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| Rod |
 Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:07 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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marantzo wrote: When I saw Easy Rider I was 29 or so, so I wasn't exactly young. I loved it. I've seen it since and though it has some sub-par snippets here or there, I still loved it. I never did like the Fonda acid trip. Not when I first saw it or on repeated viewings. The UFO conversation was brilliant and apparently Nicholson just winged it. What a lot of people might not realise is that Fonda is supposed to be an unrealistic dreamer. That's why some of his dialogue might sound cornball. For instance, when they are with that couple? who have this god forsaken piece of land that they intend to grow things on, Fonda says in his optimistic and love and peace way, "They'll make it" Hopper retorts with something like, "No they won't, nothing will grow on that land, it's sand!" Hopper is the realistic one, Fonda is in a delusional 'everything is good' dream.
It's a funny and sad movie with terrific energy. And visually it's a pleasure.
Marantzo, that's the best movie post you've ever made. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:16 am |
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You just like short reviews, Rod. 
Thanks, but I don't know what that says about my other reviews. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:31 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Well, I agree with every word of it, that helps.  |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:33 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Last night I started watching Rainbow Bridge. A mixed bag. It's billed as Jimi Hendrix: Rainbow Bridge, but this Rover dozed off before Jimi took over. The film follows Pat Hartley (aka Dolly Dagger) as she makes her way to California and then on to Maui, where she is supposed to check in on the Rainbow Bridge Alternative Meditation Center. This consists of a bunch of stoners and surfers, yoga practitioners and free-love hippies living together and digging the Age of Aquarius. They discuss God and aliens ("space brothers") and generally sound serious and seriously stoned.
I was expecting something more along the lines of the video to Crosstown Traffic (I hope people have seen that excellent snapshot of funky Manhattan). There is a decent sequence in RB when Pat Hartley is riding a public bus in LA and blaring "Dolly Dagger" from a tape player. Anyway, I'd have to say that the film is best enjoyed as a sort of sociological study -- a time capsule of that era. Some of the film is a bit erratic, but it was rather low-budget. Nothing is as developed as an actual plot, but more of a free-form journey to hang out with this commune.
It was made in 1970, several months before Hendrix died at the age of 27, and features his last US live concert, on the foothills of a volcano. I didn't make it that far, and apparently the concert footage is only 20 minutes long and not edited to best effect. Also a drunk Jimi raps with the stoned meditators. Or perhaps the drugs are reversed. In any case, it looks like I have the best part awaiting for tonight's viewing. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 11:13 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Easy Rider is a visual pleaure, I'll give you that. But it's a dull, dull movie, not helped by a complete lack of dramtic conflict. Until, I guess, the last few seconds of the movie. |
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| Mr. Brownstone |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:14 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 2450
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The New Orleans acid trip terrified me the first time I saw the film (I was 19). I somehow felt I was watching death.
HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!!! |
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| Shane |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:44 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1168
Location: Chicago
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I first saw Easy Rider at 16 with a bunch of long hairs and when we left the movie house we almost attacked a bunch of hostial straights waiting in line. Of course it was the anthem for the southern hippies cause we were always in fights with violent rednecks or worse. I tend not to watch movies of that era anymore the memories are best left buried, like a lot of people who weren't as lucky to make through.
If struck me dumb! I remember getting up with the rest of the audience and the only sound was everyone putting on their coats for the exit into the Tacoma winter. I was so blown away by this phenominon that I took a friend the next day to have her experience it and when it happened she too was pratically in a trance with this audience. I find no fault with the movies presentation or the use of b & w which is still in question. I've seen interviews with people and when it's been brought up there are conflicting stories to tell. It was truly an experience to remember for me. Both movies were on their first U.S. runs by the way.
As for watching people trip, I've always found it very amusing that someone thought they could reenact the experience in film. Fonda tried pretty hard in The Trip and it still was like visiting a mental ward you just visit. I did see that one triping so I could laugh with him at the things around him but that was still not as good as I wanted. The best film I ever saw tripping was 2001 on the Cinaramanic (sp) screen in its Atlanta Premire many of us went that day and boy what a day!!! |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:49 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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best acid scene on film:
the casino carpet pulsing and swirling with color in FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. |
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| Shane |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:55 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1168
Location: Chicago
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| I had better check that one out, straight though. |
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| Shane |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:57 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1168
Location: Chicago
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| I used to love vinyl floors with the breathing patterns.....my first trip was spent watching the floor breathe..a lot of it that is. |
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| bocce |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 1:06 pm |
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Joined: 24 May 2004
Posts: 2428
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actually, the best trip scene i remember was william hurt with the old indian shaman in ALTERED STATES....
(a sadly forgotten film) |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 1:09 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| bocce, yer right. ALTERED STATES has some great psychedelic scenes. And its a very good movie. |
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| Shane |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 1:14 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1168
Location: Chicago
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| and indeed it is overlooked...but I agree with you both it was a real seat grabber at times. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 6:52 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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Altered States is amusing in the way Russell bypasses Chayefsky. More power to him. He would have been sued by Chayefsky for omitting one line, so he gets around the verbiage by having his actors yell the words down stair cases, speak rapidly, and shove food down their faces as they talk.
But what a terrible movie! The "revelation" at the end makes the whole movie worthless: The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth. Bleh. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 3:40 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I had the dubious pleasure of watching The Lost Continent today, a Hammer film which is a genuine turkey appropriate for Thanksgiving. We start off with an odd funeral at sea attended both by people in modern dress and spanish conquistadors. Then the flashback which tells how we came to this pass.
We have a group of passengers aboard an ocean liner which is carrying a load of high explosives which must never, ever be exposed to water. Naturally, there is an immediate puncture that starts to fill the compartment with water. After several scenes with people peering through a window helplessly watching the compartment fill with water it finally occurs to them to move the high explosives out of the compartment! Of course there's a hurricane coming, an a captain who really needs some ball bearings to keep his composure. After several attempts to abandon ship which are thwarted by the captain it occurs to him that it might be a good idea to abandon ship now that the hurricane has arrived. (I think. I was starting to doze by this point.)
After adventures at sea including losing people to dorsal fins with no apparent shark attached and carnivorous seaweed (!), the passengers bump into a ship which turns out to be the one they just left. The crew and passengers include two women--maybe--one of which likes to show lots of skin and no appreciably cleavage, and the other a woman named Eva who eleven years previous was wife and mistress of a dictator who supposedly ruled over a Latin American country, even though the woman(?) sounds like Marlene Dietrich and I suspected the dictator had a little black moustache and had fled to a friendly country. I add the question mark to "woman" because we had a debate as to whether Hildegard Knef was actually a woman. (On the other hand, we also wondered whether one of the male characters was a woman, so it all evened out.) Fortunately the dubious male was killed by a piece of fire hose which was supposedly the carnivorous seaweed™.
Anyway, they are becalmed in the Sargasso Sea (I think) surrounded by the carnivorous seaweed™ when they notice a nearby island which is apparently inhabited by giant insects. They are approached by natives wearing two balloons rising from a harness on their shoulders and some sort of inflatable disks on their feet. This enables them to walk on top of the carnivorous seaweed™ which apparently cannot consume people walking on it if they wear wear inflatable disks on their feet, but is quite capable of grabbing people off an ocean liner.
The island (the Lost Continent of the title, although it seems awfully puny for a continent) is inhabited by people descended from passengers of previously becalmed ships, including spanish conquistadors who have helpfully left their 16th century armor behind to help out the props department. These are led by a kid who claims he is a god, a grand nagus who looks like the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan except that his robe is apparently polar bear fur and his hood is about four feet tall. and who feeds dissenters to a whatchamacallit. Whatever it is, it has lots of eyes, teeth, tentacles, and looks either like a toothed vagina (with snakes attached) or an oversized garbage disposal consumed by moldy nachos. This threat makes the carnivorous seaweed™ look plausible. Okay, not entirely ridiculous. Okay, entirely ridiculous, but not in comparison. (Also, by this point, we have been introduced to some female islanders whose feminity is not in doubt and of whom Russ Meyer would be proud.)
At this point, a passenger flees, only to be consumed by a gigantic hermit crab which is then attacked by a giant scorpion. The hermit clab has lovely green eyes which glow in the dark for no particular reason except to remind us this is a color film. We wait for them to be put out and we are not disappointed. It finally occurs to the crew that they still have the ridiculous amount of high explosives which go off in contact with water, and the local water is filled with carnivorous seaweed™ which is keeping them prisoner. The local god wants to go with them, is assasinated by the inquisitor guy in the polar bear skin Ku Klux Klan robes, and the local god is the corpse in the opening scene.
A roomful of people sat through this, and half of them wouldn't sit through Bride and Prejudice. I'm seeking a new group of friends. |
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