The Silver Screen

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Re: The Silver Screen

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Just came back from seeing both The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and Annie, and they are really good!
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Had a really productive movie night recently.
I finally saw Aliens (Bill paxton is awesome) and it was a really cool movie. I'm a fan of that franchise and we watched the firector's cut so I was in heaven. Cool flick, Bill paxton's character may be my spirit animal.

The Crow was so unnecessarily awesome. I loved it, it was alternately a really cool atmospheric creepy action movie and an over the top MST3K worthy movie. Also it includesThis bit (no spoilers) so I guess it's pretty much just the best.

Food of the Gods is a great 70's B-Movie about giant animals attacking canadiens. It features a CFL player fighting off a giant chicken. 'Nuff said.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Seth wrote:Had a really productive movie night recently.
I finally saw Aliens (Bill paxton is awesome) and it was a really cool movie. I'm a fan of that franchise and we watched the firector's cut so I was in heaven. Cool flick, Bill paxton's character may be my spirit animal.

The Crow was so unnecessarily awesome. I loved it, it was alternately a really cool atmospheric creepy action movie and an over the top MST3K worthy movie. Also it includesThis bit (no spoilers) so I guess it's pretty much just the best.

Food of the Gods is a great 70's B-Movie about giant animals attacking canadiens. It features a CFL player fighting off a giant chicken. 'Nuff said.
I wouldn't say MST3K worthy. I love "The Crow". Its one of my all-time favorite films and I have a lot of respect for it. It is a perfect mix of action and gothic romance. If you really want MST3K fodder then you need to see its sequels. They are horrible. Especially "The Crow: City Of Angels".

I saw "The Hobbit" and I agree that it seemed padded out for time, but it still kept me entertained. Even though I knew Smaug was going to die I was still bummed out about it because he was a cool monster.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Radio Blue Heart wrote:
Seth wrote:Had a really productive movie night recently.
I finally saw Aliens (Bill paxton is awesome) and it was a really cool movie. I'm a fan of that franchise and we watched the firector's cut so I was in heaven. Cool flick, Bill paxton's character may be my spirit animal.

The Crow was so unnecessarily awesome. I loved it, it was alternately a really cool atmospheric creepy action movie and an over the top MST3K worthy movie. Also it includesThis bit (no spoilers) so I guess it's pretty much just the best.

Food of the Gods is a great 70's B-Movie about giant animals attacking canadiens. It features a CFL player fighting off a giant chicken. 'Nuff said.
I wouldn't say MST3K worthy. I love "The Crow". Its one of my all-time favorite films and I have a lot of respect for it. It is a perfect mix of action and gothic romance. If you really want MST3K fodder then you need to see its sequels. They are horrible. Especially "The Crow: City Of Angels".

I saw "The Hobbit" and I agree that it seemed padded out for time, but it still kept me entertained. Even though I knew Smaug was going to die I was still bummed out about it because he was a cool monster.
I dunno man there were some pretty unintentionally hilarious bits. I personally found them endearing in a throwback action movie sort of way.


On an unrelated note the amittyville horror from the 70's is almost as good as I remember it. However watching spooky movies alone at night in a spooky house sucks : p
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Watched The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, written and directed by Terry Gilliam. It was a great movie, I really enjoyed it.
I still need to see the two other films in Gilliam's "Trilogy of Imagination" (Time Bandits and Brazil)
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Re: The Silver Screen

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I watched the remake of "Black Christmas" from 2006 and I really wish I had not. It was terrible. Although I can appreciate that they tried to flesh out the identity and the history of Billy and added lots of cool gore effects, it failed everywhere else. All the scares were predictable and the characters were under developed and flat. The way the film is cut together it easy to put together that there were two killers. The phone calls which were so shocking a disturbing in the first film come off as some thing that would be in the "Scream" films. And finally the ending was vapid. Overall I found it unscary and boring. Like the most remakes of horror films, you are better off watching the original film.

The film "God Bless America" is nothing short of brilliant. Its kind of like "Office Space" meets "Natural Born Killers". Its a very dark comedy and satire.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Just came back from seeing Unbroken, and it was great!
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Re: The Silver Screen

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I just watched "Mighty Peking Man" for the first time in many years. It was the Shaw Brothers of Hong Kong's attempt to cash in on the 1976 remake of "King Kong". It cheesy but in a good way. It never ceases to entertain. A giant Yeti-like kaiju destroys a village in norther India, and some business men and a hunter from Hong Kong go there to capture it. They meet a jungle girl who was raised by the monster when her parents died in a airplane crash. They convince her to calm the monster so they can take him back and put him on display. After both are exploited and abused, Peking Man goes on the rampage.

I also saw the film "Ozombie". Although not a good film I can't really say anything bad about it. It was funded on Kickstarter.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Just came back from seeing Inherent Vice, and it was pretty good.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Birdman was the best movie I have seen for a while. It was basically Death of a Salesman meets someone trying to produce Death of a Salesman.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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So......... I just watched the movie Brazil last week.
I'm currently reading Orwell's 1984 (where was I for 22 years)
I couldn't help but notice connections between the two. :shock:

What's going on here?

Also, Brazil was pretty cool movie. I love the setting of a futuristic Utopian society speculative of the 1930's (or 40's?, Orwell?). I wouldn't call this one of my favorites (the plot kind of sucks), but it's a neat watch.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Does anyone else think that Indiana Jones 4's use of a dubious artifact (a Mesoamerican crystal skull - most or all examples of which have been proven to be fakes made in the 1800s or later) instead of well-documented artifacts (Examples: The Ark of the Covenant, Shiva lingas, and the Holy Grail), all to find B movie aliens, was a very flawed concept?
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Re: The Silver Screen

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At least the crystal skulls physically exist, what's more than you can say about either the ark or grail.

The concept in itself wasn't particularly broken, movie aliens are more often than not magic anyway. They wanted to move on from the adventure serials of the 30s to the scifi of the 50s to reflect the passing of time, which is thematically sound. It all fell apart in the execution rather than the design.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Liam wrote:At least the crystal skulls physically exist, what's more than you can say about either the ark or grail.

The concept in itself wasn't particularly broken, movie aliens are more often than not magic anyway. They wanted to move on from the adventure serials of the 30s to the scifi of the 50s to reflect the passing of time, which is thematically sound. It all fell apart in the execution rather than the design.
But they weren't actually connected in any way to Ancient Mesoamerica, other than that they were alleged to have come from there, which it was proven that they hadn't (admittedly at around the same time the movie came out). As for the Ark and the Holy Grail, even if they weren't real, they were well documented; there was no documentation (ancient or otherwise) of the crystal skulls other than the word of the people who "found" them (and not in any official archeological digs).

What I'm saying is, if you don't know anything about something, don't make a movie about it. :roll:
Last edited by Douglas Collier on Fri Jan 23, 2015 3:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Eh, artistic license. Just like there's no three knight brothers who vowed to protect the grail in the histories, here the skulls are the real deal.

Ed.: Yeah, maybe they could've gone with a more credible artifact, but then again, Lucas hasn't the best grasp of other cultures. *cough*Temple of Doom*cough*
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Liam wrote:Eh, artistic license. Just like there's no three knight brothers who vowed to protect the grail in the histories, here the skulls are the real deal.
Ok, I'll give you that. :P But they should have continued the established formula where the climax is them finding the artifact (MacGuffin), rather than them finding the artifact halfway through the movie and the climax being a Gainax Ending.
Liam wrote:Ed.: Yeah, maybe they could've gone with a more credible artifact, but then again, Lucas hasn't the best grasp of other cultures. *cough*Temple of Doom*cough*
True, but they could have at least attempted to do something connected to Islam or even paganism. Bucking the trend of hunting spiritual artifacts and jumping directly into SciFi is just a disservice to the series.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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I thought "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" sucked on so many levels that I would have to write a 10 page itemized list on everything that I hated or was just plain stupid about it. I have never thought that Lucas and Spielberg were that great of filmmakers. They just have enormous budgets. Ultimately their special effects are the real attraction in their films. No wonder Spielberg's acolyte is Michael Bay.

I ordered "Basket Case 2" and it should arrive in the mail soon. Whereas the first film was a beautiful combination of horror and comedy, the sequels focus more on comedy.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Oculus (2013)

Starring Amy Pond and Starbuck as they come across an evil magic mirror that likes to kill a lot. Highly recommended.

While taking notes from The Shining, what with a family man going homicidally crazy and trying to kill his loved ones, evil inanimate object and the restricted location, Oculus uses this as a starting point to do its own thing.

In the present day both kids are now adults; Karen Gillian's character has a job at an auction house and her little brother is released from his mental health center, so she takes the opportunity to track down the mirror and build an elaborate experimental set-up at the old murder house. By conclusively proving the mirror is supernatural she hopes to clear her daddy's name and show the world he didn't shoot Sackhoff's character. Well, he did, but she wants it to be known it was under evil magic mirror influence. So she assembles the last two survivors at a secluded building in order to poke Satan with a stick. A watertight plan that goes off without a hitch.

Strong performances all around. Katee Sackhoff convincingly portrays a woman who unravels at the seams through her husband's seeming affair, the child actors playing the kids know how to act and aren't obnoxious. Karen Gillian's child counterpart especially is pretty good at playing a strong-minded girl who toughens up in face of seeing her parents become crazed and abusive. Gillian has her role as the obsessive mastermind down pat, too.

The story alternates between the present-day investigation and extended flashback sequences showing the lead-up to and immediate aftermath to the murders. Gillian's little brother at first assumes the role of Scully trying to explain away the events of the past as mundane happenings. At the film's midpoint they have a discussion that cleverly comments on how horror plots sound perfectly like the result of insanity by real-life standards. In the course of making him remember the order of events he recalls normal explanations for certain points, such as that his dad simply took the dog to the vet rather than that he mysteriously disappeared in the mirror room. He cites fabricated memory and the movie smartly implies he's the one with the fabricated memories as a consequence of his treatment.

A lot of thought is put in the experiment. Multiple video cams recording everything, heat sensors warning of temperature fluctuations, Gillian's fiancee calling at fixed times, houseplants placed at regular intervals to measure the life-draining field's size, and a free-swinging anchor linked to a mechanical clock that acts as a dead-man switch should the two be incapitated.

It's a well-shot film, with nice ideas like the past and present segments blurring together in the end as the mirror's illusions intensify. ...or is it?!

Yeah, there's no way all that's just in the characters' heads. Anyway, it's well-written all around, starting with the fact they didn't rob the mirror of its mystique by giving it a mandatory, inevitably silly origin story.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Just came back from seeing Selma, and it was great!
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Re: The Silver Screen

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I found a copy of Dr Strange love at the local second hand store. What a find . Everything about that movie is just perfect. Who knew Kubrick was so funny?
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Re: The Silver Screen

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I just watched John Carpenter's "In the Mouth of Madness" for the first time in years. I forgot how good it is! Its Carpenter's tribute to the works of HP Lovecraft and apart of Carpenter's "apocalypse trilogy" along with "The Thing" and "Prince of Darkness". Its very creepy and it plays with your conceptions of reality.

I watched "Battle Beyond the Stars" for the first time and it really impressed me. It was produced by Roger Corman as an attempt to cash in on the success of "Star Wars". Whereas "Star Wars" takes its plot from Akira Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress", this film borrows its plot from Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", even naming one of the planets "Akir" in tribute to Kurosawa. Its about a young man who sets out on a journey to find warriors to protect his home world from cruel invaders. It was Corman's most expensive production, costing about $2 million. That is a lot of money for Roger Corman. It continued to be useful to him as he reused the special effects footage in his future productions like "Forbidden World" and "Dead Space". I thought it was one of the best of the space opera films that were spawned by the success of "Star Wars".
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Re: The Silver Screen

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So, the Oscars happened.

And now we can forget all about the various movies that are only made for Academy members, and not the actual audiences (AKA Oscar bait), like the world does every year. Seriously, if you need any more proof the Oscars are a gorram joke look no further than the absence of The Lego Movie among the nominations.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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And in the category "unnecessary sequels no one really asked for and will probably turn out terribad":

http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/4 ... ien-sequel - District 9 director makes new Alien movie

http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/4 ... ner-sequel - Blade Runner II confirmed
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Liam wrote:And in the category "unnecessary sequels no one really asked for and will probably turn out terribad":

http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/4 ... ien-sequel - District 9 director makes new Alien movie

http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/4 ... ner-sequel - Blade Runner II confirmed
Ah, yes. The belated sequel. Along with the unnecessary remake (or "re-boot" as it has been re-branded) is yet another way to squeeze money out of the reputation of a classic film.

Maybe the studio felt that "Prometheus" didn't live up to their expectations of it.

I saw the Japanese musical/zombie film "Wild Zero" for the first time and I really liked it. It stars the Japanese punk band Guitar Wolf. Its kind of like combining "Rock 'n Roll High School" with "Evil Dead 2", "Dawn of the Dead" and "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park". Its outrageous and entertaining.

I re-watched "The Being" for the first time int many years and even though it is not a good movie by any means, it is still entertaining. For me the worst sin a film can commit is that it is boring.

I've obtained a copy of "Killing Zoe" and have not watched it yet. I hear many good things about the film, written and directed by Roger Avery, co-writer of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" and special make-up effects by Tom Savini. Its about a bank heist in Paris on Bastille Day that goes horribly wrong.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Radio Blue Heart wrote:For me the worst sin a film can commit is that it is boring.
Regardless of anything else, the point of a film is to entertain. No matter what happens, if the end result is boring, the film has failed about as hard is it possibly can. That's why "bad" movies can still be good, so long as they're bad in an entertaining way.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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JeffCvt wrote:
Radio Blue Heart wrote:For me the worst sin a film can commit is that it is boring.
Regardless of anything else, the point of a film is to entertain. No matter what happens, if the end result is boring, the film has failed about as hard is it possibly can. That's why "bad" movies can still be good, so long as they're bad in an entertaining way.
True. People always give "Plan 9 From Outer Space" grief because it was so incompetently made but it makes for one of the best unintentional comedies of all time. Its far from the worst movie ever made. If I had to give that title to any film it would either be "The Curse of Bigfoot", "The Beast in the Cellar", "The Lone Ranger" or "The Room". They are more endurance contests than films. On the other hands there are movies that have a lot going on in them that are still bad. Like "Van Helsing". I like it because the werewolf effects are awesome, but the horrific over acting, especially from Dracula and his brides, wears on my nerves. So even though some film can be a burst of energy, they can still be insulting to one's intelligence. One of the reasons I also hate the "Transformers" series.

Today I got a copy of a Japanese zombie movie that I had not seen in a long time. Its called "Junk" and it is a sort of love letter to Italian zombie films, particularly the films of Lucio Fulci. I love this movie.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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After many years of searching I have finally seen "Frankenstein Conquers The World"! And it was everything that I hoped it would be! Its a kaiju film from the same team that did most of the Godzilla films and features a giant version of the Frankenstein Monster. It starts out in the last days of the Second World War and the Germans ship to japan, via U-boat, the still beating heart of Frankenstein's Monster. The lab where it is to be studied was in Hiroshima and seemingly destroyed by the atomic bomb dropped there. The radiation caused the heart to regenerate a new body around itself and the creature returned to life in a child form, eating animals to survive. The boy is captured and studied. Its revealed that his regenerative abilities have made him immune to radiations and could be the source of cures for radiation caused sicknesses. On a protein rich diet, the monster beings to grow exponentially, breaks free and escapes. Added to this situation is the appearance of a subterranean kaiju called Baragon who is wreaking havoc for which the Frankenstein Monster is blamed. The two monsters meet in battle.

Interesting thing about this film. It began life as a treatment drawn up by Willis O'Brien for a King Kong sequel called "King Kong vs Frankenstein" in which Kong would battle a monster that Dr. Frankenstein would create from animal parts. This treatment was eventually sold to Toho who would eventually change one of the combatants to Godzilla and you got "King Kong vs Godzilla". Another film was planned that was going to be "Frankenstein vs Godzilla", but this film was dropped and Godzilla was substituted for a new kaiju called Baragon and you got "Frankenstein vs Baragon" also know was "Frankenstein Conquers The World". In a weird way, this film stays closer to original concept of the monster than any other cinematic depiction. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein studied alchemy as well as medicine and galvanization at university. His creation was not just a bunch of parts sewn together and reanimated but they fused into a single cohesive being, the first of an entire new race. That is why he was reluctant to create a mate for it. Their offspring would only inherit the traits of the corpses their reproductive organs came from, not the creature as a whole.

The version I watched was the American re-cut of the film. One thing that I missed was there is an extended ending where after the monster defeats Baragon, a giant octopus appears and attacks, dragging the Frankenstein Monster to its death under water. There is a sequel called "War of the Gargantuas" about two giant hairy monsters spawned from the cells of the Frankenstein Monster.

I also saw the film "Shadowzone" for the first time in a long time. Its about an dream experiment where they discover that the human can access other planes of existence. It accidentally brings a shape-shifting monster from that other dimension and it starts killing the researchers. It proudly boasts that it is "in the tradition" of the "The Thing" and "Alien", but I would also say "Galaxy of Terror" because the monster is able to assume the shape of whatever scares you the most. Its from "Full Moon Features". I also got a copy of their film "Puppet Master" that I was assured was the uncut version but sure enough it is the R-rated version. If it wasn't just $5 I would have really been mad. So, I just sent an angry email to the company.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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So one night over break I finally watched Demons and it was everything I wanted. It's awesome 80's splatter horror/ action and it does a good job of creating tension through a cool scary concept rather than incompetent characters (though there are some head scratching lol horror movie logic moments) which to me always takes a film to the next level. I didn't realize it was from the guy who directed suspiria. I really need to check that out now. It's been on my radar but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I also saw a great 80's sci-fi movie called Robo Vampire which is not actually about robotic vampires but is instead a weird robocop vs. the undead/ kung fu movie mash up. So that was pretty great. If you find it somewhere give it a watch if you like over the top low budget stuff. It definitely falls into the "tried too hard with too little budget but it's got heart" category of bad movies.

Annnd I saw a bunch of other stuff

The Conjuring left me feeling kind of cheated. I heard some good things but really it was just a typical modern haunting/possession movie. Nothing special or particularly original. It was just really really average. Oh well it was a gift from my sister so no complaints.

M is an awesome 1930's german film by Fritz Lang. It's part of the group of 1930's european films that would eventually be cited as pre-cursors to film noir. If you don't mind sub titles and black and white it's actually a really engaging, well written, and well acted story. It definitely doesn't feel like something you need to watch with the mindset of "oh well this is old so there will be some rough edges."

Birdman is awesome technically and artistically. Go see it if you can still find a theatre showing it. Or just buy it. It has a really good take on the modern super hero movie explosion and is a really touching story if you're the creative type. I really liked Michael Keaton's character and the film's take on the creative process.

I caught everything but the first 30 or so minutes of The Hustler starring Paul Newman. It's a film about a pool hustler (Newman) getting into trouble because he's paul newman and all his characters get in trouble. I have come to realize that I really like Paul Newman in everything I've ever seen him in. I think he's on the level where I need to just start watching anything he stars in. He's great in this and he was better in Slapshot and Butch cassidy and the sundance kid.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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I don't know about anyone else, but I've actually heard of lots of people wanting Neill Blomkamp to do an Alien movie, myself included. His visual design would be perfect for that universe, plus he's a smart writer.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Seth wrote:So one night over break I finally watched Demons and it was everything I wanted. It's awesome 80's splatter horror/ action and it does a good job of creating tension through a cool scary concept rather than incompetent characters (though there are some head scratching lol horror movie logic moments) which to me always takes a film to the next level. I didn't realize it was from the guy who directed suspiria. I really need to check that out now. It's been on my radar but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
I am glad you liked "Demons", Seth. And you will love "Suspiria". It is one of the greatest movies ever made. You might also want to be on the lookout for "Demons 2", and the semi-sequels "The Church", "The Ogre" and "Black Demons". All three had the alternate title of "Demons 3".

I've been watching some more Hammer Films Dracula films. I just saw "Dracula, Prince of Darkness". I also have new editions of "From Beyond" and "The Burning" to add to my collection. I got "Patrick Still Lives" by mail and still need to watch it. It is an unauthorized Italian-made sequel to the classic Australian horror film "Patrick" about a coma patient that it not only conscious but it killing people with telekinetic powers.

I just heard about a movie called "Winter of the Dead: Snowstorm/Зима мертвецов. Метелица". It is Russia's first zombie movie! Unfortunately it is not available in North America yet. But if my wait for the film "White Tiger/Белый тигр" taught me anything its that it be here eventually.
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Saturn381
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Just came back from seeing Cinderella, and I thought it was really good.
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Penwrite
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Re: The Silver Screen

Post by Penwrite »

Really enjoyed that movie.

And on the topic of Disney live-action remakes of its animated films: http://thisisinfamous.com/disney-keeps- ... ion-mulan/

Color me excited! Mulan is one of my fave Disney films.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Robert Z'Dar died this week. I think I will remember him by watching all the "Maniac Cop" movies.

I watched a really gross killer bug movie called "The Nest". I think it probably had an influence on Del Toro when he made "Mimic". On an New England island, a biotech company tried to create an alternative to pesticides by creating a breed of roach that eats other roaches. The problem is that they eat everything in their path and share a hive mind. They can also assimilate DNA from the victims they eat to created hybrids, including a cat/roach hybrid and a human/roach hybrid.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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So, I saw the class if nuke 'em high this week. I'm really glad I was able to experience that. It wasn't great but it had a lot of great over the top moments and characters. I think I probably like the toxic avenger more but I'm glad to have found that weird surreal little corner of movie history
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Greatest high-budget movie ever: Star Wars Holiday Special (1979) :P
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Seth wrote:So, I saw the class if nuke 'em high this week. I'm really glad I was able to experience that. It wasn't great but it had a lot of great over the top moments and characters. I think I probably like the toxic avenger more but I'm glad to have found that weird surreal little corner of movie history
I am glad that you got to see that movie! Its one of my all time favorites! You can never go wrong with Troma movies.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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I recently watch Interstellar and my oh my that movie was wonderful to watch. I was interested what with Neil Degrasse Tyson talking about it, and I wasn't disappointed in the least. I especially loved the ending, everything coming together. I can now see why TARS was considered MVP by some as well.
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Re: The Silver Screen

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Ender's Game was good. PewDiePie's cameo in the bonus features was better. :lol:
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Re: The Silver Screen

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*incoherent excited screaming*

http://thisisinfamous.com/force-strong- ... s-trailer/

STAR WARS!
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Re: The Silver Screen

Post by HoundInATree »

Is it me, or has this news suddenly got viral? I've known this was happening for a while now so I'm not sure why the hypes suddenly picked up.

But still, yay!
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