There's plenty of 'Lovecraftian' writers that I prefer to Lovecraft. I sometimes think he's like one of those bands that unwittingly invents a genre just so that other groups can come along and really perfect it. A lot of those Cthulhu anthologies are just pure fan fiction but there's plenty of them (The Black Wings series, etc.) that include stories that stand up to (and in many cases surpass) anything Lovecraft himself wrote.

Wrong thread I know, but if you're into reading writers who've taken the spirit of Lovecraft but led it into completely fresh territory, I'd strongly recommend Thomas Ligotti and Laird Barron.

and to clarify, with this i meant: i didn't know this was what i was feeling about it until you wrote it down

That's in KB1, but yeah. Classic. One of the best.

You've recommnded Ligotti before, I think.
Though wasn't it in a discussion about the "Yellow King" character in True Detective?

What's the best place to start with Ligotti?

Yeah, loads of Rust's dialogue was lifted from Ligotti's book Conspiracy Against the Human Race (a non-fiction philosophy book that has a big following - I think Dead Battery's a fan) but Penguin's edition of Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscibe is a great introduction to his short stories.

https://www.amazon.com/Songs-Dreamer...sap_bc?ie=UTF8

My Scientology Movie

The failure of this film to really reveal anything concrete (due to Scientology's clear efforts to disrupt the production) is in a way the best proof we have that there's something very sick going on there.

As a young college student we would watch our VHS of reservoir dogs and True Romance, and we got to know and love Tarantino, who made movies without all the fluff shit added by standard filmmakers, focusing more on dialogue and well framed character acting.

Pulp Fiction blew everyone's mind. I did not "like" it in the theater, but it was because i was so busy trying to determine how he was telling the stories and did not pay attention to the stories. Watching it again and again on VHS at home was awesome.

Jackie Brown was not what anyone expected and is an amazing film. Nothing in it was predictable.

However, when I saw Kill Bill, I found it very "standard" in it's tropes and story, but it was amazing visually. KIll Bill 2 I find extremely boring to this day. I ahve seen it thrice and each time I get bored and find myself wishing it did not exist, as it undercut all the excellent tension and dread created by the first one. I saw it as KBI being Tarantino's mashup of asian cinema, while KBII was his mashup of american cinema. american cinema is far more boring.

Well, it's been a while since I last saw it. I remember being ever so slightly bummed that it wasn't "good" in the way his previous films were, and that it was more of a "is this good, or is this dumb? Is it both?"

Of course it's both. It's good and really dumb. And it lumps together odes to all these disparate kinds of revenge and hero stories, and it doesn't have any kind of consistent tonal flow to it. But I still think it's just great. I think it works. I'm not sure if feel that way now, but last time I saw it, as a film-watching experience, it still kind of blew me away.

Can't like the highlighted bit enough. These days, I tend to look at "Reservoir Dogs" with the eye of someone who's subsequentely discovered all the stuff QT's "borrowed" from for this ("The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3", the original "Django", various Poliziotteschi efforts etc). Still have some time for "Pulp Ficton", admittedly, but for me, "Jackie Brown" is easily the best thing he's put together.

(This one is from a good while ago)



Arggggghh! Basically, Massacessi put his (oh alright, Luigi Montefiori's) "script" for "Anthropoghapous" back into service, whilst also throwing in a huge amount of VERY, VERY BORING AND POINTLESS h/c scenes stuff. "George Eastman" (and the J&B whisky corporation) are present and correct, though this time Montefiori isn't going around bumping people off all over the place. This film seriously wore out it's welcome for me within the first 20 minutes, and I was wishing for a coma to hit me by the film's end. One of those "legendary" items that should have been thrown into the nearest landfill site and forgotten about. Avoid at all costs!

You must spread more Free Kitten albums around before repping Mr Instigator again.

Before I respond to this (and @demonrail666), I want to clarify that I myself was not actually disappointed by Jackie Brown at all, and I was in the theater the day it opened, already a fledgling fanboy. What I meant earlier when I said that it disappointed people was that ... it was not like Pulp Fiction. Everyone loved Pulp Fiction, and wanted more. What they got was a more subtle and slow-burning film — a romantic story, and an adaptation no less; not a Tarantino "original." But I have never cared about that, because it's extremely rich, character-driven more than dialogue driven (like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), and it actually tells a more solid story than those films.

It's really the one film in the Tarantino canon that exists without cartoonish affectation or embellishment. It stretches out and allows itself to settle. I think it's definitely Tarantino's most mature film, but all these things aside, I don't think it's a better movie than Pulp Fiction, all things considered. Still, I think it stands apart from the rest of his films. It wasn't until Inglorious Basterds that he attempted to use simmering tension and subtlety to propel a film forwar again. And that movie — though very good — didn't have the the soul of Jackie Brown. I think it would be nice if he would return to this style before calling it a day.

Also, the films opens with an (unmissable) ode to the Graduate, which isn't the kind of film one thinks of when considering Tarantino's influences. But it sets you up right away for an experience that really is defined by the characters and the performances. And what a cast! Seriously.

I think the Oscars shut this movie out more out of principle than anything else. The lack of award-scene recognition did a lot to hinder QT and his rising star. It was probably because of/in response to this that we got Kill Bill, which seems so divisive among fans. That was Tarantino saying "fuck it, I'm going to have fun now and make my own brand." And yeah, since then, we haven't really seen him backtrack on this at all.

NATHALIE

a boring french movie with a good premise: an upper middle class woman hires a stripper/hooker to approach & spy on her cheating husband. good casting too (fanny ardant, emmanuelle béart, depardieu).

the problem is that this comes across like a movie made by a writer, not a filmmaker. slow edit with absurd cuts, boring shots, a lot of talking and very little seeing. and no, it's not my dinner with andre. but this movie wanted to be a book or was maybe adapted from a book or... something.

I get your point. Pulp Fiction was a game changer for Hollywood, in a way that Jackie Brown just wasn't, and was where Tarantino's sheer virtuosity as a filmmaker probably reached its peak. I just saw Jackie Brown as a necessary step in his development because it showed his ability to deal with rounded characters. I don't equate rounded characters with great filmmaking but it did show that Tarantino could handle them in a way that RD and PF didn't. JB is my favourite but that's just cos I have a preference for certain kinds of films. I wouldn't call it a better film than PF, though.

I have a hard time determining my favorite films by Tarantino. I can't really compare the pre-Bill to the post-Bill very easily. But Jackie Brown is in my top 3, no question. Haven't seen it in a while, but it's not in the middle or bottom chunks, certainly.

I wonder what his last two films will be. Or if they even will be his last two. It would be nice to see him do horror (you know he wants to), but it would also be nice to see him make another character driven piece.

Given the likely range of possibilities, I can see him doing something in the sci-fi/action vein, along the lines of say Escape From New York. Whatever my problems with him in recent years, he's a natural fit for that kind of movie.

But even given all that, I'd say Robert Rodriguez does post-JB Tarantino better than Tarantino. I get the feeling that a pastiche of EFNY by Rodriguez would be great fun, whereas a Tarantino one would just become really irritating.

Ranking Tarantino i'd go

Jackie Brown
Pulp Fiction (but agree it's his 'best' film)
Reservoir Dogs
Kill Bill 2
Hateful Eight (if you think of it as Carpenters The Thing remade as a Comedy-Western)
Django (minus the last half hour)
Kill Bill 1
Inglorious Bastards
Death Proof

Pulp Fiction
Kill Bill (1 and 2 — seems silly to separate them)
Jackie Brown
Django Unchained
Inglorious Basterds
Hateful 8
Reservoir Dogs *
(Still haven't seen Death Proof)

* Maybe I've just seen this one too much, and it's lost its luster. Maybe it's been blown to oblivion by pop culture references and critical praise and posters in every college kid's dorm room. Or maybe it just simply isn't quite as good as it's made out to be. Or I'm dumb and wrong. All equally likely.

Honestly, I'm leaning toward the third option... just not as great as it's made out to be.
It's kind of a spiritual cousin to GoodFellas — another movie that's been hammered at by critics and praised in film culture for decades, albeit not to such a grotesque degree. But GoodFellas has only grown stronger with repeated viewings. I am still just captivated every time I see it. It has lost nothing, and time has only made it more obviously the crown jewel of Scorsese's career.

But Reservoir Dogs... I actually think the opposite is true in its case. For a few years it was my favorite Tarantino movie. But last time I saw it, I couldn't help but think of it as a warm-up for Pulp Fiction, in both screenwriting and narrative style. It's like listening to Rubber Soul after Revolver. It's solid, and unquestionably good, influential as all hell, but everything that made it original and fresh and great was dialed up to 11 two years later. Also, this was early on in Tarantino's maturation. His use of language in this film could have used a more deft hand. In retrospect, it seems almost arrogantly inflammatory, and that, to me, means that it simply can't be a truly great screenplay. Pulp Fiction truly eclipses it in this sense, as it manages to still push against taboos of language without inducing cringes.

I dunno though. Been a while since I've seen any of these at this point, except for Pulp Fiction (which I rewatched not long ago, and talked about in this thread) and of course Hateful 8.

This is an AWESOME way to think of this movie. This never occurred to me, but I would not be surprised at all if that was exactly what QT was going for here.

Wow. That's something. Nice call!

It does but I found the emphasis on martial arts in 1 so boring, just because I don't like those films anyway. It's in 2 as well but doesn't seem as much, maybe just because of the change of setting.

Yeah, I think a lot of fans are disappointed at the time by the lack of swordplay in the second one. I remember watching the DVD commentary back in the day, and Tarantino said the first volume was total Shaw Brothers Kung-Fu, and the second one was a total spaghetti western.

Makes sense to me, except that if I remember correctly, all of Beatrix's training with Pai Mei took place in the second film, but still... the overall vibe was much more Eastwood than Bruce Lee.

The first movie made a lot of money, and inspired a new generation of fanboys and girls, but the second one was probably a better movie. I believe Carradine and Thurman both received Golden Globe nominations for acting, and I think I remember Roger Ebert saying Thurman deserved an academy award for the second film.

I miss Roger Ebert. He was reliable.

EASY RIDER

if you want to be a biiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrdddddd!!

nik nik nik firecracker.

Serenity

I've wanted to see this for a while, just cos I've heard so many good things about it, but I started to lose interest about 10 minutes in. I kept with it, hoping it'd get better and I'd see what all the fuss was about but in the end I was just glad when it finished.

O MAN. you didn't see firefly first?

serenity is not a great movie in itself, but it's teh closing of a great TV show that never got a fair chance by the network that produced it.

it was cut short without an ending, so the movie was the ending

it was changed multiple days, debuted during the world series... total clusterfuck in the pre-a-la-carte days of TV

Ah that makes sense. It did seem like I was coming into it in the middle of something. Although ultimately it felt like one of those films/tv shows that, as much as I try, I'm evidently just not programmed to really like - a bit like Asian food (except Westernised Chinese), or Robert Plant's voice.

No man, you NEED to watch Firefly. Please! You owe it to yourself.

Took me a few episodes to get on board, but once I did, I was on. fucking. board. And while the final episode is one of the great bottleneck episodes in TV history, it didn't even attempt to wrap up the story. So watch that shit, and then rewatch Serenity.

I sometimes hold out hope for a sequel. The mythos could support a trilogy of excellent sci-fi films. Excellent stuff.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

I liked it a lot more this time than I seem to remember when it 1st came out.

The first Trek suffered from too many star wars comparisons, when it is instead a meditation of life, humanity, and the vastness of time and consciousness..... it is slow compared to space battle movies but I like it.

The Wolfpack

I was really looking forward to seeing this but it ended up not being really what I expected. I definitely didn't expect it to be that depressing.

Wow... you were watching and remembering films in 1979?

I was going to say something about how much older you are than I thought, but... well, did a bit of math and realized I didn't want to start taking about who is and isn't "old." ;)

I don't hate it as much as most people do, but it's a miracle that a sequel as strong as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ever even happened.

I would've been about 9 but remember being taken to the cinema to see it and not really understanding it, and basically just wishing it was more like Star Wars.

Gimme Danger.

not revealing but, very fun to watch. bonus for some little unseen footage of early Stooges. it was like a low tech anti mini doc.

Cavemen. childhood classic. not still funny but charming.

JACKIE - Not very good. Natalie Portman, who I usually like, annoyed me a lot by the end. Could've/should've gone a lot deeper.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA - Basically a literary short story (although it's actually an original script). Little plot, jumbled timeline, elliptical ending. Casey is really, really is good in this.

MOONLIGHT - Touching, boring, beautiful. The beginning was great; I really felt I was in this Miami beach neighborhood. The Artiness of the thing was a drag, I thought.

HIDDEN FIGURES - Sappy, corny, sugary. But darn it. That ending really does grab the heartstrings.

FENCES - Filmed theater. Expertly crafted on every level. Very boring as a film; riveting as theater. I had to take an intermission.

ARRIVAL - About 90% of this is a great, potentially classic sci-fi film for those of us who generally don't like sci-fi. But there's about 10% that kind of annoyed me. Plus Amy Adams has an odd nose.

What about Hell or High Water? Seen that one?

If so (or even if not) which of these do you think will grab Best Picture this year? I've seen exactly none of them, but from what I've been reading, I feel like it's a Manchester By The Sea v. Moonlight showdown. Maybe Oscar can partially make up for the Grammytrocities by picking Moonlight.

I hear Manchester is just grueling. Like, obscenely sad. Almost a melodrama.

MANCHESTER is certainly sad, and doesn't deliver a huge emotional release at the end. If HIDDEN is a crowd pleaser, MANCHESTER is a crowd dis-pleaser. I seriously doubt it'll win, although it might actually be the best. It was the closest to real life, at least.

Haven't seen Hell, Hacksaw, LaLa or Lion. Might watch Hell but the others just don't interest me. LaLa if I skip the songs.

I'm looking forward to Scorcese's SILENCE. How bad can it be? A Marty mis-step still beats out most of the competition, as far as I'm concerned.

No Oscar predictions, except Casey. I'm not confident what other people like or want out of movies.

Amy has an adorable nose!!

watched a pretty decent robot movie the other night, Automata. Certainly didn't make any new ideas, but the old tropes were well done. Dystopia, robots getting free from humans, good and bad humans, etc. Nice scenery of the badlands, which looked to be filmed at the Salt Flats or some similar place. Well cast with Antonio Banderas, Robert Forster, Tim McInnerny, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen. Kind of a cheezy ending, but for sci fi fans, like me, you should give it a watch...

never heard of it!

Really, really beautiful and emotional movie.

I liked her "before" nose. But we know Hollywood demands a specific tiny "white" nose. wonder why???