Based on short but positive comments on this thread I gave 2018s Tag a whirl. It was entertaining and funny. Name cast including Ed Helms , J Hamm , and Jerimy Renner. Grown men still playing a game of tag from childhood. Way funnier than it sounds. Based on an actual Wall Street Journal article. Painless 2 hours.
Lee no doubt used an early (earliest) Roland GR-500, since the movie came out in '77.Originally Posted by GuitarGeek
Well, yes, I know about the Synthaxe, but that was still about 8 years in the future when Demon Seed was made. I was somehow thinking the movie was made more like 74 or 75. I believe I read that Ritenour used a 360 Systems guitar synth in the late 70's, not the Roland GR-500, or maybe he used both, I dunno. I know Mike Rutherford used both the GR-500 and the ARP Avatar, so I imagine it's feasible someone else might have done something similar, using one to fill the gaps not present on the other, and vice versa.
Yes, he did.
But I was thinking his contribution could have been more in terms of providing material for the musique concrete aspect of the score. Or he could have been playing a conventional guitar, but processed electronically (which, actually, is what most guitarists do, but I was thinking instead of fuzz, wah-wah and Echoplex, it might have been more like ring modulators and synth filters, i.e. the kind of stuff Eno used to do).
The thing about the Synthaxe was, it was probably the best guitar synth controller ever, but the thing is, that's all it was. It wasn't a guitar, and made no sound of it's own, so unless you had some sort of Lifeson/Howe esque guitar-stand-on-a-tripod rig (or had a sampler with guitar sounds on it), you basically had to sacrifice the actual guitar sound. Holdsworth did some pretty cool stuff with the Synthaxe, but he had to give up his beautiful clean "rhythm" guitar tone, in the process. I believe I read that Ritenour said he ended up selling his Synthaxe to Future Man, the percussion in Bela Fleck's band, who custmoized the Synthaxe into being more of a percussion controller.
The Old Dark House: Boris Karloff's second film with James Whale (I'm sure you're familiar with the first). This was the first movie where Karloff actually had top billing, because in Frankenstein, his name doesn't actually appear in the credits (the monster is credit as being played by "?"). Anyway, this is one of those "unlucky travelers get stuck in the rain and have to spend the night in a creepy mansion inhabited by even creepier people" movies. Karloff plays the silent manservant. I thought it was a decent movie, had the right atmosphere. Loved the dinner sequence, where a fireplace was used for lighting (or at least partial lighting). Very nice effect as you see the shadows moving ont he wall behind the dinner table.
^^ "Have a po-tay-to." Best line in the film...
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
Just for the record, TCM is showing a dren load of horror flicks in the next week and a half, with the last couple days before Halloween being nothing but wall to wall macabre favorites (well, there are about three Bowery Boys movies in there, I guess those are sorta "thriller" pictures, though I gather the Bowery Boys were usually playing it for laughs), climaxing with a Halloween night marathon of Vincent Price flicks, including The Fly and White Zombie.
Apostle
Netflix original...not too bad! Very Wicker Man-like with the cult and the crops and the creepy prophets lol. This one takes a while to get going so you need to have patience, but when it gets it's tires spinning, it really takes off. I won't give anything away, but if you liked that original Wicker Man, you'll definitely want to give this a whirl. I enjoyed it.
"Who would have thought a whale would be so heavy?" - Moe Sizlak
Watched the 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 last night (directed by Tony Scott). It was fairly enjoyable to watch, but far inferior to the 1974 original (Unsurprisingly. How many movies have they remade with Denzel Washington? They seem to think he's a guarantee of quality. I like him, but he can't save a mediocre remake.). The film's main flaw, IMO, is that all the quick cuts and frenetic editing make it seem like riding the NYC subway isn't a real thing that people do all the time. The original film's slower, more realistic pace gave a much better representation of what it's like to ride the NYC subway every day.
Also, Robert Shaw vs. John Travolta!
Last edited by JKL2000; 10-21-2018 at 12:14 PM.
The Sorcerers: Another Boris Karloff picture, this one from 1967, so it's a later film for him. He plays a man who somehow takes control of the mind of a young man (played by Ian Oglivy), so that he and his wife are able to experience all the sensations the young man experiences, as well as being able to control him. Things go sideways when the wife decides she's going to "play God", as it were, causing the young man to steal, beat the crap out of people, and even commit murder, on her behalf. I somehow have the feeling I've seen this one before, though I don't actually remember doing so. But there was certain lines of dialog and the ending seem strangely familiar somehow. Good picture, anyway. And I like the "swinging teenage combo" who are seen performing in the nightclub scenes.
Did you happen to catch the 60 Minutes segment on the NY subway system last night? It's amazing how old much of their equipment is, and how, in the21st century, subway workers do not know the exact location of their trains.
I have seen both movies of The Taking Of Pelham 123 (good story), but I have never been on the NY subway. Closest I ever came was riding BART under the San Francisco Bay.
We're trying to build a monument to show that we were here
It won't be visible through the air
And there won't be any shade to cool the monument to prove that we were here. - Gene Parsons, 1973
No, I didn't see the 60 minutes segment - sounds interesting and I believe it! There's a scene in the 2009 movie where a bunch of cops and Denzel Washington or whoever are running steps to the subway platform, and you can see the ceiling or the bottom of the steps above them, and you can see all the mineral stalactites and crud that you see all over the subway system. It's really in many places just become like a cave - lots of visible disrepair and decay. It sometimes feels like an abandoned amusement park ride or something.
I did get to ride BART several years back, and that definitely had its own "charms." The weirdest thing, we thought, was the upholstered seats. They seem like they must just soak up the homeless piss and drunk-person vomit. The NYC subway is all metal and plastic or fiberglass, etc. so the cars can be cleaned. But those BART seats must get pretty nasty.
this may belong in very off topic but, they have recently switched to a plasticy design. still padded seats, but not fabric on the outside. slightly less chance of bodily fluid contact nowadays.
Last edited by gojikranz; 10-22-2018 at 02:20 PM.
I used to ride the #1 subway in NYC all the time when I was stationed on Governor's Island. It was mostly clean and the people well behaved. On the train, one of the numerous signs you'd see was "No Spitting." One day as I was riding uptown, I saw a guy sitting in the corner under one of those signs bent over and repeatedly spitting on the floor. The puddle of spit between his feet was about the size of a small plate. <smh> I don't know.
“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 used to ride the #1 subway in NYC all the time when I was stationed on Governor's Island. It was mostly clean and the people well behaved. On the train, one of the numerous signs you'd see was "No Spitting." One day as I was riding uptown, I saw a guy sitting in the corner under one of those signs bent over and repeatedly spitting on the floor. The puddle of spit between his feet was about the size of a small plate. <smh> I don't know.
What the heck?
I used to ride the #1 subway in NYC all the time when I was stationed on Governor's Island. It was mostly clean and the people well behaved. On the train, one of the numerous signs you'd see was "No Spitting." One day as I was riding uptown, I saw a guy sitting in the corner under one of those signs bent over and repeatedly spitting on the floor. The puddle of spit between his feet was about the size of a small plate. <smh> I don't know.Performance art. What else.
What the heck?
I've seen guys eating sunflower seeds on the subway and spitting the shells on the floor. And I've seen people eating fried chicken and dropping the bones on the floor. ("I've seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.") I've seen/experienced some other crazy shit, but I don't want to go into all of it!
Speaking of spitting, I used to work with a guy who was in the Army Reserve. He got sent to London for training, and was promptly hit by a car because he looked the wrong way before crossing the street. He incurred slight brain damage, and eventually came back to work with some strange behavior changes:
1) He was much friendlier and louder.
2) He was suddenly very into punk and Ska.
3) He started chewing tobacco at his desk and spitting into a cup.
He still wrote our SDLC though, which was ok because no one followed it.
IKR?What the heck?
The only thing I could think of what that it was his little rebellion against the establishment. They're not going to tell him he can't spit on the train!
“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
Performance art. What else.
“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's pretty strange, but also interesting how head injuries can result in personality changes like that. My dad knew a guy who was in a terrible sledding accident where the top of his skull was sheared off. They were able to reattach it and there was apparently no obvious indication that he had ever been in an accident -- except for the fact that before the accident he was a total jerk, and afterward he was a really nice guy.
You guys remind me of Bill Cosby's piece about riding the NYC subway. He essentially advises tourists to avoid bringing lots of money with them to NYC, instead of going to see a Broadway show or whatever, he suggests that " You can get all the entertainment you need for 75 cents by riding the subway, because they put a nut on every car". He then goes into a this description of the things he saw on one such subway trip.
Last week I attended the 9th annual Horror Show in Telluride, CO. Wonderful collection of horror movies: shorts, animations, features. Most of the shorts were pretty funny. One outstanding one was Attack of the Potato Clock. Lightning hits an elementary school and wakens the potato being used as the source of power for a clock (remember making those in the 3rd grade?). The mayhem begins.
While sitting in the audience I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. He is a teacher at Cal Arts who used to be a stop-motion animator. He met Ray Harryhausen. He told me he used to work with Sneaky Pete Kleinow (steel player for the Flying Burrito Brothers) who did stop-motion for Gumby, Davy and Goliath, Star Wars, commercials, Gremlins, etc. As I big Burrito fan, I was in heaven listening to this guy talking about Pete.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
Wow, that sounds like a good time, Lopez! That guy must have a wealth of stories from the films he was associated with.
The mother of my best friend in high school dated a guy who was a movie makeup artist who worked with Dick Smith or Rick Baker - I forget which, maybe they worked in the same studio? Anyway, my friend got to visit their studio, and see the head-spinning Regan model from The Exorcist. Probably a lot of other cool stuff as well.
And Lou, major Gumby and Davy & Goliath fan here (I'm surprised I didn't become a Lutheran!). That's cool!
Just came back from Halloween (2018)
If your a fan of the 1978 original , then go see this.
It wasn't perfect, but close enough.
no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone
A Comfort Zone is not a Life Sentence
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