TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

The Invisible Boy (1958).  An awesome movie with a metastasizing tumor of a Godawful movie inside it, which ultimately swallows the thing whole.

Scientists have created a great computer, not dissimilar to AM, Skynet, or other machines of that ilk, that has achieved sapience and naturally desires to conquer the world.  Applying the methods that Chinese and Korean educators have used with the success for decades, the computer brainwashes the son of the lead scientist with flashing lights and grants him a super-intellect by throwing disjointed facts at him at subliminally high speed.  With the son under his sort-of control, he has him break into a supply closet kept by one of the scientists and finish what that scientist could not: rebuilding a robot.  A robot named Robby.

Yes, this is the "sequel" to Forbidden Planet, and in a dreadfully unsubtle wad of exposition, we learn that one of the scientists dabbled in time travel and a disassembled Robby is what he brought back.  What took him apart is never explained, but, trust me, no one cares.  No one even cares that he's been put back together by a ten year old, a feat none of these gov't scientists had been able to perform.  I mean, literally, people see a giant hulking robot and react with less passion and surprise than they would have to the presence of a black person or woman.

The entire middle part of this crappy film has nothing to do with the Allied Mastercomputer.  Instead, it is devoted to Robby's dull adventures in babysitting for this shitheel of a kid, Timmy.  The point of reactivating Robby is to get him close enough to AM so they can plug its ethernet cable into Robby's chest, override his dumb prime directive, which as we recall fondly from Forbidden Planet, prevents him from harming rational beings, and serve as AM's arms and legs.  Unfortunately, this movie is named "The Invisible Boy," so instead of getting to that point immediately, a good half hour involves Robby helping Timmy achieve his goal of evading his mom's discipline by swallowing chemicals and becoming transparent.  Timmy's parents are slightly more surprised by the sudden adjustment to their son's refraction index than they were by the robot.  Hijinks, God help us, ensue.

Eventually AM is reintoduced into the story and the computer-conquers-the-world plot continues.  Robby is reprogrammed.  An orbital weapons platform is commandeered.  AM plans on getting on that orbital weapons platform, from which he can rain strontium bombs upon humanity.  Timmy is kidnapped and his life threatened so that AM can obtain the release code for the explosives that bind him to his moorings, a code known only to Timmy's dad.  It turns out Robby is an almost completely superfluous element to this plot, because in addition to being able to hypnotize people, AM can directly control humans; and, in fact, all the other scientists have had chips implanted in their parietal lobes that place them under its command.  (So why isn't it Timmy performing the forcible surgery on these scientists?  That'd be macabre and great.  Because it's two separate movies, probably from two separate scripts, crushed into one.)  AM would just do the same to Tim's pop, but there's a chance that he would react adversely to the implant and it could kill him.  AM is unwilling to take that risk, but is willing to do much besides.

The movie gets really dark when AM threatens to have Robby gouge out Timmy's eyes (no shit) if his father doesn't reveal the code.  But then comes a cop out such as God has never seen, when Robby, the ROBOT, the non-freewill ROBOT, develops a conscience, hesitates, and allows Timmy to open up his crankcase and root around in his robot brain, immediately fixing the problem and returning Robby to his good old helpful self.

Then AM gets smashed or whatever.  The great thing about most 50s sci-fi movies is how earnest and pure they are in their intentions, no matter how trifling or frankly stupid they are.  It is exactly that which makes them charming and worth watching sixty years later.  But this movie has the definition of a tone problem, swinging wildly from goofy, terrible comedy to killer machine overlords, and it sucks.  A lot.  D+

[Eddie Teach]

Jesse Pinkman

I don't think he's long for this world.

[Syt]

That wasn't the director.

Huh. Thought he was. Anyways, yes - I know that his accent is real. I'm saying it didn't work well with this character, but it may also have been the whiny/high pitched voice. His henchmen (also South Africans) sounded much better.

[Jacob]

So hey, they're going to make a World of Warcraft movie. They're shooting it in Vancouver too: http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2013/08/world-of-warcraft-filming-vancouver/

[Eddie Teach]

I predict it will suck. WoW's lore is lame.

[Ideologue]

The really heinous thing about the WoW movie is not that it's being done but who's doing it: Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code).  Instead of doing the oft-talked-about sci-fi noir Mute, or at least something else worthy of his talents, he's stuck doing this.  It makes me want to vomit on Hollywood's face.

[Savonarola]

Beneath the 12 Mile Reef (1953)

Set in the brutal and shadowy world of the sponge fishing industry on Florida's gulf coast; this action adventure story concerns two rival factions.  There are the Greeks out of Tampa Bay who's grounds have been mostly exhausted and the WASPs out of Key West who harvest in the Everglades.  The WASPs (or Conches) keep the Greeks out of the 'Glades by violence if necessary.  The only place with bountiful sponges outside the glades is the 12 Mile Reef but, as the scion of the Greek family (Robert Wagner) says, "No one has been to the 12 Mile Reef since it killed my brother."  The WASP family has a beautiful daughter (Terry Moore) and in a farm fresh plot twist she and Robert Wagner fall in love; but she has a jealous and possessive would be boyfriend (Peter Graves.)

There's a fight with a giant octopus as well.  I don't think you could make an underwater adventure film in the 1950s without some sort of battle with a giant cephalopod.

Even the advertisements for the film boast the films anamorphic lens and CinemaScope.  The gorgeous cinematography and the score by Bernard Herrmann do distract from the mundane plot.

[Malthus]

The really heinous thing about the WoW movie is not that it's being done but who's doing it: Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code).  Instead of doing the oft-talked-about sci-fi noir Mute, or at least something else worthy of his talents, he's stuck doing this.  It makes me want to vomit on Hollywood's face.

But they already made a WoW movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRgNOyCnbqg

[Savonarola]

Martyrs of the Alamo (1915)

A Texan "Birth of a Nation" directed by DW Griffith's underling Christy Cabanne (in fact the film is subtitled "The Birth of Texas.")  The film opens with Santa Anna (an inveterate drug fiend who takes part in SHAMEFUL orgies, according to the title cards) occupying San Antonio.   The Mexican army mostly just mills about and lusts after white women.  Santa Anna orders the Texans guns seized.  (That was obviously a bad idea; the American Revolution began because General Gage ordered weapons seized and that was in Massachusetts, imagine how the Texans are going to take it.)  The Texans outwit the Mexicans though and hide their guns.  Then Santa Anna leaves, the Americans (who all wear coonskin caps ) seize a positively baroque looking Alamo and the battle is on.

Unlike most Alamo film this continues on to the Battle of San Jacinto so the film has a happy ending (well not for the Mexicans, but they weren't the target demographic.)  This film also depicts the survivors of the Alamo being executed, which, I understand, was a controversial view at the time the film was made.  The true Texan, of course, never surrenders.  The battle scenes are well done; the non-battle scenes not so much.

[Ideologue]

Santa Anna had shameful orgies and killed Texans?  He's a Goddamned American hero.

[The Brain]

The Texans outwit the Mexicans though and hide their guns. 

Where did they hide them?

[Savonarola]

The Texans outwit the Mexicans though and hide their guns. 

Where did they hide them?

Under a loose board in the floor, Mexicans never think to look there. 

[Ideologue]

The Texans outwit the Mexicans though and hide their guns. 

Where did they hide them?

Under a loose board in the floor, Mexicans never think to look there. 

Fucking Yojimbo Maneuver.  "THE DOOR WAS LOCKED THE WHOLE TIME OMG WHERE IS HE?" "CHECK OUTSIDE."

[crazy canuck]

Beneath the 12 Mile Reef (1953)

Set in the brutal and shadowy world of the sponge fishing industry on Florida's gulf coast; this action adventure story concerns two rival factions.  There are the Greeks out of Tampa Bay who's grounds have been mostly exhausted and the WASPs out of Key West who harvest in the Everglades.  The WASPs (or Conches) keep the Greeks out of the 'Glades by violence if necessary.  The only place with bountiful sponges outside the glades is the 12 Mile Reef but, as the scion of the Greek family (Robert Wagner) says, "No one has been to the 12 Mile Reef since it killed my brother."  The WASP family has a beautiful daughter (Terry Moore) and in a farm fresh plot twist she and Robert Wagner fall in love; but she has a jealous and possessive would be boyfriend (Peter Graves.)

There's a fight with a giant octopus as well.  I don't think you could make an underwater adventure film in the 1950s without some sort of battle with a giant cephalopod.

Even the advertisements for the film boast the films anamorphic lens and CinemaScope.  The gorgeous cinematography and the score by Bernard Herrmann do distract from the mundane plot.

I used to watch that movie on TV when they had Saturday at the movies on the Networks.

[crazy canuck]

So hey, they're going to make a World of Warcraft movie. They're shooting it in Vancouver too: http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2013/08/world-of-warcraft-filming-vancouver/

If they shot this one near my house (like all the other movies that come to Vancouver and need forrest scenes) I will try to get you guys some pictures of the elven women.