KingEric7
Stupid Conspiracy Enthusiast Wanker
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2006
- Messages
- 24,000
Twas harsh when the captain's son got completely decapitated and his head slid off his neck in slow motion. He was a legend on the battlefield aswell.
TMNT
My 8 year old really enjoyed it but the plot was a bit crap 6.5/10
i refer you to my previous answer on this
"plot? they're giant ninja turtles"
You still need a plot to give them something to do. If they had made it funnier I probably wouldn't have noticed.
It would probably have benefited from some big turtles.
downloaded, but it was a Cam version. Worth going to see in the cinema
GRINDHOUSE
I almost feel bad for Robert Rodriguez, insofar as he has the misfortune to make a generally entertaining feature only to have it eclipsed by some sublime genre work by Quentin Tarantino. It’s the story of his career, the two filmmakers having hitched their respective wagons to each other a long time ago. No one forces Rodriguez to habitually collaborate with a director who is clearly his creative superior, so really he only has himself to blame.
On the list of film genres worthy of tribute, grindhouse exploitation is certainly not my favorite; they’re typically cynical, artless, misanthropic, and not very good. If case you’re curious, “grindhouse” gets its name from the theaters these films screened in, often former burlesque houses that featured elements of (ahem) audience participation. Most shows were double features (long after traditional Hollywood pictures had abandoned the practice) presumably because the public wouldn’t pay to see just one terrible movie. On any given night, audiences could expect to see copious amounts of nudity, violence, torture, rape, motorcycle gangs, lesbian prison inmates, zombies, cannibals, and zombie cannibals.
It’s upon this last cliché that Rodriguez has fashioned his 80 minute Grand Guignol, Planet Terror. Cherry Darling (McGowan) dreamed of becoming a doctor but ended up a go-go dancer instead. She now aspires to be a stand-up comedienne; this progression should give you some indication of how seriously Planet Terror takes itself. After accepting a ride from ex-boyfriend El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez, no relation to director) the two are besieged by zombies who have escaped from a nearby military facility. Cherry gets the worst of it with a severed limb, but necessity is the mother of invention; she’s provided with one of the better sight gags of the picture in the form of a prosthetic leg/M4 assault rifle (though coming as it does late in the third act, one images it might have been more effective if it were not advertised on every Grindhouse one-sheet).
At the local hospital, husband-and-wife Doctors Block and Block (Brolin and Shelton) seek to determine the source of the zombie outbreak while resolving issues apropos their own deteriorating marriage (read: lesbian infidelity). The survivors, including mad scientist Abby (Andrews), Texas BBQ proprietor JT (Fahey) and his brother, Sheriff Hague (Biehn) band together against the growing zombie army and a quasi-government force that will stop at nothing for a cure.
Rodriguez has followed the lead of his hero, fellow Renaissance Man/Type A multi-hyphenate John Carpenter, by assuming most creative positions (director, writer, producer, composer, editor, cinematographer) on his picture. The result is an enjoyable trifle, all said, though you wonder how much Rodriguez can truly enjoy a genre that he loads with so much winking, ironic scorn. Planet Terror is ridiculous to the point of satire; it’s not that exploitation isn’t worthy of the treatment so much as it’s masturbatory and beside the point. No one needs to have the absurdity of these B-movie spatterfests pointed out; if they did, someone wasn’t carding at the door. Rather than make an interesting film, Rodriguez has decided to parody some bad ones. Even if he succeeds more than he fails, where’s the fun in that?
Quentin Tarantino harbors no such conflicted feelings. For good or bad, exploitation is a genre he actually likes (having called grindhouse filmmaker Jack Hill “the greatest living American director” and meant it); he’s made a living appropriating the conventions of exploitation, applying his own stylized, fanboy aesthetic, and creating high art. In Death Proof, Tarantino has not set out to belittle films like Vanishing Point or Gone in 60 Seconds (the original) but simply to make a better version. He’s succeeded, despite only writing, directing, producing, and shooting his own film, likely making him the butt of jokes in the Rodriguez household.
The plot is a study in simplicity. Death Proof is essentially two extended dialogue scenes with two sets of female leads (Dawson, Ferlitto, Ladd, and Bell among others) piggy-backed by action set-pieces involving a deranged movie stuntman (displaced by age and CGI, suggesting a quasi-Luddite theme) known as Stuntman Mike. Thusly, we get to know these women a little before Stuntman Mike tries to kill them; it’s an obvious conceit, but great filmmakers are always demonstrating how the fundamental is ignored by hacks. The car chase sequences are fairly masterful in the way Tarantino uses music, framing, and editing to forge suspense and empathy (and further, real menace), even building off each other until a climactic paraph of typical of the director’s interesting vision of female empowerment (like Jack Hill and Russ Meyer, Tarantino dreams of zaftig women who can beat him up). For those keeping track, feet (another Tarantino staple/fetish) also figure prominently, accompanying the director’s screen credit in what must be a filmic in-joke.
Besides the Tarantino/Rodriguez double bill, Grindhouse features four faux-trailers by Rodriquez, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), Eli Roth (Hostel), and Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses). Wright’s take on Britspoitation, Don’t, is the best of the lot, followed by Roth’s holiday slasher Thanksgiving. Zombie’s take on Nazi sex and sadism, Werewolf Women of the SS leaves little impression while Rodriguez’s Machete is noteworthy for its superficial resemblance to current Mark Wahlberg release, Shooter. All four can be found on YouTube should you be so inclined.
Interesting footnote: Obviously, Grindhouse is not Tarantino and Rodriguez's first collaboration, nor is it their first attempt at an abbreviated double feature. Tarantino wrote and stars in From Dusk Till Dawn (he also appears in Desperado), which Rodriguez directed; the picture is essentially two in one – a gangster/hostage and vampire movie (Rodriguez reportedly asked Tarantino to co-direct, but he declined). Tarantino also directed a scene in Sin City. On the other side, Rodriguez wrote music for Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and supposedly did some uncredited directing work on Pulp Fiction. They each wrote/directed segments of 1995 anthology film Four Rooms.
http://www.pretentiousmusings.com/grindhouse.html
when is it out in ireland GB? cant wait.
Any chance of "Alien Autopsy" film?
My daughter is mithering me!
Cheers!
SLEEPING DOGS LIE
Bobcat Goldthwait probably thought he was rather clever, even provocative making this film. We're talking about Bobcat Goldthwait, after all, the oddly-voiced star of such seminal 80s viewing as Police Academy 2, Hot to Trot, Police Academy 3 and, well, Police Academy 4. Who would expect Bobcat Goldthwait, filmmaker, to make a romantic comedy about a woman who once fellated her dog and then dedicate said picture to his mother? Such are careers redefined; Bobcat Goldthwait doesn’t simply act in bad comedies, now he writes and directs them, too.
Amy (Melinda Page Hamilton) doesn’t really know why she did it. There she is, reading a book before bed when the idea strikes. It’s one of those random, irrational impulses that most ignore but Amy does not, either out of boredom, experimentation, or even because it seemed funny at the time. “I’m not into bestiality in any way,” she assures us. That’s good to know, but now Amy has burdened herself with a great secret, one she fears will one day have to be revealed out of some misguided need for complete and total honesty. Like to her fiancé, John (Bryce Johnson), a nice enough guy who proposes to her in one of those cute ways nice guys are always doing in movies. For true intimacy, Amy feels certain closets must be opened, their skeletons revealed; it just so happens her skeleton is that of a dog possessing one, singularly-pronounced bone.
After the perfunctory establishment of the film’s major players - including a smitten coworker, Ed (Colby French) – the action transitions to the home of Amy’s (Meet the) parents (Geoffrey Pierson, Bonita Friedericy). Despite John’s best efforts, it seems no man will ever be good enough for their perfect little girl. Obviously, they don’t know she’s sucked off a dog. Amy also has her resentful, drug-abusing brother Dougie (Kack Plotnick) to contend with; it would quite unfortunate if Dougie were to find out about Amy’s embarrassing secret. One can imagine the surefire comic possibilities should he overhear Amy telling John about her canine sexual liaison and the dinner table confrontation that would certainly ensue.
The dog fellatio business isn’t a terrible idea for a motion picture. It just happens to be the only idea Mr. Goldthwait has, and even then the basic conceit – repentance for a past sexual transgression - is cribbed from Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy (a picture that is just about superior to this one in every way). Goldthwait wrote the film in three days and shot it in sixteen; it shows. Sleeping Dogs Lie aims to be subversive (the opening sequence features Amy spitting dog semen into a sink) with its aberrant high concept but ultimately settles for, without irony, the clichés and tropes of mainstream, multiplex romcom garbage (it’s once again worth mentioning that this picture played to applause before the Sundance cognoscenti – it screened during the 2006 Film Festival). The film simply does not have the courage of its own button-pushing introduction. “It was like it something that happened to someone else,” Amy tells us. “Like a movie I had watched, not starred in.” We empathize, as the film actively distances Amy from her original sin. Amy does not seem like someone who would blow a dog (she unquestionably does not want to repeat the experience), as that person would have to be rather antisocial in other, obvious ways - it practically did happened to someone else.
It might be interesting to see that picture, the one about someone who actually would blow a dog; except that film hasn’t been made already, and thus there is nothing for this one to copy from. Rather than say anything about hypocritical sexual mores and pious virtue, Goldthwait would rather film dogs and dog shit and call it a visual theme. It wasn’t funny the first time. After a family member dies, a relationship ruined, and 88 minutes of insipid running time passes, Amy grudgingly concludes something the audience had figured out long before the opening credits (or simply read the pun-tastic title). I’ll save you some time and money: if by chance you fellated a dog, keep it to yourself.
Interesting footnote: Sleeping Dogs Lie is not Bobcat Goldthwait’s first attempt at directing. He also helmed the 1992 cult classic Shakes the Clown, a veiled satire of the stand-up comedy circuit featuring the director in the title role. Though it was quite maligned by critics upon release, Shakes has drawn vocal support from the likes of Michael Stipe and Martin Scorsese. REM even produced a song entitled Binky the Doormat, based on a character from the film.
http://www.pretentiousmusings.com/sleeping_dogs_lie.html
i haven't - would you like to recommend one?
You have to suspect that the demographic for this offering is a tad limited.
Hmmm...mehro's probably better at this but I'd recommend 'Being Cyrus'.I think its in English...'Rang De Basanti' was quite good too.
Try and check them out.
Shooter
Plot: A marksman (Wahlberg) living in exile is coaxed back into action after learning of a plot to kill the president. Ultimately double-crossed and framed for the attempt, he goes on the run to track the real killer and find out who exactly set him up, and why.
Rating: Excellent, non-stop action. Take bits from Rambo, Sniper and Bourne Identity and you have 'shooter' Also has the lovely Kate Mara 9 out of 10.
I saw 300 today, cracking movie. Very well directed and some great, graphical battle scenes. Only negative was finding out that the army of 300 didn't defeat 10,000 enemies, they merely delayed the enemies until the other army of 30000 arrived. The 300 Spartans ended up getting absolutely slaughtered.