I am as impressed as I
was the first time. The first half of the movie is great: intriguing,
romantic, sexy, complex... but as it went on layering more and more
intrigue, romance, sex, and complexity on top it just got too much. Too
artificial. In the end I just didn't care.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Excalibur</b> - Another off my long-term Need to See list. I loved it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Fun With Dick and Jane</b> - the original. I have no desire to see the remake.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Alice</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Trip</b> -1967 written by Jack
Nicholson directed by Roger Corman. There is somewhere, I'm sure, a
list of films that claim to have the largest number of cuts. This must
be well up there. There are great chunks of this film that must have
been 90% splicing tape. The neg cutter on this must have had a <i>hell</i> of a job. Though as I typed that I realised there is no way that great chunks of this <i>could</i>
have been cut on negative. There are dozens if not hundreds of one,
two, or three frame edits in some sequences. My guess is they made a
negative from the edited workprint and cut that into the more
conventionally edited main footage. Trite story with some groovy visuals
- a lot of them done in-camera.</li></ol><br />
Abandoned in September: <b>Time Lord (2011) </b>unrelenting,
semi-amateur, all green screen SF Comedy with a just-out-of-school cast
which might have made a funny little short but at the 60 minute mark and
with another 40 to go finally became too tedious to bother with. Too
much yadda yadda yadda and none of it funny enough to be worth listening
too.
<div class="js-selectToQuoteEnd"> </div><p> </p>Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-43658862498495606922020-10-05T23:28:00.001+01:002020-10-05T23:28:15.643+01:002020 movies part the first<p> <b>January </b><br />
</p><ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Shaolin Drunkard</b> - A 1983 chopsocky
'comedy' of high octain WTF?ery which had Number One Daughter and I in
hysterics for its entire running time.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Highlander : The Source</b> - Holy fucking
CRAP! What an amazingly awful film! I was in hiccup inducing
uncontrollable giggles for its entire length. Number One Daughter walked
through the room during one of the Fight Sequences - she's two movies
behind and doesn't want to spoil things so didn't watch it with me -
"That," she said after watching a few cuts and moving on, "looks like a
trailer for a PS1 Game." She was so right. Oh dear gods, my sides hurt.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Side Effects</b> - A neat enough pretty
intelligent thriller from Steven Soderbergh that was doing great guns
till the final twist [SPOILERS, Sweety] in which it turns out that it
was all an evil lesbian plot by evil lesbians. Oh... great. More
mainstream evil lesbian plottery. Just what I need.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Independent </b>- A rewatch of a favourite with #2 Daughter who was less than impressed. Ah well.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>36</b> - Le Sweeny.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Spice World: The Spice Girls Movie</b>- I
have no shame in admitting that this has been on my Must Watch List for
the longest time and I finally found a copy yesterday in a charity shop
for a quid.<br />
<br />
The Daughters and I watched it tonight while the wife ran away - Number
One has a thing for Richard E Grant and I have a thing for Scary Spice -
Number Two daughter who WASN'T WATCHING IT snuck in when she realised
Naoko Mori (Tosh from <i>Torchwood</i>) was in it - and you know what?
We had the most fun we've had with a film for ages. It's stupid. It's
badly acted. It makes absolutely NO sense. If I was uncharitable I
could say it's just a full colour remake of <i>A Hard Day's Night</i> with tits - but it works. There were times when I was both laughing both <i>at</i> and <i>with</i> the movie at the same time - which is a neat trick if you think about it.<br />
<br />
I'm sorry to say I nearly had a bladder-related accident when one of the
girls dived into a phone box wearing a silver spandex catsuit, span
round to the classic TV <i>Wonder Woman</i> music, and transmogrified into.... Bob Hoskins! That kind of stupid. I loved it.</li></ol>February<br />
<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Alexander Nevsky</b> - Prompted by hearing Prokofiev's rather terrific music for The Battle on the Ice on the radio <div class="bbMediaWrapper">
<div class="bbMediaWrapper-inner">
</div>
</div> and next day noticing I had a copy of the movie in my unwatched
pile. For a film buff I'm woefully ignorant about Eisenstein's work. I
must say that for a film made in 1938 it looked very primitive. Like a
silent with breaks for locked-off camera speeches about defending Russia
from invaders. Ok, it was the Stalin era, and WW2 was heaving into view
but, compared with what was being produced elsewhere in the world, it
must have looked very old fashioned even then. Having said that there
were moments of WOW! during the battle sequences - I remember thinking, I
bet Kurosawa watched the hell out of this movie - and some very
dramatic use of hand held camera which I'm not sure was in the average
DP's repertoire back then.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Justice League -</b> I fell asleep. I've not seen <i>Man of Steel</i> or <i>Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice</i> so had little or no idea what was going on for the first half - apart from the bits featuring the Amazons because I have seen <i>Wonder Woman</i>
- I haven't read a Flash comic since the 1960s and had no idea who the
bloke with the glowing eyeball and all the CGI bionic stuff was. My ears
pricked up at the words 'Mother Box' before I realised this had very
little to do with the Mother Boxes I remembered from the New Gods/ 4th
World books that I loved as a kid. Ping! ping! By the time the story
finally got going I didn't care. I fell asleep. By the time I woke up
again Superman wasn't dead any more and the same people were still
hitting each other (and Superman) so I went back to sleep again.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mr. Holmes </b>- Half way through I had
the thought that I had seen this film before. It reminded me so much of
something else. Then I realised it was reminding me of <i>Gods and Monsters </i>which
also starred Ian McKellen as a once famous talent living in isolated
retirement. Reading the credits afterwards I found both were directed
by Bill Condon.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With - </b>Mild rambling American indy film which was better than I was expecting.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>La Dolce Vita </b>- In a beautifully restored print in a cinema. The best way to any movie.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Darwin Awards</b> - Intermittently very funny, occasionally<i> really </i>not good 50p well spent in CEX</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Gorgon</b> - Mid-period (i.e. pre 'let's fill the screen with vampire lesbians and tits!") Hammer horror.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Paul </b>- Funnier than I remembered.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Truth about Cats and Dogs</b> - I was too tired to think</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Comic </b>(1985) - I introduce Number
One Daughter to the deliriously dreadful films of Richard Driscoll.
(Who, I discovered tonight, appears to be out of jail and is making
films again - hurrah!) This is my IMDb review of The Comic: <a class="link link--external" href="https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2806472/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2806472/</a></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Professor Marston and the Wonder Women</b> (2017) - a biopic about the creator of Wonder Woman and the women in his life. A beautifully romantic polyamorous love story.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Killer Nun </b>(1979) - I'm sure <i>The Killer Nun</i>
made sense to someone somewhere at some point during its production but
by the time it got to my eyeballs it was an incoherent, bonkers mess.
Though there was just enough to keep me watching - some really oddly
edited sequences during the drug-addicted, central character's morphine
trips - and the astonishingly beautiful Paulo Morra...</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<div class="lbContainer lbContainer--inline" data-lb-container-zoom="1" data-lb-id="_xfUid-1-1601936839" data-lb-single-image="1" data-lb-trigger=".js-lbImage-_xfUid-1-1601936839" data-xf-init="lightbox" title="">
<img class="bbImage" data-url="https://fappeningbook.com/avatars/p/a/paola-morra/avatar.jpg" data-zoom-target="1" src="https://fappeningbook.com/avatars/p/a/paola-morra/avatar.jpg" />
</div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: 10px;">Wow! It's really hard to find an online <br />
picture of this woman with her clothes<b> on!</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
...as the lesbian killer nun. Another one ticked off the Video Nasties list.</div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>At the Earth's Core</b> - the Doug
McClure, Peter Cushing one. Watched with my Number One Son aged 10 who
lapped it up. The next day he said, "Dad, I just realised. That film
we watched last night. I didn't have any songs in it." which is one of
the odder things I've ever heard about a film with exploding dinosaurs
and Caroline Munro's cleavage.</li></ol><br />
March<br />
<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Handmaiden</b> - A rewatch and not as
wonderful as I remember but then I have just read the book it was
'inspired by' and I was very conscious of the way the film wandered well
away from (and simplified) the complicated revelation-filled latter
third of the novel. Still a damn fine piece of film making though.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Cat Women of the Moon</b> - Stupendously
awful entry in the First Mission to the Moon encounters an All Female
Society genre which I have watched far too often for my own good.
Watched with #1 Daughter and we had the most ridiculous fun. She's very
good at the MST3K type one liners. I'd never noticed, before, the sheer
ludicrous suggestiveness of the line delivered by one of the seductive
cat women to her venal male victim. She wants the low-down on how his
space ship operates; he wants the gold she say lies in abundance not far
from where they are sitting. " "I'll make a bargain with you," she
purrs. "You take me to your rocket ship; I'll show you the cave of
gold!" - pure Freudian smut that's what it is. Filth!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Notebook</b> - long, overly
sentimental, slushily romantic guff which - had I known what is was - I
doubt I would have put in my DVD player but as I <i>didn't</i> (I found
the disc in a pile of unsorted rubbish and wondered what it was) I
watched it and was weeping like a baby at the end of it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Dragonheart </b>- I'm working my way through a stack of back issues of <i>Empire</i> magazine I bought a few years ago - my collection is taller than Tom Cruise - . <i>Dragonheart</i> is a lead story in the one I'm currently reading. I noticed today I had a copy near the top of my To Be Watched pile. <i>Empire</i> was right. It's not good.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Exterminator </b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Lair of the White Worm</b> (1988) -
seriously bonkers Ken Russell 'Horror' film with the best Kilted
Bagpiper Vs Snake vampire policeman battle ever put on screen. And
Amanda Donohoe wearing a giant sacrificial dildo.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Ghost in the Shell</b> - the live action
remake which left me wondering "Why did they bother?". It's not that it
was bad and the casting issues didn't bother me but it felt like a shot
for shot remake of the original (I'm sure it wasn't but that's the
impression I came away with). The original is just an amazing piece of
art. This was just another CGI heavy movie without the stillness of the
original - OR the bloody brilliant music. Bizarrely they included some
of the original music over the end titles just to remind you what you
could have been watching instead.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Knack</b> - "a British movie that has 'Sixties' written all over it ".</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Potiche </b>(2010) -</li></ol>Unwatchable dross of the month club:<br />
<b>Voodoo Academy</b> - Would-be homoerotic horror which fails on both counts. I lasted 20 minutes.<br />
<br />
<b>April</b><br />
<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Empire of Ash</b> - a seriously dreadful American post-apocalyptic effort that spent<br />
<br />
80% of its running time filling the screen with people firing
semi-automatic weapons at each other in a quarry (which was pretending
to be several different places).<br />
<br />
10% of its time showing us hairy leather-clad biker types riding around
in trucks shouting "Get the mother f*8kers!" at each other.<br />
<br />
5% of its time in close ups of 'actors' muffling ump their lnes an
mbbling guff tht th wrtrs tht ws a plot. (The main bad guy was
brilliant. You could barely understand him when he was on screen and
could see his lips sort of moving a bit. When he was delivering dialogue
off camera he was incomprehensible!)<br />
<br />
And finally the film spent 5% of its time getting the two Victoria's
Secrets models that hung around in this quarry for no apparent reason to
get their tits out. Hint to future movie makers of the world. You
cannot make a nude bathing scene interesting (or even credible) if you
have only 6 inches of water in a rocky stream to play with. Can't be
done.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Kiss Me, Monster </b>- I introduce #1D to the incomprehensible film making of Jesus Franco. Many WTF?s were generated.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Blue Gate Crossing</b> - sweet little Chinese film about two girls and a boy who, within that triangle, each love someone unobtainable.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Diva</b> - with #2 daughter - "What did you think?" I asked her. "... It was... very French."</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Hundra</b> - My favourite 1980s barbarian movie which just gets better each time I see it. This time was the first time I have watched it <i>with</i>
anyone (#1D). I was a little nervous at the start that it was going to
be one of those films which divided rather than bought us closer - it
starts with a prolonged sequence in which Hundra's (our heroine's)
peaceful, all-female tribe are wiped out, brutally murdered and raped by
hairy barbarians. I needn't have worried. As soon as Hundra started on
the path of revenge and whacking the bad guys, and fomenting female
emancipation while trying to get pregnant, she was right there with it.
The film is a lot funnier than I remembered. Having someone there to
share the jokes heightened the humour. She now has a printout of the
poster stuck up in her room.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Mummy</b> - the Brendan Fraser one. I
like Brendan Fraser. Got a bit of a crush on him. But this one was just
generic. meh! Too much running around and SFX. I didn't believe a word
of it. The most fun I had while watching it was listening to John
Hahhah's accent wobbling about. And I had one of those moments when I
idly rewrote one of the sight gags in my head ( I was that engaged) and
turned it into something I don't think I've seen anywhere - so it's
going in the notebook for possible future use.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Little Ashes</b> - Fictionalised account
of the (possible) real life romance between Salvidor Dali and Frederico
Garcia Lorca - in which Dali was portrayed as the obnoxious wanker
(literally) that I always thought him as being. Looked great but... I
dunno. There was something missing. I wasn't convinced.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Carry on Screaming</b> - with #2D</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Strangers on a Train</b> - with #1D who
was on the edge of her seat. Another off the 1001 list. I've seen it
before but was gripped too but managed to slip in the odd analytical
thought. I'd never noticed before what a significant part staircases
play in Hitchcock's films. He uses staircases well.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Nightcrawler</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Two Faces of January</b> - and another rule of thumb is born. Anything based on a book by Patricia Highsmith is worth a watch.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Scanners</b> - with #1D</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>How to Get Ahead in Advertising</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Ignition</b> - Routine by the numbers
actioner which had some nice camera angles. Doubt if I will remember any
of it in a week's time. But I do need to see one of the director's
earlier movies<br />
<i>Pourquoi l'étrange Monsieur Zolock s'intéressait-il tant à la bande dessinée? </i>(1983)</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mrs Henderson Presents</b> - Bob Hoskins NUDE!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Summer Things</b> - mercifully short (by
French standards) 103 minutes spent in the company of a bunch of
unpleasant bourgeoisie on holiday. It was billed as a comedy. Hmm...</li></ol>unfinished in April:<br />
<br />
<b>Promethus</b> never seen it before. I lasted just shy of an hour
before turning it off. I didn't believe a word of it. I nearly turned
off at the five minute mark when our archaeologist dated the cave
paintings she had just discovered within seconds. And I'm just so fed up
of people doing stupid stupid things just to keep the plot going
especially when they are supposed to be intelligent scientists. Dumb
movie. And an expensive dumb movie which somehow makes it worse.<br />
<br />
<b>Infini</b> - Read a good review of it in an old Empire magazine I was
flicking through the other day and saw it on Amazon Prime as I was
scrolling through the availables. Gave up after 25 minutes of low
budget <i>Aliens </i>meets <i>Event Horizon</i>. I am done with watching sweaty people being terrified up and down the same three dark corridors.<br />
<br />
May<br />
<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Flashman</b> - Rubbish day so I watch some shite with Number One Daughter. <i>Flashman i</i>s a seriously awful Italian superhero movie which had #1D and I in stitches for its whole running time. And then we watched:</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Future Women</b> (aka <i>The Girl from Rio</i>)
- seriously WTF Jess Franco lesbian utopia SF dross We both felt a
lot better afterwards. Number One Daughter especially I suspect because
she exorcised a mini demon of hers. The box set which had <i>Future Women </i>in
has a menu screen with a loop of clips from many of the films in the
set. One of the shots in this loop has haunted her for years. It's a
weird moment where a man in a hat, with his back to the camera, turns
round as a couple approach him to reveal:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="lbContainer lbContainer--inline lbContainer--canZoom" data-lb-container-zoom="1" data-lb-id="_xfUid-2-1601936839" data-lb-single-image="1" data-lb-trigger=".js-lbImage-_xfUid-2-1601936839" data-xf-init="lightbox" title="">
<img class="bbImage" data-url="https://teleportcity3000.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/gfr14.jpeg?w=1200&h=" data-zoom-target="1" src="https://teleportcity3000.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/gfr14.jpeg?w=1200&h=" />
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
It's an utterly bonkers shot and she finally got to see in its very odd
context - though not in as good a print as that still was taken from.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Diner de cons</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Better than Chocolate </b>(1999) -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Billy Liar </b>-</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Head</b> - The Monkees movie. And what a
weird treat. #1D and I had more WTF?!s per minute during this one than
we usually generate in a month's worth of movie watching. And a movie
that is going to play a pivotal role in our endless game of 'Warwick
Davis' in that it's a quick shortcut from Ed Wood's films (Tor Johnson)
to Mel Brooks and Star Trek (Terri Garr) to Kubrick (Jack Nicholson) and
all sorts of other blink and you missed it delights.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Downsizing</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Elvira -Mistress of the Dark</b> - which just gets funnier each time I see it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Queen of the Amazons</b> - I needed cheering up so I spent the afternoon watching s**t with my Number One Daughter.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Manster</b> - A Japanese American mad
scientist monster movie from the 50s which alternated between being
hilariously awful and actually really very good... without breaking step
between the two which is remarkable achievement. Watching crap films
with #1Dis great fun. DIY MST3K fun.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Earth Girls are Easy</b> - Gods! I'm evil.
"Fancy watching an early Jeff Goldblum film?" I asked Daughter Number
One who is a bit of a fan." "Ok!" she said, settling down. "Wait!...
Wait!... It's not <i>Earth Girls are Easy</i> is it?!" But by then it
was too late. The disc was in the player and she was doomed.
Afterwards she said she probably invented several new emotions while
watching it. The feeling of, "Thank you for sharing that - I hate you."
being one of them, "I have a headache now." Half-way through she asked
if we could watch <i>Voyage of the Rock Aliens</i> as a palette cleanser. Mwahahahaha!</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> Eating Raoul </b>- D#1's turn and we get
to giggle our way through what has to be one of the most amoral films I
have ever seen. Utterly reprehensible - the entire plot is that a
married couple lure 'degenerate swingers' to their apartment and kill
them for the money without the slightest qualm - and it's insanely
funny.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Gone in 60 Seconds</b> (1974) - well that was pretty boring.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Taxi 2</b> - and that was silly fun.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Drôle de Félix -</b> low budget, French gay road movie which had its moments.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Starship Invasions</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Carry-on Doctor</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Le Bossu</b> - #2D and and I. She likes films with subtitles I like French movies.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Curse of the Golden Flower</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Ikarie XB1</b> - for the umpteeth time. It gets better each time I see it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Breaking In</b> - written by John Sayles and directed by Bill Forsyth. Both did sterling work but it just didn't quite work for me.</li></ol><b>Abandoned in May:<br />
Hybrid</b> - alien killer car garbage which out wore its welcome after about 10 minutes.<br />
<br />
June<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Razorback </b>- Giant mutant killer pig in the outback with #1D.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Casablanca</b> - with #2D.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Solar Crisis </b>- Hoooo boy! Why do I do this to myself.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Footlight Parade</b> - one of THE greatest films of all time.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Paprika - </b>One of the better Anime that D#1 has tried to enthuse me with. She likes Anime and thinks I should too.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Candyman - </b>She also likes horror films<b>.</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Dish</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Paris, je t'aime - </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome - </b>D#1 gets to hear what Boris Karlof sounds like! "You go, we stay we belong dead!" from Bride of Frankenstein doesn't count.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>I'm a Cyborg but That's OK -</b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>I Walked with a Zombie - </b>Val Lewton classic</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Legend of Boggy Creek 2(MST3K)</b> - again. I'm a sad bugger.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Carnival of Souls</b> - I've been meaning to take another look at this for ages and I shared with #1D (who loved it).</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Shape of Things to Come</b> (1979) -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Gold Diggers of 1933 -</b> We're in the
money! Not as great as Footlight Parade but still pretty darn good
and....I really found myself very affected by the <i>My Forgotten Man Number</i>. I almost cried.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bugsy Malone </b></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Phantom of the Paradise </b>(1974) - Daughter Number one and I have a Paul Williams double bill.</li></ol>July<br />
<ol><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Adventures of a Taxi Driver </b>(1976) - I
really don't know why I do this to myself but every now and then I go
poke about on the Firestick till I find a 1970s British 'Sex Comedy'
(which are always from my experience neither) and watch it through to
the bitter end. Someone on IMDb described this film as 'Dismal'.
That's the perfect word. Watching these things is a horrible.
soul-destroying experience but I'll tell you what. It really makes
anything you watch <i>after </i>it for several months look a hell of a lot better. Even crap like...</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Space Amoeba</b> (aka <i>Yog: Monster from Space</i>)
- an Ishirô Honda double bill! Space Amoeba is from late in his carreer
and, from the look of it, he just didn't give a s**t any more as long
as it was in focus.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Mantango</b> (aka <i>Attack of the Mushroom People</i>)
- from a decade earlier is (even in a horribly dubbed version) a far
superior film. Atmospheric, creepy, slow, almost decedant. I really
liked it. I suspect I would have liked it more in a subtitled version.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Battle Beyond the Stars</b> - Roger Corman's SF reworking of <i>The Seven Samuri.</i></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Spider Baby -</b> peculiar (and funny) horror.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Velvet Touch </b>- Hollywood hookum of
the first water that couldn't make its mind up if it was a Noir, a
'woman's picture', a Freudian psychological guilt movie or a
Columbo-like 'we know who dunnit but how does our detective prove it'
movie. I rather enjoyed it.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Les Hommes libres - </b>fictionalised
account of the role played by Moroccan Muslims in the French resistance
and the saving of Jews from the Nazi occupation. A chunk of history of
which I was totally ignorant.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Dracula's Daughter </b>(1936) - the first (mainstream) lesbian vampire movie?</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Theatre of Blood</b> - A 1973 film in
which Vincent Price has a whale of a time as a ham Shakespearean actor
bumping off - in true Shakespearean manner - all the critics he blamed
for ruining his career ably aided by Diana Rigg in drag. It's a bonkers,
camp hoot.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Prestige </b>- I liked that. I liked that a lot.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>I, Tonya </b>- which left me less than overwhelmed.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Tekkonkinkreet</b> -</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Warlock</b> - to celebrate the fact that
my VHS player does work after all (long story) I make D#1 (Richard E
Grant fan that she is) watch him putting on a very variable Scottish
accent, Connor McCloud hair and cossy, and run around modern day America
trying to over out overact Julian Sands as the titular warlock. She may
never forgive me.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Man in Outer Space </b>(aka <i>Man From the First Century </i>1962) a slight Czech SF comedy with a few amusing moments and some <i>seriously groovy a</i>rt design. I first came across it on Youtube where it was used as the imagery for this earworm of 80s Czech electronica.<br />
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</div></li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Let the Right One In </b>- D#1's been
wanting to see this for ages and sat me down tonight to watch it with
her. What a great wee film! I have NO intention of ever watching the
remake.</li><li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Gwendoline </b> (aka <i>The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak</i>)
- OMG. I was expecting bad (it's based after all on a comic strip in
John Willie's 1950's leather / bondage fetish magazine Bizarre - how
good could it be?) but when it got to the point where our heroine
rescues our hero by riding off in a chariot pulled by three leather clad
pony girls - only then to be chased by another three similar
chariots... and I realise I'm am more interested in the location it was
filmed in than in the action you have to question the quality. Just how
bad does a film have to be to make a <i>salt mine</i> (?) more interesting than 20+ semi-naked women in leather fetishwear running around in the foreground?
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<img class="bbImage" data-url="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOTFlY2RlMGYtMzRkMi00YWRlLTg3YzItNzg1ZDAzNTdkMjJmXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUyNDk2ODc@._V1_SY450_SX800_AL_.jpg" data-zoom-target="1" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOTFlY2RlMGYtMzRkMi00YWRlLTg3YzItNzg1ZDAzNTdkMjJmXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUyNDk2ODc@._V1_SY450_SX800_AL_.jpg" />
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</li></ol>
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Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-30335986802520817692020-06-30T17:41:00.003+01:002020-06-30T19:21:25.326+01:002019 Movie Diary Part the second...<span style="font-size: 15px;">July</span><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Bula Quo</b>
- Dear mother of God! That was painful. For some unfathomable reason
someone in 2013 thought that what the world needed was a comedy thriller
starring the band Status Quo (as themselves) getting mixed up with
gangsters who harvest the organs of people they force to play Russian
Roulette. Like a hard Days Night written and directed by someone who
saw a couple of Guy Ritchie movies and armed with a budget of tens. It's
as unfunny as it is distasteful, and equally as badly acted, paced, and
scripted. Awful. Easily the worst film I've watched all year. It is
(I realised the next day) the sort of movie you threaten people with.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Usual Suspects</b> - </span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Peeping Tom</b> - </span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>An American Werewolf in London</b> - the third of our 1001 movies project of the week for #1D and I. And much better (funnier) than I remember.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Witchfinder General</b> - </span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Pink Floyd: The Wall</b> - 17 yr old D#1 loved it. I thought it was a pile of self-indulgent juvenile wank.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Body Heat</b> - (1001 project)</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Horse Feathers </b>- pretty unmemorable - apart from the speakeasy password routine early Marx Bros. </span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine </b>(2017) - renamed<i> Galaxy Raiders</i> to try and con the gullible into thinking it was some sort of <i>Guardians of the Galaxy </i>knock-off,
this is a pretty crappy home movie with a bit of a budget - well,
enough to hire Casper van Dien for a week and Cynthia Rothrock for a
couple of hours. (She's on the cover equal billing as Casper Van Dien
but only onscreen for a couple of minutes as a static 'hologramic' image
delivering lines she's probably been handed three minutes beofore
shooting.) It's crap. But with some virtuoso masked villain acting to
liven things up. Masked villain acting is a subtle art. When strapped
into a costume that totally obscures his features the average bad actor
will start to exaggerate his hand and body gestures to compensate for
the lack of expression he would usually convey with his face. As most
bad actors don't know what to do with their hands most of the time
anyway (been there, done that, and cashed the cheques) this leads to bad
actor movie villains delivering bad movie villain lines while
alternating between clenched their leather gloved fists ("I will destroy
them!") and pointing ("You are powerless to stop me!") clench point
clench point clench point clench point.... Raise hands to ceiling
("Mwahahahaha!"). Cut to heroes wandering around the same piece of
woodland every other low budget, shot on digital, straight to DVD film
made over the last 20 years was shot in. That good. The same few names
appeared many times in the end credits; sometimes the same name is on
screen several times at the same time performing different tasks. And
there was a whole slew of Kickstarter backers who presumably didn't get
their money back. A very long 83 minutes.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool</b>
- which, once I had got past the strange digital quality of the
camerawork which gave the thing a TV quality, and some strangely too
big, or obviously green screened set design, I slowly fell deeply in
love with. A couple of great central performances telling a simple but
wonderful story. I was (as with most films that use <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>as a touchstone) in tears at the end.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian -</b> oh gods! they made a third one...!</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>House on Haunted Hill</b> - silly little William Castle chiller which made no sense whatsoever but Vincent Price was having such a good time....</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Starsky and Hutch </b>- meh</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>I, Robot</b> - which I <i>know</i>
I've seen before but remembered nothing about. I suspect I may well be
typing the same thing in a couple of years. I liked Alex Proyas'
earlier funnier films. Though, having said that, I may well remember it
because I spotted Aaron Douglas in a non-speaking, standing behind
someone else, blink and you miss it role. He went on to play Chief
Tyrol in<i> Battlestar Galactica, </i>and other stuff. Another useful link in the Game of Warwick Davis.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Hudson Hawk</b> - </span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Apollo 18</b>
- well that was pretty pointless. A 'found footage' movie purporting
to tell the story of a secret mission to the moon. A couple of nicely
set up jump scares but in the end it was all a bit 'so what'?</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;">August <br />
<br />
For some reason (that I cannot remember or fathom) I told myself that
this week I was only going to watch films in which the 'First Manned
Mission to Mars Goes Horribly Wrong':</span><br />
<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Red Planet</b>
- First of two big budget 'First Manned Mission to Mars Goes Horribly
Wrong' movies released in 2000. This is the one with Val Kilmer
fighting off exploding killer 'nemotoads' and launching himself into
orbit in an obsolete Russian lander after jump starting it with the
battery he ripped out of a killer robot. </span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Mission to Mars</b> - The second <span style="font-size: 15px;">big
budget 'First Manned Mission to Mars Goes Horribly Wrong' movie
released in 2000. This is the one where Tim Robbins, Gary Sinese,
Queen Hippolyta, and that bloke from <i>Sliders </i>space conga from
their crippled ship to another handily passing piece of NASA technology
with landing capabilities. Of the two I preferred <i>Mission to Mars</i>.
The tech looks more credible, the science (though still ultra iffy in
places) was more credible and the ending - though a bit Disney icky in
places - had a hopeful upbeat looking to the future quality which many
people have likened to Kubric's<i> 2001</i> but reminded me more of the
optimistic, looking forward to the future endings that Soviet era
Russian, Czech, and East German SF films used to have. <i>Red Planet </i>ends
with the usual Hollywood bullshit heterosexual romance conquering all
ending ('all', in this case, being the laws of chance, physics,
medicine, and common sense). </span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Satyricon</b> - </span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Grosse Point Blank </b>-
one of those 'something wants me to watch this' moments. I picked out
this film as I was sorting my To Be Watched pile yesterday ('sorting'
being a euphemism for 'shovelling into a slightly less untidy pile') and
I thought "I must get round to this soon" and then, 20 minutes later,
found myself reading a glowing review of it in my current selected read
as I work though my HUGE pile of unread<i> Empire</i> and <i>Total Film </i>Magazines (it's taller than Tom Cruise). Not sure my review would be as glowing as <i>Empire's </i>but
it's a funny, odd little film. I'm developing another rule of thumb for
selecting movies. Anything with Alan Arkin in it has to be worth
watching at least once. </span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid</b> - nowhere near as funny as I remember.</span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Arena </b>- Women in Prison film set in Ancient Rome (ok, Ancient Brundisium). </span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters </b>(2013)
- There were several Hansel and Gretel movies made in 2013. This was
probably the most expensive one and, I would guess, the one the others
were knockbustering. I've seen two this one and the one starring BooBoo
Stewart. I don't think I would want to watch either of them again
unless money changed hands. A<a class="link link--external" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2784082/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_57" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"> sequel (to this one) appears to be in development hell </a>- or just shelved. Who can tell? (My money is on the latter.)</span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Kung Fu Hustle - </b></span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>All The Queen's Men </b>-
Matt Le Blanc in drag behind enemy lines in WW2. Surprisingly not as
awful as it sounds but still not good. Far too long for one thing. a
ninety minute movie stretched out to two hours with enough amazing
strokes of luck and coincidences helping the plot along to keep three
other movies afloat as well.</span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>My Forgotten Man </b>(aka
Flynn) - supposed biopic of Errol Flynn's early years that is - even
from my minimal knowledge of the man - such obviously fictional bollocks
to make you wonder. Again, far too long for the material (even at 95
minutes), and padded with numerous overlong montages of not a lot
happening.</span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet </b>- with #2D who was watching for the first time (my 4th I think). She loved it. I still do.
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<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Maverick</b> - fun.</span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Frequencies</b>
- interesting low budget British SF. A Romeo and Juliet story set in a
world (not that far from the here and now) in which people's
unchangeable 'frequency' determines their luck.</span></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Great Gatsby </b>(1974)
- with D#2 who is greatly enamoured of the book, and the Baz Lurman
version. It's many many years since I saw this and I was bowled over.
What a great film. </span></span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;">SEPTEMBER</span><br />
<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b><span style="font-size: 15px;">The Double Life of Veronique</span></b></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b><span style="font-size: 15px;">Raising Arizona </span></b></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b><span style="font-size: 15px;">Thor the Conqueror -</span></b><span style="font-size: 15px;"> cheap Italian barbarian crap. Really really awful (even by Italian movie standards).</span> <span style="font-size: 15px;"> But all my fever dream-state ManFlu brain can cope with at the moment</span></li>
</ol>
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SEPTEMBER<br />
<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Double Life of Veronique</b></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Raising Arizona </b></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Thor the Conqueror -</b> cheap Italian
barbarian crap. Really really awful (even by Italian movie standards).
But all my fever dream-state ManFlu brain can cope with at the moment</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Clash of the Warlords</b> - more feverdream stuff this time a Phillipino <i>Max Max</i> knock off.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Nurse </b>(aka<i> Nurse 3D</i>) - pretty shitting awful lesbian psycho-nurse slasher shite.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Night of the Hunter</b>
- darling Daughter Number One continues to amaze and astound me with
how wonderful her movie tastes are by wanting to watch what is one of
the oddest Hollywood films of the fifties with me - she wants to watch <i>Hellraiser</i> next... she's eclectic. I'll give her that. </span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Replicant</b> (2001) - Jean Claud van
Damme as a serial killer bought to justice (in a shot to death in a soon
to explode cellar sort of way) by a retired cop and a super-secret
government black ops clone of the killer with enhanced telepathic powers
and genetic memory of the killer's actions. As bollocks as that all
sounds (why, ferinstance, didn't the black ops guys just sit their
duplicate down in front of the sooper-dooper facial recognition software
that the cop had to pull strings and sneak his way into his old office
to get to? Software that identifies the villain in seconds - case
solved! Except this being a stupid, Avi Lerner produced action movie the
hero ex cop has to get personal, force an illegal entry, and trip a
HUGE explosion by tampering with the evidence). There was very little
plot that wasn't 90% hole, and what there was was punctuated by long,
incoherent fist fights - in which van Damme gets to beat himself up a
few times. This film provided more grist to my theory that any film
produced by Avi Lerner will have a helicopter in it... by having a
helicopter in it.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Godzilla </b>(1998) - the Roland Emmerich
version. Meh. I missed the music. That Godzilla theme is just the most
brilliant piece of film music. I'm sure the music here did it's job but
20 minutes later I can't remember a note. And someone really ought to
tell Roland Emmerich that helicopters can go UP as well as along and
from side to side. As in his earlier <i>Moon 44 </i>Emmerich stages a
long pointless chase sequence when he has helicopters pointlessly
careering through twisty turny canyons when they could have escaped the
threatened danger by just going... up.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Prospect </b>(2018) - I like! This is what low budget SF movie making should be like.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Catwoman </b>- rewatch is as not good as I remember and it's reputation.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Hundra</b> - another rewatch.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Constantine</b> - Keanu Reeves was wrong for the role but there was a slow weirdness about this adaptation of the <i>Hellblazer</i> comic books that almost made up for it.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>La belle saison</b> - slow, lyrical (French) lesbian romance.</li>
</ol>
October<br />
<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Chance </b>(2002) - today, in one of my
favourite second-hand DVD / CD hunting grounds (they're four for a quid,
it's off the beaten track, and I'm not telling you where it is) my eye
was caught by a DVD spine. It stood out because it had no BBFC
classification logo. Not on the spine, nor anywhere else on the box.
My curiosity buttons are well and truly pushed by things like this. <i>Chance</i>, it turned out, was a pretty dire 'romantic comedy' (it was neither) starring a couple of regulars from later seasons of <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i>
(insert your own jokes about the movie sucking here). Very low budget
and full of endless, self-indulgent, fourth wall breaking, yadda yadda
yadda dialogue that needed cutting by a good 50% (though doing that
would have forced the writer / director / lead to come up with something
visually interesting to fill the gaps and I didn't see much evidence of
her ability to do that on show) all badly delivered in that snarky and
heavy sigh laden style known and loved by Youth Theatre groups the world
over. Daughter Number One (a member of her local Youth Theatre Group
and ardent critic of the eyeball roll, heavy sigh, and sulky gesture
school of acting was in fits of giggles at what she saw on screen.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>3:10 to Yuma</b> - the original.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Bon Voyage</b> - le deuxieme film de Jean-Paul Rappeneau j'ai vu, et comme l'autre, <i>Cyrano de Bergerac</i>, je l'ai aimé. [/pretentious tosser mode]. But seriously; I loved it.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Supergirl</b> - a near 2 hour cut. Why?</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>La Cite des enfants perdu</b> -</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Young Sherlock Holmes </b>- A good choice for Friday Night Movie with my two younger kids.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>B.E.I.N.G</b> - why there isn't a full
stop after the G in the title on the box is the most disturbing thing in
the film. Very Shot on Video. For the first 20 minutes I had
absolutely no idea what was going on apart from the fact that a bunch of
really bad actors were beating each other up, down back alleys in LA .
One of them appeared to be force-feeding the other hard-boiled eggs
which made them explode green goo. By the time I had worked out what
was going on - which was s**t (a serial killer is let loose to hunt down
and kill alien beings who can only survive by inhabiting human bodies) -
I didn't care. There's a 'twist' ending too! From the end credits
it's obvious that the film makers thought the film was called <i>Choker</i>. I wonder why they changed it. Apart from the fact that <i>Choker</i> is a s**t name for a film. IMDb tells me it's also called<i> Disturbance</i> in the US and was shot in 12 days. Looks like it.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Shotgun</b> - !!!! He's a cop! His sister
is a hooker! There's a maniac on the loose beating up prostitutes!
Guess what happens! - seriously AWFUL. Cops so stupid they can't catch a
killer who keeps beating people up in the SAME hotel room (a hotel room
incidentally that the shill, who suckers the girls for his boss to beat
up, rents from the unsuspecting desk clerk - despite the fact that his
boss is already in it). Luckily the DVD I was watching started to fall
apart about 3/4 the way through. I mean that literally.The sound stopped
working and when I ejected the disc to see what was up it had developed
a huge crack from the centre to about 1/2 way to the edge. I was never
so happy to not to have to watch the end of a movie. Our hero cop had a
ponytail too. Lots of the men in this movie (well the middle-aged white
ones) had ponytails. That kind of movie.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b> The Cloverfield Paradox </b>- oooh!<span style="font-size: 15px;"> Gugu Mbatha-Raw is rather lovely isn't she?! Didn't notice much about the rest of the film, to be honest.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Gigli </b>- ow!</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Tomorrowland: a World Beyond - </b>and I got mugged. Knackered after a long day and not really wanting to watch anything demanding I pulled <i>Tomorrowland: a World Beyond</i>
from the To Be Watched Pile and shoved it into the DVD player. Not seen
it before. Disney movie. George Clooney. Harmless bit of CGI heavy
escapism - that'll do me, I thought. <br />
<br />
I was totally wrong footed<i>. Tomorrowland </i> turned out to be a
pretty terrific film that had glued to the screen and in tears at the
end of it. My only regret is I wish I'd watched it with my kids.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Interview</b>
- Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller do acting! Based on (essentially a
remake of) a Dutch two hander shot in 5 days. Filmed with three cameras
simultaneously on a conveniently huge apartment Miller and Buscemi had a
lot of creative freedom and a lot of fun with this. Not sure I was
convinced by all the twists, turns, and about faces of the plot but it
was fun watching two very good professionals playing them out.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Vantage Point </b>(2008)
- this must have sounded so good as a pitch: A Secret Service agent
with PTSD foils a terrorist attempt to assassinate the US President -
but told in multiple flashback storyines - like <i>Mission Impossible</i> mashed up with <i>Inception</i>.
It starts off pretty well. The workaday newroom tensions as they
cover the open-air event (while having newsmen conveniently info-dump
all the background, character-identifying exposition we need) are well
done but it's pretty hard NOT to do that sort of thing so it sells -
especially at the start of the film when people are still settling into
the story. But it soon goes wrong. A flashback within a flashback early
in the film didn't help. (A personal hate of mine.) A good cast, who
obviously signed up before they got the final script, including
Sigourney Weaver, Forest Whittaker, & William Hurt) sleepwalk though
paper-thin parts, and the start again/rewind gimmick gets tired very
fast as each retelling adds little to the story that we hadn't worked
out already a couple of iterations before. The plot finally comes
crashing (literally) to a halt when the ruthless,
kill-everyone-who-moves-that-is-possibly-in-their-way (including bound
hostages, innocent bystanders, and minor members of their own
organisation) bastard evil terrorists go and crash their stolen
ambulance to avoid hitting a young girl crossing the road. (Thus
allowing our multiple car crash survivor, plank-faced hero to catch up
with them on foot.) Boll-ocks!</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes</b>
- An extraordinary film from The Brothers Quay which looks like
something David Lynch and Jan Švankmajer would have come up with as a
backstory to one of the later Myst games. And yet again - despite my
bestest efforts - I fell asleep. I have never managed to watch this film
without falling asleep. It's not that it's boring (though it is slowly
paced) but it is so dreamlike and opaque that it manages somehow to
convince my subconscious to take charge. I'm starting to think the film
doesn't actually exist - it's a figment of my imagination that I only
dream I'm trying to watch in the first place.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Vampire Lovers</b> - Late Hammer Lesbian Vampire nonsense which WAS boring.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Four Just Men</b>
- 1939 Ealing film based on a novel by Edgar Wallace in which four
terribly terribly English chaps - well, three terribly terribly English
chaps and an almost funny Frenchman - are a mysterious gang of
vigilantes who foil a dastardly attempt by an unnamed foreign power (cue
very tacked-on looking coda made up of newsreel footage of the Nazi war
machine and Adolf Hitler) to bring down the Holy British Empire.
Their methods include, theft, blackmail, burglary, kidnap, and murder
(electrocuting an elected representative in his bath because they've
decided he's a wrong 'un). But it's all all right because they're
English and good chaps so the ends justify the means and all that, pip!
pip!</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Abominable Dr. Phibes </b>(1971) - that was... odd. </span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>November</b></span><br />
<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Force Majeure </b>(2014)</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Just Visiting </b>- ok that was a bit of a mistake. I thought I was watching <i>Les Visiteurs </i>starring
Jean Reno and Christian Clavier - by the time I had realised I was
watching the crappy American remake starring Jean reno and Christian
Clavier I was too fucked to get out my chair and find something else to
be brain dead in front of for 90 minutes.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Big Lebowski</b></span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>December</b></span><br />
<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Faster Pussycat... Kill! Kill!</b></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Bram Stoker's Shadowbuilder</b>
- adequate, straight to video gun-toting priest vs demon nonsense with
the odd flash of decent writing and a few nice camera moves.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Crimson Pirate - jolly Sunday afternoon fun.</b></span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Virus - </b>The
end of the world... or is it? movie in which a secret American
developed military virus gets loose and kills off the entire population
of the world unlucky enough not to be living in Antarctica. Once you've
swallowed the dodgy science that gets the whole thing going (and the
tremendous amount of stock newsreel footage taken to get the plot really
rolling) - and Chuck Connors playing a British naval officer! - there
is not a bad movie in here. Pretty grim and depressing stuff. All the
way through it, though, I kept thinking 'there's far too much material
here, too many sketched in plotlines, too many characters, this is like a
miniseries that someone has chopped down to a movie'. I was <i>almost</i>
right. What I had watched was an edited down, American version of a
much longer Japanese film which had employed lots of American actors.
The original is supposed to be far far better and make a lot more sense.
I'll find out soon enough. I just bought a copy on eBay. </span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Zero Theorem</b> - um... ok...?</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Informant!</b>
- Another Rule of Thumb developing: If George Clooney has a producer
credit; it's worth checking out. I liked this. A little lightweight
maybe but interesting and well done. Coincidentally the second randomly
selected Matt Damon movie in a row.</span></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Creation of the Humanoids<i> -</i></b>
Daughter Number One and I had one of our You Chose One and Then I'll
Chose One double bills. First up was my choice - a 1960 (filmed in 1960
but released in 1962) science fiction film which for the most part
consisted of people standing in a line giving each other lectures about
things they would have already known purely for the audience's benefit.
It's a weirdly wonderful little film that has a central character who
is a robot though he doesn't know it (this is 7 years before PK Dick
wrote <i>Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep</i>) who hates robots and
is incensed when his sister shacks up with one. It's incredibly
endlessly talky and obvious metaphors for racial tolerance are nailed to
the audience's foreheads every other scene. I saw a full frame crappy
VHS copy 10 years ago (I just checked my Film Diary) but last week
managed to get a DVD letter-boxed to something like the cinema release.
It was, apparently, Andy Warhol's favourite movie.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Under the Skin</b> (her turn) a 2013 film
which she had not seen but has been sat in her to Be Watched Pile for a
while. In a way it was almost a perfect companion piece to <i>Creation of the Humanoids</i>. Both are heavily heavy metaphorical movies - that's what SF is FOR! - but unlike<i> Humanoids</i>, there was very little dialogue in <i>Skin</i>
- and what there was of it was mostly unscripted and/or of little
importance to the plot which was about an alien creature assuming an
understanding of her own possible humanity, and was mostly conveyed
through some seriously stunning visuals. <i>Creation</i> was entirely studio-bound flat-set artificiality; <i>Skin</i>
was hidden-cameras on the street real life - and accurate too. Great
chunks of it were filmed in Glasgow, the nearest city to where I live.
And some of the Highlands sequences were shot on roads I drive to get
there. It's odd seeing a shop you were in a couple of weeks ago with
your kids turning up in a movie with an A-Lister movie star in it. And
apparently - and this was news to me - you can show erections in film
classified 15 in the UK.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>The Thomas Crown Affair</b> (1999) - entertaining enough piece of fluff.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Possible Worlds</b> (2000) - Arty Canadian parallel universe weirdness which I will watch again.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Wonder Woman</b> (2017)- with Daughter #2 who likes <i>Wonder Woman, Xena</i> and all such female ass kickers. It was a lot better than I was expecting.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol"><b>Earth vs the Flying Saucers</b> -</li>
</ol>
Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-81593651855520242502019-07-11T19:16:00.003+01:002019-08-16T01:44:38.099+01:00Film List 2019 Part 1 (The Wilderness Months)<ol>
<li><b>The cars that Ate Paris - </b>My choice for an evening-in double-bill with 16 year old Daughter Number One (herinafter refered to as D#1)<br />
</li>
<li><b>In Bruges -</b> D#1's choice. She is a bit of a fan of Martin
McDonagh. I loved it. True to my long-held belief that good movies
affect the way you move and talk immediately after seeing them every
other word we said for the rest of the night was "fecking this" and
"fecking that"!</li>
<li><b>Aliens</b> - <br />
</li>
<li><b>The Thing</b> - D#1 and I continue knocking off scary movies from the <i>1001 Movies you Should Watch Before You Die</i> list while the rest of the family are away.</li>
<li><b>The Odd Couple</b> - our nightly double bill becomes truncated
when we both realise that we've enjoyed this so much we don't want to
watch anything else. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Monkey Business</b></li>
<li><b>The Blood of Ghastly Horror</b></li>
<li><b>100 Years of Evil (2010) -</b> low budget comedy about a Swedish
academic convinced Adolf Hitler didn't commit suicide and had managed to
escape to America where he invented Fast Food, Soap Opera, tried to
reshape the figures on Mount Rushmore to show Richard Wagner and
Napoleon, and was was behind the Joe McCarthy witch-hunt and the Cuban
Missile Crisis. It almost works.</li>
<li><b>Boccaccio 70</b> - 1962 Italian portmanteau movie with four sections, one of which was directed by Fellini between <b>La Dolce Vita</b> and<b> 8½</b> I like Fellini.<br />
</li>
<li><b>Thérèse Desqueyroux</b> - French, slow, rather beautiful.</li>
<li><b>Hotel Paradiso</b> - Pretty fucking dreadful.</li>
<li><b>Ocean's Thirteen</b> - disappointing threequel. I really liked thie first two but this one was just unfocused and well, boring.</li>
<li><b>Kissing Jessica Stein</b> - Indy Gay/bi rom com with a Hollywood gloss. Genuinely funny and touching.</li>
<li><b>How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer </b>- rather dull Indy.</li>
<li><b>Exit Through the Gift Shop</b> - excellent! Very funny too.</li>
<li><b>Election</b> - a rewatch, and better than I remember.</li>
<li><b>Atlantis</b> - Amazingly dreadful British bash at a sword and
sorcery flick with a cast of tens and the budget of an average village
Christmas panto. Midbogglingly awful. So much so that - for the first
time in ages - I had managed to find a film that apparently no one had
ever watched before. At least if anyone had watched it no one
had thought it worthwhile reviewing the thing on IMDb. So I did. This
is, by any standard, a terrible film. technically shoddy in every
respect from the set design: wrinkly sheets, plastered and painted with
emulsion by the look of it standing in for 'rock' and 'cave walls', to
painted cardboard boxes stacked to play the part of 'Stone Walls' and
flesh crushing rollers made from carpet roll tubes. The music is
endlessly the same three chords on a organ with a drum being beaten
seemingly at random. The acting is amateur - with only a few of the cast
trying to do anything other than get their words out without messing
them up. A truly awful experience. The 'restored' version currently
available on Amazon Prime contains 20 seconds where the screen goes
blank for no obvious reason. The one star I did give it is for a weird
little coda when (SPOILER) the high priest we have just seen vaporised
in the distant past as Atlantis sinks beneath the sea, turns up in
modern day London. It's so weirdly out of nowhere and nonsensical that
it almost works.</li>
<li><b>Visitors of the Nigh</b>t - tedious alien abduction TVM. During
the watching of which I worked out another of my Inviolable Rules of
Science Fiction Movies. Rule 8 (or possibly 9 I've lost count) All
children abducted by aliens from their own home will have a rocking
horse in their bedroom. And possibly some form of clockwork monkey.<br />
</li>
<li><b>Conan the Barbarian</b> - the Jason Momoa one. Jeso it was
boring. Endless fight sequence after endless fight sequence with the
music getting faster when we were supposed to find it exciting. Momoa is
a lot cuter than Schwarzenegger, but if he hadn't been doing the
"hey.... I <i>know</i> I'm a hunk!" eye-candy moody hooded-eyelid, as
near straight into the camera look thing at every opportunity I doubt if
I would have got to the end of it.</li>
<li><b>Iron Man 2 - </b>noisy stupid fun</li>
<li><b>Doomsday -</b> Ultra-violent post apocalyptic crap assembled from bits of other, better films.</li>
<li><b>The 100 Year Old man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared - </b>That was fun.</li>
<li><b>Lost and Delirious -</b> There's lots of love for this girl/girl
romance/tragedy in the IMDb reviews - love which I want to share but just
can't. It was all a bit too TV Movie for me. Beautifully shot in
places with some really nice emotional acting, I would guess the three
main actors got some good mileage out of their performances here in
their showreels, but I'm afraid it just didn't work for me. I'm a real
sucker for unrequited love stories. Romeo and Juliet makes me cry every
time I see a production - and 'Rom and Jule' was heavily referenced and
paralleled in this film but it just didn't connect. Part of the film's
problem for me was that it was obviously based on a novel. Too much
voice-over and speeches with language that sounded like they had come
straight out of the book.</li>
<li><b>Volver</b> - I love Almadovar's movies I really do.</li>
<li><b>Whisky</b> - A very long 90 minutes."A delight... it would be a
tough soul that didn't warm to this terrific little movie... It's
wonderful stuff" says<i> The Times</i> on the back of the box. I must have a heart of flint then because I thought it was a plodding, repetitive, unimaginative bore.</li>
<li><b>Blast From the Past</b> - Funny. Brendan Fraser doing what Brendan Fraser does best being big and cute and gormless. The perfect manboy.</li>
<li><b>The Hound of the Baskervilles</b> - Just as Tom Baker is my
Doctor Who, Basil Rathbone is my Sherlock Holmes even though the films
were made 20 or so years before I was born.</li>
<li><b>101 Reykjavik</b> -</li>
</ol>
February:<br />
<ol>
<li><b>Prince of Persia: Sands of Time</b> - Friday night popcorn with the kids.</li>
<li><b>The Belles of St Trinians</b> - which was a lot of fun. Though I
did get slightly distracted by the utter hotness of one of the minor
players and wondering where I had seen her before:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="[IMG]" class="bbCodeImage LbImage" data-url="http://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/2017/M/35145-1487.jpg" src="https://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/2017/M/35145-1487.jpg" /></div>
<br />
A few minutes on IMDB and it turns out she's called Andree Melly and she was in <i>Brides of Dracula</i> (1960)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="[IMG]" class="bbCodeImage LbImage" data-url="http://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/2017/M/35145-2459-1.jpg" src="https://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/2017/M/35145-2459-1.jpg" /></div>
<br />
which I haven't watched in years but is now on my Must See Again list.</li>
<li><b>Lady of Burlesque</b> - not as good as I remembered. though I was hampered by watching a bloody awful copy on the long defunct<b> AG Plate</b> label - a precursor, I believe, to the notoriously awful quasi-legal <b>23rd Century</b>
label. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known but the packaging of
the disc had no indication that it was on the AG label. Only when the
logo appeared on screen did my heart sink. I presume somewhere a pile of
discs surfaced in a warehouse somewhere and been rebadged.</li>
<li><b>John Carter </b>- not as bad as people make out (and better on a second viewing) but I still wish they had not buggered about <i>quite</i> so much (and confusingly) with the original story.</li>
<li><b>Escape from Tomorrow</b> - strange little black and white film in
which a man, on holiday at Disneyworld with his family, is fired from
his job, has some kind of psychotic episode, and dies on the toilet. I'm
not sure it entirely works - the first half feels very draggy and
padded - but the fact that it exists at all is incredible. The film was
shot guerilla style in Disneyworld (without permission from the Disney
corporation) on video mode of domestic digital cameras with the sound
recorded on iPhones. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Jumanji </b>(2017) - Much fun with the younger two of my kids.</li>
<li><b>La Strada</b> -</li>
<li><b>Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror -</b> this and the <i>Hound of the Baskervilles</i>
I watched the other day both in versions restored by UCLA and bloody
lovely they were too. The Voice of Terror had some realy groovy noir
lighting going on it.</li>
<li><b>Ink </b>(2009) - low budget overly-ambitious foray into <i>Inception / Adjustment Bureau / Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</i>
territory. A heartfelt labour of love with some great imagery but too
long and laboured. A quick poke on IMDb and it turns out that I have
seen the director's previous feature, <i>The Frame</i>, which I described on watching as; "A great idea played out <i>far</i>
too slowly. Some ruthless editing (I guess this film could stand to
lose 20 - 30 minutes without breaking sweat) and you'd have an
interesting little mind-bender. As it is, it becomes a bit of a chore to
watch." The same applies to<i> Ink</i>. The director Jamin Winans, needs to step back from the editing and let someone kill his babies and tighten up the show.</li>
<li><b>Kung Fu Panda</b> - I fell asleep about ten minutes in and then I
woke up about ten minutes from the end. I don't think I missed much. I
asked my daughter who was with me whether I should go back and try
again. She said it was "no Penguins of Madagascar" so I guess I won't
bother.</li>
<li><b>Cherry, Harry & Raquel</b> - one of Russ Meyer's lesser films.
It might have been less of a lesser film if the lab hadn't irretrievably ruined half of the film while developing it but we'll never
know.</li>
<li><b>Elysium</b> - I spent most of the film wondering what the hell
had happened to Jodie Foster's voice. I've now seen two of Blomkamp's
films. This and <i>District 9</i>. I didn't like either of them.</li>
<li><b>Bloodrayne</b> - Ewe Boll bollocks.</li>
<li><b>Not Quite Hollywood:</b><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b> The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!</b> - Jeeso that was fun! I now have shitload of films I'd never heard of added to my my Must See List.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!</b> - Almadova </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Relic</b> -<i> Alien </i>in a museum.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Outlander</b> - Beowulf with aliens.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Underworld</b> - It's Sophia Myles a go-go on the JunkMonkey moviebox this week. She was in <i>Outlander </i>(and the best thing in it) which I watched last night. And <i>Underworld,</i>
I realised as I watched the end credits, provides me with the shortest
route I've yet come across for me in the Game of Warwick Davis. The
Game of Warwick Davis is a game that my daughters and I play in which we
connect all that is Geek by circuitous routes to the the wonderful Mr
D. It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon but with Warwick Davis in the
middle and a tacit understanding that the starting point for any chain
is SF / Geeky / Comic related. Warwick Davis is singularly well
connected for this kind of nerdy dominoes game in that he is one of the
few actors who has been in <i>The Star Wars </i>franchise<i>,Harry Potter, Doctor Who, The Chronicles of Narnia,</i> and<i> The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. </i> He is the Nexus of Geek. Anyway, the route between me and Mr D: I worked as an assistant editor on a film called <i>Wild Side</i> - the first (released) cut of which was edited by Martin Hunter - who edited <i>Underworld</i> - Sophia Myles was in <i>Underworld</i> and the <i>The Girl in the Fireplace</i> episode of <i>Doctor Who</i> - <i>Doctor Who</i> - Warwick Davis. It keeps us amused.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Argo</b> - oh! For a change that <i>was</i> impressively as good as I was lead to believe by the review.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Fillums Abandoned in February:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Tarnation</b> - arty wank</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Scream of the Banshee</b> - I gave
up when a character did one of those bullshit plot corralling
lines:"We've got to keep this thing under wraps till we can figure out
what's going on." For NO REASON other than to keep the cast numbers down
and keep the plot moving forward. No reason at all. </span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;">March</span><br />
<ol>
<li><b>The Addams Family</b><br />
</li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Mystery Men </b>- one of my go to movies when I just want to flop. Shared with Number 2 daughter.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Evilspeak</b> - one of those
'horror' film you only thought existed on VHS but someone thought it
worthwhile releasing it on DVD. (I suspect only because it was one of
the Video Nasties prosecuted for obscenity by the DPP.) . Hard to see
what the fuss was about - especially as the DVD I saw is obviously a cut
version.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Flame and the Arrow</b> - Burt
Lancaster - for whom I have a lot of time - at his athletic
swashbuckling best. It's years since I have seen this and I didn't
realise it was directed by Jacques Tourneur most famous I guess for his
work with Val Lewton at RKO on low budget atmospheric classics <i>Cat People</i> and <i>I Walked with a Zombie.</i>
The directorial style here is pretty mundane apart from one wonderful
moment that could have come from one of the earlier chillers when the
hero and villain fight in a darkened room. The villain trapped by fear
in the only patch of illumination as the hero prowls the darkness
taunting him. Great stuff. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Addams Family Values</b> - </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><i><b>Zatoich at the Blood Fest</b> - </i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>A Prairie Home Companion </b><i>- </i>Robert Altman's last film and a wonderful sweet elegiac movie. I loved it.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Planet of the Vampires</b> - I finally get Number One Daughter to watch it with me - her verdict? "That was pretty groovy." Which it is.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Top Fighter 2: Deadly China Dolls</b>
- pretty shoddy 'documentary' about female Hong Kong action actresses. I
guess if you were a connoisseur of the genre this might act as
greatest hits collection (ho! ho! did you see what I did there?). For
the rest of us it was all a bit relentlessly repetitive. Endless fight
sequences - sometimes from really battered prints - with no indication
which film, when it was made, or other context at all - intercut with
badly-framed, low res interviews with the star in question. (One
interview, obviously shot in a noisy bar or restaurant and probably on
the director's phone, was spectacularly inaudible. I had no idea what
the poor woman was saying over the background hubbub of other patrons. I
could tell she was speaking English but that was it.) The inclusion
of a clip of a naked woman beating the chopsocky crap out of a bunch of
ninjas was a highlight. Naked Kung Fu. Another 25 pence not<i> quite </i>wasted from my local charity shop's '4 DVDs for a Pound' shelf.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>De Palma </b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>I think I Do</b> - amiable low budget LGBTQ rom com.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Franklyn</b> - Another British Dud
from the days when Lottery Funding and great costume and production
design couldn't quite get movies over the hump of the script just...
not... being... quite... good... enough.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Sobrevivire</b> - Spanish soap opera.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Cannibal: the Musical</b></span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>April</b></span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Hollow Man 2</b> - which was, surprisingly enough, a hell of a lot better than I was expecting. </span></li>
<li><b>The Incredible Burt Wonderstone</b> (2013)</li>
<li><b>Plunkett & MacCleane </b>-</li>
<li><b>The Ladykillers</b></li>
<li><b>The Martian</b> - which I thought was pretty damn terrific. But then I am a sucker for movies in which smart people solve problems.</li>
<li><b>Warrior Queen </b><i>(1987) </i>- Pretty dreadful cheapo Italian swords and tits movie.</li>
<li><b>Valarian</b></li>
<li><b>Peggy Sue Got Married </b></li>
<li><b>Pina -</b> I know nothing about contemporary dance and understand less but WOW!</li>
<li><b>AD Project</b> (2006) - Someone, somewhere wondered what an 1970s
Italian UFO film ( I found myself reminded of the bloody awful <i>Occhi
dalle stelle</i> (1978) more than once) directed by David Lynch would look
like - if he only had about 150 euros to spend on the whole show. There
are a few nice edits and interesting shots but they are far outweighed
by the number of failed attempts at nice edits and interesting shots.
Very little in this movie is shot straight. Everything is funky angles
and ultra-bold, in your face framing. The main trouble is that all the
funky shots add up to very little. There's an impressive bit of steady
cam at one point that starts at the bottom of a liftshaft/staircase. As
the lift starts to ascend we steadycam up the stairs, around the
shaft, and arrive at the first floor just as the lift arrives and a girl
gets into it. (This must have taken more than a few takes to get the
timing right.) This shot is followed by a cut to inside the lift - as
the girl descends alone to where we started from - and that's it.
There's no-one down there. It's not a POV. Doesn't advance the story,
or do anything much other than impress. It's just a 'wouldn't it be
great if...? shot. There's a lot of that in this film. In the end all
the mysterious revisiting the events that may have happened, or may be
about to happen, or are happening right now, looping time stuff just
becomes hopelessly confused and pointless till, in the end, everyone
just stands still in the middle of a field and big lights descend from
the sky and everyone looks at them till the film is over. Leaving us
none the wiser about anyone's motives for anything.</li>
<li><b>Dazed and Confused</b> - which I had seen before and liked better
the last time I think. What a bunch of abusive, self-satified,
middle-class wankers. <br />
</li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b> The History of Time Travel </b>
(2014) - smart (but not unflawed) mocumentary about the fictional
history of the US wartime time travel program which suddenly has a
jarring WTF? moment in the middle of it. Just as you are starting to
think you've missed something (like a reel of the movie) it becomes
obvious that the 'reality' of the events being discussed by the various
talking heads are, in fact, being altered by the uses to which the time
travel device was put. The version of history they were talking about a
few screen minutes ago no longer exists as far as they're concerned. I
LIKED it. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Beast With a Million Eyes </b>(1955)
- low budget McCarthy era alien-invasion cheapo that had an alien mind
taking over birds and other animals and attacking humans some 8 years
before Alfred Hitcock's <i>The Birds.</i> Some clunking dialogue,
histrionic acting, long VERY static shots of not a lot happening, and
the implication that God helps out in the end - but there were moments
of cheapo inventiveness.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Sky Blue</b> - Korean anime for me
an uneasy mix of live action footage 3D and 2D animation which spent
more time in beauty shots than it did in plot before ending in a big
dumb lightshow that happyendinged everything.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>All About Eve</b> - </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>La Cité des enfants perdus</b> - </span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Abandoned in April:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Les amants réguliers</b> (<i>Regular Lovers</i>) after about an hour, after a <i>particularly </i>tedious
set of shots in which we watched the back of some characters standing
about in grainy black and white while something happened somewhere else -
presumably wherever the characters we were staring at were staring - I
switched on the on-screen display to discover I had only been watching
for some 20 minutes... and the film was 3 hours long. Three hours of
staring at grainy French people staring at things I wasn't allowed to
see? f**k that.<br />
<br />
May</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Ashes of Time Redux</b> - ooooh I liked that. I liked that a lot. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Dolls </b>- rewatch of a strange, slow, rather beautiful film.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>All About my Mother</b> (Todos sobre mi madre) _ I introduce D#1 to Almadova - she gets it!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Asterix and Obelix: Mansion of the Gods </b>
(2014) - Number One Son is a bit of a Asterix fan and this is a
genuinely funny movie. The best adaptation of an Asterix book. The 3D
animation catches the original flavour of the books and some of the gags
are perfectly timed - funny even when you know what's going to happen.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Happiest Days of your Life </b>- One of the greatest 'Sunday Afternoon Movies' ever. Watched in the company of two of my kids (the 10 and 17 year old ones). </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Hitchcock </b>- The book was better though this had its moments</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Coherence</b> - a rewatch with #1D.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: 15px;">June</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Malena </b>- I really wanted to
like this a lot more than I did. It was almost like a caricature of an
Italian Coming of Age movie. A short story stretched out far beyond the
length the material could support. Monica Bellucci was ravishing as
usual but didn't have to do much apart from look good, get naked, and be
abused. I hope she was paid a lot. The music was wonderful but Enio
Morricone can do no wrong in my book even when it sounds like he's
(deliberately) channelling Nino Rota's wastepaper basket.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>La Jetée</b> - D#1 wants to watch a movie and lights upon <i>12 Monkeys</i> on the shelves. I make her watch the original first. She LIKES it.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>12 Monkeys</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>So, I Married an Ax Murderer -</b>
Which turned out to be even less funny than I remembered. Not very funny
at all apart from a wee subplot with Alan Arkin which was basically one
gag.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Zelig</b> - I laughed a couple of times.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Hercules </b>- Dwayne Johnson and Rufus Sewell in one movie! I may have to go lie down for a bit.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>West Side Story </b>- for the first time. Loved it.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Les Parapluises de Cherbourge</b> - *****</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"> <b>The Avengers</b> - not the Bish!
Bash! Kapow! superhero one, but the benighted update of the iconic 60s
TV series. And it's as awful a misfire as I remember it. No idea why.
There are some really nice elements in there and some nice understated
touches (Mother's handbrake turn wheelchair entrance for a climatic
showdown being one, and the oddly touchy-feely relationship between him and
his assistant being another) but the witty repartee just wasn't witty
and the odd quirkiness of the original just wasn't there. (Giant Teddy
Bears excepted.) it was just flat where it should have been fizzy.
Didn't work</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Brainstorm</b> - Not the 1983
Douglass Trumbull one, or the 2002 Jeremy Northam one (aka <i>Cypher</i>) but
the not at all bad low budget SF film which was called<i> Listening</i> when
released in the States. Not bad but a little overlong in the setup.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Almost Human</b> - Another low
budget (4 speaking parts and the only other two people in shot may well
have not been aware they were being filmed) SF film that went slightly
off the rails for me when I saw through the artifice at the 30 minute
mark and spent the next 60 minutes spotting the obvious 'clues' . But
not bad.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Passengers</b> - I liked it once I
had got past my teeth-grinding at the the usual, "Why is everywhere on
this ENORMOUS space ship fully pressurised and kept at an ambient living
temperature - when there is not going to be used for 150 odd years?!"
It would have been a much better film if the leads had been gender
reversed and played by Steve Buscemi and Kathy Bates. But then, as
Daughter #1 pointed out, most Hollywood films would be better if the
leads' genders were reversed and played by Steve Buscemi and Kathy
Bates.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The 5th Wave</b> - The first half
of which is pretty good but, somehow, by the end I felt I was watching a
pilot episode for a TV series that never got made. Pity.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Circuitry Man </b>- with Daughter #1. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Secret Life of Walter Mitty</b> - the 2013 Ben Stiller one. Which I liked... but.... and Kirsten Wiig was wonderful. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Cloud Atlas</b> - I remember liking
the book though very little about it other than its interesting nested
structure and a couple of "wait that doesn't work" moments that stuck in
my head. One involving the nailing shut of a door and the other
concerning the geography of Hull a city where I used to live. The film
is interesting but didn't capture me. I also got a bit thrown out of
the picture when I recognised a couple of the locations (local to me
now) and the back alleys of inner-city Glasgow that were doubling for
American inner-city alleys (as they often do). Interesting though.</span></li>
</ol>
<br />Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-40842035827181565052019-07-10T10:43:00.001+01:002019-07-10T10:55:02.423+01:00I have just spent the last two days resisting buying this:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K2UVbguWCO0/XSWxRDtuNqI/AAAAAAAADkc/WGJ2P5bL_eEsWZbk7bEWVBXD31SE0277gCLcBGAs/s1600/Underwater%2BKung-Fu%2Bshark%2Battack%2521.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K2UVbguWCO0/XSWxRDtuNqI/AAAAAAAADkc/WGJ2P5bL_eEsWZbk7bEWVBXD31SE0277gCLcBGAs/s320/Underwater%2BKung-Fu%2Bshark%2Battack%2521.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
A French comic from the 1980s featuring underwater Kung Fu on Shark Attack action! I mean how brilliant IS that on a scale of zero to 25? About a 23 I reckon.<br />
<br />
Sadly the interior art looks less than stellar <br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XnEWZm-Vgw8/XSWyWKwU1cI/AAAAAAAADkk/ANNmKHP2mU0QCgvOy-cgI9w4ePGlUMnigCLcBGAs/s1600/s-l160b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XnEWZm-Vgw8/XSWyWKwU1cI/AAAAAAAADkk/ANNmKHP2mU0QCgvOy-cgI9w4ePGlUMnigCLcBGAs/s320/s-l160b.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
so I won't be buying "Steel Punch". But it<b> is</b> nice to know (in some way I'm not sure I can define) that, while franco-belge comics are frequently things of utter beauty and the best comic art in the world, there were still people churning out badly drawn crap like this.<br />
<br />
EDIT: Looking at it again I suspect the artist here is Italian. There's something about the sloppy style that just says fumetti. <br />
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<br />
<br />Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-4592996070455641152019-06-16T23:56:00.004+01:002019-06-16T23:56:52.354+01:00I have spent most of my Getting Some Art Done Time playing in bits of
Photoshop I have known about for a while but never really explored -
seriously it's a maze. I have pay out string to find my way back to my
desk sometimes.<br />
<br />
I have this idea that I want to make my next comic - paper one - look
like a real comic. Printing technology is getting too good. I like the
texture of old fibrous absorbent wood pulp paper and the sloppy
soaked-in inks they used up until the 80s? 90s?<br />
<br />
These days comics are printed so well, on such good quality paper, that
people can use gradations of colour and detail unheard of 30 years ago.
If you want imperfections you have to build them in. You can't rely on
rattling old printing presses shaking something loose or overworked
underskilled careless printers to randomly do it for you.<br />
<br />
Comics look too slick these days. <br />
<br />
<img alt="[IMG]" class="bbCodeImage LbImage" data-url="https://legionofandy.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/cap.jpg" src="https://legionofandy.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/cap.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
So I've been messing around channels and coming up with groovy new ways
to make my art look messy(er). The big break was finding a button that
splits a flattened CMYK image into editable greyscale images each one
corresponding to a different channel... I can see your eyes glazing
over but this is seriously exciting stuff for me. That and finding the
option in Illustrator (that I could have done with knowing about ages
ago) that lets me preserve transparency when autotracing imported
PSDs.... Trust me. It's been a good night.
Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-27294917061274261212019-06-14T01:46:00.003+01:002019-06-14T01:46:36.337+01:00New Comic. Is on it's way to the printer! (To be utterly accurate it's at the printers waiting to be printed.)<br />
<br />
Now the hard bit. <br />
<br />
Waiting.Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-5388092151997870422019-06-13T00:04:00.001+01:002019-06-17T16:26:19.592+01:00The Brute # 2When I'm not drawing comics I'm often reading comics. All sorts of comics. Superhero comics, French cowboy comics, long confessional autobiographical self-indulgent waffle comics. Sometimes I really slum it and dig out the box in which I hoard my Atlas Seaboard collection:<br />
<br />
Previous dips into my box of Bloody Awful Atlas Seaboard comics can be found here: <br />
<br />
<a href="http://anotherjunkmonkey.blogspot.com/2016/06/its-long-time-since-i-wittered-on-about.html">http://anotherjunkmonkey.blogspot.com/2016/06/its-long-time-since-i-wittered-on-about.html</a><br />
<br />
and<br />
<br />
<a href="https://anotherjunkmonkey.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-brute.html">https://anotherjunkmonkey.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-brute.html</a><br />
<br />
<br />
....so where were we? Issue 2 of <i>The Brute</i>:<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
Previously, a thawed-out superhuman prehistoric pre-human (The Brute) has thrown several people to their grisly deaths (and possibly eaten a couple) and is fleeing captivity - redheaded, pipe-smoking police chief Frazier has sworn to kill him on sight (sometimes, he keeps changing his mind).<br />
<br />
The Brute's only 'friend' is ace anthropologist Dr Ann Turner. At the end of the previous issue the Brute has stowed away in the undercarriage of light aeroplane Songbird 5HI7... and now, somehow, is on the plane's roof....<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
A page later the Brute throws the other guy out. "He had no way of knowing," says our narrator, "that these flyers meant him no harm... that their plane but a machine, not a fearsome pteranodon!"<br />
<br />
How the hell the Brute would know what a pteranodon <i>was</i> is an interesting point as he was shown battling mammoths in the last issue. Either the Brute has wandering around in defiance of evolutionary theory since the late Cretaceous when dinosaurs roamed the earth or the author is an ignoramus and/or a Young Earther.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, a plane without anyone flying it, and half a ton of pre-human ape-beast sitting on the cowling, is bound to....<br />
<br />
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<br />
Within two panels a pair of shadowy mysterious figures are at the crash site.<br />
<br />
As luck would have it, the Brute has landed smack in the middle of an Ed Wood Re-enactment Society get-together. The two shadowy figures turn out to be Dr Speer and his hunchback assistant Eric.<br />
<br />
"Examine the wreckage carefully! We must salvage every electronic part that might possibly be of use in our work!", says Dr Speer. "The engine for example!" (er... ok...)<br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Doctor<b> Look-</b>-! I can stick my finger right up my nostril!</div>
<br />
Weird salvage is soon forgotten, however, when the two discover the Brute lying within the wreckage. "It appears that he is still alive! Ha! Ha! Ha!" -- "After some minor surgery he will fit in perfectly with my plan for vengeance!"<br />
<br />
Who is this mysterious Dr Speer? and vengeance upon whom? Good questions. Luckily the not so good doctor spends the next three pages telling us <i>exactly </i>why, what, and whom in a long, rambling, Ed Woodesquian monologue. This monologue is delivered to the faithful Eric (who must have heard it all a thousand times before) who manages to squeeze in a couple of "I know"s in at the corners of panels in the hope the crazed old loon will take the hint and shut up.<br />
<br />
Basically, Dr Loon has been; "persecuted by the scientific establishment" for trying to create a race of amphibious 'REPTILE MEN' which would allow the human race to survive the coming nuclear annihilation. He has had his "Licence to experiment" taken away by "jealous scientists" after his experiments to convert "Bums, derelicts, hobos," and other "men of no value" into the Creature From the Black Lagoon ended up with them all dying. "We must stop him!", you can almost hear these other scientist cry. "If he continues on at this rate there won't be any helpless dregs of society left for OUR deranged experimental programs!"<br />
<br />
So, deep in the woods Dr Demento has perfected his technique and needs new victims. He will implant a 'mind control electrode' (I think they stock them in Radio Shack) into the Brute and use him to kidnap members of 'the academy' so he can convert them into REPTILE MEN! Mwahahaha! By the way we have now segued from Ed Wood's <i>Bride of the Monster</i> land to Ted V Mikels' <i>Astro Zombies</i> land.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
"Meanwhile, several hundred miles away..." Hunky Police Chief Frazier has had another extraordinary flip flop about the Brute and no longer wants to shoot him dead on sight (which is what he wanted to do for a lot of last month's episode before changing his mind several times - mainly because he fancies the tits off blonde anthropologist Dr Turner - who is determined to save the Brute from being shot dead on sight). This man is the Boris Johnson of comic book police chiefs. "Yes! Yes! Anything! Just let me in your knickers!"<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mxQWjg8uyUg/XQLk81k_LOI/AAAAAAAADgQ/vXwBq6ys3BUF2-s91w42p_ppx5TFUCWYwCLcBGAs/s1600/mm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="309" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mxQWjg8uyUg/XQLk81k_LOI/AAAAAAAADgQ/vXwBq6ys3BUF2-s91w42p_ppx5TFUCWYwCLcBGAs/s1600/mm.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
The chief tells Dr Turner that he's had radio reports about a 'monster' on a missing plane and, though he can show her 'map coordinates' of where the pain has crashed, he's not bothering to go up and take a look until morning and if she can get there first maybe she can save the Brute from being "riddled with police bullets!" - What kind of fucking cop IS he? "I have a crashed air-craft, two missing possibly dead civilians, and yeah whatever... I'll go up in the morning. While you are there if you see a couple of dead aviators lying about just shove them in body bags and send them to the Civil Aviation authority will you? And if you could do a full crash investigation while you're at it...? <br />
<br />
Meanwhile:<br />
<br />
To test if 'the mind control' he has implanted in the Brute's brain worked and "see if my brilliant operation has been successful" (Will it still be a 'brilliant operation' if it doesn't?) Speer gets the Brute to smash that standard piece of lab equipment, a huge isometric cinder block balanced on two 1960s TV stands. There was one in our school chemistry lab. We never dared ask what it was for - but there were rumours.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hpyn9KBfr74/XQAni3uNQoI/AAAAAAAADdA/OR3pNny14VYjsOfPQhsB1FaGdSS9uolRACLcBGAs/s1600/bang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="286" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hpyn9KBfr74/XQAni3uNQoI/AAAAAAAADdA/OR3pNny14VYjsOfPQhsB1FaGdSS9uolRACLcBGAs/s320/bang.jpg" width="277" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Needless to say the cinder block gets smashed. "Yes! Brilliant operation! I win! I win!". And then, to doubly check, Speer gets the Brute to smash poor Eric against a wall because the good doctor is fed up with him. "You have outlived your usefulness" (to the plot). That and the poor, misunderstood Brute hasn't pointlessly murdered anyone for seven pages.<br />
<br />
Somewhere else: <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ag53ZejgdRY/XQAsUCTC7yI/AAAAAAAADdY/jwFvlS4xitYrdA4uacoLTE8SeN5wOqmigCLcBGAs/s1600/bang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="303" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ag53ZejgdRY/XQAsUCTC7yI/AAAAAAAADdY/jwFvlS4xitYrdA4uacoLTE8SeN5wOqmigCLcBGAs/s1600/bang.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Dr Frederic Bertham's current line of research involves pointing small cannon at his forehead for some reason - possibly in an attempt to cure his horribly dislocated right shoulder.<br />
<br />
Dr Bertham is hijacked on his way home from work by the Brute, carried to Speer's remote lab,<br />
and operated on. Mwahaha!<br />
<br />
Another somewhere else: <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3fu5UCsMzCY/XQAyLcaEgJI/AAAAAAAADds/96cmByIglnMUhqVHDLRbmbHZ571PuUA4QCLcBGAs/s1600/beckman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="337" data-original-width="321" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3fu5UCsMzCY/XQAyLcaEgJI/AAAAAAAADds/96cmByIglnMUhqVHDLRbmbHZ571PuUA4QCLcBGAs/s1600/beckman.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Quite how 'Nuclear Physicist Dominic Beckman' is preparing for bed in this panel is a open to conjecture but, after smoking a cigarette, while pondering the 'news announcement' of Dr Bertham's mysterious disappearance, the Brute hijacks him from his own bed, carries him to Speer's remote lab,<br />
where he is operated on. Mwahaha!<br />
<br />
And, somewhere else again: <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HlpFA-e6EEI/XQAzh3l7_WI/AAAAAAAADd4/xN2W8F8Oxa0L2Ak0qRPus-lfCW8VzhOpACLcBGAs/s1600/custard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="631" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HlpFA-e6EEI/XQAzh3l7_WI/AAAAAAAADd4/xN2W8F8Oxa0L2Ak0qRPus-lfCW8VzhOpACLcBGAs/s400/custard.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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"This is Dr Legrand... " </div>
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That ellipsis after the doctor's name represent the author's attempt to come up with third kind of scientist, " Molecular Biologist... Nuclear Physicist... and... and... oh crap! there has to be <i>another </i>kind of comic book scientist... erm... erm... whatever... I'll come back to this..."</div>
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<br /></div>
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Whatever kind of scientist Legrand (or later, 'Le Grand') <i>is</i> I hope it isn't in the field of electronics - unless this is THE Dr Legrand. Inventor of that phone where you talk into the earpiece.</div>
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<br /></div>
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And that poor cop. "Wha--?" indeed. As if throwing custard on the bugger was going to stop him.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Needless to say: Dr Legrand... Brute... Hijack... operate... Mwahaha!</div>
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<br /></div>
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Meanwhile: </div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jHXxIZVdyW4/XQA5Wm6hy3I/AAAAAAAADeI/cZ_IWyBDoJYr2aD1moXEFsqpG9jTLFc_gCLcBGAs/s1600/meanwhile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="252" data-original-width="625" height="129" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jHXxIZVdyW4/XQA5Wm6hy3I/AAAAAAAADeI/cZ_IWyBDoJYr2aD1moXEFsqpG9jTLFc_gCLcBGAs/s320/meanwhile.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Dr Ann Turner has arrived at the crash site - which means that ALL of that Scientist ... Brute... Hijack... Operate... Mwahaha! stuff happened in ONE NIGHT. Wow! That's some going even for a homicidal Neanderthal and a crazed scientist named after Hitler's architect. A crazed scientist who now gets to deliver one of the<b> greatest </b>lines in comic book history:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IifKkkWKx44/XQA5Wv76enI/AAAAAAAADeE/BpJoPYwJRNcb35gI65HKddy0mvfWvVpGwCLcBGAs/s1600/platypus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="243" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IifKkkWKx44/XQA5Wv76enI/AAAAAAAADeE/BpJoPYwJRNcb35gI65HKddy0mvfWvVpGwCLcBGAs/s320/platypus.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
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"I'm going to give Dr Le Grand the face of a <b>platypus</b>."</div>
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<br /></div>
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Sheer poetry.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The knock on the door is, as you would expect, Dr Turner who is looking for--</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nsR7D4iN7LM/XQBCuLmNI0I/AAAAAAAADeg/2N9YFS1IXM8i4A3OUbFnWfNUKuKMl7VwACLcBGAs/s1600/turner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="622" height="197" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nsR7D4iN7LM/XQBCuLmNI0I/AAAAAAAADeg/2N9YFS1IXM8i4A3OUbFnWfNUKuKMl7VwACLcBGAs/s400/turner.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Oh, there he is...<br />
<br />
Dr Speer, is delighted that find that scientists are now delivering themselves to his front door without having to send the Brute out to fetch them. (Tesco's have been doing this for years in our area.) He immediately hatches a wizard wheeze.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_7-JRmRA_yw/XQF2ttQXvWI/AAAAAAAADfM/H5DTUIrl5vMqxuxEs3IIKhtUEoqQ09HKQCLcBGAs/s1600/mate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="307" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_7-JRmRA_yw/XQF2ttQXvWI/AAAAAAAADfM/H5DTUIrl5vMqxuxEs3IIKhtUEoqQ09HKQCLcBGAs/s1600/mate.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oEgxqfCITB4/XQF20YTUc2I/AAAAAAAADfQ/TA9kjlzX2Lk5BGzITLYaTOBZXg8x0ZA_gCLcBGAs/s1600/for-him.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="226" data-original-width="271" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oEgxqfCITB4/XQF20YTUc2I/AAAAAAAADfQ/TA9kjlzX2Lk5BGzITLYaTOBZXg8x0ZA_gCLcBGAs/s1600/for-him.jpg" /></a></div>
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<br />
<br />
Nice of the mad bastard to take his hand away from her mouth long enough for her to have a quick "=gasp=" there.<br />
<br />
Instructed to strap the girl to 'th<i>at other</i> operating table', the Brute rebels!<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RLJ8_7QohBk/XQF4Up0avEI/AAAAAAAADfg/xFvRVoGB_QwQPmBSvY0wQX2XX1AmzAxawCLcBGAs/s1600/arrghh%2521.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="305" data-original-width="335" height="291" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RLJ8_7QohBk/XQF4Up0avEI/AAAAAAAADfg/xFvRVoGB_QwQPmBSvY0wQX2XX1AmzAxawCLcBGAs/s320/arrghh%2521.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
(Forget <i>Bride of the Monster</i> and <i>Astrozombies</i>, we're in <i>King Kong</i> and Ann Darrow territory here.)<br />
<br />
<br />
So, with all the pieces<b> finally </b>in place (apart
from the police chief who isn't due to saunter up to the woods some time
in the morning and who is, probably, at this very same moment, actively
ignoring three drive-by shooting and a bank robbery in progress), and
with only 3 pages to go to wrap this up - we can finally get on with the
Brute vs Lizard Men action promised on the front cover.<br />
<br />
The anticipation....<br />
<br />
The Lizard Men are released! At LAST! Prehistoric Cave Brute faces the '<b>MONSTROUS PERIL</b>' as he is ATTACKED by AMPHIBIOUS REPTILE MEN! The titanic battle twixt mammal and ex- mammal fish/beast/lizard things is HERE!<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cOie29rHyG8/XQF8dwM3hCI/AAAAAAAADfs/OkkRV3urLckpTAhNdDphKlgrwa5Knf_jACLcBGAs/s1600/donnybrook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="631" height="158" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cOie29rHyG8/XQF8dwM3hCI/AAAAAAAADfs/OkkRV3urLckpTAhNdDphKlgrwa5Knf_jACLcBGAs/s320/donnybrook.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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...and that's it.</div>
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"The pathetic reptile men are no match for the prehistoric ferocity of the beast man..."<br />
Two panels.<br />
<br /></div>
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</div>
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Next! </div>
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Well, Doctor Speer, obviously, who gets hurled into the Mk IV Acme Machine Most Likely to Explode standing in the corner of the lab'.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GWLJ94rrdf4/XQGAbhB38jI/AAAAAAAADf4/ZMqURNXC9PI0G6hqDNKWHYQVEv5qq3o2wCLcBGAs/s1600/oder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="321" height="315" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GWLJ94rrdf4/XQGAbhB38jI/AAAAAAAADf4/ZMqURNXC9PI0G6hqDNKWHYQVEv5qq3o2wCLcBGAs/s320/oder.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
"The Rancid oder of searing flesh"? I would guess the author is either: slipping in some vegetarian polemic there, or he has never been to a BBQ. And if it's purely a human flesh thing, I can tell you from personal experience - I once gave myself a really nasty burn with a blowtorch - that cooking human flesh smells delicious. Just like roasting pork. It was a very strange moment. I was in extreme pain and simultaneously<i> very </i>hungry.<br />
<br />
And 'oder'? The Oder is a river in Poland.<br />
<br />
So Ann flees. Lab goes boom! Ann is sad that the Brute is dead. Ann goes home. Brute emerges from the wreckage to continue his next Littlest Hobo adventure; "Not knowing WHERE to turn who he can TRUST... truly... ALONE!"<br />
<br />
And I think that's enough of that. I'll put the box of Atlas comics away for another few months. Even my addled brain can't take much of this.Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-71213983149052992742019-06-08T01:51:00.001+01:002019-06-08T01:52:02.629+01:00I really find it hard to understand how I gave up drawing for so long. For years I just didn't draw. The occasional doodle, sketch-maps, or rough diagram but not real DRAWING. Now I find I really can't stop. I really do love to draw. Here's some rampaging nuns I just threw onto the page at daughter number 2's suggestion for something to fill an awkward space in the new comic's back pages. (It relates to one of the stories in the book.)<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Me6iR16tC9U/XPr0kZf4DGI/AAAAAAAADcY/mcMluiG2tGIq4qlQbbB6GH1mUzWW01HMQCLcBGAs/s1600/nuns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="489" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Me6iR16tC9U/XPr0kZf4DGI/AAAAAAAADcY/mcMluiG2tGIq4qlQbbB6GH1mUzWW01HMQCLcBGAs/s640/nuns.jpg" width="194" /> </a></div>
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It's not the greatest drawing in the world. I will be the first to admit that. But it flew off the end of my pencil in minutes and was coloured just as quickly. I think I might JUST be starting to get a handle on this cartooning lark </div>
Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-23123775157857650062019-06-05T00:02:00.004+01:002019-06-17T16:39:06.170+01:00Stupendous Stories<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Oh this is a good omen.</div>
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<br /></div>
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After spending a couple of hours hand-crafting, from the finest, high quality pixels that money can buy, the cover for my next book. Then lovingly, tenderly, folding them into a superb, bespoke PDF format with just a zest of hyperbole to tingle the eyebuds - I actually go look on <a href="http://comicvine.gamespot.com/">comicvine.gamespot.com</a> - the largest Comic Book Database in the known universe - to see if anyone has ever made a book called Stupendous Stories before. </div>
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They haven't.</div>
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<img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1136" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JjoqlgO-2z0/XPb1ytusi2I/AAAAAAAADcM/J1LAewf1840aPTSwEsuWCuIv9Fle-liPgCLcBGAs/s400/mmm.jpg" width="282" /></div>
<br />
They have now.<br />
<br />
Almost.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(The regular reader of this blog - a wonderful construction that sounds like I am addressing each member of a large group individually, when I really know for a fact there<i> is</i> only one of you - the regular reader of this blog will have noticed that this cover looks <b>nothing at all</b> like the cover I was drawing "for my next comic" a few posts ago. That's because this comic isn't that comic. The editorial staff of Gosh Wow comics (Merriol) decided that we were doing an all superhero comic this time instead of the mixed bag anthology <i>Derek</i> I was planning, or the all-SF <i>Tales of the Unaccepted </i>I haven't got enough material for. So we've started a new title just for the superhero nonsense. One of these days I'll get round to working on the second <i>Geeks </i>book. I have a story plotted out - mostly - and pages of dialogue written and thumnailed.... One of these days. )Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-2409325688793332592019-05-22T01:15:00.002+01:002019-05-22T01:17:44.474+01:00Art has been cancelled.Art has been cancelled because my computer has stopped talking to my scanner - or vice versa. Which is a BIT of a bugger as it's the only way I can get the pages and pages of comic strip I have drawn into the wider world of Photoshop, Sketchbook, and the other post- paper and pencil software I use to do the lettering and colouring (and fixing my more awful drawing disasters) and thence to the web and eager eyeballs all over the world.<br />
<br />
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, I suspect this only a temporary aberration - probably caused by me fucking with things that should not be fucked with - though I don't remember thinking "I wonder if this is entirely safe?" recently...<br />
<br />
Ah well. I just wish it hadn't happened in the middle of a seven page strip. 6 pages so far pencilled only 5 scanned.<br />
<br />
Drat!Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-21242526935249001762019-05-17T00:32:00.004+01:002019-05-17T00:34:51.300+01:00I'm taking a wee break from the 7 page superhero strip I'm currently working on to start on
the cover for the next paper comic: We have a con or two coming up and I need to have something new to point at as people walk past the stall not buying stuff. That and I needed a break from endlessly (it
seems) drawing the same two guys and trying to make them look
interesting as they deliver their lines (sequential art is HARD! Especially when you're foolish enough to write a script in which the entire cast is the same character from multiple alternate universes. I'm never doing THAT again.) So, this evening, after finishing pencilling the day's page (six panels including one total cop out "I'll add the interdimensional portal thingy in Photoshop later" panel) I had fun throwing my space-babe heroine into the clutches of something
with a LOT of tentacles.<br />
<br />
This isn't totally gratuitous - there is a gag
coming.<br />
<br />
<img alt="[IMG]" class="bbCodeImage LbImage" data-url="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/baccbca0-168b-49e5-87a8-e0ae5bde1a22/dd72dpu-bfd0634c-6f2d-4ca8-acc3-46475a106b81.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1762,q_75,strp/derek_the_comic___cover_a__first_pencil_rough_by_thejunkmonkey_dd72dpu-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTc2MiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JhY2NiY2EwLTE2OGItNDllNS04N2E4LWUwYWU1YmRlMWEyMlwvZGQ3MmRwdS1iZmQwNjM0Yy02ZjJkLTRjYTgtYWNjMy00NjQ3NWExMDZiODEuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.hzgID-Gud7t34w1vTaqpUlSkTPnB8aU0XR5QHQNSiAg" height="400" src="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/baccbca0-168b-49e5-87a8-e0ae5bde1a22/dd72dpu-bfd0634c-6f2d-4ca8-acc3-46475a106b81.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1762,q_75,strp/derek_the_comic___cover_a__first_pencil_rough_by_thejunkmonkey_dd72dpu-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTc2MiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JhY2NiY2EwLTE2OGItNDllNS04N2E4LWUwYWU1YmRlMWEyMlwvZGQ3MmRwdS1iZmQwNjM0Yy02ZjJkLTRjYTgtYWNjMy00NjQ3NWExMDZiODEuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.hzgID-Gud7t34w1vTaqpUlSkTPnB8aU0XR5QHQNSiAg" width="290" />Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-70810621232491550982019-05-12T00:33:00.002+01:002019-05-12T00:33:41.309+01:00One of the great ways old SF movies (I'm talking about the 1950s and 60s here) used start was to have our intrepid scientist/adventurers hold a press conference. This was a great way to get a shedload of info-dumping done thus getting the audience up to speed before the fun and games dodging meteor showers, getting attacked by giant rubber spiders, and trying not to kill the annoyingly stupid comic relief got going. During the press conference the scriptwriters could straight out answer the questions in the audience's mind (e.g.. "WTF is going on?") by having the questions posed for them by men with press passes tucked into their hatbands. Concepts like multi-stage rockets, zero gravity, and the need to get to the moon before the 'Commies' could be explained in excruciating detail without sounding TOO much like a lecture. These press conferences would often end with a Lady Reporter asking the Woman Scientist on the expedition for the 'Feminine Angle'. (Sadly not ONE single Woman Scientist - and they always were single - answered '27 point seven degrees' which is a very feminine angle. "None of your Right angled macho square stuff for me!").<br />
<br />
I digress.<br />
<br />
I have noticed that I have tendency to do something similar in my strips. I find I often draw someone telling a crowd of people a whole pile of stuff that helps set up the joke. A leader rallying his troops, a town crier making an announcement, a politician hectoring an audience. In the strip I'm working on now I have a mass meeting of superheroes from across multiple dimensions - the trouble is jotting down 'crowd of faces' in my sketchbook as I'm writing the strip and doing a few loopy circles is easy....<br />
<br />
When it come to DRAWING the bloody thing properly...<br />
<br />
I seriously hate myself at the moment (well, the part of me that has to do the art hates the bit that writes the stuff) which is why I probably shouldn't work with writers.<br />
<br />
My current work in progress has 106 faces IN THE FIRST PANEL! All of which are attached to bodies and clothes and all of which will need colouring.... I am really going to have to give myself a stern talking too. While I'm at it I'll give all the other bits of myself that do silly things a good talking to as well. I'll hire a hall.<br />
<br />
Hmm... I may get a strip out of this....Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-91499621323727002662019-05-08T23:14:00.002+01:002019-05-08T23:55:29.620+01:00Comic Strip Writing 102Argh! Looking through my recent <a href="https://goshwowcomics.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/326/"> Arthur story</a> on line I noticed two HUGE
typos - since corrected - HOW DOES this happen?<br />
<br />
Meanwhile I'm working
on a superhero yakfest which runs to 7 pages but... and this is a BIG
'but' for me... (And yes, I <i>can</i> hear my kids snikkering - "he said
'big butt' snarf! snarf!") ...I'm getting organised. I'm doing the layout
and lettering first. The thumbnail/script in my sketchbook looks like a
workable layout* instead of my usual mess of tiny panels with too much
text crammed into them Sometimes sideways and onto the next page, often with little arrows and asterisks telling me where to go next.<br />
<br />
Usually this means that as I draw the strip out, the art has to
expand to make room for the words and I will often find what was one
page of doodle in the sketchbook turns into 3 or more pages of strip.<br />
Sometimes X and a <i>half </i>pages which is kind of annoying because then I'll have to go back and write MORE stuff to get to the bottom of a page.<br />
<br />
This time though I'm pretty sure I can stick to my plan - which will be a
first. So do the lettering, Print out the pages. Draw in round the
word bubbles. What can go wrong...?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
[Watch this space.]<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
* I think I had just read Tim Pilcher and Dave Gibbons' rather excellent
book <i>How Comics Work </i>and had obviously learned something. </div>
</div>
Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-61182211842165097922019-05-06T15:54:00.001+01:002019-05-06T15:57:28.953+01:00Flags<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/48603845_401.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="700" height="180" src="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/48603845_401.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Daughter #1 and I went on the AUOB Indy March in Glasgow on Saturday. The first time I have ever felt able to march / walk / protest (whatever) while carrying the national flag. I have loathed nationalism and the parochial mindsets that go with 'National Pride' and the symbology of banners all my life. The only flags I have felt any identification with have been wide, all-inclusive ones. The Pride Rainbow... The EU flag... symbols of hope over adversity - but these are interesting times.<br />
<br />
So I carried a flag and walked in the sunshine and chanted a bit and blethered with people. For a while D#1 and I walked beside a bunch of middle-aged gay women
carrying Rainbow, EU, and Scottish flags. I felt more comfortable with
them. <br />
<br />
At the end of two hours we reached the rally at Glasgow Green and D#1 and I split off to go and get a coffee at <a href="http://www.monocafebar.com/">Mono</a>. (I'm so out of condition I needed a sit down.) We had coffee, D#1 bought a couple of CDs and a DVD, we chatted a while, and when we came out the march was still arriving at the rally. There were a LOT of people.<br />
<br />
I felt like I had been part of something. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v_O9eXfXco4/XNBJz4OSH8I/AAAAAAAADX8/bkOTSFxN_gc6HGLDmfxaQ7sE9NJNTcPHQCLcBGAs/s1600/389-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="640" height="182" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v_O9eXfXco4/XNBJz4OSH8I/AAAAAAAADX8/bkOTSFxN_gc6HGLDmfxaQ7sE9NJNTcPHQCLcBGAs/s320/389-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I don't know who took this photo,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
or where it's from</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
but isn't it GREAT?</div>
Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-3677078849661166202019-05-02T18:06:00.000+01:002019-05-04T02:02:26.723+01:00Part 2 of the "Every film I watched, attempted to watch, or fell asleep in the middle of" for 2018.
December<br />
<ol>
<li><b>Five Fingers</b> - <br />
</li>
<li><b>Monty Python's meaning of Life</b></li>
<li><b>Fortress - </b>well that was as awful as I remembered it being. Holy crap! They made a sequel!</li>
<li><b>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon</b> - which, having not watched it for
many years and then obviously not on a colour television ( yes- that
long!), I was surprised to find <i>wasn't</i> in Black and White.</li>
<li><b>The Scarlet Claw </b>Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes</li>
<li><b>Storm</b> - Swedish SF/Fantasy/Existential Angst/Couldn't Make
Its Mind Up movie that started off well but just lost me somewhere as it
all turned out to be a lot less interesting than it was trying to be. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Star Trek Nemesis</b> - I guess this must have been one of the more interesting <i>Star Trek</i> films because I only fell asleep once while watching it.</li>
<li><b>Lost Future</b> - In the distant future tribal survivors of a
plague fight for survival and a cure - watchable despite some seriously
holey plot. Impressive set design work though. <br />
</li>
<li><b>The Tomorrow Man</b> - not bad low-budget (near zero SFX ) time
travel story in which a wanted criminal goes back in time to kidnap
himself from his abusive father in order to take him into the future to
give him a better childhood.</li>
<li><b>In Time</b> - nice idea (time is literally currency - everyone
gets born with 25 years of life but can buy gamble trade for more time
to extend their lives) and it's an idea interestingly played with - but
there are plot holes you could drive several buses through (side by
side some of them) and enough 'gosh! wasn't THAT lucky?' moments for
several films, but it looks good. Very stylish. There was enough going
on that wasn't totally stupid to keep me watching .</li>
<li><b>Valley of the Bees</b> (1967) - I don't know a lot about Czech cinema but so far I have been pretty well impressed by everything I have seen.</li>
<li><b>Ocean's Twelve</b> - That was silly. A bit soggy at the end but a fun ride.</li>
<li><b>Return of the Pink Panthe</b>r - I introduce my younger kids to Inspector Cluseau. We all giggled like loons. Great fun.</li>
<li><b>Iron Sky</b> - it had its moments.</li>
<li><b>Narcoplis</b> - low budget British SF which thought it was
cleverer than it was. Anyone who had read any Philip K Dick or read ANY
time travel SF could have told you what was going to happen for the rest
of the film from about 5 minutes in. The rest of the world could have
told you from about 10 minutes in. The film has a prologue set twenty
years before the action of the main film. A title card "Twenty years
earlier" separates the two. Our cop hero finds the unidentifiable body
of a man of about 29 years old - and then goes to see his nine year old
son and gives him a copy of H G Wells' <i>The Time Machine</i> as a present. (Three Very Dramatic Chords please)... blah blah blah...<br />
</li>
<li><b>The Mask</b> - (with Number One Son). Never seen it before. I thought it was crap.</li>
<li><b>It's a Wonderful Life</b> - with Number 2 Daughter.</li>
<li><b>Alien</b> - with Number 1 Daughter.</li>
<li><b>Forbidden Planet</b> - with daughter #2</li>
<li><b>Razorback -</b> Giant mutant pig terrorizes a bit of the
Australian outback as seen through the filter of an MTV video director
who went on to make the hilariously awful <i>Highlander</i>.</li>
<li><b>Dracula 3: Legacy</b> A film I own only because it has Rutger
Hauer in in it - a few years ago I dared myself to watch every film he
has ever made. Boy has he been in some s**t. I have no idea why I dared
myself to do this stupid thing but I did and I shall. <i> Dracula 3: Legacy </i>was
very s**t. One of those films where Hauer was obviously on set for two
or three days at most (all his scenes took place in one set) and had a
huge vampire lesbian orgy in it (on a different set) which was even less
interesting than the usual lackluster "Do we have to...?" movie lesbian
vampire stuff that turns up in Jean Rollin's movies of the 70s. I
really must get round to watching some of his good films.</li>
<li><b>My Bloody Valentine</b> (1981) Canadian slasher film on a DVD,
which my teenage daughter tells me, has been shorn of all the "Good Gory
Bits". From her descriptions of what was cut I don't think I missed much.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"> </span></span></li>
</ol>
Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-49399641400289792902018-11-01T18:01:00.000+00:002018-11-01T18:01:27.738+00:00Part the first of my 2018 Movie Diary.January<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><b>Black Narcissus - </b>which just gets better and better every
time I see it though I was annoyed with myself for spotting a continuity
error this time which I will now never unsee.</li>
<li><b>Welcome to Collingwood - </b>not as funny as I remembered it. So
much so that it has found itself demoted from the shelves where DVDs
sit proudly on display in cases on the shelves - to the folders where they languish in polipockets making
room for more, better movies.</li>
<li><b>Alfie</b> - the original for the first time.</li>
<li><b>The Graduate</b> - for the first time in ages, and funnier and better than I remembered.</li>
<li><b>The Old Dark House</b> (1932) - peculiar little horror film directed by James Whale</li>
<li><b>Eraserhead</b> -</li>
<li><b>The Hunger </b>- Arty vampire nonsense with David Bowie dying
from latex poisoning and Susan Sarandon and Catherine Denueve (and/or
their body doubles) naked between the sheets.<br />
</li>
<li><b>The Handmaiden</b> - Korean drama based on the novel<i> Fingersmith</i>
by Sarah Walters. It's a long time since I read the book but from what
I remember of it this seemed pretty true to the intent of the novel if
not the detail. (For one thing the novel is set in Victorian England
not 1930s Korea. And I don't remember quite so much sex in the book -
but then literary sex is notoriously difficult to write, and sometimes
impossible to read - whereas people can happily watch young bodies
coupling in interested and varied positions for ages without getting
bored. (Well I can.)<br />
</li>
<li><b>Eating Out </b>- Low budget queer film in which a straight guy
pretends to be gay to seduce a straight girl who lives with the guy he
dates - who in turn is secretly in love with the straight guy's gay
roommate. (That was a spoiler by the way.) Not as complicated as it
sounds with far too much stagy dialogue but it had its moments. Gay
male sex for a change.</li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b> The ABCs of Death (2012)</b> - 26
short films, each by a different director. Each director was dealt, at
random, a letter of the alphabet, a limited budget and final cut for a
maximum of 4 minutes of screen time. I suspect a request was made that
they open and close on a red or predominantly red screen to make the
stitching together of the films more seamless. (Kudos then to Adam
Wingard for opening his segment "Q is for Quack" with a shot of a film
studio Green Screen). Like most portmanteau films some bits were good,
some excellent, some dire. Though, as is usual with this sort of film, opinions differ wildly as to which bits are which. The Japanese entries were the oddest. The
one where the kawaii school girl gets sucked up her teacher's bum ("F is
for Fart") has to be one of the weirdest screen moments I have seen
for ages.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Withnail and I</b> - a repeat
watching. Even funnier than I remember but that may well be because I
was watching it in appreciative company (with #1D this time, knocking
another off the <i>1001</i> list).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Against The Wind</b> - An Ealing
Studio film about the Belgian resistance during WW2. Some nice moments
but too much plot (and too many little side plot lines) for the length.
Not overly complex, it wasn't difficult to follow what was going on,
but it all looked a bit sketched-in and cursory. Not enough space to
engage with the characters. First film I have watched for weeks without
an overtly gay storyline involved.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Flesh + Blood</b> (1985) - Paul
Verhoven's first English language film (?). Some toe-curlingly bad
performances and lots of nudity. A bit like a Corman movie (echoes of
the <i>Masque of the Red Death</i>) but with a bigger budget and less
style because of it. Plot wise it's a bit of a creepfest too, relying as
it does on the idea that women enjoy getting raped and then fall in
love with their rapist... </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Interstellar</b> - with Number 2
daughter. I liked that! Just as Star Wars back in 1977 (ish) put all
that Gosh Wow!, thud and blunder pulp SF of the Gernsback era pulps up
on the screen, early 21st Century Hollywood cinema has finally gotten
round to the Campbell era of SF. #2D was bowled over. As was I - for
the first half. I loved that we the audience, didn't have everything
spelled out for us. We were trusted to be smart enough to work out what
was going on and assumed have enough SF in our collective DNA to
understand . The second part was a bit less impressive. I struggled a
bit towards the end with some of the film's science - some of the time
dilation stuff was bit off and I'm <i>really</i> dubious about the 'you can come out the other side of a black hole event horizon <i>if you go fast enough'</i> - I'm not sure that's <i>quite</i>
how it works and if time was going so slowly (relatively) on the planet
wouldn't it be going even MORE slowly the nearer you got to the hole.
Millennia would have passed before all the hand-wavy air science (it's
like air guitar but with a slide rule) needed to get our hero back to
his own solar system. And why did the villain opening that airlock door
cause that huge explosion on the ship - other than the script says the
film needed an explosion at that point and it the bad guy need to leave
the plot without damaging the morality integrity of our scientist
heroes. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Hairspray</b> (1988) - D#2 is going to see the musical - so I make her watch the original first. She loved it. Job done.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>Beautiful Creatures</b> (2000) -
another chunk of pre-millennial Lottery/Arts Council money pissed up
against a screen. I imagine if you took all the out takes and deleted
scenes from <i>Bound</i>, <i>Thelma and Louise</i>, and <i>Shallow Grave </i>and
played with them for a bit you might end up with something a bit like
this. About half way through I realised it was supposed to be a comedy.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px;"><b>The Abduction Club </b>(2002) -
mildly amusing costume Rom Com with lots of scenery, a few good jokes,
Sophia Myles (hubba hubba!), and far too many candles. Why two pairs of
runaways hiding in a church would light every candle they could find -
while the lighting crew were flooding the windows' ingos with moonlight
was a puzzlement. As was the director's habit of having characters
appear out of nowhere centre screen. Wide shot of three characters on a
beach with no one else in sight, cut to a medium close up of them -
with a fourth suddenly appeared from nowhere. It happened at<i> least </i>twice.</span></li>
</ol>
<br />
Abandoned in January:<br />
<b><br />
Macbeth</b> (2015) I got to the murder of Duncan and quit. Striving for
muddy 'authenticity' it made you wonder why anyone would want to live
in the rainsodden, barren desolate representation of Scotland portrayed
here, let alone plot and scheme, and murder to rule it. Other throwing
things-at-the-screen moments were prompted by the vast amount of candles
in every interior (and flambaux and bonfires outside), and the total
lack of any visible infrastructure to support the vast number of candle
makers and firestokers that were obviously needed in Scotland at the
time. Just mud. Mountains, more mud, and rain.<br />
<br />
I live in Scotland and yes it is cold, wet, muddy, and rainy - BUT NOT ALL THE TIME!<br />
<br />
Macbeth's castle that-<br />
"The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,<br />
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath<br />
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,<br />
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird<br />
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:<br />
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,<br />
The air is delicate."<br />
<br />
Is represented by a wooden shedlike structure, a couple of tarted-up
army surplus marquees (that presumably doubled as location craft
services, costume and make-up tents), and loads more mud.<br />
<br />
All the dialogue, recognisably Shakespeare's (what was left of it) was
delivered in modern 'realistic dialogue' type whispering mumbles.
Close to mike, looped studio acoustic everywhere: field, tent, or
shedlike structure, all sounded the same. Hard to hear, uninflected,
diction-free muttering. All accompanied by mildly discordant,
middleeasterny sounding, stringed instruments. The music sounded oddly
interesting, ethereal, and unsettling for the first few minutes but got
very irritating very quickly.<br />
<br />
Some of the photography was nice.<br />
<br />
<b>No Tomorrow </b>(1999) - I finally find a Pam Grier movie I couldn't
watch. In the opening sequence some sort of illegal arms deal goes
wrong and ends up in a gun fight with endless explosions and the same
three stuntmen falling off the exploding stuff (sometimes on fire,
sometimes not) for ten minutes. I got bored, fast forwarded a bit to
find Pam Grier info-dumping to an assembled team of cops, info-dumping
all the stuff that any decent script would have <i>shown us</i> instead
of all those explosions I'd just FFd through - after about ten minutes
of a slideshow of villains, and other villains, and some other villains'
friends and known associates I figured it was time to quit. Which is
probably why it was only 25p in CEX.<br />
<br />
Februrary<br />
<ol>
<li><b>Avengers Assemble</b>! - with D#2. A bit overlong but ok.<br />
</li>
<li><b>The Fly</b> - before we watch the modern remakes in the 1001 List
D#1 thought we should watch the originals. Better than I remembered -
though the coda was a little twee and superfluous. <br />
</li>
<li><b>The Thing - </b> Great sound! Lots of tight overlapping dialogue.
Love that sort of stuff. And a wonderfully strong female character
(for a piece of 1950s SF).</li>
<li><b>Godzilla </b>- the latest one - went on for a bit looked rather
groovy in places and I was totally uninvolved. I did spend a lot of my
time wondering if citywide blackouts do always progress across the city
from left to right (or right to left depending on which way the camera
is panning) or whether everything just goes OUT pooph! just like that.
A lot of the action in this movie flowed wonderfully, carefully
orchestrated mayhem that just happened to follow on to the next bit like
a huge exploding domino topple as the camera panned across just in time
to catch it. It got rather dull after a while.</li>
<li><b>The Men Who Stare at Goats</b></li>
<li><b>Cat People </b>(1942)</li>
<li><b>ExistenZ </b>(1999) - I introduce D#1 to the weird and wonderful world of David Cronenberg. She gets it.</li>
</ol>
March<br />
<ol>
<li><b>King Arthur </b>- Clive Owen - why?</li>
<li><b>Alice - </b></li>
<li><b>Humanoid Woman - </b></li>
<li><b>Spun - </b>Messy overlong drug movie .</li>
<li><b>Robot Overlords - </b>Small budget British SF which reminded more
than anything has recently of the sort of stuff that the BBC used to do
on a Saturday night when Doctor Who was off on holiday. Very British
post-apocalyptic with totalitarian overlords keeping the enslaved humans
in their place. Great echoes of John Christopher's <i>Tripods </i>books and Peter Dickinson's <i>Changes</i> novels. And I really rather enjoyed it.</li>
<li><b>Angry Red Planet -</b> Rewatch of one of Sidney Pinks almost good
SF films. This is the one with the weird RED camera effect for the
exteriors of Mars's surface and the weirdest 40 foot high Martian spider
bat monster ever filmed<b>.</b></li>
<li><b>Mechte navstrechu</b> (aka A Dream Come True) strange - and, as
it turns out - thankfully quite short piece or Soviet SF later
cannibalised by Roger Corman for the weirdly creepy <i>Queen of Blood.</i> <br />
</li>
<li><b>Iron Man</b> - Daughter #2 and I are catching up with the MCU. I
enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting. It was genuinely
thrilling in places.</li>
<li><b>Orion's Loop </b>(1980) This movie is - at least with the English
subtitles available to me (it's Russian) - an incomprehensible mess. I
have watched a LOT of bad SF movies in my time but this really is a
clunker.<br />
<br />
The plot, such as I could make out concerned a Soviet spaceship's
journey to the heart of a deadly phenomenon, the titular 'Orion's Loop',
which is heading for Earth. The crew are supplemented by an equal
number of robots which (for brilliant cast/budget reducing and cunning
'plot twist' setting up reasons) have been made identical in every way
to them. It is soon revealed, by ethereal aliens, that the dangerous
alien phenomenon heading for Earth is actually a benevolent alien
phenomenon manufactured by themselves. The aliens used to live in the
solar system - but don't any more because their planet ('the tenth
planet') got destroyed (for unfathomable reasons) and they now live
somewhere else . Seeing Earth in the path of a 'Space Typhoon' carrying a
a deadly 'Glass Virus', they send out their sooper dooper radiation
belt to save their former neighbours. For some reason these ethereal
aliens have managed to kill several spaceships full of people by talking
at them too fast before our gallant Russians manage to get them to stop
gabbling and explain things in simple sentences.<br />
<br />
One of the Russians doesn't trust them and does that, 'going mad,
putting the whole mission in jeopardy' thing that worked so well in <i>Ikarie XB1</i>
- and didn't here - before getting a hug from the female robot and just
vanishing from the movie because... I dunno... the actor had to go make
the tea? Your guess is a good as mine.<br />
<br />
From time to time we have some shots of the cast on holiday on the
coast. I would guess shot at some local Black Sea resort as this film
was made by the Odessa Film studios. What this footage has to do with
what is going on in space is not clear.<br />
<br />
There's lots of zooming panning and hand held camera in this film. The
only other reviewer of this film on IBDb likens this to avant garde 60's
experimental film making. I think he's being very generous. It looked
to me like Jess Franco had attempted to shoot<i> Solaris</i> in two days, on the set on <i>Mystery Science Theatre 3000</i>. (Not helped by the fact that our heroic captain does a <i>Mannix </i>over
our inept cameraman - the cameraman's leg appears in the frame at one
point - as he lies on his back then films the actor running away on the
ceiling.)</li>
<li><b>Dracula: Prince of Darkness</b> (1965) - I introduce D#1 to the gloriously bonkers world of Hammer Horror.</li>
<li><b>And Frankenstein Created Woman</b> (1967)</li>
<li><b>A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy </b>(1981) -<br />
Every now and then for the last couple of decades I have taken the
occasional look at a Woody Allen film (with as open a mind as I can
muster) in an attempt to work out what it is that people seem to adore
about him so much. Having just read an extended magazine interview with
the man in which he came over as a genuinely likeable human being I
thought I was in a good place to have another go at finding what 'it'
is.<br />
<br />
Whatever it is I didn't see it here. You would have thought with a title like <i>A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy </i>there
would have been some sex or comedy in it. Apart from one throwaway
line line delivered near the end of the thing which was genuinely funny -
more for the delivery rather than the content - the film didn't raise a
smile! <br />
<br />
I remember hearing an interview with Jack Lemmon, many years ago, in
which he said that when Billy Wilder was directing him in a scene in <i>Some Like it Hot</i>
Wilder gave him a pair of maracas to hold, and told him to shake them
after Tony Curtis said his line and stop before he delivered his own.
Lemmon was perplexed. The scene's dialogue was a snappy and rapidfire
to and fro interchange. The maraca shaking would slow it down to a
crawl. But Wilder was the director and Lemmon did what he was told.
When Lemmon saw the film with an audience he understood. Curtis's line
were funny. So were Lemmons'. If Lemmon had come in with his line as
soon as his actor's instincts told him to, the audience would not have
heard it because they were still laughing at Curtis's previous line.
His line would have been lost. Curtis's next line would make no
sense... and the scene would have collapsed like a house of cards.
Wilder knew where the laughs were and built space into his direction to
let the audience enjoy them. Allen doesn't leave any space for the
audience. We're not given any space to get the 'jokes' (such as they
are) because there's always someone talking straight after them. What
they are saying is usually inane piffle and by the time you've
registered that what they are saying is of little consequence and not a
zinging comeback (if was generous I could concede that a lot of the
inconsequential dialogue here is Allen's carefully crafted, verbal
equivalent of maraca shaking) any humour in the 'joke' that just went
past has evaporated. <br />
<br />
The less said about Allen's helpless, "oh look at me, I'm so clumsy" shtick the better. <br />
<br />
I'll give it a couple of years and have another go.</li>
<li><b>Red Reaper</b> (or <i>Legend of the Red Reaper</i> depending
whether you want believe the front or the back of the DVD case). Dear
Mother of Gods! WHAT A FUCKING AWFUL FILM! Not a "so bad it's good
film" just BAD! Ok, I'll admit I wasn't expecting a lot - the cover had
a chainmail bikini warriorwoman on the front which sort of conned me I
was buying (for 50p) a <i>Red Sonja</i> knock off - but dear gods! Instead of a <i>Red Sonja</i> knock off I got a <i>BloodRayne</i>
knock off acted out by weekend Renaissance Fair cosplayers vs weekend
death metal goth cosplayers in a variety of locations that had
subtropical and alpine ecosystems within a few minutes walking (or
running) distance of each other. Not that was the least of this film's
problems. It was a mess. A real turd. Lots of our heroine's
voice-over narrator filling in endless over complicated backstory,
characters who appeared from nowhere and vanished just as quickly taking
whatever barely sketched in reason they had to be there in the first
place with them. Endless repetition of same shots over and over again.
And then again. And some of the most audacious and sustained 'not
actually showing people speaking on screen because the dialogue was
rewritten and rerecorded after the shooting was over' editing that I
have seen in any film - ever. The conversation between our heroine and
her mother (in which more endless plot points are delivered) is a
masterpiece. For a minute and half, for over 44 shots, (I went back
and counted) all we see on screen is whoever ISN'T talking.
Occasionally there are cutaway shots to some of the endless repeated
flashbacks we have seen dozens of times before, or to a crystal ball
showing us shots we will see later in the film. It's incredible. The
fact that the sound quality goes totally tits up here makes it
especially wonderful. Other delights to be had are trying to guess how
much blood the makeup department will have splattered over our heroine
in the next shot. I guess there must have been a continuity person on
set at some point but their work was for naught as shots from here,
there, and everywhere are cut together willy nilly so that people get
cleaned up and messy again from shot to shot, costumes vary in the same
scene and one actor's mustache gets a trim and gets shaggy again within a
couple of minutes. And I have to wonder where some of the establishing
shots came from. The mother's rather groovy ethnic medieval hut has a
huge radio mast sticking out of the roof!</li>
</ol>
Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14062960.post-43484817167159279072018-02-14T23:23:00.002+00:002018-02-14T23:23:24.876+00:00Here's a lesson. <br /><br />So there I am, sitting idly drawing fan art crap
for a con we're going to soon; my Geek characters decided to keep me
company and started a heated debate in my head about whether Wonder
Woman would shave her armpits or not. I <i>was</i> drawing Wonder Woman
at the time and seriously considering giving her some generous under-arm
hair (I'm European; I like women to look like mammals not plastic
dolls). After a few minutes I stupidly typed, "would wonder woman shave
her armpits" into the nearest search engine and got over<b> 470,000</b> results. <br /><br />Any possible joke died stillborn on the spot. <br /><br />New rule of thumb. Write the joke, THEN do the research:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
With heartfelt apologies to Mucha and Jack Kirby:<br />
<br />
<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/junkmonkey/39345467525/in/dateposted-public/" nbsp="" title="Barda 52"><img alt="Barda 52" height="500" src="https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4624/39345467525_373f0e714b.jpg" width="342" /></a><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js"></script>Junk Monkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815834128251943035noreply@blogger.com0