Yeah, this movie nearly made me piss my pants when I was little. I loved it. Haven’t seen it in forever, but it was a childhood favorite of mine.

it’s on prime video if you feel like revisiting

anyway saw this shit also for the first time



indiana jones & the temple of doom

never been a fan of this series so this movie managed to elude me

it’s a bit shit of course, but one spielberg’s action sequences are well worth studying. the way he shoots + edits them is really priceless.

also the story the story is like a good carnival ride, sometimes literally (like in the mines). it’s classic desire vs. obstacle, but relentless, and to the point of laughter.

and yet for all the technical achievement and display of skill i did not give a shit. how come? don’t know. too obvious/exploitative maybe? something.

Watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It had been some time and that movie is a lot of fun.

watched this in theater when it came out with dad and lil bro. I was 12. my lil bro and I walked out to play video games after the monkey brains scene. I couldn't handle it. soon after the MPAA created the PG-13 rating. it seems LOTS of 10-12 year olds couldn't handle the grossouts.

oh i didn’t know this about the pg13

i remember hearing about the “eye soup” and stuff like that but now that i saw it felt more like a funny tim burton flick, say, mars attacks

lucky the monkeys were not alive! cuz that.... gives me the willies just reading about it.

I've got this Alien DVD box set for a long time of the first four movies (up until Alien Resurrection). Never watched it and I realised once again why: bought it in the US, stupid me, and yes I was warned not to do it but I was stubborn... So I can't play it on my DVD player on the big screen TV due to PAL vs NTSC
But now I'm watching it on the PC. There's two DVDs for each movie. First has the original and a special edition / director's cut version. And then an additional DVD with special features on how the movie was made. The special features for the first movie are very cool. Quite amazing to find out how all the special effects were done in a time when there were no PCs yet to do all that work.


I won't give any spoilers, but it's highly recommended if you're into these movies.

yeah the first alien was great and the effects were awesome. my favorite of the lot is the android head and the milky tubes. ha ha ha ha.

have you seen “jodorowski’s dune”? if you haven’t, there’s a big connection between that non-movie and alien.

Alien special effects>Covenant special effects

I don't think it even occurs to filmmakers to use practical effects anymore. And for all I know, practical might even be cheaper than hiring a team to sit at computers all day.

Not to beat a dead horse, but ...

Christopher Nolan is a champion of practical special effects. There’s literally no CGI in The Darin Knight. None. That hospital? THEY ACTUALLY BLEW UP A HOSPITAL. It was a one-shot deal. And what’s interesting is that Heath Ledger walks away form the building with this explosion happening right behind him, and he *doesn't look back.* There’s an alternate take that’s even longer than the one in the film, and he just walks away, gets on a bus, sits on the bus with an explosion happening outside the window, and still just stares directly ahead.
Most expensive, biggest shot of the film, and he missed it... for the role.

Also all the fighting and shit is real fighting and shit. None of this Black Panther nonsense where it might as well be a cartoon (and in five years will look like one). Real dudes in suits banging the hell out of each other. Better every time.

beat, beat, bitch :cool:

(Obviously Batman Begins has some CGI because of the hallucination sequences — the many, many hallucination sequences — but TDK is all real fuckin’ deal.

And yeah, Alien is and example of excellent practical effect use. Better than Covenant, I’m sure, and I haven’t even seen Covenenant.

It already does. If you compare some of the scenes from that film to hell, let's say the Matrix trilogy the standard has dropped badly. How a film made 15 years ago (jeez...) looks better in someways than a film released in 2017 is depressing.

Doesn't help that Marvel don't give a shit and are getting away with the bare minimum in technological advancement.

Not sure if this is true. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but using practical materials probably does cost more than doing something on a computer in this day in age. I fully agree, if you can accomplish something practical, always go practical. But seeing as doing something practical requires access to supplies which costs money, as well as a team of crafters and artists who know how to makes those effects work well, and doing practical effects will most likely always have drawbacks, its essentially a job where something is going to fail 99 times before making it work right. The reason why someone would make a CGI xenomorph over a man in a suit or puppet is so the xenomorph can do movements that would be impossible it were just a man in costume or a puppet.

Dark Knight was released 10 years ago and Alien was released roughly a million years ago (ok ok... maybe more like 40), so I'm not sure which 15-year-old film you’re talking about, but yeah.

OH, the Matrix.

Those effects looked dated within five years. That film had a mix of practical and super ... uhhhh... impractical... but yeah.

Or how about Crouching Tiger? Another 100-percent practical fx flick. Or house of flying daggers. Both look amazing to this day.

Me either. And I'm probably wrong.

Not sure how many times they had to do the chest-bursting scene in ALIEN, but if they messed up once, they had to wash everything down and reset. Costly.

But there's also the issue of saving a few bucks now and having shitty effects in a film forever. That doesn't get factored in?

And the magic is gone with CG. I love those "How did they do that?" moments. Now, I just shrug and say "Computers." Yawn.

Those puppets in Gremlins were great! If they did a re-boot, they'd CG the monsters and it would suck and everyone knows it, but they'd do it anyway. Idiots.


You're right, and I can think of a few things that would probably be impossible without CG. (Maybe. Although didn't Moses part the red sea back in the 50s?) I think limitations force creativity. Limits aren't always bad.

I think the biggest loss of movies going almost 100% digital effects is that the skills that a Rick Baker and a Stan Winston won't be passed on to the next generation. And those methods and just plain ingenuity will be lost. Sure, there will be those that say those methods are out dated, and perhaps they are right, but as a fan of those guys and the art they made its still incredibly unfortunate.

Office Space. I didn't enjoy it much this time around.

I've no problem with CGI when it's used for things that couldn't be achieved any other way. T2 springs to mind, with its liquid effects, or for something truly spectacular that could theoretically be done by other means but would be too complex or expensive to be really viable.

Check out the tv show “Corporate” for an update on that humor. It’s great:D

watched mel brooks’s “life stinks” which is a very 80s comedy reminiscent of eddie murphy’s “trading places”. nothing to write home about except for the political archaeology— this is from a time when reagan dumped the schizophrenics into the streets and the homeless were not as invisible as today (they are still there, but people have stopped giving a shit.)

ok i’ll post the others later. the other ones ere better as movies, not just for the archaeology/anthropology, but they have that too...

The Ardennes. Not bad...

I will check it out.

Watched Lone Star on Sunday. Really is one of those films that should be better known than it is. Great film.

never seen lone star. i dont think ive even heard of it. lonesome dove maybe (but i havent seen that either). i’ll look for it and try checking it out.

this weekend i watched, o, let’s see

PEEL: an exercise in discipline. Jane Campion’s Cannes-winning short.
from 198...7? It was nice and well done and tons of subtext. On first viewing not great but it’s growing on me,



kaurismaki’s ROCKY VI. haaaaaa haaaaaaa haaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaa. funniest thing ever. another short yeah like 9 minutes.



andrzej wajda’s KANAL. 2 nd in his ww2trilogy after “a generation”. fantastic fucking war movie! sure sure saving ryan’s privates is more spectacular but cheesier. this has better characters and a better story. in glorious 1957 black and white.



thank you filmstruck for saving my life.

LOne Star is very good

One more for the Lone Star-is-great express

i searched filmstruck for “lone star” and no luck. the most frequent near result were the lone wolf & cub films which were already in my watchlist. lone wolf and cub! blood spurting everywhere like a fire hydrant...

anyway amazon has it but for rental not on prime i think... will add to watchlist now and decide later.

OH IT’S A JOHN SAYLES MOVIE

i watched Marathon Man anoché. loved it. hoffman at his best. 1976 roy scheider was pretty hot. the sewer scene was one of the best moments in film i've seen.

oh i havent seen tat movie in ages. i used to have a childhood crush on marthe keller. hard to remember most things now but that chair...

if yuo like roy scheider all that jazz is a must see

One of those films I never enjoy when I watch it but have somehow convinced myself that I like

funny thing, i generally HATE musicals. tried watching an american in paris the other day and turned it off after 10 minutes. annoying! but all that jazz is
... something else.

I don't mind musicals but it just feels like a bit of a mess. And yet there's something in it that I like, or think I like.

it’s probably the fact that it’s brilliant, ha ha ha

I may just be struggling to get past the whole that's Chief Brody, tap-dancing, thing.

ooooh haaahaaahaaa

check this out about the editing

https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/why-m...terion-blu-ray

the video essay not the long story about why it’s not there

One of the best films of the 1990's. It's director, John Sayles, used to be one of my favorite directors. He's kind of dropped off the radar the last decade or so, but "Limbo" (1999), City of Hope (1991), Matewan (1987)... all superb indie films that deserve more attention today. His ensemble, low-key, regional Robert Altman like stories are just the kind whose characters sink into your bones. Would love to see him make a glorious comeback.

Honestly... it was just good. It was definitely DEFINITELY not great. It was a standard well-made Marvel film. The plot is a mixture of Wonder Woman, Rocky, Dark Knight Rises, Captain America and Iron Man. The only novel concept was the all-black cast in a superhero movie. Oh, and Andy Serkis not being a motion capture character (when, ironically, almost EVERYTHING ELSE WAS FUCKING CGI). And they were good! It was all good! It was fine!

But... man, it was certainly not a great fucking film. It was perfectly serviceable, occasionally visually stunning, but never remarkable. Not in concept, acting, visuals or anything else. Chadwick Boseman barely even had a character to portray. He just kinda looks pretty.

Oh, and he bad guy was really the good guy. Black man abandoned by his wealthy country that refuses to supply aid to the black people being oppressed mercilessly for hundreds — THOUSANDS — of years demanding that his country take action and attone for standing by through centuries of genocide? Uhhhhh. Yeah. He was right.

Anyway, not great.

It has the same Rotten tomatoes score as The Godfather part II. The system is broken.

Really want to see Infinity War now though.

w.s. van dyke’s THE THIN MAN (1934) based on a dashiell hammett novel



i had seen this before but not in such good condition. the filmstruck restoration is not perfect, you can spot scratches in the darkest scenes, but it’s fun and funny and a lot of great dialogue—oh yes a good crime story too but the highlight is really the humor—not just their lines but it’s sometimes unspoken, like the faces they make to each other. these people were hollywood stars, and for good reason.

The Bookshop. Pretty good, Bill Nighy is convincing in whatever role he’s in. An interesting drama with a complex ending.

Love that line "They say you were shot 5 times in the tabloids" "That's not true he didn't come anywhere near my tabloids" or something to that effect. Remember enjoying that film a lot when I watched it. Should give it another go.

So for film night on Sunday we watched Roman Holiday. Nah. So, so overrated. And this is coming from someone who loves William Wyler films.

Speaking of film club I'm thinking of doing El Topo as my next choice. I've always be wary about choosing this one. Purely because as much as I've heard people love it, I've also heard the opposite said of it. I really don't want to watch it and think "is that it?" at the end.

Watched a few films with the wifey this weekend.



FX - from 1986. I first saw this as a college student in the early 90's. It still holds up. entertaining and R rated




Lost In London - 2017. The wife and I put it on to see what it was l;ike, not knowing that it had a gimmick. still, very odd biographical film about a bad time Harrelson had back in 2002. Turns out this film was the first film to be "filmed" as it was being live-streamed to 500+ theaters worldwide. very clever conceit, but woody comes off looking horrible!