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| Syd |
 Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 11:02 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Supposedly they were originally going to have the humans used for their brains' computing power, but decided that would be too complicated for our little heads and opted for stupidity. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| knox |
| Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 11:27 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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| Bad science is always entertaining. Even the original concept that was scrapped....like, they can cross interstellar space and subjugate an entire planet, but they can't manufacture a decent microchip? If Graham's Law makes sense elsewhere, seems like any society around long enough to travel between the stars would have reached a point where a biological brain would be far less efficient than hardware. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 7:12 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6967
Location: Black Hills
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A few films manage not to bite off too much concept...maybe the most successful cyberspace thriller is The Thirteenth Floor, in which some tech company creates a simulation of 1937 Los Angeles inside a computer. You get a murder mystery, kind of like a really good holodeck episode on ST:NG, and Gretchen Mol, turning up the heat.
Worst cyber-movie: Lawnmower Man. This enters a realm of campy fun, with all the pleasures one might find in an Ed Wood movie. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 5:23 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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The Truman Show got it 100% wrong. It's (outdated) Orwellian fantasy pictured a world in which lack of privacy is viewed as violation by the man watched. He has no idea he's watched. Realizing it, he sees himself as a victim and walks out, though he's offered everything to keep going. It pictures a society wholely voyeuristic but obsessively non-exibitionistic.
But the frightening thing about our contemporary world is not that it is one where people are the innocent dupes of invasive media. No one has to hide a camera or coerce a participant. It is a world in which the average person feels his life is meaningless unless millions of strangers observe it incessantly. People sign on for reality shows, put their sex lives on the net, and tell the most personal things about themselves to (hopefully) millions of strangers on blogs, e-journals and Facebook. It's it's all about hits, hits hits. Are people watching? Are a lot of people watching? Then life has meaning. The opposite of unwilling, they essentially can't be stopped from displaying either the most private or the worst, or both, aspects of themselves for a massive audience.
Making The Truman Show the most inaccurate societal critique ever. |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
-Topher |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 5:38 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Joe--Excellent. I've never thought of it that way, but you're right on.
Though, to be totally fair, the world was different at the time The Truman Show was made, and not so steeped in "reality shows." The movie had a point to make; my problem was that it made it in such a boring and mediocre fashion, and tangentially, that it was so well received by critics who should have known better. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 6:22 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Thanks. Quite true about the times being different, but in terms of predicting the zeitgeist, it seemed to look back rather than forward. |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
-Topher |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 9:12 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6967
Location: Black Hills
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Joe, your analysis of our tweety world is brilliant -- my daughter has a friend who will send her messages like "I'm fixing a sandwich with albacore tuna." The exhibitionism is often an exhibit of the dully quotidian, bordering on vacuous. Never have so many shared so much of so little real interest.
And though TTS may have missed the current trend, I think it did get a piece of it, in the scenes where we see people fascinated by all the boring petty details of Truman's life. The sly joke of the movie is that so many people would stick with the show, that voyeurs would stay at the window to observe the most ordinary and tedious parts of life. I agree the film isn't predictive, but I think it was a funny look at the times and the thin gruel that is pop culture. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 10:20 am |
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| The Thirteenth Floor was a good movie. Very overlooked. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 8:05 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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bartist wrote: Joe, your analysis of our tweety world is brilliant -- my daughter has a friend who will send her messages like "I'm fixing a sandwich with albacore tuna." The exhibitionism is often an exhibit of the dully quotidian, bordering on vacuous. Never have so many shared so much of so little real interest.
And though TTS may have missed the current trend, I think it did get a piece of it, in the scenes where we see people fascinated by all the boring petty details of Truman's life. The sly joke of the movie is that so many people would stick with the show, that voyeurs would stay at the window to observe the most ordinary and tedious parts of life. I agree the film isn't predictive, but I think it was a funny look at the times and the thin gruel that is pop culture.
Thanks much. I did like the "product placement" in Truman's life. |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
-Topher |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 9:16 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6967
Location: Black Hills
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Finally saw ILYPM -- like a darker, fiercer take on the basic "Catch Me If You Can" theme. As a Lebowski fan, I enjoyed all the Jackie Treehorn doodles, of course. Certainly an acting showpiece for both Carrey and McGregor, and just insanely funny at times. As for the con artistry twist in the latter part of the film, somehow it really caught me off guard. If this is based on a true story, I can well understand that a filmmaker would have found it impossible to resist. And the influence of the Coen bros is unmistakably there.
By far the best comedy of 2010. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 8:35 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| "ILYPM" is very funny in places but broke my heart, too. My friend David finally saw it but didn't like it much, saying it was unbelievable. I told him that the most unbelievable things in it were the most factual sequences; there was an article in Entertainment Weekly about Steven Russell, and I only wish I could read the original book. (Out of print, even on Amazon--I can't believe it wasn't reprinted when the film came out.) The guy was brilliant, reckless, fearless, addicted to risk, and totally devoted to Phillip. (Phillip is living in Florida, and sometimes writes to Steven in prison, but hasn't visited.) |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 11:05 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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| Interestingly, just because something is factual doesn't make it believable in a fiction film. A lot depends on the presentation and the context. Outlandish real events can come across as contrived or phony in a film without great care in the telling. Often times I wish they toned down or altered the real event so that it worked better in a fictive environment (not for a well known historic event though). What is included or excluded in a film is of course crucial. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 11:45 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Prey for Rock and Roll. The travails of an all-woman punk rock band led by a Joan-Jettish Jacki (Gina Gershon) and Faith (Lori Petty who reminded me strongly of Annette Benning if she'd become a punk-rock lesbian). Drea de Matteo is drugged out bassist Tracy and Shelly Cole is young Sally who is Faith's lover. Marc Blucas is Sally's brother Animal who is just out of prison for manslaughter of his stepfather who Animal killed for raping Sally. Animal alarms people and has the good sense not to spread it too widely that Sally called him that after the character in Sesame Street.
There some charming humor like that and a lot of melodrama. I think it was a mistake to have Gershon do voiceover narration, and, to tell the truth, she's not a great singer, which may help explain why Jacki's been rocking for more than twenty years without landing a record contract. To be fair, Jacki's not supposed to be a great singer. There are still a couple of good songs.
Fortunately, Gershon makes up for that when she gets a chance to act, and I liked Lori Petty a lot, too. I warmed to her in a way I never have to Benning. In a way, Jacki and Faith are mother and father to the band. I thought Cole and Blucas were fine too, but de Matteo couldn't do much with Tracy.
To tell the truth, The Runaways has made this film superfluous. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri May 13, 2011 5:25 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| On the last song, de Matteo does the least convincing fake playing of a string instrument I've seen in quite a while. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 12:15 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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Saw Amreeka the other night. Pretty good movie about a Palestinian woman who emigrates to the US with her son at the time of Gulf War 2, and settles into what is supposed to be Illinois but looks like some vacant, soulless prairie Hellscape. Hi gary! Battle against discrimination and homesickness and the foreignness of life here. Funny, touching, etc. etc. etc.
Had one moment that had both my wife and me in stitches: the woman is awoken one morning by a panicked call from her mother in Palestine: She'd seen on the news that there was an earthquake in California! "Are you all right?" she asks. Ayup. My wife still gets that sort of thing from her family. You'd be surprised how foreign the vastness of this continent is to people who have never been here. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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