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bartist

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 12:35 pm

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6965 Location: Black Hills

In Sharknado, we see a creature with cold dead eyes, its face a mask of feral desire, trolling endlessly for sustenance to stuff into its soulless face. That's right, I'm talking about John Heard, as he plumbs new career depths!

A film which has to been seen to be believed. Move over, Ed Wood, Bow down, Bobby Bowfinger.

Gravitational laws, thermodynamics, ballistics, hydraulics, marine biology, basic logic - all find themselves more violated than a crack whore at a biker rally. The dialog - I can't even describe how hysterically awful it is - at one point, a shark is killed in a semi-submerged living room - a man observes, as the water turns red, "Hey, looks like it's that time of the month!"

Am so glad that Weeds (and Grace, IIRC) called this bit of cinema flotsam to my attention. Memorable.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

carrobin

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:57 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

Yes, I loved the idea of killing a shark in one's living room after it breaks through the window. Doesn't happen every day. (In fact, it doesn't happen.)

TCM showed "Manhattan Murder Mystery" this afternoon, which I recalled as being lightweight but entertaining, and have now decided it's one of his best. Putting aside the facts that I tend to identify with Diane Keaton and love New York and am intrigued by murder mysteries, it has some of the best movie references (echoes of "Rear Window," the great "Lady from Shanghai" climax), lovely performances by Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston, and some of Allen's best dialogue ("There's nothing wrong with you that a little Prozac and a polo mallet couldn't fix"). Oh yes, and the funniest threatening phone call ever recorded.

jeremy

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 6:12 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

bartist wrote:

...

Gravitational laws, thermodynamics, ballistics, hydraulics, marine biology, basic logic - all find themselves more violated than a crack whore at a biker rally...

Good stuff Bart. I'm afraid, I didn't make it to the end (of the film that is, not your review).

Though I get the 'so bad, it's good' joke', I'm afraid that by around 40 minutes in, it had become a case of 'stop me if you've heard before'.

_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.

jeremy

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 6:18 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

I watched “Oblivion”from the discomfort of a cramped airline seat. The film had the potential to be a taut, psychological, austere, discomfiting, sci-fi thriller. Unfortunately, these elements and the interesting, but slight premise were submerged by the demands of a big budget, multiplex filler. It was a “Pitch Black” story given a “The Chronicles Of Riddick” makeover. A miscast Tom Cruise didn’t help. For me, the part demanded alienated, uncomprehending and troubled to the point of neurosis, but Tom seemed stuck in firm-jawed action hero mode.

[Sigh] Morgan Freeman continues to deliver dispiriting, dialled-in, caricatures of earlier performances, providing easy, if expensive faux-gravitas to films whose directors and writers who don’t seem to have the wit or time to generate it for themselves. And. unable to summon as much as a twinkle, he knows it. **(stars out of five)

So far, Disney are so far proving to be little more than a safe pair of hands for the once inspired Pixar studio. “Monsters’ University” was a likeable, but formulaic and obvious prequel to the brilliant “Monsters’ Inc.” Like most of Disney’s efforts to commercially, defibrillate its back catalogue, this one should have gone straight to DVD. **

“Man Of Steel”, viewed on the return leg, was an interesting and well-made reworking of the Superman origin story. I liked it, but would suggest that the elements of gritty verisimilitude and efforts to force the story into a sincere, coherent, real world setting only served to emphasise that the Superman belongs in an earlier more innocent and less scientifically literate era. Discuss. **½

jeremy

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 6:25 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

Fight Club; Trainspotting; Barton Fink and other Cohen's; and Pulp Fiction would all figure in my first pass at a nineties' top ten.

Syd

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 9:16 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12940 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

I had fun today watching a collection of Goofy cartoons. This one had "Goofy's Glider," which was the first of Goofy's "How To" movies, showing, of course, how not to fly a glider. That, "Father Lion" and "Clock Cleaners" were about the best, but I liked "Aquamania" (Goofy goes waterskiing) quite a bit despite it not being quite up to the rest.

In "Father Lion," Goofy takes his son camping. Now Goofy has been telling his son tall tales about his exploits (the joke being that these exploits are embellishments on earlier Goofy cartoons), and the worshipful son wants to see his father take on a lion. And indeed, they encounter a mountain lion, which the son is quite aware of, and Goofy is oblivious to for most of the cartoon, leading to lots of funny gags. I smiled a lot at this cartoon. I should mention that the son in this cartoon isn't Max, the one in "A Goofy Movie" and "An Extremely Goofy Movie." This one is a puppy, but not a lookalike to his father. He also appears in "Father's Weekend" and "Aquamania."

"Goofy and Wilbur" was Goofy's first solo cartoon. Wilbur is a trained grasshopper and Goofy's fishing pal. Their gimmick is that Wilbur hops on the surface of the water, attracts fish, who follow Wilbur to Goofy's boat where Goofy nets them. Naturally, there are complications, such as two fish going after Wilbur at once. Cute and funny film.

"Clock Cleaners" features Mickey, Donald and Goofy as, er, clock cleaners, in this case cleaning a clock on the scale of Big Ben. This film is one of the best animated of the Disney shorts, and winds up on a lot of Best Cartoon lists. Given the subject, it's not surprising that it owes a big debt to Harold Lloyd. It may be surprising that the Lloyd film it owes a big debt to isn't "Safety Last" but "Never Weaken," the one where Lloyd is walking around the girders of an uncompleted skyscraper.

The collection is "Walt Disney's Funny Factory with Goofy." Some day I'm going to break down and shell out for the master collection of Goofy films with "How to Dance," "How to be a Detective," "How to Golf," etc. They're among the best cartoons Disney had to offer.

Okay, time-out over. You can go back to inferior live-action films.

_________________
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!

carrobin

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 9:26 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

My favorite was always Donald Duck. Never could figure out the attraction of Mickey.

Syd

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 10:06 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12940 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

carrobin wrote:

My favorite was always Donald Duck. Never could figure out the attraction of Mickey.

Mickey was the first and made Disney a fortune. Donald, Goofy and Uncle Scrooge were more interesting, though Mickey's fine (and not bland) in "The Band Concert." If you haven't seen that, it's on Youtube, and is better the more times you watch it.

The breakthrough character for Warner Brothers wasn't Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, but Porky Pig, who now seems bland in comparison (despite being the protagonist for several classic cartoons). Mickey plays the same role for Disney.

_________________
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!

daffy

Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 2:21 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1939 Location: Wall Street

Quote:

Best film of the 1990s would be hard to pick, but Fargo, The Silence of the Lambs and Schindler's List rank above GoodFellas just for starters. .

...My choice would be Schindler's List.

Premiere proclaimed Raging Bull the best film of the eighties (in a critics poll), which I can't see. The Right Stuff was #3 and was my choice. #2 was Wings of Desire, which is pretty defensible.

Good Fellas was better than all of those movies, hands down.

The Right Stuff wasn't even the 2nd best movie at a duplex. The Mercury 7 and Tom Wolfe all deserved far better.

Predictable snoozefest Wings of Desire has the honor of being one of only three films I've ever walked out of in my entire life. The others are Pink Cadillac with Eastwood trying to be Eddie Murphy, and Ethan Hawkes' Chelsea Walls, with a star-filled cast all trying to figure out how to get out of their contracts.

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billyweeds

Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 5:33 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

jeremy wrote:

bartist wrote:

...

Gravitational laws, thermodynamics, ballistics, hydraulics, marine biology, basic logic - all find themselves more violated than a crack whore at a biker rally...

Good stuff Bart. I'm afraid, I didn't make it to the end (of the film that is, not your review).

In the grand scheme of things, this doesn't make a bit of difference. But if you're going to watch Sharknado at all, you simply must see the final sequence, which may be the single most ridiculous scene ever filmed.

bart--Bonus points for your hilarious takedown of John Heard, whose career woes would be sad were he a nicer person.

billyweeds

Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 5:51 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

carrobin wrote:

TCM showed "Manhattan Murder Mystery" this afternoon, which I recalled as being lightweight but entertaining, and have now decided it's one of his best.

Yay! It's high time more people started joining Marj and me on the MMM bandwagon. This underseen, undersold Woody Allen movie is so much better than overrated stuff like Sweet and Lowdown and Match Point that it hurts.

marantzo

Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 11:33 am

Guest

Daffy, I'd put Fargo ahead of Good Fellas.

When I saw MMM, I didn't like it very much. Just saw it again on TCM and I really liked it. I still like Sweet and Lowdown more, but they are quite different movies. Match Play is quite a bit behind MMM.

bartist

Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 6:36 pm

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6965 Location: Black Hills

Renting a copy of MMM from the library - thanks. Haven't had a good Woody in a while.

Quote:

True dat. Puts "Anaconda" to shame.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

Ghulam

Posted: Mon Oct 07, 2013 3:06 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY

.
The 2012 documentary "The Queen of Versailles" is the fascinating story of the family of David and Jackie Siegel, the super-rich owners of Westgate Resorts who achieved remarkable success in the resorts time-sharing industry in Orlando, Miami, Las Vegas and a host of other cities, and lived in the largest single-family home in the U.S. built as a replica of the Palace of Versailles in France. Right about the middle of the movie however the great recession of 2008 hits and they are left with huge debts and have to let about 6,000 of their employees go. They had to put their palatial home in Orlando on the market but could find no buyers. Interesting and frank couple, somewhat shallow, but not stuck-up.

.

gromit

Posted: Mon Oct 07, 2013 3:39 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

I visited a Versailles replica in Latvia.
The Rundale Palace, kind of in the middle of nowhere.
A "summer residence" of the Duke of Courland built in the 18th C.
Oddly enough the Courlanders established a couple of colonies in the late 17th C, controlling Tobago for 30+ years, before selling it to the British to pay of debts, and a settlement in Gambia.

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