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Kilted Rob said:
As I get older, I find Scarface doesn't hold up as a movie for me Like it use to. For me, De Palma's films tend to two types. You have the normal grounded films like Carlito's Way and The Untouchables. Then you have the heightened reality films like Body Double, Snake Eyes, etc. The conversation between Voros Voros and BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan, I think, highlighted why Scarface doesn't hold up, it doesn't fit into either categories. The heightened reality is clearly present but it is also trying to be a normal grounded movie and you have this disconnect. for me, Scarface is at its best when it embraces the heightened reality, the exaggerations, cranked to eleven. It doesn't work as a grounded film because of all the exaggerations and larger than reality portrayals.
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Definitely would say it is less grounded than the untouchables (but I also like it more than the untouchables----even though I do like the latter, 80s and 90s movies with Kevin Costner just bother me a little more than 80s and 90s movies without Kevin Costner in them). I do love the baseball bat scene though (another good example of dark humor in a mob movie). But definitely going to give that one a rewatch now that you brought it up (don't think I have seen it for over 20 years). I loved Body Double. I don't even remember why as it has been ages since I saw it (would need to give it an honest rewatch to give any intelligent thoughts on it).

Scarface I would definitely call heightened reality, and it looks like it was written on cocaine (my understanding is it was just researched on cocaine by stone, but he wrote it in Paris because he knew he would have more trouble getting cocaine there while writing it). To me it is the kind of movie that is good at capturing feel, and maybe that is why you are sensing it is heightened but also grounded. As an example I was talking with a friend about it last night and he said he likes the movie still but gets really annoyed at parts of it. The montage scene obviously came up but also he said he found the movie got much more boring once Tony made it. I wasn't watching it with that criticism in mind, but I do think he might be right that it gets more dull when he is on top (I just rewatched it but a little fuzzy on the timeline of events). However I think that might also be intentional because he is supposed to be kind of lost when he gets to the top (and Elvira even calls him boring). The rise is very exciting. You have all these interesting scenes taking place and it makes the idea of becoming the big boss a very alluring one. But once he gets there, we are just kind of watching Tony sit in a hot tub, smoking a cigar and watching TV, then we literally watch him count money before he gets busted. In terms of making you feel what the character does, it works. But it also relies on shifting a little from being really heightened reality to being a little more level (and you might also be able to compare that kind of shifting throughout the movie from being high on cocaine to being clearheaded and dealing with reality). I would need to rewatch it again with that point in mind to know if it really matches up. But I do think there is something there with the movie not always being heightened reality (obviously it picks that heightened reality back up by a factor of ten in the finale). Also I found out that Steven Spielberg directed one shot in the final (sure plenty know this, but it was news to me). I think it was one of the shots when the hit squad first enters the mansion grounds.
 
Kilted Rob said:
It's been at least twenty years since I last watched Carlito's Way. So many movies to still see...
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I haven't seen that one since it came out. The good thing about being older, is when you haven't seen a film in that long, it is almost like watching it for the first time. I have been watching a lot of classic horror movies for my podcast and when we get to ones I haven't seen since I was a kid or in high school, I often only remember key moments or scenes.
 
Kilted Rob said:
As a wee lad in the 80's I had a crush on Michelle Pfeiffer, Grease 2, Married to the Mob, Witches of Eastwick, Tequila Sunrise, etc. Then there was Ladyhawke...
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I like Ladyhawke, despite the very dated Alan Parsons' score. It has my favorite line about the Black Death in any movie I can think of: "Since the plague, there are more wolves than men." And a great Leo McKern part.

3rik said:
I watched two films on Netflix this week: News of the World and The Edge of Seventeen. Really liked News of the World but I´m rather partial to westerns. The Edge of Seventeen was enjoyable enough.

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I've been waiting for News of the World but it somehow never arrives.

Because my wife was interested, we watched Judy, the Judy Garland biopic from 2019, on Friday night. It was perhaps a bit sentimental, but I found that Renee Zellweger really did disappear into the role. After I while I forgot I wasn't watching Judy Garland. I never had that feeling with Tom Hanks playing Fred Rogers.

On Saturday, I caught about half of From Hell It Came (1957), an extremely campy monster movie featuring a murderous tree-man:

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De Palma is hit and miss with me. I find Scarface tedious and WAY overrated. Body Double is one of my all-time favorite movies, though.

Been watching WMAC Masters, which I never knew existed.

 
Voros said:
GF 3 is a disaster that all Coppola fans pretend never happened.
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Missed this. I agree Godfather III was bad. I definitely wasn't endorsing it as a good movie (or at least a good Godfather movie) with that remark. Godfather III is also not just a bad movie, but one of those films that is so pinned to the day and year it was made, in a bad way, that it just feels weird to watch anytime I see it. Loved his next film though, Bram Stoker's Dracula. That was leagues better
 
BedrockBrendan said:
I haven't seen that one since it came out. The good thing about being older, is when you haven't seen a film in that long, it is almost like watching it for the first time. I have been watching a lot of classic horror movies for my podcast and when we get to ones I haven't seen since I was a kid or in high school, I often only remember key moments or scenes.
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Keep an eye out in CW for Mr. Aragorn himself, Vigo Mortensen, in a small but important role.
 
Last night I watched To Be or Not to Be (1983), a remake of an Ernst Lubitsch film from 1942. It's set in Warsaw just before and after the beginning of World War II. Mel Brooks plays the prima-donna head of a theatrical troupe that has to aid a Polish airman (and would-be lover of Brooks' character's wife and co-star) regain a list of Polish underground agents before it can be delivered to the Gestapo.

I'd seen it ages ago, in the theater, I think. At the time I was somewhat disappointed in it, perhaps because I was expecting something like Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, but Brooks neither wrote or directed this film--he is just the star. This time I really enjoyed the movie. It has a good cast, including Jose Ferrer as the villainous turncoat who is trying to get the list to the Germans, Charles Durning as the over-the-top Gestapo colonel, Christopher Lloyd as a hapless Gestapo officer, and some funny work by veteran character actors like Jack Riley (Mr. Carlsen on Bob Newhart), George Wyner, and George Gaynes. Anne Bancroft, Brook's real wife, is funny and suitably gorgeous as his character's wife, and a young Tim Matheson does a good job as the wet-behind-the-ears Polish flyer. Estelle Reiner, Carl Reiner's wife (and Rob Reiner's mother) has a small role in it, and Brooks' son Max (of World War Z fame) has an even smaller one. The humor isn't sophisticated, but what do you expect?

I'd be interested to see the Lubitsch film now, which has a very good cast as well: Jack Benny in the role Brooks plays and Carole Lombard as his wife, with Robert Stack as the young lieutenant.
 
Lofgeornost said:
Last night I watched To Be or Not to Be (1983), a remake of an Ernst Lubitsch film from 1942. It's set in Warsaw just before and after the beginning of World War II. Mel Brooks plays the prima-donna head of a theatrical troupe that has to aid a Polish airman (and would-be lover of Brooks' character's wife and co-star) regain a list of Polish underground agents before it can be delivered to the Gestapo.

I'd seen it ages ago, in the theater, I think. At the time I was somewhat disappointed in it, perhaps because I was expecting something like Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, but Brooks neither wrote or directed this film--he is just the star. This time I really enjoyed the movie. It has a good cast, including Jose Ferrer as the villainous turncoat who is trying to get the list to the Germans, Charles Durning as the over-the-top Gestapo colonel, Christopher Lloyd as a hapless Gestapo officer, and some funny work by veteran character actors like Jack Riley (Mr. Carlsen on Bob Newhart), George Wyner, and George Gaynes. Anne Bancroft, Brook's real wife, is funny and suitably gorgeous as his character's wife, and a young Tim Matheson does a good job as the wet-behind-the-ears Polish flyer. Estelle Reiner, Carl Reiner's wife (and Rob Reiner's mother) has a small role in it, and Brooks' son Max (of World War Z fame) has an even smaller one. The humor isn't sophisticated, but what do you expect?

I'd be interested to see the Lubitsch film now, which has a very good cast as well: Jack Benny in the role Brooks plays and Carole Lombard as his wife, with Robert Stack as the young lieutenant.
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I've only seen the original and it is a masterpiece. Lubitsch mocks the Nazis with such black wit that would soon be near-impossible even a few years later, along with Ninochka he has to be one of the greatest satirists of two of the most destructive authoritarian systems in history.



At a time when many intellectuals played apologist or lost their minds he showed remarkable moral foresight.

I assume the original film had to be an inspiration for Brooks' The Producers.
 
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The second season of Girl From Nowhere is up on Netflix. We're really enjoying this at times Junji Ito-esque Thai high school mystery tales series.
 
Anyone have suggestions of stuff to watch on Vimeo? I love short films in theory, but in practice, I don't really know where to start...
 
I'm making my way through Resident Alien on Peacock. Enjoying it so far. Before that I watched Jupiter's Legacy, which was ok. They changed a lot of characters (some of the characters were real assholes in the comic, but on the show, they're more heroic), which I think makes the story somewhat better
 
Just realized that the Carroll Baker/Lenzi giallo boxset is all up on Tubi.tv for legit viewing.

Watched A Quiet Place to Kill (not to be confused with the great Testi horror film of a similar title), Paranoia and So Sweet..So Perverse with their last film together Knife of Ice next. Jean Sorel is good in A Quiet Place... but it is Jean-Louis Trintigant in So Sweet... who helps make it to the top of my list.

All very well made (check the editing in So Sweet...) and pacey with fun very 60s soundtracks and set design, fashion. These are so good I'm jonsing to pick up the Severin boxset. Highly recommened.

We need a really good English-language giallo rpg I tell ya.

 
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Last night I saw most of Fiend without a Face (1958), a very cheesy SF film in which a scientist accidentally creates murderous mind-creatures, which multiply and become dangerous when an American Air Force base in the area sets up an atomic power plant. You can get a good idea of the monsters from the poster below, though not of their size--the 'brain' portion was the same scale as a normal human brain. They were realized on screen through stop-motion animation. For most of the film they are invisible, but in the last 15 minutes or so they come into view. Laughably, their attack consists of flying through the air to their victims and wrapping their spinal-cord tails around the target's neck, suffocating him or her. They are quite vulnerable to guns, axes, and other kinds of damage, and it's hard to see why they are much of a threat--a neck-brace is all that you would need to defeat them. The writers also seem to have been a little unclear on how atomic plants work. When the heroes figure out that the plant is somehow powering the creatures, they want to shut it down, only to find that the monsters have wrecked the control rods. Their solution? Blow up the control room with dynamite.

Fiend without a Face.jpg
 
We just watched Shazam on Netflix. It was alright. I liked the first part better than the showdown. I think it could've done with more funny and less dark.
 
OK, so apparently there i this "unboxing" video fad on youtube, where people order things, and then film themselves...opening their mail, and showig off the products they got. I don't understand what the entertainment value is in that, but it's a pretty big subgenre on youtube these days. Anyways, there's a specific subset of these videos devoted to CCGs, like Pkemon, where a person opens blind packs on camera.

Recently I guess there is now this thing where video supporters can bid to have the person bend the pack or cut it in half before opening. I guess it's kind of a dare - see what rare cards you might have had if you hadn't ruined the pack beforehand. These, at least, I can see the entertainment value in, at least the times it's gone horribly wrong:



 
Watched the first 3 episodes of the new season of Legends of Tomorrow. I continue to absolutely love this show and how it completely leans into the absurdity of superhero comics.
 
Also watched the second episode of the new version of Kung Fu (first episode wasn't available for free). It was fine, but not anything I'm particularly inspired to continue watching.
 
TristramEvans said:
OK, so apparently there i this "unboxing" video fad on youtube, where people orer things, and then film themselves...opening their mail, and sowig off the products they got. I don't understand what the entertainment value is in that, but it's pretty big. Andyways, there's a specific subset of these videos devoted to CCGs, like Pkemon, where a person opens blind packs on camera.

Recently I guess there is now this thing where video supporters can bid to have the person bend the pack or cut it in half before opening. I guess it's kind of a dare - see what rare cards you might have had if you hadn't ruined the pack beforehand. These, at least, I can see the entertainment value in, at least the times it's gone horribly wrong:



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I could never see the point of unboxing videos. IIRC, even the movie Wreck-It Ralph II made fun of them. I guess if they are the beginning of a review of the product, they might make sense. But I’d rather read a review than listen to someone speak it into a camera, personally.
 
E-Rocker said:
Also watched the second episode of the new version of Kung Fu (first episode wasn't available for free). It was fine, but not anything I'm particularly inspired to continue watching.
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It's available on the CW website (I just checked)
 
I finished a movie last night called "Hong Boxing", which is a martial arts film. It was ok, but nothing special. There's a lot of these movies being released from the mainland, and the quality tends to varies. Also started watching John Wayne Gacy - Devil in Disguise on Peacock. It has footage from the only interview he ever did. It's been interesting so far
 
E-Rocker said:
Anyone have suggestions of stuff to watch on Vimeo? I love short films in theory, but in practice, I don't really know where to start...
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I've only found isolated stuff here and there on Vimeo over the years, which is a shame as it is a good plaform, superior to YT in many ways I've heard from those who work in video production.
 
Over the past two weeks I watched a few things on Streaming.

Girls5Eva on Peacock -- This was really funny, and I actually tried Peacock to see all the episodes (the first one was available on the free version so I watched it). I really enjoyed it, the humor was good. I never saw 30 Rock but I heard it's good. It's short but I think it's better in small doses, I can't see it being a 22 episode a year show. Unfortunately for Peacock, I didn't really find any other benefit to keeping the service (not a lot of content that grabbed me), so I cancelled after the trial.

Halston on Hulu -- Mixed feelings about this. The good parts -- Ewan McGregor is perfect, he had the voice and mannerisms down perfectly, and I felt other cast members did a good job. The problem with this series is it's biographical but it's not well structured. It does a good job establishing character rapport between specific characters, such as his relationships with Liza Minelli, but there's an odd structuring and it's hard to sympathize with the character since he's obnoxious (on the outside at least) and we're left out of certain elements. One Example--we are shown in brief flashbacks of him as a boy making his mother happy with some head-dresses in a few episodes. Then, all of the sudden, he goes to his Mom's funeral--but we are never made aware of his current relationship with her, even if she was still alive. The show is very oddly paced -- so, I give it high praise for the acting but the story itself could have been better structured.
 
Lofgeornost said:
I could never see the point of unboxing videos. IIRC, even the movie Wreck-It Ralph II made fun of them. I guess if they are the beginning of a review of the product, they might make sense. But I’d rather read a review than listen to someone speak it into a camera, personally.
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This one is pretty good:
 
For the last few evenings, my wife and I have been watching Deadwater Fell, a recent BBC short series, courtesy of Netflix. I was drawn to it because of the cast, including David Tennant, Anna Madeley, and especially Cush Jumbo. It's an atmospheric show, set in a small village in Scotland. Early in the first episode, one family (Tennant's and Madeley's) house is consumed by fire, leading to multiple deaths. The series then explores how this happened, who was responsible, and what the effects were.

Although it was a pretty show and Jumbo and Madeley both gave good performances, I didn't find it all that successful in the end. It fell between two stools, so to speak. Part of the time it tried to be a mystery (was the fire arson? who was responsible for the deaths?) but most of the time it was basically a domestic drama of a number of families with an emphasis on their miseries and disfunctions. So it ended up doing neither particularly well, and came across as rather ponderous, to me anyway.
 
I watched the Duran Duran documentary There's Something You Should Know the other day. It was fun, though it did skip a lot of albums very casually.
 
Last night I saw the 4th season X-Files episode "Paper Hearts," which is quite good. Mulder has strange dreams which lead him to the burial site of a young girl, the victim of a serial killer he helped put away some years ago. This raises the possibility that the killer may have had more victims than previously known. When Mulder visits him in prison, the killer claims that Mulder's sister Samantha was in fact one of his abductions--she was not taken by aliens at all. And he seems to know details about the case that support this... It's an eerie episode and the solution makes dramatic sense, though there's little attempt to justify it through pseudo-science. Tom Noonan, a veteran character actor, is good as the serial killer.
 
Last night I watched Ophelia (2018), a re-imagining of Hamlet from her perspective, apparently based on a novel by the same title that I've not read. It was moderately successful, I'd say. It ends up mixing in a fair amount of "Romeo and Juliet" into its plot--maybe too much. Some of its adaptations of scenes from the play are interesting or effective, but others fall kind of flat. It also introduced a subplot about a wronged 'wise woman' near the castle at Elsinore which was too predictable.

As you might expect from such a movie, it was strong on its female characters' agency, which may be one reason that Daisy Ridley was cast as the main character. She did fine with the strong or rebellious elements in Ophelia, but her attraction to Hamlet (which was important for the story) didn't come across well--it seemed like something that had to happen for the plot, not an emotional reality. Clive Owen played the villainous Claudius, Naomi Watts Hamlet's mother Gertrude, Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy from the Potter films) her brother Laertes, and Tom MacKay (from 1917) was Hamlet.
 
I'm finally starting the new Castlevania animation. It's a little overly gory (I'm Canadian, we're a little sensitive to violence) but the animation is cool, the story is bog standard, if a tad dark, but more than serviceable (I'm not looking for award winning craft here), and the delivery is spot on.

I'm probably going to dip out after Season 2, as I hear it goes downhill from there.
 
Watching Army of the Dead on Netflix - high octane zombie fun. Feels like the Resident Evil films will be asking where their stuff went.
 
I watched Island Zero, a low-budget horror film that can literally be broken into two halves, based upon a scene where a character’s laptop is ubattended. The part of the movie before that scene is really fun, and the film after tgat is full of so many contradictions, plot holes, and cliche writing you’d think you were watching another film.
 
Last night I watched "Revolution of the Daleks," which I think is the latest of the New Who to air--January 1 of this year, if IMDB can be trusted. I wasn't very impressed. Despite having Jack Harkness as a guest-character, the story seemed to be too much of a retread of the previous holiday special "Resolution," and a rather ho-hum use of the Daleks. The companions' reaction to the Doctor's enforced absence was also kind of jarring, though I guess necessary for one of the main plot developments:
that Graham and Ryan are leaving the cast.
 
Watched the latest episode of Legends of Tomorrow.

Literally playing football with the nuclear football? Brilliance.

Give those writers a raise!

Also watched a Western called The Warrant. I felt like there was a fair bit of over-acting happening, but I did like the story.
 
Last night I saw "Night Terrors," a season 4 TNG episode on broadcast. In it, the Enterprise gets stuck in an energy-draining bubble known as a Tyken's rift, while simultaneously the crew (except Troi) lose the ability to dream and become increasingly whacked-out.

It's not a great episode, but I know how they feel. Last night some raccoons had a dust-up around 4:00 a.m., awakening me, and then around 5:00 the birds started singing. It's amazing that such a small animal can make so much noise. One male cardinal apparently wanted to block radar, or something similar.
So at this point I feel like I'm sleep-walking.
 
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