Saturday, February 4, 2023

Weekend Open Thread

14 comments:

  1. Some quality rewatches took place this week: Night of the Living Dead, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Double Indemnity, The Last Waltz, The Princess Bride, and 12 Angry Men. Bless Criterion for putting out all these excellent titles on Blu-Ray. It's so difficult to pick a favorite out of this bunch, but it's a delight to recall what a groundbreaking masterpiece of horror NotLD is.

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    1. that is an OUTSTANDING playlist. Honestly its like you picked a handful of completely different, but ALL perfect, movies. why..to do so...seems....

      {cue wallace shawn voice}

      INCONCEIVABLE!!!

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  2. Yo F This Dudes and Dudettes! Happy freezing weekend!

    In Search of Darkness III (2023 Shudder)

    Absolutely ADORE this documentary series about 80s Horror. Im pretty much gonna go back and rewatch part I as its been a while. Its super long (over 5 hours) but its nice bite sized looks at a lot of obscure-ish 80s horror movies that we oldies recall the vhs boxes of from back in the day. LOTS of great interviews with current SMEs of horror and original folks involved with the flicks. If you're like me, you'll have a notepad handy while watching as you're BOUND to come away with a huge list of "i gotta check this one out" movie suggestions!

    The Blob (1958 HBO/Max)

    Im blessed to have a kid that digs old school horror. This flick is alot of fun. You have to suspend some disbelief...not in the alien goo premise but in that Steve McQueen and his buddies all look 47 but play high school students. hahahahah. honestly i think that guy looked 47 from birth.

    I do need to bring up some mind blowing observations from this watch (prob mentioned before). One of my fav concepts in entertainment aligns with the "everything is a remix" theory. There's only so many original concepts and alot of stuff gets "repurposed". Sometimes blatantly but often to varying degrees of 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". Anyhoo i found the roots of two of the all time greatest horror movies are seeded with The Blob. First..the egg scene in Alien is DIRECTLY pulled from the opening scene of The Blob (old dude. asteroid. stick). Not just the inciting incident..but a solid 20m of it as old dude is taken to docs..they try to remove the blob..its defense mech prevents that..and things get worse. Identical to Alien from Egg thru chestburst. Second: The Thing's jumping off point is pretty much the exact finale of The Blob. (blob spoiler ahead). So the end of the Blob they realize its weakness is cold so they freeze it and randomly state that theres no way to kill it. SOOOO the solution is to bring the frozen alien creature to the Antarctic where it will remain frozen as long as he artic circle remains so...but ends with an ominous "?". Soooo we have an unstoppable alien creature that adsorbs hosts and grows accordingly frozen in the ice....hrmmm...sound familiar? I think The Blob and The Thing would make one of the best art house cinema double features ever.

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    1. The movie theater scene was shot at the Colonial Theatre in the Pennsylvania town of Phoenixville, Mashke. Every summer there is a Blobfest there to celebrate the film.

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  3. Hi gang! What up?

    I just got home from seeing Sisu, the new film from director Jalmari Helander (Rare Exports, Big Game), and I had a total blast!

    It's set in northern Finland in 1944, when the Nazi soldiers occupying northern Finland are in retreat. One Nazi patrol happen upon a gruff Finnish prospector carrying the gold he just dug up from the ground and decide to kill him for it, which turns out to be the biggest mistake of their lives.

    The movie feels very reminiscent of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, with its lingering shots of the arid landscapes and a nihilistic disregard for human life the characters display. Jorma Tommila's (the director's brother-in-law, who also appeared in both of his earlier films) character is John Wick, The Man With No Name, Indiana Jones and the Terminator all rolled into one, a one-man nazi-killing machine who refuses to die.

    Please keep a look out for this one if you enjoy bloody action movies, it's really fun! I'm told it'll get a bigger theatrical release in America than any Finnish movie ever has, but haven't seen a release date anywhere yet.

    (Sisu is a word that describes this mythical quality we Finns like to think is in our DNA. The closest I can translate it is "courage and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds". It's closely associated with WW2 when Russia attacked with their military might and the plucky Finns fought them off against all odds, but it's also often used for overcoming everyday hardships.)

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    1. OMG....thanks Mikko for the heads up. Just based on your awesome description alone now places this movie on my "top 5 cant wait to see in 2023"!!!!

      I did some digging online but cant find specifics around the US release other than Lionsgate has the rights. HAZAA!

      Thanks for the great review and cool details around the meaning of the title....i love the backstory on what the word means to the folks of Finland. Cant Wait!!!!!! Cheers mate!

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  4. BACKDRAFT (1991). Still holds up! Lots of great performances and awesome action in this. It still bugs me when the firefighters walk around in the burning building with the fronts of their coats wide open, but whatever.

    CLOCKSTOPPERS (2002). This is a very dumb, very sloppily made movie... and I love it! It's just a fun time at the movies.

    Curiosity got the better of me, so I caved and watched Michael Bay's 6 UNDERGROUND (2019). I like the concept, of a hero who fakes his own death to fight his enemies outside the system. It feels like an old-school pulp character. But Bay just can't help himself with the too-busy action and hacky humor. A missed opportunity.

    RED CLIFF (2008). John Woo goodness!

    MEN (2022). This was certainly... a movie. It had great performances and an outrageous ending, but I'm left with the thought that it's not for me.

    CLERKS III (2022) with the Blu-ray commentary. Everybody's self-congratulatory to an obnoxious degree. The bright spots on the track are when they point out all the cameos and extras. Every background person is someone of note, and that was fun to hear about.

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  5. OMG....quick click to pick.....goto youtube and watch the snl sketch for "HBO Mario Kart Movie". Its absolutely hilarious. Layers of humor about the current broody tv shows and video game adaptations and the fact that anything can be adapted anyway. BRILLIANT.

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  6. Another week of limited time for movie watching, but I made the most of it. I saw a couple of Indian films just before they went of Mubi. One of these weeks I will get to four films.

    AWAARA, or THE VAGABOND (1951, dir. Raj Kapoor) – A Bollywood classic with a sociological message: A person is not born bad, it is society that makes someone bad person. The winding melodramatic plot provides plenty of opportunity for the characters to break into song and dance. The film is notable for the presence of Nargis, one of the most famous Bollywood actresses of all time. The black-and-white cinematography is top-notch, featuring several beautiful sequences with high-contrast lighting. At nearly 3 hours long, I had to break up the viewing up into two sessions. Bollywood is not really my thing, but it was interesting to see an early example of it.

    ANKUR (1974, dir. Shyam Benegal) – A portrait of an area in rural Indian where power is held in the hands of few people. When the son of the local landlord, back from his education in the city, is forced to take over running a parcel of land, he seems to come with a different attitude to society. Caste and his own privilege do not matter much to him until they have to. All of this is comes into play with Lakshmi, a low-caste woman who has to endure one humiliation after another without complaining. A drama filled with bitterness and injustice, Ankur is an excellent example of the more serious side of Indian cinema.

    My Saturday night movie this week was 1992's MIRACLE BEACH. Take the idea behind the TV show I Dream of Jeannie, set it at a California beach, add in random female nudity, and make everything as early 1990s as possible. There you have Miracle Beach. To the credit of a frequently dumb script, there is a coherent plot that provided cast an opportunity create some engaging scenes. Ami Dolenz, the daughter of Monkees member Micky Dolenz, is very charming as the genie. Then there is Dean Cameron being Dean Cameron, and Pat Norita is given little to do but somehow steals the scenes he is in. Better than I thought it would be.

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  7. So, the lineup for last year's F This Movie Fest was announced on the first Monday of February... I'm just sayin'.

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  8. Finally watched THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN! But it was SO FEKIN SAD, I found it hard to watch. It was beautiful in the sense that I felt it was crafted better than his last two films. Like in In Bruges I personally wanted more story - more movie - between the irony-reveal moments. And though I loved things about Three Billboards, the story was wonky. So Banshees was really well balanced, IMO. But I couldn't watch it again. It was like watching someone kick a child for however long it lasted. I laughed a handful of times but unlike the other films, I wasn't left with any sense of acceptance or upliftment or hope or any silver lining feelings. That could just be me reading it wrong, which is something I do sometimes if I'm in a certain mood, but...I'm not trying again. Still really appreciate Martin Mcdonagh, though.

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    1. Also, I get that that was kind of the point - for it to be sad. But unlike the other ones, I didn't get any moral humor or moral ambiguity. It seemed just straight downhill. Am I missing something? Curious about the vibe other people got from it.

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    2. Meredith, I'm 150% with you on this. I made the mistake of watching it on Christmas Eve and it literally ruined my entire day, it was so sad. I will never revisit but I appreciate the acting and writing. I would like Martin McDonaugh to make a non-sad comedy next time!

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    3. Haha. Thank you, Rosie! I feel so seen! I'm so sorry about your Christmas :( Wth Martin McDonagh! Non-sad comedy next time, Sil.vous.plaittt.

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