I'll add House of Sand and Fog to my watch list.Originally Posted by Progatron
I'll add House of Sand and Fog to my watch list.
(Ed McMahon mode) You are correct, sir! (Ed McMahon mode off) Not sure about the year, but the rest of your info is right. Sigourney Weaver played the First Lady. Good movie, maybe not "substantial" by Doc Prog's definition, but still fun to watch.
My point was that, it was mentioned that Sir Ben Kingsley had played both Ghandi and one of the ranked officials of the Third Reich, as demonstrating his range of abilities. Since I've often heard it suggested that one of the hardest things to do in the acting world is comedy, I reckoned that could further that demonstration of his range, by citing a comedy (though admittedly, his role in Dave is relatively minor, so he doesn't get to do much of the actual comedy, but he does a great job with his part).
Ben Kingsley was also in this dog of a flick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunder_(film)
DtB
I am definitely in! Kingsley is a giant and Oscar Isaac is no slouch, either. He was excellent in Ex Machina and in the Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis.
For anyone with an interest in the Holocaust, I can recommend Conspiracy, the 2001 HBO movie about the Wannsee Conference in 1942 where Reinhard Heydrich (Himmler's right-hand man in the SS) and various German and Nazi officials came together to discuss and implement the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Kenneth Branagh plays Heydrich and Stanley Tucci plays Adolf Eichmann. Branagh won an Emmy and Tucci a Golden Globe for their portrayals.
For any readers among you, I can also recommend Hunting Eichmann, the best non-fiction book I've ever read.
hunting eichmann.jpg
“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
He also played Simon Wiesenthal in Murderers Among Us. In the real world, Wiesenthal, an Austrian Jew who'd been captured by Nazis, became a Nazi hunter after the war and was instrumental in tracking down Adolf Eichmann.
In a parallel universe, Ben Kingsley is hunting himself.
“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
I wouldn't blame Kingsley though; I'd blame Hyams, the director, who has made 22 films of which I have never heard anything good about any of them (though I've only seen a couple myself - and, yes, hated them).
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
He was in Species as well, that really only had one redeeming feature.
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.
I just watched Lars & The Real Girl w/Ryan Gosling, Patricia Clarkson & Emily Mortimer. I can only describe it as squirmingly great. I wonder if it was the inspiration for Her w/Joaquin Phoenix.
"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician, and to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference"
President Harry S. Truman
Rarely have I seen a B-movie go into the shitter in the third act with the authority and completeness that Species did.
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
2010 was good and Running Scared was good for what it was.
“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
It seemed to go there with a sense of glee didn't it?
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.
I thought Ben Kingsley was awesome in Transiberian. Cool movie.
"Who would have thought a whale would be so heavy?" - Moe Sizlak
Queued. Oh, and do catch Cargo. I thought it was superb.The Rover...Puttin this her again in case it was missed. I'm curious as to wether I'm nuts or not for liking it so muchprobably...
"That gum you like is going to come back in style."
Yeah, Giger was pretty much carrying that movie, wasn't he?
Maybe I was distracted by something else
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.
I don't think I've seen Running Scared. 2010 I thought was pretty good. You have to go into that one knowing that there's no way it's gonna be as good as 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you judge it for what it is, i.e. a mid 80's sci-fi flick, and not as the sequel to a Stanley Kubrick picture, I think one might find it more enjoyable.
Somethign I forgot about that movie is, Dame Helen Mirren was in 2010. Looking at her CV on Wikipedia, I think that was probably the first movie I ever saw her in. It would have to be either that or O Lucky Man (which I saw sometime back in the 80's).
Prog connection: Tony Banks was originally hired to score 2010, but got fired of the project, because Hyams didn't like the music he came up with. Also, Andy Summers recorded a take of the Fanfare from Also Sprach Zarathustra, which was effectively a circa 1984 "dance music" update of the Eumir Deodato arrangement, complete with synths, drum machines, etc. If I remember correctly, the Summers track doesn't actually appear in the film itself, but it was used a promotional tool, with clips from the movie appearing in the video (one of the very few instrumentals I ever remember seeing on MTV) and photos and poster artwork appearing on the 12" single. Edit: Wikipedia confirms my memory that the Andy Summers didn't appear in the movie, but was used on the soundtrack album (the single had a B-side which appear in neither the film nor the soundtrack album).
I also recall reading that the model makers workign on 2010 had to build a recreation of the Discovery One, as the original had been destroyed, along with all the other props, models, etc, as per Kubrick's orders following the completion of the original movie. Apparently, he was concerned that the props would get recycled into subsequent productions, which was common practice in Hollywood in those days. Something like the Proteus sub from Fantastic Voyage got reused in subsequent movies and TV productions, as one example.
And apparently, the blueprints also had been destroyed, as well, so the model makers had to look at individual frames from a 70 mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to work out how the new Odyssey One model should look. Of course, now, they'd just take the frames, plug them into some CGI software, and the computer were generate a digital "model" or whatever.
Back to Hyams: I thought The Presidio was a decent movie. That's the movie where Sean Connery beats up a guy using just his thumbs, after warning the damn he was going to do so (which was then parodied on The Venture Brothers, where Colonel Gentleman cuts off a man's thumb, and uses that to beat him up, saying afterward, "I didn't stipulate it'd be my thumb!").
Stay Tuned, a comedy starring John Ritter and Pam Dawber as a couple who purchase a satellite TV service from Satan, I remember liking at the time (particularly the scene where John Ritter's character, trapped in Hell and being shuttled from TV channel to TV channel, eventually finds himself on the Three's Company set, at which point he screams in terror). But i got a feeling if I saw it now, I probably wouldn't think it was very good. Probably the best thing about that picture was that Pam Dawber was in it (and as usual, if you really want to see Pam Dawber, you're probably better off sticking to Mork & Mindy and My Sister Sam reruns).
I think I saw both Timecop and A Sound Of Thunder, but I don't remember much about either.
And Outland was pretty awesome too. That was one of the first movies I remember seeing when we first got HBO, back in 1982 or 83. I remember my dad complaining that the commercial free aspect meant he had to get up in the middle of the movie to use the bathroom. I also remember at the end of the movie he said, "That wasn't what I was expecting it to be". I asked what was he was expecting, and he responds, "I don't know". Anyway, I saw Outland again maybe int he last 10 or so years, and I think it's held up reasonably well.
Interesting (or not) side note: both Outland and 2010 take place in the vicinity of Jupiter.
Pam Dawber appearing in a wrestling outfit in Stay Tuned = multi-schwiiiiing! That flick is fun. Tons of pop culture references from the time. Eugene Levy is good in it, also. Just re-watched it about a month ago.
Oh you must mean Natasha Henstridge, huh? Well, yeah, I do kinda see your point. Actually, I don't remember a whole lot about Species, beyond the fact that the Henstridge character is looking to reproduce, and the movie's ending. I somehow have this vague memory that the appearance of the creature on screen (which I think was rendered via CGI) was less than impressive. It certainly isn't the classic that Alien is, is it?Maybe I was distracted by something else
I believe I also saw Species II, the one with the astronauts, but I think that might have been even worse than the first.
Hmmm, I totally forgot about the wrestling outfit, as well as Eugene Levy's presence in the picture. Maybe if it turns up on one of the cable channels, I'll give another look.
Wow, John Ritter made movies? More to avoid.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
Heck no!! He was great as the mealy mall manager in Bad Santa!
A Comfort Zone is not a Life Sentence
You seriously never heard of Problem Child? I never actually saw it, but I seem to recall it was a pretty popular picture, even spawned a sequel. He was also in Bad Santa, which I seem to recall getting praised by a lot of people.
John Ritter was in a movies. I think about the only ones I've seen, besides Stay Tuned, are Real Men and Wholly Moses.
Wholly Moses was a Dudley Moore vehicle, that hinged on the discovery of a scroll that reveals a man named Herschel, apparently who God had really chosen to lead the Jews out of slavery, but somehow, Moses manages to steal the credit. I remember it being funny, but according to Wikipedia, a lot of Orthodox Jewish groups protested the movie for "mocking our religion".
Real Men was a really strange, sort of screwball comedy. Ritter plays a dual role, as a FBI man involved in some kind of alien contact scheme, and his lookalike, a milquetoast suburbanite who gets recruited to stand in with the CIA gets bumped off. James Belushi plays the FBI guy tasked with protecting the latter person. Strange stuff happens in this movie. There's a scene wehre they get attacked by Russian spies disguised as clowns. In another, a full blown shoot out with Russians abruptly stops because it's lunch time, and apparently the Russians are really strict about obeying the union regulations or whatever. Maybe the movie is implausible. OK fine, but I can think of a whole lot of supposedly classic movies that are "implausible". I thought it was a fun movie.
Oh, and I don't actually remember seeing it, but there's Skin Deep, which I must have seen at some point, because, I know off the top of my head that Julianne Phillips, Bruce Springsteen's first wife (also, the star of .38 Special's If I'd Been The One video), was in it. Wiki says Denise Crosby was in it too, but the only movie I really remember seeing her in is Miracle Mile (well, there was the Trekkies documentaries, also, but that's kind of a gimme).
Sure, the movies may have been fine, but I just never cared for his lame attempts at being funny.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
John Ritter was excellent in Sling Blade. Definitely not a comedy, although there were some funny moments.
Most people will remember this Blake Edwards movie for the "sword fight". Ritter and the husband of another character get in a fight in the dark while each is wearing a glow-in-the-dark condom.
I was working in a theater when it came out. We got promo shirts with the title and a couple of neon crossing swords on it, with the tagline: The comedy that glows in the dark.
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