movie recommendations

[fragger]

I'd like to add a few words. You know it's coming from a German and I am aware of that, so I want to be clear about one thing: I have no sympathies whatsoever for him or what he stands for and all that. I am looking at history I was not part of.

I absolutely understand that, Art. I think that those of us here who have gotten to know you realise that you're too intelligent and decent a guy to be a Fuhrer fan :)

For me, I believe that for all his charisma and charm, Hitler was still an essentially soulless and despicable creature who brought untold misery upon the world, but he's long gone and Germany, like the rest of the world, has moved on.

Hitler, and what he created, should be remembered, but only in the sense of as a warning from the past. He should never, ever be admired or idolized, and present-day Germans should never be judged by what happened in their history.

[PZ]

Moldy oldies that are favs of mine include:

• The Long Long Trailer - Lucy and Desi
  
• Forever Darling - Lucy and Desi
  
• Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
• The Great Race
• Duel (Spielberg's first) and my all time favorite movie - must have watched it over a hundred times.
• The Train - Burt Lancaster
• Emperor of the North - lee Marvin
• All the old Clint Eastwood Westerns
• Many of the Howard Hawks John Wayne westerns: Eldorado, Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo, McClintock, etc.
• Once Upon a Time in the West - Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Henry Fonda
  

[JRD]

Hey PZ... reading your post I rememberred and oldie I saw many moons ago and just loved it...
"The Savage Innocents", filmed in 1959!
Starring Anthony Quinn and Peter O'Toole.
An eskimo accidentally kills a guy in a village and a police officer is sent into the snowy Alaska to arrest him... the thing is that is a white man in an eskimo's land and the cultural encounter is fascinating... a must see!!

[PZ]

Thanks for the recommenation, JRD - that movie reminds me of a similar one that I can't remember the name of - Charles Bronson is a guy in Alaska that is liiking for some insane trapper.

[fragger]

Yes, cheers, JRD, sounds like an interesting film :-X

I like Anthony Quinn, great actor. It's funny how many people think he's Greek, because of Zorba no doubt, but he was actually born in Mexico, and was of Irish and Mexican extraction.

Btw, I like your new avatar. He didn't eat Beetle, did he? ;D

@PZ, could that be Breakheart Pass?

[PZ]

@PZ, could that be Breakheart Pass?

I was thinking the same, but I recalled something about a train in Breahheart Pass - just did a search on Charles Bronson and came up with the title: "Death Hunt"

Another good Charles Bronson movie was Chato's Land

[fragger]

I haven't heard of "Death Hunt", I thought I knew all his films. Must try and find.

"Chato's Land" is one of his best, I think, great movie :-X

[Fiach]

I would like to recommend some irish films as they dont get around too much on the international scene.

I would suggect that all of these films are mature and excellent films in ther own right and wish everyone could get to see them.

The Quiet Man (John Wayne returns to Ireland from America)

The Field (Tom Berenger returns to Ireland from America, and gets embroiled in a land feud).

The Commitments (A great rock movie about setting up a band, incredibly funny).

Michael Collins (Dramatisation of Irelands fight for Independance).

Into the West (Two boys go in search of their dead mother, a road trip with a difference).

The Snapper (A teenage girl gets pregnant in Dublins Inner City and how she and her family cope with it, a very funny film).

[Dweller_Benthos]

Just caught the last half hour of "Forbidden Planet" the other day, the great-grand-daddy of awesome scifi films. Even now, it still holds up, mostly, and is not your typical shlocky 50's scifi film. One of the best.

Robby the robot - need I say more?

[fragger]

@Fiach, I've seen the Commitments twice, it's hilarious! That bouncer/drummer is hysterical. Cool flick :-X

I've heard of the Quiet Man and Michael Collins, but haven't seen either.
Thanks for the recommendations, mate. I'm always on the lookout for lesser-known, good movies :-X

@D_B, Forbidden Planet is a surprisingly intelligent film, as you say, not B-grade 50's drek. Very impressive and innovative, given the time when it was made.
Btw, I once had a book (since gone by the wayside) which contained all sorts of behind-the-scenes stuff re old sci-fi films, and it had a section on Robby. That suit was a bitch to w@&k in! It was really made of steel, not something lightweight that only looked like steel, so it weighed a ton. It was also packed full of motors and things to drive the twirly things on its head and some other stuff, so there wasn't much room left over for the operator. It got stinking hot inside, and if you were in it and fell over you could do yourself a serious injury. That's why you never see him walk very fast and only take small steps in films; the operator inside had to be VERY careful not to fall ;D

I'd be interested to find out where it is now, probably in the Smithsonian or some such place.

[fragger]

I found out - he (it) is currently owned by a film director named William Malone. I wonder if he's tried it on...

There's actually a wikipedia article about it, that suit has sure clocked up some mileage in filmdom! It's here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robby_the_Robot

[Fiach]

Yeah Alan Parker directed the Commitments, best line ....

What do you play?
Soccer.
I mean musical Instrument?
None
Why are you here?
I saw the queue, I thought you were selling drugs .....

:)

[Art Blade]

LOL  ;D

And nice wiki link to robby  :-X

[fragger]

the Commitments, best line ....

That's the line that stayed with me! ;D ;D

[Fiach]

Yeah, well the same guy wrote The Snapper, so you should enjoy that too if you decide to check it out :)

[fragger]

Cheers Fiach :)

Just back to Robby for a moment, I found out I was wrong about him being made of steel (just goes to show, you should never accept unsubstantiated hearsay). He was rubber and plastic, but still heavy due to the sheer amount of stuff that made him up.
When I thought some more after writing that post, it occurred to me that if he was steel, he would literally weigh a ton and nobody would be able to budge him from inside, so I checked it out further. I can't remember where I heard that originally, obviously it was BS.
Just wanted to clear that up. :-[

[Art Blade]

cheers mate, saved me the trouble of checking it out myself :)

[fragger]

A couple of members (not naming names, but it was mmosu and Fiach) mentioned Mad Max in the Borderlands thread, so this gave me a flaccid excuse to bring up the leather-clad one here.

The original Mad Max movie is, in my view, a pretty terrible movie - apart from some of the hurtling action, which can be quite spectacular. The acting is terrible, the music is terrible, and the characterization is terrible.

Then there's Mad Max 2 (known in the US as "The Road Warrior"). The acting is terrible (mostly) and the dialogue is terrible (mostly).

Then came Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. This had terrible acting (mostly) and terrible dialogue (mostly) and was generally a pretty lousy movie.

But out of the three, for various reasons, I really like Mad Max 2 (Road Warrior). What it lacks in thespian ability and writing prowess, it more than makes up for in imagination and raw action. It also has what I consider to be one of the longest and most breathtaking vehicular chase sequences ever filmed. The characterization may seem pretty silly, and some of it is, but actually many of the characters are not so far-fetched, given the premise and an understanding of the Aussie character. Should the world ever go to war over oil shortages (if it isn't already), I can really see a situation like the one depicted in the film coming about in outback Oz. The over-the-top depiction of the bad guys notwithstanding, if you are at all familiar with the Australian character, and its people in general, some of the characters in the film come across as quite familiar, i.e. like normal domestic neighbours suddenly finding themselves in an apocalyptic situation. This film, to me as an Aussie, manages to be both brilliant and pretty crappy at the same time – no mean feat.

The best version is the original Aussie one. When it was released in America, it was overdubbed as it was thought that most Americans wouldn't be able to understand Aussie accents. To be brutally honest about this, I think that as long as they continue to do that, Americans will never know what we really sound like – hence all the abominable "Aussie" accents that I hear in American movies and TV shows. They sound nothing whatsoever like Aussies, more like a cross between Cockneys and South Africans. It's an accent that exists nowhere on Earth. I've seen the dubbed version, and in my opinion, it sounded atrocious, and it stank. The original Aussie version is the way to go – just listen carefully, you'll get us. Especially the introductory and closing narration by New Zealand actor Harold Baigent. For the US "Road Warrior" version, this was replaced with a voiceover by an actor with a southern US accent. Baigent's original narration is tremendous, he has an amazingly resonant, character-filled voice, and it really leads into the film well.

I highly recommend any members who liked the Road Warrior to try and see the original Aussie version, if they haven't already – and try to get the R-rated one with extra footage. I believe it's worlds apart from the US version. It's not world-shattering film-making, but it's got something going for it. What that is, I'm not too sure exactly, but I find it oddly riveting.

[Fiach]

Yeah, some americans think Mel Gibsons accent is aussie :)

I liked all three for different reasons;

1. The car
2. The chase
3. Tinas outfit.

I only have the US version, my mate who lives in NZ, said basically the same thing as you Fragger, I think you use a diff region code to here for DVD's, otherwise I would get to post me a copy.

Nice read there though :)

[Art Blade]

English version dubbed with another English version...  :D

[fragger]

Cheers guys :)

Tina's outfit is a big plus, I must admit, Fiach :-X Plus that lady really knows how to strut around in heels :-X

Btw, there's a Mad Max 4 just gotten underway, no Mel though. Considering his mucking around with young floosies and verbally bitch-slapping Jews lately, that's probably not a bad thing ;D I think that guy's lost the plot, personally - it's about time he hung up his leathers and took a reality pill. Anyway, he's a bit long in the tooth for the whole revenge-seeking revhead thing.

@Art, English is a nutso language sometimes, at least between English-speaking countries. Aren't you glad you're Deutsch? At least with German films, there's a valid reason for subtitling, for the benefit of us English-speaking dummkopfs who can't understand one another ;D

[Art Blade]

Heh, you wouldn't believe how many strong dialects we have, and we don't understand one another, either, if we're confronted with a dialect from a far-away region of this country  ;D

[Fiach]

Yeah, maybe Mel just wants to direct, I prefer him doing that than acting tbh, all his own movies are exceptionally good.

[mandru]

Beyond the Thunderdome, yeah it's a favorite.   :-X

While more polished than it's two predecessors it still had bits that were rough as a dried corncobs for toilet tissue. But there were some concepts that come through that were astounding.

I am devastated by the think w@&k that went into scripting the Lost Children's daily lessons scene where they recited "the way it was and what they were anticipating" when Max first came into their oasis.

"I tell the "tell"" the eldest girl, Savannah Nix, starts out and while she talks there's a frame w@&k on a pole made of tree limbs held together with bits of vine and sinew that is exactly the proportions of a television screen and while she recites that grammatically broken but earnest story of their abandonment and hope for coming rescue the frame focuses her audience's attention on each significant section of the the wall drawings that illustrate her words.


The words tell, tale and television had all been blended into a single concept.

In that scene when the wind came up and the children, leading Gibson's character, all ran out to the airliner downed by either an empty fuel tank or from being slapped by an Electric Magnetic Pulse smashing it's control systems. I couldn't help but see that small tribe as a restless message in a bottle. Had they been a group of children loaded onto a flight evacuated towards a safe haven while parents remained behind to an uncertain fate?

Though they lived in a virtual Eden they couldn't wait for the restoration of the promises their dim and imperfect memories told them were awaiting them on the other side of an ocean of sand.

The final words of the movie:

"Time counts and keeps countin', and we knows now finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride. But that's our trek, we gotta' travel it. And there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna' lead.

Still in all, every night we does the tell, so that we 'member who we was and where we came from... but most of all we 'members the man that finded us, him that came the salvage.

And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of them that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there come a night, when they sees the distant light, and they'll be comin' home."

(Whew!) It gives me the shivers.

[Art Blade]

Reminds me of FallOut3, the Lamplight Cavern. It's a post-nuclear world, and in that cavern live children, they have a mayor, a cook, a doctor etc, all children. And they have a teacher, teaching knowledge from old books. When they've grown up, they get kicked out to go to Big City, that's where the older children live. The promised land. Until they get caught by some slavers or similar unpleasant beings. All that reminds me of The Last Man Alive, a novel by Scottish author Alexander Sutherland Neill, and of The Lord of the Flies by William Golding.