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Post by Subtext Mining on Mar 30, 2024 19:07:55 GMT
As an Episode II fan, I'm glad I got today's Wordle in one guess. Wordle 992 1/6 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 It was Clone. Star Wars fans should get today's too. Wordle 1,015 3/6* ⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩 🟨🟨🟨⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Post by Subtext Mining on Apr 1, 2024 3:44:13 GMT
It was Force.
And I finally saw Raging Bull all the way through. Great character study, perfect companion piece to Taxi Driver.
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Post by Subtext Mining on Apr 1, 2024 15:35:14 GMT
Walter Hill's Streets of FireFirst of all, Walter Hill in general is in a special category for me, just plain simple. Major WH fan speaking. One part Western the other part Action-Crime-Noir revivalist, his movies are hard boiled and often graceless works of attitude where male heroes speak roughly (or little at all) and women saunter. But like many a filmmakers who came out of the 1970s he too is an homage artist in his own way. The Warriors from 1979 was already his first foray into a kind of graphic comic world of that era's urban gangland psyche, but rolling into the following decade thronged with Lucasberg's B-serialized Star Wars and Indiana Jones, W.D. Richter's take on Doc Savage via The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and John Carpenter going all yellow peril/wuxia sorcery with Big Trouble in Little China, Hill would likewise embrace the pulp—and that pulp was the 1984 'Rock'n'Roll Fable' as tag-lined on the very poster. Streets of Fire is also perhaps Hill's most innocent film, with a PG rating rare among his portfolio. No one dies in the film surprisingly while the language is mild. It's for kids, teenagers specifically. It's the ultimate date movie offering in equal measure what young guys and gals desire on a Saturday night outing sans any heavy investment: guns, motorcycles and street fights -- music, glamor and romance. Heroes, villains, damsels, sidekicks etc. are drafted statements right from the start and brassy dialogue is of such that cuts right to the point of pushing the plot forward while still illustrating whatever the character speaking it. Two aspects of the film in particular strike a relation with the Star Wars Prequels, the first being its world-building. The story is set in an alternate timeline that splices together 1950s rockabilly with a contemporary dimension of 1980s zeroed in on the burgeoning zeitgeist of an MTV pop-video culture; in the fictional city of Richmond (think: vintage steel mill St. Louise, L-train Chicago and Motown Detroit all meshed into one) is where the action takes place loosely to the meter of a diegetic musical. The second link to Lucas' space opera melodrama is, well, the melodrama, for Streets of Fire encapsulates the stuff of unabashed drive-in romance replete with longing looks, wounded feelings and the naked expressions of such through the film's own idiomatic, street-level purple prose. Other broad-yet-potent commonalities may include:
- opening fairy tale text: A long time ago in a galaxy far far away... / Another time, another place...- fictional metropolis coded with "graffiti" distinctly American
- a planetary queen / rock queen as the macguffin - accumulating motley crew of disparate characters
- hindered transports and waylay stations
- revved engines and speeder bikes
- seedy nightclubs
- sledge hammer duel in place of lightsabers - dare I say, a cult following or niche fanbase?
Finally saw this. Good stuff. It's like American Graffiti meets Escape From New York with cues taken from Bladerunner. And a colorful follow-up to The Warriors.
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Post by Subtext Mining on May 29, 2024 23:01:05 GMT
I think Hayden's character in Takers is the most like TCW Anakin. Brash, outspoken, upbeat, cocky, wry sense of humor with a smirk, a bit of a swagger. Basically Han.
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Post by stampidhd280pro on May 31, 2024 7:40:13 GMT
youtu.be/B796P0EO4oAMessiah of Evil (1974) Written and directed by the screenwriting team who gave us American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz.
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Post by stampidhd280pro on Jun 1, 2024 17:08:56 GMT
I finally watched Devil's 8 (1969) last night. Notable for being Willard Huyck and John Milius's first screenwriting credits. It's pretty trashy, but it was interesting to see early Milius dialogue. I get the impression the 1960s and 70s had too many damn car chase movies. Up next on my list is Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (also from 1969). Another friend of George Lucas, if you don't know the name. This one mixes fiction with documentary filmmaking. Looks very interesting. youtu.be/KsUyjkd9YUw
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Post by Subtext Mining on Jun 1, 2024 20:34:12 GMT
I just found out about The Big Chill (1983) by Lawrence Kasdan. It seems like what could be an alternate universe version of American Graffiti II.
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Post by stampidhd280pro on Jun 1, 2024 22:30:24 GMT
I just found out about The Big Chill (1983) by Lawrence Kasdan. It seems like what could be an alternative universe version of American Graffiti II. Ah, the Kasdan filmography has been in my sight for a while now. I watched Huyck and Katz's Best Defense (1984) just now and it is one of those truly bad 80s movies. Where the jokes are just fat people being fat, a foreign accent, or driving a vehicle through a building. Also, I get the impression that Willard and Gloria may have been real horndogs. I haven't seen Lucky Lady or French Postcards yet, but it seems like the other movies they've been involved in, people are trying to screw all the time. If you thought Howard the Duck was bizarre with its sexual humor, you probably didn't know about this movie or their involvement.
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Post by stampidhd280pro on Jun 3, 2024 5:54:11 GMT
The only movie directed by Dan Akroyd, Nothing But Trouble (1991) is free on youtube where I am. Just watched it. Thoroughly engaging and occasionally hilarious. Don't believe the ratings.
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Post by Subtext Mining on Jun 3, 2024 20:51:27 GMT
I watched Nothing But Trouble last fall on youtube, after seeing it posted so many times on Incredibly Strange Films on fb.
I enjoyed it. But yeah, it's one of those movies you'd see on tv, then later you can't remember if it was a movie, or something you saw in a fever dream.
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Post by Subtext Mining on Jun 21, 2024 10:21:07 GMT
And now Natalie Portman is starring in a movie called Lady In The Lake. Padme being from the Lake Country gives her some interesting loose parallels with the Lady of the Lake form the King Arthur legends. It was the Lady of the Lake who offered King Arthur the Excalibur; corresponding with Anakin's lightsaber. The Lady of the Lake also entrapped Merlin within a tree, rock or cave, depending on the variation. While Padme did not do this to anyone, one could take the liberty of applying another indirect and loose parallel with Yoda exiled to Dagobah and Obi-Wan to Tatooine. Or even Yoda & Obi-Wan enscnonced with Padme in Polis Massa. And Persephone as well, in that the flowers and vegetation are said to wilt away in the winter time as she returns to her husband in the underworld. Her return in the spring then ushers them forth as well. Much like the colors of the SW films diminish as the The Dark Side, The Sith Empire and Darth Vader take dominion. Only to gradually return in the latter half of the OT.
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Post by eljedicolombiano on Jul 9, 2024 18:56:36 GMT
Ridley Scott out of ideas and going back to his anachronist Roman gladiator story
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Post by stampidhd280pro on Jul 9, 2024 19:04:53 GMT
More like Diddley Squat.
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Post by Subtext Mining on Jul 17, 2024 19:09:36 GMT
I finally saw Lawrence Kasdan's 1983 film The Big Chill. Definitely the '80s answer to American Graffiti, with the boomers now pushing 35.
Kasdan is very talented with casual, conversational dialogue. There's not much plot in the film, just a group of friends hanging out for a weekend, but it does a good job of that. It feels like you're there watching regular people just talking.
He also directed a wide variety of characters, from a lot of up-and-coming stars, quite well, too.
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Post by tonyg on Jul 18, 2024 5:52:14 GMT
Ridley Scott out of ideas and going back to his anachronist Roman gladiator story Should we expect another emperor with pro-republican values and similar "extravaganza"? I'm not big fan of the first Gladiator, either. Ok, like epic action movie is great. Like historical movie: I'll skip. Fortunately, Gladiator was centered around Maximus character, but if they repeat the story, I don't see the point of making such movie. And from what I see in the trailer, they will try to repeat the story.
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Post by eljedicolombiano on Jul 19, 2024 5:17:57 GMT
Ridley Scott out of ideas and going back to his anachronist Roman gladiator story Should we expect another emperor with pro-republican values and similar "extravaganza"? I'm not big fan of the first Gladiator, either. Ok, like epic action movie is great. Like historical movie: I'll skip. Fortunately, Gladiator was centered around Maximus character, but if they repeat the story, I don't see the point of making such movie. And from what I see in the trailer, they will try to repeat the story. Yes if there is one thing I really didn’t like about the first Gladiator is how it doesn’t understand the ancient world… it pretends that the Romans and Greeks had the same idea of democracy that we have, when the Empire was seen as more stable and having brought order to the realm
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Post by eljedicolombiano on Aug 3, 2024 16:22:19 GMT
On my return from my vacation to Italy I saw Clint Eastwood´s The Bridges to Madison County as there wasn't much interesting in the airplane; and besides I knew that some great songs from the underrated crooner Johnny Hartman where included in the soundtrack so I figured I would give it a shot. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would; deeply moving in a rather strange way. I may have cried after it ended
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Post by smittysgelato on Sept 7, 2024 21:22:53 GMT
On my return from my vacation to Italy I saw Clint Eastwood´s The Bridges to Madison County as there wasn't much interesting in the airplane; and besides I knew that some great songs from the underrated crooner Johnny Hartman where included in the soundtrack so I figured I would give it a shot. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would; deeply moving in a rather strange way. I may have cried after it ended This movie makes a great double feature with the British film, Brief Encounter, from 1945. I remember watching Bridges as a kid while on vacation at my Auntie's, and that was the movie she had available at the time, lol. I felt so weird after watching it, probably because there are alot of unpleasant, mature emotions going on it that film. I came back to it around the time I was in University, and found it was actually a rather good film.
Anyways, I dropped by the film club forum because I just watched the trailer for Coppola's Megalopolis:
The aesthetic for this one very much reminds of Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem (which I still have yet to see, but would like to). In that sense, this movie is going to deliver on eye candy, that is for sure. It is certainly the most intriguing movie to come out in some time.
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Post by smittysgelato on Sept 7, 2024 21:28:56 GMT
Ridley Scott out of ideas and going back to his anachronist Roman gladiator story I don't see why history can't be mined for material to create a myth about the present. Then again, "realism" has never been my top priority with movies. This Gladiator sequel, according to the trailer at least, looks like a louder version of the first movie (which is already pretty energetic to begin with). So, I am definitely skeptical that Ridley can match the lightning in a bottle that was the first film. I'll watch it on Netflix when it is available, I guess.
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Post by eljedicolombiano on Sept 8, 2024 2:50:43 GMT
well realism is not exactly what I'm going for. 300 is not a realistic movie, but it paints an accurate picture of what the ancients believed
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