i thought it was more of a 40s thing! thanks for that.

that shower scene is awesome but not just the shower stab itself, i mean, the way the camera roves post-kill over the corpse and then from her tight pupil and the drain is just amazing. AMAZING. eisenstein would be proud-- and though it's a continuity edit it's also a montage proper. fantastic, just... eye-gasm. most perverted of all, it's from a murder. ah, to be disturbed.

i wish i had the 24-hour psycho machine. maybe can make one with handbrake + VLC! i'll hang it on the wall... i'll project it on a sheet to see both sides

dat movie... oh damn.

You're identifying another common theme that connects Hitchcock to Spielberg here. The power of the "villain POV" shot. That scene in Psycho was rather unlike anything before it as far as I can remember, the "Shark-vision" scenes in Jaws have always reminded me of it. That and the redundant, throbbing score accompanying both scenes.

Maybe I'm wrong though and this didn't come from Hitchcock. Please correct me if that's the case.

P.S. My favorite Hitchcock film is and always has been Rear Window. I'm not sure if this makes me some kinda pussy or what, but that film is damn near perfect in every way, and truly, undeniably terrifying. It taps into an entirely different kind of horror than Psycho or the Birds. A more complicated narrative also, as it grapples with the moral murkiness of privacy violation "for the greater good," an honest to God, real world horror that we still haven't learned any more about or come to terms with in any overarching societal way.

Rear Window > petty much everything

And these were the last two movies I watched. No shit.
After T-Day, I couldn't stomach the thought of watching anything even remotely serious. I found escape in this shit. These movies are fun.

I'm of the opinion that Hitchcock was only at his best when he limited himself with locations etc. I'd quite happily go the rest of my life never seeing Vertigo (HOW that film was voted Sight and Sound's best film ever is beyond me), North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much etc. again.

The opposite is true for Rear Window, Rope and the like. Honestly, the films where he had free reign in the story to go wherever bore the hell out of me.

I've never thought of it quite that way before, but I think you're right. In television, they call it a "bottleneck" episode when the entire thing takes place in one location, with only a handful of characters. These episodes are often revered, standing apart from the rest of the series (see Breaking Bad'a Emmy-winning "The Fly"). I think a lot of feature length films that use these strategies stand out as well. Like Rear Window, Wait Until Dark, etc., and I think part of this is because it kind of forces everyone involved to go to the limits of their comfort zones, and to bring nothing less than their A-game acting, directing, screenwriting. If they don't, the film won't hold anyone's attention.

Rear Window holds my attention. I've seen it more than any other Hitchcock film, and I'd watch it again right fucking now. Honestly I consider it one of my top 10 favorite films of all time, and have for as long as I can remember.

Fair enough about it not being the best film ever, I mean, what is? I tend to think in that particular poll, critics were just desperate to find something that'd replace Citizen Kane as almost the default 'best ever'. As for whether Vertigo is even the best Hitchcock film is debatable. Saying that I do love it and I would say it's kind of the ultimate Hitchcock film, dealing with most of his obsessions. If someone who'd never seen a Hitchcock film asked me to recommend one that represented what he was all about, I'd give them Vertigo, even though my personal favourite is The Birds.


The musical score maybe but according to Spielberg himself the 'shark vision' stuff was inspired by underwater shots in Creature From the Black Lagoon, which was his fave movie as a kid.

Another bit of Spielberg/Black Lagoon trivia: in Duel, the sound when the truck finally falls off the cliff is that of the creature's roar, slowed down.

This'll all sound like I'm just trying to shoehorn CFtBL into every discussion but in the case of Spielberg, and Jaws in particular, it does have massive relevance.

Creature From the Black Lagoon


Jaws

Ah! Creature From the Black Lagoon, of course. I knew you were going to say this before I even read this post. I remembered your previous mentions of this film just as I was scrolling down to see who said what most recently. You're right. Shark-vision was a total CFBL throwback.

I haven't seen that film in forever. Maybe it's time I revisit.

Ah, it's always time to revisit Cftbl, even if you only saw it a few weeks ago :)

haaa haaa haaa-- i've actually been thinking about it

then again, i think it's going to be THE BIRDS this weekend

because.. whattamovie!

thanks to you !@#!@$!s i've got REAR WINDOW and THE BIRDS lined up for *very soon*.

really looking forward to this. i think rear window was the first hitchcock i watched, in some remote 3rd world cineclub. ah fuck that was a nice place. also saw my 1st fassbinder there.

Vertigo is my favorite.

oh i love vertigo too. i think i still have the VHS ha ha ha.

but the best screening of vertigo ever was at the uptown theatre in washington DC-- they had a humongous, curved screen, built to show 70mm movies

gaaaah that was... eyegasmic

waiting for 4k bluray because i'll never have fast internet again

eta: the uptown lives!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uptown...hington,_D.C.).)

Yup. Beyond "creepy" or "spopky" or "suspenseful." That one is just plain unsettling and genuinely freaky as shit throughout.

Recently:

The Legend of Billie Jean
St Elmo's Fire
Pretty in Pink
Breakfast Club
Pump Up the Volume

Continuing through the list: Aliens 3

prison rape planet alien was good i thought

haven't watched it in years but yeah. had its original elements. that whole XYY business. and roc was good in it.

am i the only one who didn't like 2? alienZ or whatever?

^you defend 3 but don't like Aliens? What?

Alien 2 is an actual movie. An Italian unofficial sequel. Full title is Alien 2: On Earth.

I'm a huge Alien/Predator fan and in the past year I convinced my wife to watch all of the Alien & Predator movies in release order. It was awesome. My short thing I'll say is that I *like* all the movies a lot. Or rather, I love most of them, and I like a lot the ones that most people hate. I just love the franchises in general.

well i'm not a huge cameron fan. he's a technical genius, but... i don't know. it's hit or miss with him. have you seen avatar? unfuckingwachable (for me anyway). my mind vomited afterwards.

so right now i can't recall much of aliens except... winona? and some flamthrowers in a base? i forget, just... zero impression, just-- fucking trite.

alien, the riddley scott one, was genius.

with 3 i didn't expect a lot, but the whole supermacho prison angle and ripley always in danger of being gangraped made it thematically interesting. know what i mean? it wasn't about monsters in space, it was a rape movie about rape terror. and that-- it did well. even the monster looked like a pecker. "i want you to have my babies".

what was aliens about? like "really" about? i used to like winona though. was she in it or am i dreaming it?

Haha. I thought I was the only one who didn't like 2. The kid thing irritates the fuck out of me and then it all just seems to descend into non-stop shooting at things, making me feel like I'm watching someone else playing a video game. I like 3, though. Not as good as the 1st one but it has an interesting angle.

She was in 4, which I didn't mind. Would probably rank them 1-3-4-2

right, right, exactly, a video game, and i remember nothing of it except some chick with a bandana like some badass latina and some flamethrowers. wtf.

just checked and winona wasn't even in it. that's how much of an impression it made on me, ha ha ha.

==

ETA: 4! okay. another one i forgot then. no idea what that was anymore.

I don't remember much about 4, except that it didn't annoy me in the way 2 did. I only really remember that the alien is a bit more sympathetic with the mother angle played up a lot more, and that scene where Ripley's laying down with her.

oh ha ha ha ha ha

i might have to watch that, in spite of myself

AlienS is meh for me. Has some ok moments but as I said before it's NOT better than the original, though a lot of people seem to think it is.

I didn't like the multiple big gross alien dudes. It made the whole thing feel like a bit of a mess, compared to the singular, elemental terror of the first one. All those different shaped gross-looking, semi-phallic squirmy motherfuckers slip-slidin' around. Yuck.

And the robot thing. Dumb.

And Newt. I didn't give a shit about Newt and never cared why Ripley cared so much about Newt. Yuck.

I originally thought Alien 3 was pretty good (remember those awesome teasers for it from back in the day? "The Bitch is Back!") But I rewatched it a couple years ago and it really pretty much ate shit. It was directed by David Fincher, and I tend to like his "Simple man's Christopher Nolan" style, but ... it was just a bad, bad movie.

Alien Resurrection (the fourth) benefitted from the visionary direction of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, City of Lost Children, Delicatessen, A Very Long Engagement... some of my favorite films ever!), and was a hoot in the theatre, but it didn't really feel like an Alien movie. It was interesting though. Seen it several times.

Now... I'm probably alone on this one, but I actually think PROMETHEUS was the best film to take place in the Alien "universe" since the first film. Why did people not like PROMETHEUS? It was Ridley Scot. It was epic. It was smart. It was fucking scary. It added to the mythology. Loved it. Suck my ass, Avatar, you overblown like of shit!

Looking forward to Alien: Covenant, the Ridley Scott helmed sequel to Prometheus.

Ha! Yep. That's basically how I feel. Fuck the stupid kid, fuck the shooting.

Also, as a real-life, hardcore claustrophobic ass motherfucker, I CANNOT STAND that scene where Bishop worms his way through that fucking endless tunnel. That's made me flip out since I was a kid. In fact, I remember my dad really wanted me to watch Aliens when I was little, but was worried about that scene ... not the exsessive violence or the Sugarhill Gang of monsters, but the proxy claustrophobia I'd feel from the tunnel scene.

My father is a strange man. We watched it anyway.

Aliens is "about" the moon where the eggs from the first film were found by the crew of Ripley's ship. It's been like 75 years since the events of Alien, and Ripley's been floating around in stasis the whole time, after blowing her ship to hell. She's discovered by terraformers from this moon, and she warns them all that it's super infested with alien shit, and they're like nah you're just a woman. Then the aliens totally do attack and the crew is like whoops out bad save us, look we have guns and there's, like, a 12 year-old fucking kid here for some reason!

Then fighting, dying, blah. The flamethrower you're thinking of is from this film. It's a big crowd pleaser.

Winona was not in Aliens. Her beautiful heavenly self was in Alien Ressurection, which is about Riley being cloned centuries after her death. She dies with an embryo up in her, and if I remember right, that big evil corporation they work for cloned her when she had the thing in her so they could regrow both her and the alien and harvest it from her womb er whatever.

Winona is an android (androids for Ripley are like snakes for Indiana Jones... just can't get away from them.) And turns out harvesting that alien was a bad idea, and there'S some other aliens too and lots of shot happens before a big humanoid-y Ripley alien guy is sucked through a really small hole in a space window.
...

So ... there have most definitely been better franchises.

Also, the hot potato game of directors helps prove something I've always believed which is that trilogies/series work best when handled by one person. A united, stable vision is the shit when it comes to trilogies. That's why Godfather and Dark Knight are THE trilogies. Period.

Really though, Jean-Pierre Jeunet is one of the most bizarre and brilliant visionary directors ever. I have no idea why, after making multiple foreign language cult-magic masterpieces, he decided to try to break into the US mainstream with a freaking franchise sick-go movie... but his vision is still there in Alien Resurrection, and you can see it in the design overall sheen of the film.

This is how I'd rank them:

1. Alien
2. Prometheus
3. Alien Resurrection
4. Aliens
5. Alien 3

Not counting unofficial Italian sequels or crossover cash grab fuckarounds. Fuck ghy stupid shit. Alien v. Predator is to blame for Superman v. Batman being even a speck in a young, probably stoned Zack Snyder's heavy-lidded eye.

Star Wars v. Star Trek next? No. fuck that noise.

watched a Scottish history movie the other night "Sunset Song", very understandable why a lot of people left the old sod and went to USA/Canada/Australia. Also a pretty good reading of WWI, without showing the carnage, it brought it right home. Fuuuuuck. Well acted and beautifully photographed. Only complaint was that the folks in it looked way too clean and way to healthy for 1910

Speaking of stuff... (I have fuckall to do today, can y'all tell?)

This was the last movie I watched:



I really quite liked it!
The plot was a little rushed. The dialogue was not as rich as I would have liked, and I tend to like my Star Trek to be in direct sequel form (big fan of the original non TNG films) BUT... it was a pretty fucking good time.

Chris Pine (Kirk) and Karl Urban (McCoy) have really grown into their respective roles. They're getting older, so they're starting to look and act less like Shatner/Deforest Kelly replacements and and are beginning to really take command of the characters without losing too much of what made those characters so great in the first place. I really loved watching both of them in this film.

Simon Pegg is great, and he's also doing a bang-up job, and is consistently a highlight of this new series, but he doesn't really pay any tribute to James Doohan's Scotty, so as fun as he is to watch, he doesn't scream "Mr. Scot!" to me quite like Pine and Urban scream "James T.!" and "Bones!" respectively. Still, he's got writing chops and a nose for swift, effective pacing, and I'm really glad he's a part of this.

The dude from heroes who plays Spock is an objectively limited actor and succeeds only in making us remember Leonard Nemoy, kind of like Brandon Routh made me remember Christopher Reeve in Superman Returns. I can't think of anyone who would be better suited to the role per se, but he doesn't bring a shit ton to the table beyond nostalgia.

The chick who played the big-headed alien chick was delightful, and should have had more screen time. She was really the film's secret weapon, and good as it was it would have been better if they'd used her more and expanded a bit on her character. She was happy-happy-joy-joy inducing for sure.

Idris Elba is a very capable actor, but he has yet to deliver a feature film performance that truly warrants all the critical hype he gets. Every tiime his name is mentioned it's like "IDRIS ELBA OOOHHH he's the black, male Tilda Swindon! I heard his name so now I'm excited!" but his performance in films thus far has been ... a bit gimmicky? He needs more of a meaty character, more time on screen to evolve. He did a fine job as Krall (whose backstory is truly spooky and weird and very "Star Trek"), but he didn't have the time or room to really deliver a classic Trek villain performanc.

ALL TOLD... I think this is a very successful franchise and I think it adds layers to the original story, and is nimble enough to exist alongside previous films and independently as a damn good trilogy in its own right.

I think I preferred both Star Trek 2009 and Star Trek: Into Darkness to Beyond overall, but Beyond brought something very classic to the table... a loyalty and respect for the underlying philosophy behind Star Trek. Peace over war, exploration over dominion, and "humanity" as a concept that stretches beyond sexual, cultural or even racial borders.
This film shows the crew doing what the crew had always done best... using their noggins -- not their weapons -- and inginuity to overcome superior technologies and more dangerous and deadly adversaries through diplomacy... not militarism.

In this respect, Beyond is perhaps the most true to the Roddenberry ideal of what Star Trek is REALLY about, and I thought it was just awesome. I look forward to future films, and if they continue on this track they might have a chance of matching the newly rebooted Star Wars franchise, at least in terms of quality (face it, Trek will never ever ever be as popular as even the shirkers Star Wars films.) It's a crying shame, but there's no way around it. Still... the franchise has never released 3 top notch films in a row, so there is reason to celebrate if you are a childhood Trek-head like me.

Also... you know how "Sabotage" was in he preview and the world kinda face palmed a bit?

Well, turns out "Sabotage" is also in the movie (old news, I know.. I'm late) and it's actually kind of perfect. There's a setup for it, so it's not like a 22 year-old song comes out of nowhere to soundtrack a space battle 600 years in the future, and it is honestly pretty freaking fun. Hard to think of a better choice for that moment in the film (ok, "Power" by Kanye would have been cool but whatevs).

So yeah. Severian recommends.

i put a post earlier that apparently didn't stick. aghhhhh.

i was saying there that your plot summary isn't what the movie "is really about". i'm talking about its larger/unconscious referent/symbolism.

in the case of aliens i haven't seen in ages but i think it was probably vietnam (and getting trapped in those vietcong tunnels, ouch).

i say this because i was reading up some shit about it and it said liek troop transports were like vietnam choppers. plus the flames. plus plus plus. aliens=vietcong?

in any case-- don't care lol

sorry i forgot what else

oh yes i might have to do this like TW and watch all in a row cuz monkey see monkey do

I kinda thought this might have been what you meant, but then you seemed to be, like, really confused about which movie was which. So... sorry.

Anyway, yes, I've also heard that Vietnam was the inspiration for Aliens... in the same kind of general way that, say, A Tale of Two Cities was the inspiration for The Dark Knight Rises.

I think you've mentioned that you don't read a lot of science fiction, but Vietnam is a very common theme in late 20th century sci-fi. This was only slightly after the era of The Forever War and Starship Troopers, etc. which are both more about 'Nam than they are about what they claim to be about. It was sort of a fad. But yes, in short, I guess it's "about" Vietnam.

Well.. no. It's about aliens and a chick fighting them. It's informed by the post-Vietnam Zeitgeist though.


Wow man. I'm so glad I wrote all that bullshit then. :) (< not a sarcastic smiley... a "I'm just being silly" smiley, through and through. Promise.)


Aaaand now you're calling me a monkey. That's cool.

Seriously though, go watch them in order of release if you even sort of care, because they're all worth seeing at the very least. And include Prometheus at the end. I loved that one. Nice world-building.

Everything is better in Ridley Scott's hands. Except for maybe Kingdom of Heaven or whatever the fuck that fucking thing was.

that's what i'd say i do--what he's doing. i'm the monkey who's gonna copy him. how was this about you?

and i meant i don't care about the movie enough to care about what it's really about (but i might watch it anyway as i just said).

you sound a little hyper today ha ha ha. not in a bad way. it's probably a good thing.

last night watched takashi miike's IMPRINT

which was the last installment of a showtime-produced "masters of horror" series from around 2005.

miike's movie is so hard fucking core it was pulled out of broadcast. never aired. it really is fucking hard to watch at times, with realistic depictions of torture-- i had to look the fuck away. brrrrrrrrrr! plus other much disturbing material. horror not terror (not fear).

it wasn't great, and the disc transfer didn't look great, but i've checked that box and it's done.

I'm really curious about Christopher Nolan's upcoming Dunkirk film, just because it seems like a totally un-Christopher Nolan-like subject. It'll look great and have a great Hans Zimmer soundtrack but how will Nolan do his trademark complexity thing in what was ultimately just a big shootout on a beach?

A perverse side of me would like to have seen Michael Bay do it. It would've been shit but shit in a Michael Bay kind of way, which is always at least ludicrous.

Yeah I know you weren't calling me a monkey. Ha. I was just playing. Letting myself be a little spastic I guess.

And yeah, I guess I am a little hyper today. Woke up at 10 a.m. with no obligations for the first time in a bit. And I felt a little better, mentally and physically, than I have lately. These past 2 weeks have been... well.. rough.

Sorry for being a little obnoxious. All I can say is I kinda need to be a spazz right now.

Oh, I'm dying to see Dunkirk as well. Doesn't come out for damn near a year, which bothers me, and makes me wish I hadn't followed the schedule so it would feel like a surprise to me (as Inception and Interstellar did).

About the "classic Nolan" thing.. have faith. Remember, the Prestige was really just a story about three dudes (two smart, one dumb) and a competition. But it passes for steampunk, even sci-fi simply because of the amazing visuals and Nolan's pitch perfect sense of pacing and storytelling.

Ever seen Insomnia? Similar deal. Nothing fantastic about it, but holy hell is that a eye-and-brain popping thriller. I would even argue that his first film, that minimalist black and white treachery tale Following, managed to go into some pretty heady places thematically.

We've been talking about Spielberg a bit, and I've gotta say that I think Christopher Nolan is very much a student of the Spielbergian school of film awesomeness. He's more often compared to Kubrick (when the simple fact that he has a few blockbusters under his belt doesn't get him lumped in with artless, humorless brutes... like Bay), but I see a lot of Spielberg in his ability to move between genres. He has a definite signature style, but I think he has managed to reliably fit diverse styles and perspectives and realities into his toolbelt. From noir and suspense to crime drama to dream-spies and hard sci-fi, all with that sort of trademark cerebral feel, tailored to fit each situation and set of characters. Spielberg did this as well, perhaps better than anyone in film... I mean, a dinosaur movie and a black and white Holocaust character study in the same year... both classics in their own right. Only Spielberg's "thing" was less cerebral and more... something else. Human, I guess.

I think we might expect Dunkirk to be Nolan's attempt at a Saving Private Ryan-type thing. That film didn't offer a hell of a lot of complex ideas. It was just a man extremely well made war film. And I've heard Dunkirk is a bit of a passion project for Nolan, so I think he has a solid angle and probably an excellent reason for making it, and odds are it will be great.

I just love Christopher Nolan. Really. Real film aficionados tend to thumb their noses at him a bit from time to time (despite the fact that everyone on the face of the earth at least loves Memento, Dark Knight and Inception), like he's kind of a dim bulb film "bro," but I say fuck that. He and David O. Russell probably have the best track records in Hollywood right now.

haa haa that's great news man. why apologize? it's great that your energy is back and you feel again like playing. enjoy!