TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

^Frunk makes a good point.  That movie's hilarious.  Maybe more slapstick than screwball?  Is there a distinction?

It's a movie version of a Victorian adventure written by a guy named H. Rider Haggard.

Well, it's no Lost Horizon.  (Which was written thirty years later. )

I did notice "H. Rider Haggard's She" in the credits.  I didn't read them thoroughly, so I thought Haggard was just a really egotistic director (or maybe producer).  Turns out the director was this guy named Lansing Holden who directed practically nothing else, and no other feature films (his IMDB page lists him as an art designer on a few more projects, and She is an example of great art design).  Oh well; I thought he did a good job.  Wonder whatever happened to him.

I still say it plays like a 1950s B-movie, but they all drew from much the same pulpy well I imagine.

[The Brain]

Maybe he got married.

LOL j/k

[Savonarola]

Tell me why I should like Metropolis more.  I've watched it like three times (in varying cuts, and this one does make the most sense of any, though it's also the least well-paced), once at 17, once at 23, and now again at 31.  And I have never really enjoyed it.

Did you ever see the version with the Queen and Billy Squier soundtrack?  Now that's an abomination.

If you haven't see Metropolis live and with a live accompaniment.  Think of Metropolis like an opera; it's not the story, it's the spectacle that makes it great.  (This was true of Lang's previous film was, Die Nibelungen, as well.)  The massive, stylized sets and the choreographed masses are what you should pay attention to and they come to life much more so on a big screen.

My personal favorite version was done by the Alloy Orchestra:  http://www.alloyorchestra.com/ 

[Malthus]

H. Rider Haggard is actually a very entertaining writer. He was very popular in his own day, and some of his stuff is still quite readable ... he's particularly known for King Solomon's Mines and She. I prefer the former over the latter.

[Savonarola]

She (1935).  A 1950s B-picture well ahead of its time, and clearly lavished with more money than its later counterparts, this cool movie tells the story of a latterday Hyperborean fantasy, as some white people go into the Arctic in search of the source of eternal life, and find an authoritarian immortal who is delusionally obsessed with her long-dead love, whom our hero, a relative, happens to resemble in most every detail.  Some really insultingly stupid things are said about how great death is, but they meant well.  A better psychological portrait of an immortal can be found in many other stories, but this is fun, and I guess it must be the origin of the title "she who must be obeyed."  The remake might be better (it has Vincent Price!) but somehow I doubt it, and this is quite fine.  The non-immortal love interest is really pretty, too.  B

Helen Gahagan's only film.  She was the inspiration for the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and then was elected to congress.   

[Tonitrus]

Walking Dead - meh. It tried too hard. I get it. Killing the pigs like that is symbolic of Rick realising the dream of the peaceful life is impossible, yadda yadda.... but logically- wtf. What a stupid waste. All it would take would be a few people dancing around behind the walkers to draw them off whilst the others quickly fix the fence- everyone goes back in side and return to stabbing. Walkers against the fence shouldnlt be the problem it is being

That was one half of the pig killing...throw in the burning of the pen, and I presume they figured they had to liquidate to stave off the possible "pig flu".

[Ideologue]

Tell me why I should like Metropolis more.  I've watched it like three times (in varying cuts, and this one does make the most sense of any, though it's also the least well-paced), once at 17, once at 23, and now again at 31.  And I have never really enjoyed it.

Did you ever see the version with the Queen and Billy Squier soundtrack?  Now that's an abomination.

If you haven't see Metropolis live and with a live accompaniment.  Think of Metropolis like an opera; it's not the story, it's the spectacle that makes it great.

Which I appreciate; in fact, "spectacle" movies are my favorite kind, from The Ten Commandments to Flash Gordon to Tron: Legacy to Gravity.  And the first thirty minutes or so of Metropolis, with the giant sets with clockwork laborers are really impressive.

But aside from the fact that the story cannot be entirely ignored--because it's so infused with its own sense of grandiosity--I feel it gets a lot less spectacular after the prelude.  Same locations, same stuff, etc.  Big city that seems claustrophobic, even above the Goph levs and amidst the milespires (that's a reference nobody will get).  I except the whore of Babylon sequence, I suppose, which I do credit for seriously bravura filmmaking.  WE'RE HERE WE LEER GET USED IT

I did get to see Battleship Potemkin once with a live orchestra.  It was great.

Helen Gahagan's only film.  She was the inspiration for the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and then was elected to congress.   

  Nice.

She's really good in it, though she needed a haircut.

H. Rider Haggard is actually a very entertaining writer. He was very popular in his own day, and some of his stuff is still quite readable ... he's particularly known for King Solomon's Mines and She. I prefer the former over the latter.

Blah.  Reading is for work.

[Josephus]

Walking Dead - meh. It tried too hard. I get it. Killing the pigs like that is symbolic of Rick realising the dream of the peaceful life is impossible, yadda yadda.... but logically- wtf. What a stupid waste. All it would take would be a few people dancing around behind the walkers to draw them off whilst the others quickly fix the fence- everyone goes back in side and return to stabbing. Walkers against the fence shouldnlt be the problem it is being

Not quite. Rick believed the pigs could be carrying a disease, so it wasn't that much of a sacrifice in the end. A few people walking dancing around is a bit of a dangerous solution dont you think. I don't think you realize the scale of this, just how many zombies are out there. Doesn't take much for one to trip. Tehre's also likely zombies in the woods ahead of the fence.

[Savonarola]

Which I appreciate; in fact, "spectacle" movies are my favorite kind, from The Ten Commandments to Flash Gordon to Tron: Legacy to Gravity.  And the first thirty minutes or so of Metropolis, with the giant sets with clockwork laborers are really impressive.

But aside from the fact that the story cannot be entirely ignored--because it's so infused with its own sense of grandiosity--I feel it gets a lot less spectacular after the prelude.  Same locations, same stuff, etc.  Big city that seems claustrophobic, even above the Goph levs and amidst the milespires (that's a reference nobody will get).  I except the whore of Babylon sequence, I suppose, which I do credit for seriously bravura filmmaking.  WE'RE HERE WE LEER GET USED IT

Actually I think the movie you would really like is "Things to Come."  It has everything you love; air power and STEM (and HG Wells hated Metropolis so much that he told the director to do everything the opposite of Lang.)

[Queequeg]

Didn't Ide comment on how awesome the premise is in my modernity thread?

[Sheilbh]

Almost certainly. Ide's reviews are always worth reading, but they're like a Legion of Decency for the lumpen proletariat (sadly the emphasis is often on 'lumpen').

[Ed Anger]

Ide is very lumpen.

[Ideologue]

I both love and hate every last one of you.

Sav, Psel, Things to Come is absolutely on my must-see, will-see list.  But, Sav, everything?  Are there thin women with short hair?



Well, OK.

Sheilbh: I think that's the best, most accurate, nicest (?) thing anyone's every said about my reviews. Everyone has an angle, and I reckon populism is mine.

***

Toy Story of Terror (2013).  A little short film ABC did a few nights back.  I'm always charmed immediately by the idea of America's greatest living actor Tom Hanks, America's... well, America's Tim Allen, and the rest of the cast getting together for a small project like this, and the execution is great, even though, like all Toy Stories after the first, it's become apparent that no toy ever again will solve the problem of being stolen by an enemy human through the simple expedient of coming to life and freaking them the fuck out because, hey, no Toy Story could ever again be over ten minutes long.

While, as it was bound, it lacks the genuine pathos of each of the long-form films, on a minute by minute basis, it might be the funniest Toy Story picture.  A

[CountDeMoney]

H. Rider Haggard.

I thought it was a gag name at first, like Dick Guizinia, or Phil McKracken.

"Rider Haggard, hell, damned near killed her!"

[Queequeg]

Ide, I want a review of Shivers.

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

WATCH IT NOW IT'S AMAZING