TV/Movies Megathread

[Duque de Bragança]

Gymkata (1985)

Solid B+ or even A- on the so-bad-it's good scale. A very Orientalist movie *Trigger Warning* for the PC crowd. For the others, just '80s martial arts exploitation mixed with gymnastics (?!) along with some recycled cold war plot. Almost as good as the worst i.e the best Cannon could offer back then.

Somewhat original in that it was shot in good old Yugoslavia. A lot of effort went into character screams, something even some dubs recognised, better even that the famous rebel yells.
Director? Robert Clouse, yes the one behind Enter the Dragon and Game of Death. Well, there is a tournament and a deadly game but that's about it.
Thankfully, Kurt Thomas, a real gymnast and hero of this movie, did not die during the movie. Conan Lee who starred in one of the only good bonafide Ninja genre movies (Ninja in the Dragon's Den) is not given enough screen time to change things but Ninjas are there, no worries. Richard Norton is the main villain but this is not one of his best performances. Tadashi Yamashita, of Chuck Norris' Octagon and Dudikoff's American Ninja fame, has a small role as well, at least his part did not get the axe, since he could hear actually hear it (Eastern aphorism of the movie).

Yakmallah!

[Malthus]

The stupid Swede stereotype meanwhile just dissapeared. Wonder why.

A lot of people don't even remember the existance of that one.  But yeah, it is a historical curiousity when one comes across a reference to it these days.

[Admiral Yi]

My dad has also mentioned the "dumb Dutchman" stereotype he grew up with, which similarly sounds odd now.

[celedhring]

The swede stereotype down here used to be hot, easy, women.

[Malthus]

It was once common enough that Robert Service wrote a poem in which a "Dumb Swede" turned the tables on a coupla Idaho "tinhorns".

http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/robert-william-service/dumb-swede/

[Josephus]

AMC is running a marathon of Walking Dead. I'm gonna pick one episode this evening, whichever one's on around 9 pm, and have a shot everytime a character who is now dead is first shown. Think I'm gonna be pretty drunk.

[Ideologue]

Speaking of cheap, I watched Robin Hood (1922) on Amazon Prime.  It's already a pretty direly misconceived film (the name "Robin Hood" first appears at one hour and seven minutes into the movie, and Douglas Fairbanks doesn't start climbing on shit for several more minutes still), but what was even worse was the awful public domain ragtime score.  You know what goes just swell with a 12th century period piece, particularly scenes of a knight being thrown into a dungeon, or of a lady-in-waiting tortured by a would-be usurper prince seeking information?  Scott Joplin.

Was it a Televista print?  Those are awful; Netflix just got a bunch of new ones, so I've been subjecting myself to them.

For the 1938 version of Robin Hood they were worried about being sued by the owners of the 1922 versions copyright holders; that's why almost none of Errol Flynn's adventures are the same as Douglass Fairbanks'.  Flynn's version became the standard and the influence on all future Robin Hoods.

Yeah, but even the 1915 version has the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Right now I'm right about halfway through my retrospective of Fairbanks' silent swashbucklers (and, also, to be complete, Mr. Robinson Crusoe ).  But though I haven't seen Don Q, The Gaucho, or Iron Mask yet, Thief of Bagdad must be the high point.   It's been a couple years since I first saw it, and it's really grown in my estimation, particularly as I've gotten better used to the silent form.

[crazy canuck]

AMC is running a marathon of Walking Dead. I'm gonna pick one episode this evening, whichever one's on around 9 pm, and have a shot everytime a character who is now dead is first shown. Think I'm gonna be pretty drunk.

[Ideologue]

Yeah, but even the 1915 version has the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Right now I'm right about halfway through my retrospective of Fairbanks' silent swashbucklers (and, also, to be complete, Mr. Robinson Crusoe ).  But though I haven't seen Don Q, The Gaucho, or Iron Mask yet, Thief of Bagdad must be the high point.   It's been a couple years since I first saw it, and it's really grown in my estimation, particularly as I've gotten better used to the silent form.

Oh, that said, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans sucks.

When I'm done with the silent Fairbanks actioners, I want to do the Golden Age remakes--so Flynn's Robin Hood, the better-liked '48 Three Musketeers, and so on.  Don Q, The Gaucho, and The Black Pirate don't have direct remakes, however.  I was thinking of looking at Tyrone Powers' Black Swan as a spiritual successor.  Don't know what to do about Gaucho or Don Q (is there even another son of Zorro movie between the advent of sound and 1967?).  I wouldn't mind being pointed in the direction of 1940s adventure cinema generally, and particularly pirate movies.  I understand Michael Curtiz could be a good place to start?

[katmai]

The swede stereotype down here used to be hot, easy, women.

My personal experience bears that out.

[Savonarola]

Yeah, but even the 1915 version has the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Right now I'm right about halfway through my retrospective of Fairbanks' silent swashbucklers (and, also, to be complete, Mr. Robinson Crusoe ).  But though I haven't seen Don Q, The Gaucho, or Iron Mask yet, Thief of Bagdad must be the high point.   It's been a couple years since I first saw it, and it's really grown in my estimation, particularly as I've gotten better used to the silent form.

Oh, that said, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans sucks.

I would have been very surprised if you had liked "Sunrise."  Is there any expressionist film you do like?

[Eddie Teach]

Oh, that said, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans sucks.

Ok, maybe Katmai is right about you. 

[Ideologue]

Sav: I'm not sure I've seen one by a European director I liked.  (Maybe the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?  At some point, I'll rewatch Nosferatu and watch Faust.)  Of course, I like Expressionism in a lot of movies made by Anglo-Americans: The Phantom of the Opera borrows liberally from Expressionism, and James Whale ran away with it in his two Frankenstein movies, and I love those.

Sav + Eddie: Now, I do like Murnau's direction of Sunrise (if, honestly, I'm more impressed by the camerawork in, e.g., The Black Pirate).  I particularly enjoyed the use of superimposition to demonstrate what a cesspool of decay and debauchery The City was.  My primary objection is that the story is distractingly bad.  Even if you can get beyond The Wife's ludicrous shrugging-off of her husband's attempt to murder her--and that's a big ask--the meat and potatoes of the movie is watching two people go out on a date.  It's very marginally funny sometimes, but it's mostly boring.  (Interestingly, if you change it simply so the Wife hadn't known her husband had plotted her demise, the movie plays much, much better.)  It gets more interesting during the storm, of course, but I found myself unable to connect to their characters in any meaningful way at all, so I didn't care that they had bad things happen to them.

People call it on of the best movies of all time.  It's a weird choice.

[Savonarola]

Personally I think "Der letzte Mann" and "Nosferatu" are much better films are much better films than "Sunrise," but I doubt you'll like either of them. 

[Savonarola]

American Pluck (1925)

Sort of a poor man's "Prisoner of Zenda," Blaze Derringer (what a name) is thrown out of college after rescuing a girl from a police raid in a cabaret.  His father disowns him  until he makes $5000.  He joins up with a fake duke and an Uncle Tom and turns to prize fighting.  The girl from the cabaret sees him at his first fight; it turns out she's the queen of a small country, and she invites him to be head of her army.  Hilarity ensues as the country's finances stall, a villainous lord tries to marry the girl, then spirits her to a cave before the coronation.  All ends well through true love and American pluck.

This is a poverty row film; the production values are so low that it's hard to tell if the girl is supposed to be queen of a European nation or a Caribbean Island.  (Or maybe she's Queen of California, since that where the film was quite obviously shot.)  The film clocks in at an hour.  That might be for the best; the story doesn't make sense, so there's no since in lingering over it.