I thought the Northman was pretty funny. Did anyone else think it was sort of a comedy? The lighthouse definitely was
@āMorphic Residentā#p69656 One of the positives with Eggers as opposed to other āelevated horrorā trend directors is that he doesnāt shy away from being funny and mixing up styles and genres, which makes his movies come across as less pretentious somehow. I donāt know if I would describe The Northman as a full on comedy even though it had funny moments (the lighthouse on the other hand very much was as you said), my personal take is that I read it as an fantasy-adventure film coded as horror and using those textures for entirely different purposes.
It's almost as if the director watched something like Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, Braveheart or any of the adventure movies from that era and said "yeah I want to do exactly that, but a bit weird".
By the way @āMorphic Residentā#385 just letting you know that robpat agrees with us (timestamped video)
https://youtu.be/pz52gPH3ou4?t=833
exactly, it's like an abbot and costello movie
Shin Godzilla was a pretty clever modern adaptation of TÅhÅās mythical monster under the prism of the Fukushima disaster; a thinly veiled criticism of Japanese public and corporate institutionsā incompetence when facing a crisis well beyond their means and selfish priorities.
There is nothing as clever to be found in **Shin Ultraman**. Superficially, you still get the crazy camera angles that Higuchi and Anno love to pull out to live up discussion scenes and give a sense of space to fetishized office spaces. And you still get the bumbling politicians, but they are just a foil to a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the first TV series ā basically adapting, mixing and modernizing five notable episodes into a condensed narrative. Iāll let the hardcore Ultraman fans among you(?) ponder which ones, but youāll probably be right.
Compared to Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman is much moreso a flick by Ultraman fans for Ultraman fans. I wonder if Annoās well-documented love for the series hasnāt blinded him into delivering too faithful of an homage to its original bible, whereas he had used Godzilla more freely as a critical tool for his personal means.
The biggest deviation from the original movie is how the SSSP (the scientific and military squad of Earthlings who help Ultraman) is portrayed. No more flashy costumes. No more gadgets and advanced aircrafts _Ć la_ Thunderbirds. They are now a group of typical salarymen and office ladies from Tokyo, with the foibles and issues and shitty Panasonic laptops any typical office department would recognize. That might be the most interesting aspect of the movie to analyze, maybe? Still, I would have given them at least an orange tie.
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Anyway, the most interesting characters of the Ultraman franchise are never the heroes ā especially Ultraman himself who is often less charismatic than a plate of boiled endives. Just like Batman, it is typically the Ultraman villains that make a good Ultraman story, and suffice to say we get plenty of them here. Strong beast-like monsters and devious schemers abound, sometimes stepping on each otherās toes for screen space (there is enough contents for a Marvel trilogy in those mere 113min).
Their new designs are great, the battle scenes are excellent with tons of practical effects that marry rather well with the CG effects. The artistic direction is faultless. Not a great motion picture, but pretty much the ultimate fan-film to open Daicon XXIII.
TÅhÅ and TÅei have taken the opportunity of Shin Ultramanās release to unveil **Shin Kamen Rider**, which is scheduled for a March 2023 release.
https://youtu.be/U40IUnxsgls
Itās another Monday filled with movies that center upon vehicular mayhem, as well as hijinks. This time the focus is on cars, and I of course am getting to kick things off with an off beat comedy from Japan that virtually no one in America knows about, by a director thatās equally obscureā¦
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAAPar_FV8Y
Next is a film that pretty much everyone knows about, cuz it contains what is widely regarded as the greatest car chase scene in all of cinema...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsvD806qNM8
And cuz George Carlin has yet to make any appearances on any of my streams thus far, am going to course correct that with...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf7yn9GfJZ4
Finally, there's no way in hell Iām going to stream a bunch of movies involving cars and not show...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB6gOFyRTN8
Stream starts an hour later than usual, aka 9PM EST, tho the URL remains the sameā¦
https://www.twitch.tv/wondervillenyc
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@āchazumaruā#p69870 There is nothing as clever to be found in Shin Ultraman. Superficially, you still get the crazy camera angles that Higuchi and Anno love to pull out to live up discussion scenes and give a sense of space to fetishized office spaces. And you still get the bumbling politicians, but they are just a foil to a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the first TV series ā basically adapting, mixing and modernizing five notable episodes into a condensed narrative. Iāll let the hardcore Ultraman fans among you(?) ponder which ones, but youāll probably be right.
That's a shame. Good to hear it's at least visually interesting - the exciting thing about Anno and Higuchi taking on Ultraman to me is that it's kind of where a lot of Anno's framing and editing comes from, at least in the Ultra episodes directed by Akio Jissoji. Watching Ultraseven's "The Marked Town" is almost like finding the Rosetta Stone to decipher Hideaki Anno's brain. I'd guess that a good chunk of the material in this movie comes from those episodes, but I'm not gonna hold out hope that they figured out a way to incorporate A Gift From the Sky into it (lol)
had a Jerzy Skolimowski double feature: The Shout and Moonlighting. Theyāre both good, but The Shout was good + weird which I guess did more for me personally. Although Moonlighting deserves credit for raising awareness about one of the most courageous liberation struggles of our time, thatās right, Polish guys sneaking into different countries to do under the table construction work
@āāI thought lethal weapon was safeā¦yeah.āā#p70332 I watched The Shout a few years ago. Great stuff. I liked how it combined low-key ominous dread and mundane woes with some weird, over-the-top story elements. It made me think āwhat if Joseph Losey directed a Zulawaki movie?ā Which is fun a direction I dont end up going very often (by which I mean ever).
Also. Skolimowski is so good in Eastern Promises.
The Conversation (1974). Oh boy, this was right up my alley. A great thriller about surveillance and paranoia. Fantastic editing and audio work. Great performance from Hackman.
@ārearnakedwindowā#p70333 yeah thatās a good description. I thought the shout demo sequence on the dunes was striking, plus the imagery with the lightning strike ignited that weird little cricket hut thing was strange too. I guess the little cricket hut is weird to me bc I donāt know anything about that sport
@"chakan"#p70367 yeah that's a good one. Have you seen _Night Moves_? It has a few fans on this forum, you'll like it too I suspect
@āāI thought lethal weapon was safeā¦yeah.āā#p70397 Howā¦. have I never even heard of this one? Thanks!
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Watching Brazil. Gonna report back in the morning
What recommendations do you guys have for Westerns? I watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly back in high school, but I donāt think I was in the right headspace to appreciate it. Jump forward to a few weeks ago, on a whim I checked out Unforgiven and loved it. The gentle pace, the punchy dialogue, it was incredible. Since then Iāve been watching Deadwood and am similarly enjoying it (coincidentally, I also picked up Live A Live and loved the cowboy chapter, but we donāt talk about video games here!!) but Iād love to check out more self-contained films. Thereās no such thing as a bad recommendation since Iām still new to the genre! Figured Iād ask here rather than rely on a search engine to point me in the direction of some schmuckās āTop 10 Westernsā article.
@āFunbilā#p70542 name a few more of your fav westerns pls
And off the top of my head, I like _Duck, You Sucker_ aka _A Fistful of Dynamite_ a lot if you want another Leone/Morricone film
@āFunbilā#p70542 I'd say it is worth giving The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly another go, if it has been that long since you saw it. Also, A Fistfull of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.
(slightly) more recently, I quite liked _Tombstone_.
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@āāI thought lethal weapon was safeā¦yeah.āā#p70544 name a few more of your fav westerns pls
Those two are all I've seen! I'd list more but I'd have to watch them first, which is why I'm asking for good ones to check out, lol
Track of the Cat
Missouri Breaks
Ride The Whirlwind
The Lusty Men
The Ox-Bow Incident
Bad Day At Black Rock
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Ford/Hawkes/Mann goes without saying I guess
@āFunbilā#p70546 oh if you're a beginner and enjoyed more languid pacing then 1000% Rio Bravo and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Brazil (1985)
I had been meaning to see this movie for like years, and was about to watch the version on Amazon, which is inexplicably the studio cut version that Gilliam hated. Thankfully I found the Critereon version instead and watched that. I have long had the movie spoiled because I have a terrible habit of looking up the plot on wikipedia.
This movie absolutely pinballs between being very funny and very tragic. The set and production design is fantastic. There's so many details and gags in the film I'm probably not going to remember, so I might just go shot by shot and pick things out later on. The phone using patch cables instead of buttons is brilliant. Computer screens being very tiny but compensating with a huge magnifying lens is inspired. Valve absolutely ripped off the hanging suit thing for Half Life 2
Weird how Bob Hoskins was a plumber in this movie, and a movie inspired by Brazil (That is, Super Mario Brothers the movie) These two films would make a good double feature. Robert De Nero is in like 2 or 3 scenes but he goes 100% in each of them. When I saw his getup I immediately imagined a Splinter Cell like stealth action HVAC Repair game, probably something Brendan Chung would dream up. Micheal Palin is terrifying as basically a completely normal person (It's funny that the only time he drops the pretense is when he's literally taking a mask off)
I think the only thing that doesn't make sense about the film is Lowery's romance with Jill, especially after putting her in danger multiple times. I guess in retrospect, Lowery isn't a good person at all! Not that he deserves what happens.
I think what's ultimately terrifying about the film is that the world will be terrible and most people will carry on like nothing horrible has happened, which is totally accurate