[chadbang]

Scrypt, I hate to ask, but who is that in your avatar? I'm always staring at it.

 

[scrypt]

Dear Surgically Precise "Chadbang" Film Specialist:

Your question is very important to us. We care deeply about the insignificant details of your meaningless existence. You are currently 45.04 in our queue.

(after several thousand scarab beetles have been de-horned)

Your curiosity concerning my avatar is understandable; I empathize [insert preferred emoticon].

(pause while the leaf cuticles of several convincing redwoods on treadmills are polished for the Miss Vegetal Mobile Transvestite coronation of 2005)

The foont pictured in my avatar is of course my Texan ancestor, John Wesley Hardin (no g). A friend doing research on feral gunfighters once sent a postcard commenting on my resemblance to John Wesley and asking if he were in fact my grandpapsmear. I chortled into my dung beetle's codpiece and mentioned this to my female parent, who explained that John Wesley is a not-so-distant relation of whom my father has made scant mention due to "black sheep" status.

Thanks ever so for your interest. Please shave whatever pets you might own before returning [them to us/to the womb of a rump-fed puttock].

Fondly,

Customer Service Parasite Host # 22.05

 

[Mookie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tsplash75 I agree. Ong Bak: Thai Warrior is a great movie and is definitely worth watching, especially if you have a passion for great fight scenes.

I second that ... just saw it in the cinemas just now as Australia is a bit slow in getting movies (like a year late

) .. but the fight scenes are great. Grace and power!

 

[gloco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EyeAmEye This weekend I watched The Ten Commandments. Charlton Heston was awesome as "The Statue" (or was that Moses?) . Yul Brenner was so over the top I thought he worked for the WWE. I haven't laughed so hard at a movie in a long time. Classic? Think again. -2 on EyeAmEye's 4 to -4 star movie rating system. It gets a Head-Fi rating of: Bose

You heathen! I watched a portion of it this past weekend on ABC and decided to toss on the dvd, imho, it's a classic because it reminds me more of a broadway show than a movie (like West Side Story) minus the musical elements.

I also caught the ring two on Sunday.

 

[chadbang]

Thank you, Scrypt, for that explanation. And having had no distant nor close relatives dispatched by said gunfighter, you are forgiven.

BTW: This is probably one of the most precise and truest film criticisms I've ever read. Perfectly sums up the period, the director and work. You nailed, in other words.

Only, I haven't the stomach for 145 minutes of the usual 60s-specific phantasmagoric half-improvised tale of a minor character's quest for self-actualization. In this genre, the satire and metaphors usually become laborious because formal proportion and good writing aren't there to keep them in check. And the theme lends itself too easily to vanity's excesses.

Brilliantly observed.

 

[wallijonn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerb Just bought Fight Club ...

Dude,

This is one sick and disturbing movie. It panders to the mentally insane, the freaks, the psychos, the very sick puppies of our societies, the societal outcasts, the loners, the losers. It's moral message is a morass of self depreciating social values and social irresponsibility.

Music? What music? It's all so well integrated with the visuals that you seldom notice it.

I thought Johnny Depp had the sick psycho gendre locked up - I guess I was wrong. Ed Norton just made a name for himself as an accomplished actor. (I have never liked Brad Pitt).

This movie is too much. It is over the top. I wouldn't call it trash nor would I call it art. I put it right up there with "1984", "Reservoiur Dogs", "Pulp Fiction", "Pi", "Million Dollar Hotel", etc.

It is definitely not the type of movie I would own. I am both glad and sorry that I have seen it. Hopefully in time I will completely forget it. This is the type of movie that sears the mind.

This movie is sick, sick, sick.

And yes, I never saw the anti-climax coming. It was a shocker.

 

[EyeAmEye]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallijonn Dude, This is one sick and disturbing movie. It panders to the mentally insane, the freaks, the psychos, the very sick puppies of our societies, the societal outcasts, the loners, the losers. It's moral message is a morass of self depreciating social values and social irresponsibility. Music? What music? It's all so well integrated with the visuals that you seldom notice it. I thought Johnny Depp had the sick psycho gendre locked up - I guess I was wrong. Ed Norton just made a name for himself as an accomplished actor. (I have never liked Brad Pitt). This movie is too much. It is over the top. I wouldn't call it trash nor would I call it art. I put it right up there with "1984", "Reservoiur Dogs", "Pulp Fiction", "Pi", "Million Dollar Hotel", etc. It is definitely not the type of movie I would own. I am both glad and sorry that I have seen it. Hopefully in time I will completely forget it. This is the type of movie that sears the mind. This movie is sick, sick, sick. And yes, I never saw the anti-climax coming. It was a shocker.

Own it and love it. A true classic if there ever was one. Tyler Durden is what every man should aspire to...

 

[EyeAmEye]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gloco You heathen! I watched a portion of it this past weekend on ABC and decided to toss on the dvd, imho, it's a classic because it reminds me more of a broadway show than a movie (like West Side Story) minus the musical elements. I also caught the ring two on Sunday.

Very true, and we all know how great Broadway acting is

Actually, it plays more like a high school production. Although I do admit there aren't many actors of any era that can play a stoneface and spend the better part of four hours nearly motionless like Chuck Heston. His true brilliance is underappreciated!!! He talks through his teeth pretty good, too.

 

[YamiTenshi]

I have to be one of the only people left that has not seen Fight Club. Almost everyone who has seen it has given it great reviews (well except wallijonn). I keep telling myself to go watch it, but I keep putting it off when I see something better at Blockbuster/Hollywood Video.

I remember seeing Fulltime Killer awhile ago, but I can't really remember anything about it. I think it's time to go back for another viewing.

 

[wallijonn]

Yami,

I just don't tend to love movies like "Kill Bill", "The Crying Game," and the type afforementioned. I may not mind seeing them but I am not very likely to own them.

After I see a film in the theatre I always ask myself as I walk out "Am I going to buy it when it comes out on DVD?"

To me these types of movies are as to celluoid as Metal is to music. They are the Goth personnas of the film industry - dark, disturbing, probing, shocking, blatant, mind searing. I tend to think that this one was pushing the envelope. Did you do a DVD freeze frame at the end to see the male member? For that scene alone I will not buy it - it is blantant exploitation, a mf.

Let it appeal to litttle macho men - I'm not buying it. I got as much visceral stimulation as Falling Down and I fault it for the same reasons - an appeal to mindless violence for violence's sake. I can discern when I am being manipulated. Appeals to terrorism just don't seem as cute as they once were, wouldn't you agree?

The same technique was used in "Fulltime Killer" where some person is flashed onto the screen for a split second. I have enough trouble pschoanalysizing what is being shown, how it is affecting my subsconious as I'm viewing it, looking at my mind's thinking as I'm viewing it - and now I have to worry about subliminal messages desguised as overt subliminal messages? They're messing with my mind and now they know that I know that they are messing with my mind? You know what they call that, don't you?

I wouldn't be surprised if the "Pill Pushing Industry," which seeks to over-medicate the citizentry, thereby turn the populace into State programmed drone zombies, is using this protrayal of excessive violence as apriori justification for their social manipulation. The futility of psychoanalysis was there for all to behold (thinly veiled as "feel good" group therepy) - but where were the meds?, where were the pill poppers?, where were the billboards for all the pharmacuticals which splash across our TV screens?

The anticipated socially manipulated outcome will be that the viewing populace will call for State sanctioned medication to protect them from themselves. Let's hand out the estrogen shots and pills for all men and further emasculate the species.

This review says, Quote:

By blaming movies like Fight Club for real-life horrors, politicians want us to look at the world through rose-colored glasses that they have tinted.

Too bad he fails to recognise the media's duplicity with the politicians who advocate social manipulation.

Roger Ebert gave it two stars. click here to read his review.

 

[cylanes]

I`ve just saw Being John Malkovich.

A very strange and also wonderful movie.
I really enjoyed the acting of John Cusack, Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener.
Loved the John Malkovich Puppet dance!

It`s a great movie

 

[YamiTenshi]

Mask (1985, starring Cher)

Again, I had to watch this film for class. I am so glad I have this professor. This is one of the better (recent) movies I've seen in a long time. It's happy, it's sad, but it's not overly sappy where to feel like throwing up after every scene or making a mockery of the characters afterwards.

This is when Hollywood was still making good movies. No special effects, no plot twist, no hot/half naked girls, no car chases, no loud musical number. Just a very basic storyline, good actors, and a camera. I thought Cher did a very good acting job her... Actually I've never seen her act before, but she surprised me here. Very subtle, yet powerful performance.

The ending kinda sneaked up on me, though you probably could see it coming from the very beginning of the film, I still didn't expect it to happen when it did. There was very little resolution (if any at all) to some of the problems, which actually made it sadder in the end. A very realistic ending, not romantic or overly Hollywood sad.

Recommended for the general audience.

 

[blip]

To me fight club is both over and under-rated.

It is not the most brilliantly directed movie ever (though the direction is very good) and the acting isn't the best in the world (with the exception of, maybe, of Brad Pitt who I think does an amazing job of being such a ghostly character.) Further the plot is fairly predictable and the twist didn't really suprise me that much. (Though it is neat, none-the-less) Putting all that aside it is still a superb film with much to recommend it.

What I think is great about it is that it is a quintessential zeitgeist film. It does an excellent job of capturing the angst of the post-modern male. Its characters are not insane any more than every honest supporter of Hitler was insane. Instead they are simply troubled and lost... adrift in a world that has essentially denied them access to the archetypes and behavioral patterns that they have been brought up to desire. They are the product both of post-industrialization and a commercial society that continually manipulates, sharpens, excites and then represses their so-called masculine impulses. They are ambivalence in its purest form.

Fundamentally, this is what explains the popularity of this film. Everyone has a Tyler Durden in their heads... a powerful sense of angst and alienation from the modern world. Whether he was put their by millions of years of frustrated evolution or created by the mediasphere that we all belong to, he lurks at the edges of our vision waiting to explode. When he breaks out, he does not have to actively recruit followers... they are already there. Like any leader, he does not create a social movement but merely stumbles upon it.

These topics of gender and alienation are rarely explicitly dealt with by American cinema yet surround us on a daily basis. So when a glossy Hollywood film was produced that dealt with these issues in a frank, entertaining fashion that was enhanced by significant promotion and star power, it should not be too surprising that people were drawn to its essentially empty pseudo-anarchist cry. This, to me at least, is the under-appreciated aspect of fight club. In essence its popularity mirrors the movie itself creating a unique sort of interplay.

Fight club did not say anything particularly original or interesting but instead it became a pop-culture symbol for a variety of interesting issues and conflicts.

 

[scrypt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallijonn I just don't tend to love movies like "Kill Bill", "The Crying Game," and the type aforementioned. I may not mind seeing them but I am not very likely to own them. . . . To me these types of movies are as to celluloid as Metal is to music . . . dark, disturbing, probing, shocking, blatant, mind searing. . . . I'm not buying it. I got as much visceral stimulation as Falling Down and I fault it for the same reasons - an appeal to mindless violence for violence's sake. I can discern when I am being manipulated. . . .

Actually, I find depictions of violence and dark scenarios to be incredibly restful. They seem to induce in me a state of contentment; they even help me to sleep. Why, you warble? Perhaps because I grew up with images of Kali and Shiva and learned to associate images of grand-scale violence with spiritual transcendence (which is a legitimate aspect of Hinduism -- see the first few pages of the Bhagavad Gita). Perhaps because the word death has been used as a euphemism for orgasm since the medieval period (listen to the renaissance madrigal, "Phyllis, I fain would die now," and ask yourself: what are they really singing about?). Perhaps because I have an overcast temperament and am easily depressed by imposed cheeriness, artificial happiness and hypocritical altruism, for which dark films provide a kind of antidote. Perhaps because, like most Americans in a competitive capitalist society, I tend to be afraid of not being a success, and violent sociopaths are poster ogres for spectacular failure. I remember thinking, as I worked on the song "Psychosexual Surgery" with Michele Amar of Virus -- a song that involved extensive samples from the Dahmer trial -- that, "yes, I'd like to be more established, but at least I don't have the uncontrollable impulse to eat a stranger's heart and keep the leftovers in the fridge."

I suppose one could argue that people who find violent films enjoyable are morally stunted. I'd tend to dismiss that argument on the basis of cultural subjectivity. Personally, I see fictional violence in non-literal terms: as a conduit for catharsis, which often takes place on an unconscious level. The effect is mimetic, like that of classical music.

[Edit:

Chadbang: Thanks for the props. I appreciate your kind words. I do hope you read this post, as you're more likely than most to accept my idea of fictional violence as a necessary means for catharsis (the purification of one's emotions by a vicarious experience). No one understood this better than Flannery O'Connor.]

 

[Mr.PD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by YamiTenshi I have to be one of the only people left that has not seen Fight Club. Almost everyone who has seen it has given it great reviews (well except wallijonn). I keep telling myself to go watch it, but I keep putting it off when I see something better at Blockbuster/Hollywood Video. I remember seeing Fulltime Killer awhile ago, but I can't really remember anything about it. I think it's time to go back for another viewing.

Well, there are at least two of us who have not seen Fight Club.
I have no desire to see it.
I have not even heard of Fulltime Killer.
I am not opposed to violence in movies, my favorite movie is still Natural Born Killers. Falling Down is another at that I own, and have a soft spot for. I can so relate to many of the scenes in that movie. Pulp Fiction was one I had not seen until very recently. I seem to like it, I bought the DVD.

Right now I am considering getting a copy of Death Race 2000. It's campy and very violent, but I have some fond memories to associate with it.

I also like the funny movies. I plan to watch It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World as soon as I can make the time for such a long movie.
I checked today to see if Sun Valley Serenade is available on DVD, it appears not to be. It is on tape, but I have not a VCR machine. I guess I am out of luck for a while.

Another movie that has yet to be released in the US of A on DVD is Lost Highway. I caught this late one night on TV and have been obsessed with it ever since.