Random Movie Thoughts Thread

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I'm really bummed that they're tearing down the telescope from the end of Goldeneye. (The one in Arecibo).

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I'm really bummed that they're tearing down the telescope from the end of Goldeneye. (The one in Arecibo).

I wonder if Sean Bean’s corpse is still there

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[Doctor Cringelord]

Diss is a great cawmuhntehhy becawz heeuhh he is describing exactly vhut is happening in de moovee

“Even den in deez prehistoric taims de wemmen wurr already into jewelry”

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Give deez peepuhl ayyuhh

 

[Totenkindly]

Watched the 4K of Alien over the weekend. Really nice transfer of the film, there were even new subtle shades of hue I had not noticed in prior releases. It's really a great film, esp for the time period in terms of horror. I never really knew much about why Ripley was singing Lucky Star at the end, but I found out it's probably a "Singing in the Rain" reference and possible childhood memory meant to steady her own nerves.

GOt my 4K of THe Lord of the Rings yesterday. The transfer as expected is pretty amazing, a definitive release of the film. (And honestly, the blurays were a decent release too.) There's still stuff that bugs me, usually along the lines of Jackson's proclivities, but it tonally seems to best capture the story out of the three.

I'm really bummed that they're tearing down the telescope from the end of Goldeneye. (The one in Arecibo).

WEll, they didn't have to tear it down. It was damaged and they couldn't afford to fix it for either financial or safety reasons, and were just waiting for nature to finish its course.

And now as of yesterday, it did -- it finally collapsed and is on the ground. Sad.

Contact was a more important film to me, so I always think of it in terms of that.

My "cube spouse/buddy" (we sat across from each other) at work would talk about the dish because his daughter was in a line of work where she was stationed down there and was using the dish, a few years back. I thought that was so cool.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Was watching Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" last night and it struck me again how a few of the musical cues sounded like similar ones in the film "Highlander." (Typically the brass snippets at the end of the fantasy sequences and/or maybe the Tuttle sequences... can't recall right now.)

Checked the credits after I finished. Michael Kamen. He did both films. He actually did Highlander later, so it's a case more of his mirroring himself in the latter film, not in Brazil.

Listen to the fanfare bit from Brazil in this clip, from around 30-42 second marks (used as a theme for Harry Tuttle):

I'm having trouble finding a clip on youtube of a similar fanfare from Highlander but basically it highlights Kamen's love for open-chord brass fanfare at least in his early stuff.

[I also have to pitch in that Highlander is a frustrating movie -- its script drops into B movie territory a lot but is elevated by the casting/some of the performances, the topical matter which was cool at the time, but a great deal is also the soundtrack by Queen (which rocks / brings passion) + the transcendent scoring of Michael Kamen -- it's one of those cases where it's most obviously seen how a decent score can elevate a film beyond itself. It adds the emotional heft that might otherwise at times be lost.

I think James Horner is one of the most obvious and blatant offenders, swiping actual cues from earlier films to use in later ones (although he happened to just also do a lot of high profile films, so he's far more noticeable... versus composers who did more obscure films).

Goldsmith could be pretty bad about it.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Watched the 4K of Alien over the weekend. Really nice transfer of the film, there were even new subtle shades of hue I had not noticed in prior releases. It's really a great film, esp for the time period in terms of horror. I never really knew much about why Ripley was singing Lucky Star at the end, but I found out it's probably a "Singing in the Rain" reference and possible childhood memory meant to steady her own nerves.

GOt my 4K of THe Lord of the Rings yesterday. The transfer as expected is pretty amazing, a definitive release of the film. (And honestly, the blurays were a decent release too.) There's still stuff that bugs me, usually along the lines of Jackson's proclivities, but it tonally seems to best capture the story out of the three.



WEll, they didn't have to tear it down. It was damaged and they couldn't afford to fix it for either financial or safety reasons, and were just waiting for nature to finish its course.

And now as of yesterday, it did -- it finally collapsed and is on the ground. Sad.

Contact was a more important film to me, so I always think of it in terms of that.

My "cube spouse/buddy" (we sat across from each other) at work would talk about the dish because his daughter was in a line of work where she was stationed down there and was using the dish, a few years back. I thought that was so cool.

I'd actually seen it in science books long before I ever saw Goldeneye, but I figured people would be more likely to know what I'm talking about if I refer to it as that.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

don't get me wrong, I love Goldsmith and Horner. John Barry also repeated himself quite a bit, or at least wrote a lot of scores that blurred together, especially in his later career. Soaring horn melodies and lush strings, pretty much the Barry trademark from 1980 to 2000.

Giacchino and Desplat have built careers on sounding like John Williams. That's why Giacchino did such a bang up job on Rogue One.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I can’t think of any filmmaker except maybe Tarantino or the two Andersons who can do a greater job of needle dropping soundtracks than Scorsese

The valet from 1:25ish is the same actor who plays a Vegas valet in Fear and Loathing:

And it’s amazing what a love letter Boogie Nights is to Scorcese’s style. I think it’s really obvious if you watch it back to back with something like Goodfellas. I love how long these films are, yet they move at you so fast that they feel like 90 minute movies.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I’ll always defend Temple of Doom as the perfect Indy film

 

[Burning Paradigm]

I’ll always defend Temple of Doom as the perfect Indy film

My parents love Amrish Puri, the guy who plays Maula Ram, so I was also partial to it growing up. I think people hate on it because it deviates from the events and people in the other three movies that tie the canon together. I'm not one of those people, but even if I were, it is more than excellent as a standalone adventure/action film.

 

[Firebird 8118]

My parents love Amrish Puri, the guy who plays Maula Ram, so I was also partial to it growing up. I think people hate on it because it deviates from the events and people in the other three movies that tie the canon together. I'm not one of those people, but even if I were, it is more than excellent as a standalone adventure/action film.

Well that’s fine and all (and I loved Amrish Puri too), but... you have to admit the one “monkey brains” scene went too far. I swear to God, nothing irritates me more than dangerously ignorant misportrayals of my culture and heritage.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Well that’s fine and all (and I loved Amrish Puri too), but... you have to admit the one “monkey brains” scene went too far. I swear to God, nothing irritates me more than dangerously ignorant misportrayals of my culture and heritage.

I think the point was to show the audience that something was wrong at this palace, that these weren’t ‘normal’ people, that there was an underlying evil and they weren’t representative of most Indians. Unfortunately that was probably lost on most american moviegoers who would’ve been ignorant of Indian and Hindu customs in 1984. Indy should’ve had a line like ‘this is not standard Hindu cuisine’ or ‘I didn’t realize these dishes were common cuisine here, this seems odd’ so the typical ignorant American moviegoers would understand. But instead it comes across as a gross stereotype

Remember, this is a cult being portrayed, not average Indian Hindus. Just as we wouldn’t expect or assume a film like Red State to be representative of most Christian Americans or Deliverance to be representative of most Appalachians

Spielberg probably could’ve gotten around this if he’d set it in a fictional country instead of in India, sort of like how they used a fictional middle eastern nation for Last Crusade

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Octopussy was also pretty bad with the Indian stereotypes, come to think of it. Good musical score though

 

[Firebird 8118]

Octopussy was also pretty bad with the Indian stereotypes, come to think of it. Good musical score though

OMG I almost forgot that movie too, thanks haha but yeah, I was a little more forgiving with that one as I’m a huge Bond fan.

 

[Totenkindly]

So the US cut of the StudioCanal release of "Highlander" finally came yesterday, it is definitely the definitive version that I have seen and probably the best that will be released since frankly the visual quality of the film has always been rough in home release. DVD is difficult to watch, the former Bluray was an improvement but still not-great quality, including the audio where it was difficult to make out dialogue at time.

** minor spoilers, but it's also a 36 year old film **

This version (taking from 4K master for a definitive bluray release) is definitely the best-looking imprint of the film I have seen. It is purely the director's cut, which ads some material that can feel tangential at times but considering how much of the later sequels are garbage, is the closest one gets to background information + adds some emotional depth to the film. (I'm thinking mainly MacLeod's relationship with Rachel, who he pulls out of Nazi Germany. The film also kind of sits between her status as adopted daughter vs romantic interest -- MacLeod isn't interested in her, but she has a crazy affection for him... and of course it's all muddled by the fact she once was young enough to be his daughter, but now she's old enough to be his mother and passed through a stage where they were contemporaries. The whole thread is "extra" but it's the one part of the film that usually makes me cry, with the connecting, "Hey, it's a kind of magic" line. There's a great closeup of Lambert's face after the closing bookend, where he's trying to seem kind of snappy, but the corners of his mouth fall a bit and there's a haunted look in his eye... it's a great little bit of acting. Note also Lambert actually won a Cesar award for Best Actor for "Subway" a short time before this one... they're the european oscars.)

I hadn't really realized how little English Lambert knew going into filming. He does just fine, aside from sounding a bit stilted at times in his delivery (but I guess that can happen if you're mostly just quoting syllables -- I listened to his most recent interview on the disc, from probably around 2015, and not only is he hard to recognize at first but his English is really good in terms of him speaking on a casual/colloquial level). I also did not really grasp how bad his eyesight was, which explains why some of the fight scenes feel a bit choppy/stilted at times.

It's kind of a messy film, there are things I would like to change, but to pull any of the pieces out also would take away some of the charm and flair that makes it fun. It can be serious, funny, a range of things, all at once.

Anyway, back to the audio track -- it's been cleaned up and enhanced, including some background stuff (like, when there's public scenes like at the police station or the back alley, where extras are talking over top each other), I can actually understand all the dialogue now and the character motivations become a little more clear.

I think the only thing I would remove from the director's cut is the opening bit in the wrestling match at MSG -- it's a case of too much information, Mulcahy inserted visual flashbacks of Scottish clans fighting in MacLeod's mind as he watches the professional wrestlers. I think it's confusing and also deflates a welcomed mystery in the opening: Basically he's watching a "modern" form of fighting which most of us realize is mainly for show even if some skill is needed not to get hurt; and then suddenly he stands up, goes into the parking garage, and ends up having a "real" fight with lethal outcomes, so it's a huge contrast with the opening wrestling sequence, the showy thing compared to the real. ANd you have no idea why this is happening or what's going on, which the film then explains. Again, a case of giving away too much too soon IMO. But generally the rest of the material for the DC is welcome or at least interesting.

(I think the other thing I'd change in the film is the newspaper headling saying "Headhunters 3, Cops 0" -- I would up it to 10 or 11... It's supposed to be the climax of the Quickening but the movie feels pretty small.)

Anyway, the film made more sense to me on this view, even with its inconsistencies. He only really goes to Brenda's as a counter-phobic / passive-aggressive way of punishing her for lying to him, in the way he's kept romantic interest locked out of his life due to being immortal. She's really more of a geek/artifact fangirl who the police are using (there's an extra scene tossed in, a bit choppy and short, that shows they've realized she's been talking to Nash) to investigate him; so her motives are still kind of self-interested but she's not really trying to entrap him. I don't really feel like they have a ton of chemistry, honestly; and I wonder about their relationship after the conclusion, as I get the idea she swooned for him because he's like the living embodiment of a precious artifact (which is her line of work), not necessarily as a regular man, but whatever.

This was the first time I had seen Clancy Brown in a film, so I loved it when twenty years later he began showing up in a bunch of stuff like SpongeBob and Lost (and he did Shawshank in there somewhere), so it's kind of amusing now to cut back to this. He has so much fun in this role, and the church scene always sticks in my head.

 

[Burning Paradigm]

Well that’s fine and all (and I loved Amrish Puri too), but... you have to admit the one “monkey brains” scene went too far. I swear to God, nothing irritates me more than dangerously ignorant misportrayals of my culture and heritage.

No, I get it. I feel the same way when Bollywood or Western films portray Pakistan en masse as a nation of terrorist or terrorist sympathizers. In retrospect, there were extremely problematic elements (I think some scholars question the existence of thuggees altogether). As [MENTION=19700]Tactical Turtleneck[/MENTION] said, though, I don't think that was Spielberg's intent to portray ordinary Indian Hindus in a negative light (I mean, there was the scene where Willie Scott looked like a spoiled white girl for refusing the food offered her by the villagers). But, unfortunately, that could go over a lot of viewers' heads, and if I know anything from my 1980s immigrant parents and their South Asian compatriots, that was more than likely the case. I was just thinking from the perspective of 9-year-old Burner watching the Indiana Jones movies for the first time and more enthralled by the fistfights than the cultural implications XD

Side Note: Am I crazy, or do chilled monkey brains sound somewhat enticing?

 

[Firebird 8118]

No, I get it. I feel the same way when Bollywood or Western films portray Pakistan en masse as a nation of terrorist or terrorist sympathizers. In retrospect, there were extremely problematic elements (I think some scholars question the existence of thuggees altogether). As [MENTION=19700]Tactical Turtleneck[/MENTION] said, though, I don't think that was Spielberg's intent to portray ordinary Indian Hindus in a negative light (I mean, there was the scene where Willie Scott looked like a spoiled white girl for refusing the food offered her by the villagers). But, unfortunately, that could go over a lot of viewers' heads, and if I know anything from my 1980s immigrant parents and their South Asian compatriots, that was more than likely the case. I was just thinking from the perspective of 9-year-old Burner watching the Indiana Jones movies for the first time and more enthralled by the fistfights than the cultural implications XD

Side Note: Am I crazy, or do chilled monkey brains sound somewhat enticing?

Dude seriously! Bollywood sucks that way, they even portray all (or most) Westerners as a bunch of arrogant materialistic pricks full of sin. I’ve stopped watching Hindi movies for a while now, in fact (though I still enjoy some old classics every now and then). I’ve even watched a few Pakistani TV dramas in the past with my mom, and I enjoyed those far more than our over-the-top Indian serials haha!

But yeah, cultural offenses aside - the one thing I loved most about “Temple of Doom” was Amrish Puri’s acting. He was by far one of my most favorite actors who have especially thrived in negative roles, God rest his amazing soul. (Prem Chopra is another brilliant actor who was perfect for negative roles, of course. )