Took my son to see the new Mary Poppins film last night. We both really enjoyed it. It captures all of the whimsy and fun of the original, and Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda are both excellent. A couple fun cameos, too.
Took my son to see the new Mary Poppins film last night. We both really enjoyed it. It captures all of the whimsy and fun of the original, and Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda are both excellent. A couple fun cameos, too.
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
Just came back from Clints latest The Mule (2018)
If your're, like myself, a lifetime Clint Eastwood fan you have to see this.
If not, its kinda flimsy, long with lots of head scratching moments.
no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone
What, nobody went and saw Aquaman?!
If you enjoy CBMs, go see it. Those visuals are unlike anything else out there. Killer action!
Watched Hereditary this evening. Thought it was excellent until that WTF ending. Top notch acting from Toni Collette, and an emotionally gripping drama that slowly unfolds into a horror. Very strong on atmosphere.
But then... the last eight minutes or so. WHAT?! Truly awful IMO. A solid 8 or 8.5 out of 10 that gets yanked down to a 6.5 or 7 because of how robbed I felt when the credits started rolling.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
^ Really? I didn't have a problem with the ending.
Couldn't find a time slot that worked, probably go and see it next weekend.Originally Posted by dropforge
What, nobody went and saw Aquaman?!
If you enjoy CBMs, go see it. Those visuals are unlike anything else out there. Killer action!
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
The last really good horror movies I saw were Sinister, It Follows and Don't Breathe. Pretty sure I'm forgetting something. FXM keeps showing this 1963 hour-long b&w horror flick called House of the Damned. It only comes on late at night. It's cheesy as hell but I like it. It only needs Vincent Price.
Waiting for a reboot of this to happen. If they could do it for Battlestar Galactica, they can do it for Buck. Pamela Hensley and Erin Gray...ay-yi-yi!!
Hollywood Party: 1934 musical. Jimmy Durante plays an actor who stars as "Shnarzan" in a series of pictures, who throws a huge party to impress one Baron Munchhausen, the owner of several apparently very impressive lions that the Durante character wishes to use in his next picture (because the lions he's now using are "worn out"). This leads into a very tedious series of skits and musical numbers, most of which seem to have little to do with each other. Most of the songs were written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Peopel who are more into musical theater than I can gauge whether these tunes are up to their usual standards or not.
After about the first 20 minutes, I started fast forwarding. About 35 minutes in, the Three Stooges appear, as autograph hounds who match wits with a group of scientists (one of whom looks like an escapee from a ZZ Top tribute band). About ten minutes after that, someone spots a mouse, which Durante catches, and his name is Mickey, voiced even by Walt himself (of course, Walt always did Mickey's voice back then). Anyway, this leads into a five minute Disney animated sequence, which basically is a battle between the Hot Choc-late Soldiers and a group of Gingerbread Men.
Finally, at about 58 minutes, we get the reason I DVR'd this damn movie in the first place, as Laurel and Hardy attempt to gatecrash the party. Seems they actually own the lions that were sold to the Baron, who paid them with a rubber check. Once they manage to sneak in, Stan and Laurel engage in a battle of the wits, and eggs, with Lupe Velez. That's the best part of the movie. They should have cut that out, released it as a short on it's own, and burned the rest of the picture.
In general, not particularly good film. Some of the songs are alright. I guess. The scene with the African tribesmen dancing across the stage with Durante, I thought was kinda...I dunno, I would imagine it would be called politically incorrect today. (shrug)
According to Wikipedia, the film was originally 75 minutes, but had to be edited down to 68 minutes (which is the length of the version I watched, apparently the cut bits haven't survived) because people in foreign markets didn't "get" some of the bits, e.g. a bridge sequence had to be cut because British audiences didn't understand the game. Apparently, nobody dug the film at the time because it was "too avant garde". Oh well, at least it had those Stooges, Laurel & Hardy and Disney bits, those were kinda entertaining.
Yes, I thought the ending worked well.
The mood did change at the end, mainly due to the lighting for the final treehouse scene,the composer's score for that scene and just the director's choices. It is an abrupt transition. It's almost a sense of relief at that point, but considering what that final scene implies, the horror is just beginning in that world.
It's a good movie. I felt it added something to the horror genre.
The first season of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century was good, but the second season stunk badly. They got rid of Princess Ardala and her crew, Twiki was (mostly) voiced by a different actor, and to add insult to injury, suddenly Wilma is wearing something that actually resembles a military uniform (versus those lycra jumpsuits she wore regularly during the first season).
As for Pamela Hensley, she was in my favorite Six Million Dollar Man two parter, as a woman who control sharks using a light.
watched Mowgli with the fam and liked it quite a bit. Definitely more intense and serious than Disney's Jungle Book; no singing, just action. I haven't read Kiplings book but I'm thinking this movie may be closer than the Disney and the one a couple years ago
Why is it whenever someone mentions an artist that was clearly progressive (yet not the Symph weenie definition of Prog) do certain people feel compelled to snort "thats not Prog" like a whiny 5th grader?
Searching (2018). Stars John Cho (Harold & Kumar, American Pie, etc) and Debra Messing. A very unique movie because almost all the visuals are either on a computer or a smartphone, which makes sense given the story: a widower uses technology to search for his missing 15 year old daughter. I had to get it from the library but it was more than worth it. See it!
I didn't think the ending was awful, but I know what you mean. A lot of the better horror movies I've seen have endings that left a little to be desired.
I'd call Don't Breathe more of a thriller than a horror movie. But, yeah, I thought it was really good. And I agree about the other two, altho, I wasn't thrilled with the endings. I also thought The VVitch and A Quiet Place were also great, altho i have mixed feelings about the ending of The VVitch, too.
Another one I recently rewatched that I thought was good is A Dark Song (2016), a movie that requires a lot of patience considering it has one of the longest buildups I've ever seen. There is a plot hole or two but given everything else involved, they're easily forgiven.
One that was so unique I'm not sure what to think of it (after only one viewing) is I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), a Netflix original. For a horror movie, I don't actually recall anything freaky or hair raising about it. It's one of those movies with more of a subtle sense of dread than actually horror, from what I remember. It's an extremely well made, acted, and written movie, though, but one that I know will cause a lot of mixed reactions.
And I don't know that I'd call The Invitation (2016) a horror movie but it does get lumped in with them. I thought it was really good.
Oh, and The Conjuring 2, which I really liked. The first one was just okay.
Last edited by Hal...; 01-01-2019 at 02:45 AM.
“From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.” – Philip Marlowe
Caught a few episodes of the Space:1999 Marathon on Comet. Good sci-fi without any unnecessary humor thrown in.
Really surprised to see so much like for The Bird Box here. I think what put me off (and my wife felt the same) was the whole premise the movie was based on (not being able to go outside without blindfolds, etc.) didn't seem believable. Well, okay, lots of movies have similarly silly devices, but it was the way the characters interacted with that situation that didn't work for us and it introduced a "lame factor" that we couldn't get past.
<sig out of order>
^ That's what I thought. It's like a little kid covering his eyes so the bogeyman won't get him if he doesn't see it.
I thought it was good but not great. And primarily for the reason you state. But I can often set that aside. And just go for the ride. A couple of quibbles I had with it, tho, were (1) that it seemed to me that the creatures/monsters/entities were invisible, which is the fault of the director. I mean, why did Sarah Paulson see them and not Sandra Bullock... or the viewer? (2) is why some people didn't try to kill themselves after seeing them. Instead they seemed more intent on making others see them, too. And if the entities (whatever they were) could grab a person, like what happened later in the movie, why couldn't the entities grab a person and pull their blindfold off? I think it's one of those movies that you're not supposed to think too deeply about it.
“From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.” – Philip Marlowe
Yes, it was all those sorts of details that kind of ruined the movie for me. Maybe some of the open questions will be answered in Bird Box 2, lol.
<sig out of order>
Similar ending to Polan
skis Rosemary's Baby .
It worked for me.
Last edited by nosebone; 01-01-2019 at 01:23 PM.
no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone
Watched Lifeforce last night, an incredibly cheesy 80s space horror film with the sole redeeming feature being a naked Mathilda May wandering around as a space vampire the whole movie.
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
Change the movie, actor, and decade and you have Species!
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
I haven't seen Space: 1999 in ages. If I'm not mistaken, that was another of the shows that Fred Freiberger frelled up, after being brought on as executive producer late in the show's run.
I watched the Firefly marathon on El Ray. I'd seen a few of the episodes back in the day, but had missed most of them due to working. Fun show, I can see why it and Whedon got so much attention.
You guys have never read the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, right? Or, possibly, you just don't remember the bit about how to avoid being eaten by the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
I saw Lifeforce a few years ago. I thought about the first 3/4's of the picture was not bad, but I seem to recall it kinda fell apart during the last reel (as do many horror flicks, actually, now that I think about it). I can think of worse vampire pictures though (Vampirella, for one, about the only good thing about that movie is there's a character named Forrest Ackerman, who collects sci-fi memorabilia).
You'd also have to change the plot device that sets the mayhem in motion.
About the only real redeeming factor on Species was that HR Giger designed Sil (which was then rendered badly with poor CGI!). Unless you count finding out what it would be like if you cast Sir Ben Kingsley in a lame horror flick with less than great efx. Talking about slumming.
Oh, and there's the talk about how Sil apparently inspired the first chupacabra sighting.
Tell me something: were they showing the episodes in the correct order? I read that the original network run of the show had them in the wrong order, and when I looked at the cable TV guide for El Rey, it looked like they were doing something similar. It would list a couple episodes in the right order, then it skip over about three, then after running a couple more, then jump back and fill in that three episode gap, etc. I mean, WTF?!
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks