I danced on that floor at Spectrum, the gay club the site it became after the original 2001 Odyssey closed.
3 Likes
Weird title, too: OK Connery. As in “Operation Kid Connery?” Or “You’ve seen the awesome Connery, now come see one that’s…ummm…okay.”
3 Likes
Don’t go searching for deeper meanings. It’s just the usual use of an English (or better: American), expression that any European idiot understands, in order to give it an appearance of internationality. When you look at German “Schlager” lyrics between the mid-50s and the early 70s, they’re full of “boy” and “girl” and “okay”, and (particularly) “baby” and all that stuff – which no one ever really used in everey day language. I believe it’s more or less the same with Italian lyrics of that time.
Whereas the French always tended to really use those terms. Never heard a French person talk about the “fin de la semaine”, it’s always “le week-end”. And if the English words weren’t fitting for an adaption, they just invented new ones. “le Beat” didn’t work (especially in writing), so that music style in France is simply called “le Yé-Yé” (guess where that came from 
).
In Germany, we still tend to use lots of English terms, but in wrong meanings. A mobile phone is still a “Handy”, and a “Public Viewing” is an occasion to watch football (or any big “event”) on a large screen in a public place”. And don’t get me started on international brand names in German pronunciation 
On the other hand, ask any german what a “stein” is. They’ll tell you it’s a stone and nothing else. A large beer glass with a handle is a “Masskrug” or a “Humpen” (but now that I wrote it, I see the dilemma: you’ll get a lot of looks when you order the latter anywhere in America 
)
6 Likes
Had to re-watch Sicario because of Denis Villeneuve (I´ve bin a bit harsh about him because I didn´t like his Blade Runner or Dune). But if he can scale down his uncanny love for unnecessary slow motion shots by half and he can do for Bond a mix out of what he did with Brolin and Del Toro his Bond film could be pretty good I think. The problem is we don´t have a lot of real actors like Benicio anymore…he doesn´t have to talk, you can read everything from his face and body…what a talent
5 Likes
I got the 4K boxset of Exalibur, the movie about the King Arthur legend.
Wow! This is great! It looks very, very beautiful and it is still one of my favorite movies.
Everything from the legend is in this movie: the sword in the stone, Merlin, the lady of the lake, Camelot, Lancelot and Guenevere, Perceval and the quest for the Holly Grail.
The movie is rough but also like a fairy tale, including the music of Wagner from Der Ring des Nibelungen. And with a lot of actors who would become very succesful or even famous, like Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren, Gabriel Byrne and Ciarán Hinds. But it is Nicol Williamson as Merlin who steals the show and he delivers a truly remarkable performance. You never know how he reacts the next time. Nicolas Clay is also very good as the noble knight Lancelot and I was shocked to find out that he was only 54 years old when he passed away (unfortunately like my dear wife).
There are also two blu rays in this boxset full of documentaries and inverviews. Very interesting stuff. I love it!
7 Likes
EXCALIBUR supposedly started out as Lord of the Rings adaptation that didn’t make it past the early stages. Boorman wanted to do a Merlin/Arthur adaptation but his three hour script was too beefy for the studio, so they suggested LOTR instead (which couldn’t have come in shorter or cheaper). Much of the set and costume design was created with Tolkien in mind. I’d have liked to see that film too.
Speaking of, I think I didn’t get to rewatch EXCALIBUR since the initial theatrical run…
4 Likes
I saw it many times, first I taped it from tv with my V2000 recorder and later with my VHS recorder, than I bought it on dvd, blu ray and now on 4K. I realy love this movie.
What I learned from one of the documentaries is that Boorman wanted to make LOTR but couldn’t get the rights and than he changed his mind and made this one instead because for one thing it was rights free and one of his most favorite stories he always was telling or reading to his children, who are all in this movie too. The young Mordred is his son and one of his daughters is the young woman, Igrayne, who is the one who is desired by Uther (Byrne) and his other daughter is seen by holding Exalibur out of the lake as the Lady of the Lake, because she could hold her breath longer under water then most.
8 Likes
The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton
Dir. Mark Pellington
After the discussion about Richard Gere the other day, I decided to revisit The Mothman Prophecies, one of my favorite horror/thrillers that I’ve long maintained does not get anywhere near the credit it actually deserves to see if it still holds up.
The Mothman Prophecies takes John Keel’s 1975 book of the same name as a jumping off point for a similar story, but one that is much more nuanced and cerebral than Keel’s accounts of the goings-on in Point Pleasant and the area that surrounds it in West Virginia during the 1960s. Where Keel’s accounts of supposedly real events very much lends itself to serving as the basis for a creature feature film, Pelllington’s take on this material decides to use two of the major concepts in the book, that of the titular Mothman itself as well as that of Indrid Cold, aka The Smiling Man, to tell a story that is almost entirely psychological and very personal in its scope. This approach is not without its flaws, namely in the way that it avoids any true visual personification of the either of the two major entities from the book, which both would be incredibly terrifying to actually see on screen, but in the end, it also ends up being a strength for the film, as actually letting the audience see the Mothman or Indrid Cold would severely undercut the psychological stakes that Pellington expertly crafts into the narrative from the opening moments of the film until its final shot.
The film tells the story of a Washington Post reporter named John Klein (Richard Gere), who loses his wife (wonderfully played by Debra Messing in a short, but incredibly impactful performance) to a rare form of cancer that is discovered after she wrecks their car after seeing the Mothman as they were making their way back home after purchasing a new home for themselves. What she leaves behind at the hospital is a journal in which she drew countless depictions of the decidedly evil figure that she had seen through the windshield, each of them grotesque and unsettling in their own way. This lends some weigh to Messing’s performance, as in her short time on screen in the hospital, she seems more afraid of what she had seen than she is on the reality that she is very much living on borrowed time.
The film flashes forward two years and finds Klein is still struggling with her loss. He is assigned to drive from Washington D.C. to Richmond, VA to interview the governor of Virginia for a story. He somehow ends up on the side of the road in Point Pleasant, WV, which is almost 400 miles away from where he was trying to go. He also does this in an inexplicably short period of time, as that trip would have taken him until after the sun had come up. He encounters Gordon Smallwood (Will Patton) after knocking on his door asking for help and the use of his telephone. It is here that The Mothman Prophecies launches itself into one of its main narratives, which is the descent into madness and despair for these two characters as events outside of their control are hurtling them towards a confrontation with, well, something.
Intrigued by his apparent teleportation to a town 400 miles away from where he was trying to go, Klein begins to investigate the Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant, primarily spurred on by the local Sheriff, Connie Mills (Laura Linney) showing him drawings of what people in Point Pleasant had described seeing that looked eerily similar to the ones his wife had drawn in her journal in the hospital.
It is from here that Klein gets pulled further and further into events that seem void of any logic or earthly explanation and this leads to him questioning the reality that he sees around him as well as, potentially, his own sanity. When the entity Indrid Cold supposedly reaches out to Gordon, offering predictions of things to come, that the film begins to transcend a potential creature feature setup and move into a more sinister psychological thriller territory. We never see Indrid Cold, outside of one shot that you’ll miss if you’re not playing very close attention (and even here, he looks nothing as he was described in the book, which was a missed opportunity, I think), but its voice on the telephone is one of the creepiest things you’ll hear in a film. It is the phone calls between Cold and Klein help cast an unsettling menace over the rest of the film, as many of the film’s incredibly tense moments revolve around the use of a telephone.
The acting in the film is, as one would expect from a cast that is headlined by Gere, Linney, and Patton, superb, but it’s only component of the film. The cinematography in this film is breathtaking, often using aerial footage to take the POV of the mothman to create the sense that something bigger is at play and that the people on the ground in Point Pleasant are but just small pieces of a much larger, complex puzzle. This is also a film that features a setting that really becomes a character in the film. Despite the fact that they did not actually film in West Virginia, Pellington and his crew really do create a faithful depiction of what a town in West Virginia would look and feel like. It feels incredibly authentic and, along with the cinematography, it becomes another aspect of the film that keeps the viewer uneasy about what they are watching, with the seemingly ordinary town depicted in the film being the central focus of a wave of unexplained phenomena that are incredibly unsettling.
Director Mark Pellington does a masterful job with this film, creating something that really ascends above what one would expect from a creature feature film, mainly because it leaves all of the tropes and expectations that you would have for such a film behind and uses the events of Keel’s book to tell a story that is incredibly menacing and mentally taxing, examining topics like loss, grief, paranoia, and fear in a way that horror films are often hesitant to do anymore and often avoid doing because it’s just easier to throw another several hundred gallons of fake blood at the screen and call it a day. But whereas those types of films do get a rise out of the viewer, they are mostly forgotten about shortly after the credits roll. The Mothman Prophecies, however, dares to ask questions that may or may not be resolved by the ending of the film yet stay with the viewer long after the film is over.
7 Likes
Absolutely brilliant review, thank you!
And by the way: a 4k transfer of the film is to be released soon!
3 Likes
3 Likes
Thanks.
I wonder how a 4K transfer will affect the film. The town of Point Pleasant is such a character within the film that I could see a scenario where the visuals could become too slick and could rob the look of the town of its grittiness and bleakness that I think contributes to the sinister tone that much of the film has.
4 Likes
We saw One Battle After Another at our local arts centre last night, and I agree with this. Definitely felt the film could have done with tighter editing. And, I think, a smaller cast.
However, one bright spot was Benicio del Toro. He lit up every scene he was in. We’d just seen him interviewed on Graham Norton, which inspired us to see the movie. And I must say, Chase Infiniti was remarkable as the daughter desperately trying to escape her captors.
Sean Penn has built such an amazing career. Yes, this was a sort of stock “predator” character of his, yet he plays it so well. Whenever I see him in a role, I always think … Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
I also recognized Kevin Tighe from the Emergency! TV series. He’s actually built an impressive career playing baddies, very much against type for his “good guy” paramedic/firefighter character.
7 Likes
Kill Bill the whole Bloody affair and E.P.I.C.
What a day of cinema hahaha, so KB great to see the spectacle of the first half with full colour gore and the 250 minutes passed relatively quickly. But for me, even in this complete form the second film/ half feels cheaper, feels more hollow, more shallow than first. Character driven and dialogue driven only works if the characters have more than one dimension.
Elvis Lives! Oh wow what an experience, visceral, moving and bloody brilliant, I cried.
6 Likes
You mean the first half is the Japanese full version? Years ago I bought the Japanese dvd just to see that version and it is still the version I watch today. I tried to buy it also on blu ray, but a Japanese friend told me that that is just the international version, so it is great to hear that it is now international released as the Complete Bloody Affair. Can’t wait to buy it on 4K.
2 Likes
Moonraker - first time i’ve watched it in a while.
It really has a tone of “you know what? F### it”
9 Likes
And bucket loads of charm
8 Likes
And both characteristics are what sets Bond apart from the usual action heroes.
10 Likes
It is Roger in a nutshell. I know he prefered FYEO but this film really gets his “and do what?” attitude that Moore carried through his life. It makes how outlandish it gets fun.
9 Likes
Ironically, in spite of the numerous ‘un-Flemingian hotchpotch’ accusations Moore’s films got in their day, I even think that spirit would have appealed to Fleming. Not necessarily in what constitutes Bond, but what he set out Bond to do: give the audience a good spectacle at a pace that doesn’t let them ask questions.
9 Likes
Fleming did call his own books “airport novels”
Ironic that both Sherlock Holmes and James Bond have become iconic when neither writer thought that much of them.
9 Likes