BS: Movies to avoid

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 01:08 PM

"The Buddy Holly Story" was a good one too, Jack.

And I have to say that I liked "The Lion King". I also liked "Pocahontas", though it did have some predictably over-romanticized moments about Native Americans in it. The Indians weren't saints. ;-) We are, however, living in an era that's trying to make up for the fairly recent past, when they were routinely depicted in Hollywood movies as savages and mere rifle fodder for the white heroes of those films.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 10:05 AM

I was only pulling your leg Ron. I will stop now.

I love it when songs are integrated into movies. "I Walk the Line","La Vie en Rose", "Ray", and "Great Balls of Fire" were great films. My favorites are movies where the theme of a song or songs and the movie are played out in parallel to a satisfying end, "Casablanca" (As Time Goes By), "A Trip to Bountiful" (Softly and Tenderly), and The Graduate (Mrs. Robinson and others) are classic examples. I also admire some of the older musicals like The Wizard of Oz and Singing in the Rain. But I find the newer musicals, such as "Chicago", Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King to be far to corny.

Among my movies to avoid is "Moulin Rouge" Toulouse LauTrec and disco. What were they thinking?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Ron Davies
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 09:33 AM

"playing the scene with"

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Ron Davies
Date: 04 Aug 11 - 09:32 AM

You're still not reading very carefully, Jack. I have admitted more than once that you have watched far more lousy movies than I have---including, it seems, a good number of Woody's recent ones.    You may be totally right that all of the recent ones are not worth the viewer's time.    I wasn't really tempted to watch them even before this thread.

It ia of course possible that some of his recent movies are in fact worth watching. But I think I can live without learning whether this is so or not.

As I said, I have far more interest in older movies in general.

I'm actually far more interested in defending the use of songs in movies than in anything Woody has ever done.    In the biography of Bing Crosby I am now reading, the author points out how careful the scriptwriters in a certain movie were to have Bing sing every phrase of the song he was teaching to the girl he was playing the scene lest the viewer should think it was unrealistic she knew a song she had never heard before.    As the author points out, this concern for realism was in a movie which itself had absolutely no connection with reality.

But of course reality is not what the viewer is usually looking for in a movie musical or a movie with songs--or most other movies. Probably the overwhelming majority of movies require at least some suspension of disbelief. But it seems a reasonable bargain for entertainment.

Of course, as you know, this is a huge reason why it's absurd some people think they can learn about history from movies. All they learn is the director's attitude.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 08:04 AM

Pasty, There Kings Speech was great. Helena was wonderful as the future Queen Mum.

I also like all of Burton's movies that aren't musicals.

So you did Davie's, So you did Davie's. I'll just have to fall back on the how can you criticize what I said if you haven't seen the movies defense.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 07:36 AM

Anything with a seasonal Christmassy feel to it.

Lately movies anything with Helena-Bonham-Carter in them or movies directed by Tim Burton.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 05:44 AM

"that some of the antipathy for Woody Allen is based on his despicable private life."
Nope - he makes self-indulgent, navel gazing, neurotically-boring (not an easy combination) films.
Second only in the Turkey Stakes to anything by Mel Brooks (except for Blazing Saddles - must have had an 'on day').
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 10:44 PM

"some of them"

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 10:42 PM

So it's back to Woody again.

Far be it from me to hurt your tender feelings, Jack.    I might however question your mathematical skills:   "a man who added 1 citing (Annie Hall) to zero and got a total of two."

I cited both Annie Hall and Play It Again Sam as good Woody Allen movies.   That does, I believe, make a grand total of two movies, not adding 1 to zero.

Or perhaps it's just your reading skills which are lacking--and you are in excellent company on Mudcat with that problem--as I've noted before more than once.

By the way, you perhaps didn't notice I have bowed to your superior track record in watching lousy movies.

Though just why you would want to do so I can't fathom. I read about movies in more than one source before deciding to see them.   So I haven't seen many recent movies--they don't usually seem worth my time.   I prefer older movies mostly.   With the exception of some kids' movies--whose makers have figured out it's a good idea to have something for adults also--usually puns or cultural references.

There are actually quite a few recent kids' movies I've found delightful--Over the Hedge, the Toy Story sequence, and the Harry Potter saga above all.   I would even have watched some of the them---particularly Harry Potter--on the big screen.    Though Jan and I don't do so--a big reason being all the great extras you often get on DVDs

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 04:56 PM

Amen Olddude. Amen.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: olddude
Date: 02 Aug 11 - 10:37 AM

Any movie by Woody Allen after 1980

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 05:43 PM

"when you leave the theatre you may wish you could forget the whole horrible experience. . . ."

Exactly! That's just what I thought about NOTLD after seeing it, and that's why I say that it was an extremely effective horror film. It truly did horrify the viewer...at a visceral level...it made you feel uncomfortable and despairing...it was not a fun romp of thrills and chills as so many horror films are. It's concusion did not reassure you, but filled you with doubts about life and about humanity. It was very unsettling. That is true horror.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 05:29 PM

Like its own character's NOTLD keeps reanimating on this thread and coming back to eat our brains. The following is from the Wiki page on the movie. I hope it answers all questions and allows this topic to RIP.

Reviewers disliked the film's gory special effects. Variety labeled Night of the Living Dead an "unrelieved orgy of sadism" and questioned the "integrity and social responsibility of its Pittsburgh-based makers".[64] New York Times critic Vincent Canby referred to the film as a "junk movie" as well as "spare, uncluttered, but really silly."[65]

Nevertheless, some reviewers cited the film as groundbreaking. Pauline Kael called the film "one of the most gruesomely terrifying movies ever made â€" and when you leave the theatre you may wish you could forget the whole horrible experience. . . . The film's grainy, banal seriousness works for it â€" gives it a crude realism".[66] A Film Daily critic commented, "This is a pearl of a horror picture which exhibits all the earmarks of a sleeper."[67] While Roger Ebert criticized the matinée screening, he admitted that he "admires the movie itself".[45] Critic Rex Reed wrote, "If you want to see what turns a B movie into a classic [...] don't miss Night of the Living Dead. It is unthinkable for anyone seriously interested in horror movies not to see it."[68]
Some feminist writers have criticized the film for portraying Barbra, the chief female character, as catatonic and helpless.

Since the release, critics and film historians have seen Night of the Living Dead as a subversive film that critiques 1960s American society, international Cold War politics and domestic racism. Elliot Stein of The Village Voice saw the film as an ardent critique of American involvement in Vietnam, arguing that it "was not set in Transylvania, but Pennsylvania â€" this was Middle America at war, and the zombie carnage seemed a grotesque echo of the conflict then raging in Vietnam".[69] Film historian Sumiko Higashi concurs, arguing that Night of the Living Dead was a horror film about the horrors of the Vietnam era. While she asserts that "there are no Vietnamese in Night of the Living Dead, [...] they constitute an absent presence whose significance can be understood if narrative is construed". She points to aspects of the Vietnam War paralleled in the film: grainy black-and-white newsreels, search-and-destroy operations, helicopters, and graphic carnage.[70]

While George Romero denies he hired Duane Jones simply because he was black, reviewer Mark Deming notes that "the grim fate of Duane Jones, the sole heroic figure and only African-American, had added resonance with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X fresh in the minds of most Americans."[25][71] Stein adds, "In this first-ever subversive horror movie, the resourceful black hero survives the zombies only to be killed by a redneck posse".[69] The deaths of Ben, Barbra and the supporting cast offered audiences an uncomfortable, nihilistic glimpse unusual for the genre.[72]

Other prevalent themes included "disillusionment with government and patriarchal nuclear family"[69] and "the flaws inherent in the media, local and federal government agencies, and the entire mechanism of civil defense".[73] Film historian Linda Badley explains that the film was so horrifying because the monsters were not creatures from Outer Space or some exotic environment, "They're us".[74] Romero confessed that the film was designed to reflect the tensions of the time: "It was 1968, man. Everybody had a 'message'. The anger and attitude and all that's there is just because it was the Sixties. We lived at the farmhouse, so we were always into raps about the implication and the meaning, so some of that crept in."[25]
[edit] Influence
See also: Zombies in popular culture.
Living dead Karen Cooper eating her father's corpse.

Romero revolutionized the horror film genre with Night of the Living Dead; per Almar Haflidason, of the BBC, the film represented "a new dawn in horror film-making".[75] The film has also effectively redefined the use of the term "zombie". While the word "zombie" itself is never used, Romero's film introduced the theme of zombies as reanimated, flesh-eating cannibals.[43][76] [77] Early zombie films like Victor Halperin's White Zombie (1932) and Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie (1943) concerned living people enslaved by a Voodoo witch doctor; many were set in the Caribbean.

The film and its successors spawned countless imitators that borrowed elements instituted by Romero: Tombs of the Blind Dead, Zombie, Hell of the Living Dead, Night of the Comet, Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Creeps, Children of the Living Dead, and the video game series Resident Evil (later adapted as films in 2002, 2004, and 2007), Dead Rising, and House of the Dead. Night of the Living Dead is parodied in films such as Night of the Living Bread and Shaun of the Dead, and in episodes of The Simpsons ("Treehouse of Horror III", 1992; "Treehouse of Horror XIII", 2004 and "Treehouse of Horror XX", 2009), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, South Park ("Pink Eye", 1997; "Night of the Living Homeless", 2007), Medium ("Bite Me", 2009) and Invader Zim ("Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom" 2001 and "FBI Warning of Doom" 2002).[78][79][80]

Night of the Living Dead ushered in the splatter film sub-genre. As one film historian points out, horror prior to Romero's film had mostly involved rubber masks and costumes, cardboard sets, or mysterious figures lurking in the shadows. They were set in locations far removed from rural and suburban America.[81] Romero revealed the power behind exploitation and setting horror in ordinary, unexceptional locations and offered a template for making an "effective and lucrative" film on a "minuscule budget".[82] Slasher films of the 1970s and 80s such as John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980), and Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) "owe much to the original Night of the Living Dead", according to author Barry Keith Grant.[83]

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Bert
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 05:28 PM

...Pretty much anything with Nicholas Cage in it...

Aw! come on, He's done some fun movies such as Con Air and the National Treasure movies.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 04:57 PM

I think it was primarily the psychological aspects of NOTLD that made it so effective, MtheGM. The extremely claustrophobic mood, the isolated quality of the scenes way out there in the countryside with no one around to help, the sense of no possible escape, the loneliness, that sort of thing....and the totally unexpected killing of the film's solitary hero by supposedly "normal" people at the very end was like a punch in the gut. People don't expect that to happen when they watch a movie. They expect the hero to somehow triumph over the odds. That made it much more horrifying than horror films usually are, because the viewer would have come to identify with the hero quite strongly, in most cases (unless the viewer simply didn't like anything about the movie).

Ebert covered what I'm talking about in his review.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 11:24 AM

I will rent it and watch it at home.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MAG
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 11:16 AM

so, who's going to see cowboys and aliens, now that the weekend frenzy has passed and there are no lines?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 08:05 AM

Then again films like Shaun of the Dead have a tongue in cheek swipe at Living Dead films so I tend to watch them now with humour rather than take them seriously. They are always near a shopping mall and and there is nearly always someone who didn't own up immediately that he or she got bitten I find them really funny. Aeroplane disaster movies likewise were boring and predictable too until Leslie Neilson turned it into a spoof.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Aug 11 - 03:43 AM

===Why not just accept that some people think it's a great movie and you don't? I mean, heck, I'm not losing any sleep over the fact that you don't share my opinion of that movie. Fine with me. It's probably just a matter of taste. ===

Exactly what I said myself in the end para of my last post, Little Hawk:-

"OK ~~ so some people thought it better, more effective, than I did; which is naturally fair enough ~~ of course tastes and reactions differ" 31 July 0613

If you are going to disagree with someone, wouldn't it be a good idea to read what they have written first?

My grounds for objection have sometime since ceased to be connected with the quality of the film itself, which, as we have both now said, is clearly a matter of taste; but I can't get my head round these claims that a film made in the late sixties was some sort of original trail-blazer, when it was in fact just a recycling of tired old themes and techniques which had gone on pretty well from the dawn of cinema. That's all.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 11:17 PM

Is The Black Swan about a pirate ship? Or a bird? Or...?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 10:24 PM

~M~

I wonder if you misunderstand me. in 1971 I was 12 or 13 I saw that movie on TV and had pretty much the same reaction you do now. Every thing I have said is about what I have read about other people's opinion. The best thing I can say is that people who have made pretty much every decent zombie movie since then use it as a baseline. Isn't that enough?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 08:35 PM

The Black Swan .... one of the most moronic movies I have ever, ever watched .... but with that being said I found the phsyco high drama at the end was rather humorous .... can't believe I sat through it .... I did doze off a couple of times through it.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 07:15 PM

I see, MtheGM, that you appear to have some kind of emotional need for others to agree with your particular view of NOTLD. Why? Why not just accept that some people think it's a great movie and you don't? I mean, heck, I'm not losing any sleep over the fact that you don't share my opinion of that movie. Fine with me. It's probably just a matter of taste.

Consider the possibility that all possible views of this movie ARE justified, because they are all subjective views anyway, and everyone has a right to like or dislike a movie if they want to.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 06:43 PM

I like it for it's claustrophobic viscerality, the viewer is bound to this restricted space with these characters and therefore the - physical - reality of their nightmare.
I like the gritty B&W cinematography, it's B&W realism counterpoints the period's excessive theatrical classic Hammer Horror drama (which I also love).
I like the lack of classic horror actors, see the above.


This horror, feels like a nightmare. The audience are not removed from the action. They are compelled to engage with the action. I don't know if it matters to other viewers identify with the Black hero in a 60's B&W Zombie Movie, or don't, but there's something about the whole thing that suggests a narrative I'm not clever enough to script.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 06:13 PM

You will all talk about it "in its time", as if it was some sort of genre pioneer, instead of a late and not particularly effectual [to put it at its lowest] example of a genre which had been established so long it had whiskers on it: after 50+ years of silent Houses Of Wax & Black Museums, Schrek, Whale, Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney, Price, Hammer ~~ what on earth do you mean by "in its time", as if nobody had ever made a horror film before 1968 and it was showing us all the way somewhere?

OK ~~ so some people thought it better, more effective, than I did; which is naturally fair enough ~~ of course tastes and reactions differ; but this constant iteration that I must make allowances for it as some sort of pioneer of a new movie genre is just plain ridiculous, surely?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: EBarnacle
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 12:42 PM

Thread drift: Anent the comment about Ridley Scott. Last night, I caught a rerun of the TV show "Numb3rs" and mourned the passing of that series.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 10:33 AM

Ebert's review makes it quite plain why NOTLD was such an effective horror film in its time, MtheGM. I could make additional comments to bolster Ebert's view of it, but I think he's got it covered fine already. Perhaps you should read some other industry reviews of the film too, and see what they have to say.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 09:10 AM

~M~,

Sorry about that. I wasn't trying to be sarcastic. I was just amused about how passionate you were.

I think that Ebert explains well enough why it was groundbreaking in the review. It was coldness of the villians, the fact that the hero dies. He mentions a couple of other things I don't recall. Also at that time it was not "formula." It was and end of an era when nearly every horror movie had to have at least a cameo by Vincent Price or Bela Legosi.

Today's zombie revival film makers, the producers of Shawn of the Dead, the 28 series and Resident evil series, all point to that movie as an influence.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 05:45 AM

OK: I managed to locate Ebert's review; which was actually of the remake which he compares unfavebly with original, writing of

"the artistry of Romero's film. With grainy black and white photography, a handful of locations and a cast of unknowns, he created a horrifyingly original vision"

Taking my above comments along with his, can someone please point out, with the kind of detail I used above,

what was 'original' in it?

wherein lay the artistry?

& what the film had to recommend it at all?

All the replies I have had have been either sarcastic [Jack], assertive [lively lass], or referring me [Little Hawk] to this equally assertive but non-specific professional review. Nobody seems to have engaged with any of the points I made of the film's crudity, non-originality, immobility ~~ and in particular its occurrence very late in the horror-film genre when its defenders had all made claims about how pioneering it was and we must recall how we had moved on since.

Eh!, I say again? From nearly 1970, when Schrek in Nosferatu dates from 1922.

Away you ~~ or else some specific answers please.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Jul 11 - 05:22 AM

Little Hawk ~~ re Living Dead; on imdb site could only find reader reviews and no link to the Ebert one you mention. I should like to erad it. Can you provide a more specific lnk, please?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 07:49 PM

The above is interesting to me because I love every movie by David Fincher but Alien3. Which was a skullcrushingly boring movie.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 07:47 PM

Ridley is the one film maker who has never done a movie I did not like.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 07:44 PM

Amergin:"Pretty much anything with Nicholas Cage..."

Much everything BEFORE he did 'The Rock' with Sean Connery, was not of much interest...However, if you've seen 'Matchstick Men' he and the film were outstanding, including the chemistry between Alison Lohman, who plays his 14 year old 'daughter' was one of films best casting, for chemistry. For what it's worth, Alison Lohman, in real, at the time was actually 24 years old!! If you haven't seen it, go do so!!
Directed by Ridley Scott...It is a delight!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Amergin
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 07:24 PM

Pretty much anything with Nicholas Cage in it...with some exceptions like Raising Arizona. He can make the most interesting, exciting action film, seem dull.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 07:16 PM

"Though somehow I suspect he (Woody Allen) may survive despite being trashed on Mudcat."

No kidding!!! Do you really think so, Ron????

Sure he'll survive being trashed on Mudcat....just like Fidel Castro, Muammar Gadhaffi, George Bush, Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh, and numerous others have all managed to survive quite nicely despite being trashed on Mudcat, Ron...and some of them by YOU.

We talk here for fun and to give our idle minds something to chew on for a few minutes, not because it makes any actual difference to anything out there in the real world. Get with the script. You have fun throwing brickbats at your favorite targets, and let others do the same with their favorite targets, and the world will go on without a ripple.

Woody Allen will do just fine, no matter what anyone here says.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 06:18 PM

I am saved. I am saved. Having reread Davies critique I find it appalling that my feelings were hurt by a man who added 1 citing (Annie Hall) to zero and got a total of two.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 06:03 PM

I started this thread to warn people away from two truly wretched movies which I watch because of the cast in both cases the acting was not the problem but in both cases, I will be reading carefully the reviews of anything I find them in before I watch it. If you end up watching either of these movies and you dislike it, don't blame me.

But I may not be here for long. Woody Allen may survive my criticism. But I may not survive his. His defender's, I mean. But am I qualified to judge Ron Davies judgment. I have seen Annie Hall, most Woody Allen movies before it and about half since then. That is a lot of movies. That is a lot of Woody Allen comedy beating around inside my otherwise empty skull. What is my opinion compare to that of someone whose brain has been untainted by the subject at hand since 1976?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 05:46 PM

I tend to think that critics would do better to restrict themselves to talking about stuff they think is good, and ignore anything else.

Of course, one reason the professionals often do the reverse is because it is much easier to write knocking copy that will pass as entertaining. But it's really a waste of time, for the writer and the reader.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Ron Davies
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 05:36 PM

It may be true that Woody Allen's recent films are not worth watching. You guys may be the true authorities on wretched movies. I may not have seen one of his since Annie Hall. I've thought about a few, but never gotten to them. But just the two I have cited are enough to not dismiss him--especially in the vehement terms on this thread.

Though somehow I suspect he may survive despite being trashed on Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 05:25 PM

It would be easier to list movies that you DO like than to do a catalog of stinkers, but ranking on movies is a lot more fun, I guess.

I've got to disagree about "Songcatcher." I thought it was very well done—especially compared to the catastrophe that it could have been. Although the story was fictional, it was based on real people doing things that were actually done back in the early days of "songcatching" in the southern mountains. The actors were really dedicated to doing a good job on it and singing as authentically as they could.

Case in point:   Emmy Rossum, who played Deladis Slocumb, the young girl. She was fourteen when she made the movie. Prior to that, she had been a member of the Metropolitan Opera children's chorus (singing in six different languages in twenty operas). She listened carefully to field recordings of folk music to learn how to sing the songs for the movie. She is "all growed up" now, and recentliy has sung Christine in the movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera," picked from dozens of auditioners by Webber himself, and for which she received a Golden Globe award.

And Pat Carroll, who played Viney Butler. She also studied the singing style on field recordings. And she was sufficiently dedicated to giving her part in the movie an authentic touch that, due to have a tooth replaced by a dental surgeon, she postponed the procedure until she finished shooting the movie, to leave a pretty authentic looking gap in her teeth—dentists not being readily available in the mountains, and when one is, his main tools are generally a shot of whiskey and a pair of pliers.

I was very impressed by the singing (among other things, Iris Dement, looking anything but glamorous and singing "Pretty Saro") and by the attention to detail. Including Lili Penleric's goof—rejecting the songs collected and written down by Alice Kincaid because they hadn't been collected "scientifically." In short, Alice Kincaid wrote down what she heard, not what she thought the notes should have been. Cecil J. Sharp definitely did not make that kind of mistake. He wrote down what he heard, not automatically assuming, as previous collectors had, that because the singers were not formally trained, they occasionally sang wrong notes. Sharp discovered that many of the songs and ballads were being sung in modes rather than modern scale structure.

Speaking of Sharp, when Lily, Deladis, and Tom Bledsoe were leaving, going down the road, and met the Englishman on his way up (obviously the Cecil Sharp figure), I felt that the actor playing the role was a bit too much of a "Pip pip and tally-ho!" stereotype.

And rather than adding to the movie, I felt that the somewhat unbelievable romance that developed between Lily and Tom, and the Lesbian relationship between Lili's sister and her co-worker, verged a bit on distracting from the main point of the movie. Discovering and collecting the songs. But then, that's the part I was interested in.

I am in total agreement with Little Hawk about "Avatar." My wife and I got it on DVD from NetFlix and watched it on my laptop computer. 17" HD screen. No 3D. The movie worked just fine. As Little Hawk said.

I grew up on movie musicals. And musical movies. "A Song to Remember" (biopic about Chopin), "Song of Scheherazade" (biopic about Rimsky-Korsakov), "Phantom of the Opera" (with Claude Rains as the Phantom—and Nelson Eddy, proving that he wasn't just a pretty face, that sucker could really sing), along with "The Desert Song," "Oklahoma," "South Pacific," "My Fair Lady," "West Side Story," and on and on.

And a movie I wish they had put on DVD, but so far, they haven't: "Tonight We Sing," a biopic about impresario Sol Hurok. It have everybody in it.

One movie they did put on DVD that is one of the most spectacularly beautiful movies, both visually and musically, that was ever made is the 1951 filming of "The Tales of Hoffmann," the opera by Jacques Offenbach. This is not just a filming of a stage production. They really go whole hog with this one. In addition to the singing, they have the services of English ballerina Moira Shearer as one of the lead characters, Stella. With all that talent oozing out everywhere, they made full use of it.

Here, for your enjoyment and amazement, is a clip from the movie. A bit of backstage by-play, then it goes into the "Enchanted Dragonfly" ballet:    Dragonfly.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 12:45 PM

Re Woody Allen, though I would not disagree with anything that lh has said, the reason I don't like Allen is that, to me he is boring. Don't get me wrong. When I was young, I enjoyed his stuff. He had a fresh point of view. But it has gotten to the point where I can look at any given situation and imagine how he would react. The formula has been revealed. The code has been cracked. We know what the 11 different herbs and spices are and we know how to mix them ourselves. This happens with all comedians. That's why some of the best from not too long ago are on talk shows or hosting game shows or reading other peoples' lines in movies. It makes new material by a comedian very predictable and boring. I feel exactly that way about Seinfeld.

Their schtick is played out. They are now only funny to people who have not seen them before (a small minority who are very young) or people who laugh out of habit. (a small minority who like the "idea" of Woody Allen the character or Jerry Seinfeld the character.)

The difference is, and I respect him for this, that Seinfeld knew when his time had come and had the grace to bow out before becoming a mediocre caricature of his more successful past.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 11:45 AM

"Without romantic or religious music, the field of vocal music is absurdly narrow."

Yeah, I'll go along with that.

I don't usually have much interest in movie musicals, but there's occasionally one I really like. West Side Story was a good one.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 11:37 AM

Ron... no, no, and no. Your suspicions are, I think, largely unfounded.

The reason most people who dislike Woody Allen do so is plainly obvious. They dislike him because he is (or at least appears to be) a nerdy, whining, annoying little man who goes on and on about himself constantly. He appears to be narcissistic, full of insecurities, but at the same time pretty certain that almost everyone else is less intelligent than he is. These are not endearing qualities! ;-D

Furthermore, he is very far from the sort of physical appearance most people like to see in a man. He's short and extremely nerdy looking in addition to acting like a nerd. Many people probably find him downright repulsive. He's also a smart aleck, much prone to making witty, cutting remarks at the expense of others around him whom he considers less sophisticated than himself. He's intellectually pretentious and snobby. He complains a great deal, and he talks incessantly about his problems.

What's NOT to dislike???? ;-D Most people can't stand whiny, nerdy little men.

People had several decades to dislike Woody Allen for all of the above reasons...before anything was known about his "despicable private life". That just adds a bit more icing to the cake, but he would have been disliked regardless.

I also think that "Annie Hall" and "Play It Again, Sam" were delightful movies, and I think he's a very talented guy who has made some great films...and some not so great.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MAG
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 11:24 AM

ah i once had a very foolish relationship w/ a guy who xriticized my dislike of Woody a la said daughter.

He insisted we rent one, so I picked The Front," which is about the blacklist. (Zero Mostel as a blacklistee is eerie.)

Of course he hated it.

that about sums it up.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 09:46 AM

Antonia Banderas

"has he ever done what you would call a good performance"

He did a wonderful job of portraying Tom Hanks' lover in Philidelphia. But as lovable as Tom Hanks is, is that really acting?

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Actually, he was brilliant as "Puss in Boots" in the Shrek series.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Ron Davies
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 09:41 AM

2 topics:

Woody Allen:    I suspect, though I have no evidence whatsoever, that some of the antipathy for Woody Allen is based on his despicable private life.   Not really a good means to judge a movie.    I certainly haven't seen many of his, but I did think both Annie Hall and especially Play It Again Sam were delightful.

Musicals:    I submit that those who themselves do not love to sing may well not like musicals.   And even find the dismissal of all music in them "witty".    Those of us who sing differ on the point of the music in musicals.   Obviously there are good ones and feeble ones.   Very few since the 60's have been worth much.   But quite a few before the 70's. And I also would assert that the anti-musical sentiment shows profound ignorance.    A whole array of wonderful music comes from musicals, including Old Man River, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, I Got Rhythm, and Embraceable You--just for starters.

Most musicals and the most music from them has to do, as I said earlier, with romance.   If you dismiss romantic songs (lopsidedly unrequited), you are cutting yourself off from a huge source of great music.   Just as you do if, as a strong atheist, you do not like to hear great choral music (overwhelmingly religious) and gospel music.   Both of which, based on his postings, is true for the person who first denigrated the music in musicals.

Without romantic or religious music, the field of vocal music is absurdly narrow. Not the kind of world I'd like to live in.   Perhaps you would.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 04:17 AM

Mamooth
Anything by Woodie Allen

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 01:51 AM

'The Hours'...Terrible!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: meself
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 01:37 AM

Inglorious Basterds. Possibly the worst movie I've ever seen.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 01:34 AM

Woody Allen has to have affaires like that and still be excused, because he's sooooooo sensitive! And he suffers for his art!


I think Antonia Banderas gave a good performance in the film about Pancho Villa.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MAG
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 09:19 PM

Speaking of bad versions of Beowulf, the one with Antonio Banderas sucked. In fact, has he ever done what you would call a good performance?

Woody Allen.

Way before the affair w/ his supposed girlfriend's daughter, there was (?)stardust Memories, in which he has a beautiful crazy girlfriend. Why does he think she is crazy? Because she accuses him of being sexual with a little girl.

And then there was the one where he had an affair with an underage Mariel Hemingway. (Where is SHE these days?)

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Amergin
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 08:27 PM

No...this Beowulf took place in the future...not surprised it's awful. Any movie with Christopher Lambert can't be that good.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 07:42 PM

You mean the one that had Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,skivee, guesting in
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 07:27 PM

Regarding Sir Roger Moore, I wouldn't want him to come to any actually harm, but his Bond was pretty much not good. On the other hand, if we are being honest, NONE of the bonds films were really good. They have only been various versions of eye-candy.
There is a Christopher Lambert film purportedly based on Beowulf that is astoundingly awful. Do Not Watch This Film. If prompted, I will tell you why; but I won't do it on spec.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 04:42 PM

I think Woody Allen has made a few really excellent movies, including some of the funniest movies of all time. Some examples:

Annie Hall
Play It Again, Sam
Broadway Danny Rose
Love and Death
Scenes in a Mall

He's also made some rather drearily self-indulgent films, I think, and there is something quite annoying about him...but paradoxically, he uses the fact that he's annoying to good comic effect in his best films. ;-)

When the gangster in Broadway Danny Rose yells, "Shut up, you little cheese-eater!" at Woody as he's rambling on in his usual frenzied and whiny paranoid fashion...we all know just how that gangster feels! He is ready to blow away the little schmuck just to get him to stop kvetching. And we know how Woody feels too. He's terrified, and he can't shut up, except possibly to avoid imminent death.   ;-D And that's funny.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 04:42 PM

Night of the Living Dead is a fabulous film, questions of era and FX entirely aside.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: PoppaGator
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 04:34 PM

Backtracking a bit, I've been somewhat taken aback by how many folks dislike Woody Allen. I'm not crazy about all his work (in particular, not the films where he tries to be serious), but Broadway Danny Rose is one of my absolute favorites of all time.

There. I said it. Just had to confess.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 12:01 PM

Why don't you just go to imdb.com and look up "Night of the Living Dead", MtheGM....then read Ebert's review of it (under critics' reviews), then read some of the public's reviews of it from people who liked it.

You will find out exactly why a lot of people think it's a great and innovative horror movie. All your questions will be answered! That doesn't mean you'll be satisfied...(Hardly! No one is ever satisfied by opinions that differ from their own.)...but at least you'll know WHY other people think it's a good horror film.

;-)

Do it, man! Go there now and read the reviews. I dare you.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 08:00 AM

Restrepo was boring. I couldn't it finish, that said. It shows you what the Afghanistan conflict looks like.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 07:53 AM

OK then ~M~, we'll put you down as "undecided."

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Jul 11 - 01:13 AM

I am unimpressed by these arguments as to how Night of Living Dead goes *all the way back to 1968!* & how far we have moved on since then. The sort of audience who would have gone to it then would have been well schooled in Cushing/Lee Hammer Horror which goes back to mid-50s, as well as all the 20s silents like Nosferatu with the terrifying Max Schrek, the James Whale et al 30s-40s Karloff & Lugosi Frankensteins & Draculas, from which tradition Hammer Horror had derived with additional colour & a bit more gore ~~ all of which had a frisson of effectiveness quite absent from this piece of 1968 feebleness. How on earth could those reared on all this have been scared *AS LATE AS 1968!* by those crude long-shots of a few distant figures with not-all-that funny faces standing staring in the middle-distance and not seeming to get any closer for an hour or so + a shot or two from odd angles with sudden augmented chords on the soundtrack of hunting trophies on the wall!? I can't see how it could ever have scared anybody ~~ & I always scared easy as a child [even Bob Hope's comedic The Ghost Breakers in 1940 gave me nightmares when I saw it by error as support feature to Tom Brown's Schooldays, and The Picture Of Dorian Gray nearly gave me a nervous breakdown in late-40s], and even later have been a bit sort-of-uneasy at going home to my empty house when Valerie was lecturing abroad, after the original West End production of The Woman In Black, for instance. But Night Living Dead left me simply bored & cold. I honestly can't imagine anyone with any previous experience in the genre being the slightest bit affected by it as late as nearly-1970.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: EBarnacle
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 08:40 PM

This weekend PBS broadcast the 2000 "Hamlet." While the performances were interesting, the casting was unusual and did not quite work with the play. Too many key parts of the play were severely edited or dropped. The soliloquies were chewed to death and greatly abbreviated. Bill Murray, Kenneth Brannagh et al should have been allowed to do what they do so well. They weren't allowed to.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 06:12 PM

By all means. ;-)

I saw about half of the Blair Bitch Project on the TV at a friend's place and then I left. It was giving me a headache. I'd rate it about 1.5 points out of 10.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 04:57 PM

Strangely, I got the idea in my head that he did. I am informing the next person.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MAG
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 04:54 PM

"Blair Witch Project" gave me a splitting headdache. It was way beyond crummy production values; it was bad production on purpose; it was trying to look like a real student project while being much worse than any student project could ever be.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 04:26 PM

Oh? Well, why don't you write him and ask him to, Jack?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 04:05 PM

He does not explain the high rating.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 03:47 PM

By the way, Roger Ebert gives Night of the Living Dead three and a half stars (out of 4), and here's his review explaining why:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19670105/REVIEWS/701050301/1023


And he explains it very well.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 03:41 PM

RE NOTLD....Yup. Exactly.

Regarding Roger Moore...yeah, I think he was adequate for the James Bond role, but just kind of disappointing compared to Sean Connery, that's all.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 03:10 PM

"To see it now, after decades of ever-increasing explicit bloodshed and CGI effects in horror movies is not the same thing as seeing it back then."

The concept an the treatment was what made it great. It tapped into that primal fear of neighbors turning against you. Of the familiar becoming distorted and dangerous. Not to mention the fear of death and graveyards. All those things are cliche now in movies. Zombie movies are nearly a genre for that very reason. But at that time it was fresh.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 02:59 PM

In defense of Roger Moore. It was the time of Star Wars and Jaws. Special Effects and larger than life stories were the order of the day.

Moore was there to deliver the lines, look good in a tux, to be picked up by "Jaws" and to show off the gadgets. He did a perfectly adequate job.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 02:58 PM

Night of the Living Dead was a shockingly effective and chilling horror movie at the time it was released...for a number of reasons.

To see it now, after decades of ever-increasing explicit bloodshed and CGI effects in horror movies is not the same thing as seeing it back then. It can't have the kind of impact now that it did then, because modern audiences have become extremely jaded.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 02:41 PM

~M~

I do not like either movie. But I can see why others would. Because they enjoy being scared. A lot of people were scared by those movies and they were both ground breaking in their genres.

I would call them movies to avoid if you are not into being scared or if you are turned off by low production values.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 02:24 PM

Re: Bonds ~~ my first wife always declared that nobody else was allowed to play him but Sean Connery. When I asked her whether nobody was allowed to play Hamlet after Burbage {or, anyway, Garrick}, she would become evasive.

For certain complicated reasons not worth going into, we had to get and watch a DVD of Night Of The Living Dead ~~ not the sort of film I would normally watch; I could hardly believe how dire it was. Yet it "was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" - wiki, has been colourised, several times remade, a prequel is in the pipeline, and it appears that not one but two remakes are in the offing. wotthehell, archie!

The only other as disappointing and inept was The Blair Witch Project: what the blazes was all the fuss about that one about?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 02:13 PM

I didn't really enjoy "Hurt Locker" either. But it is very well made, well acted and very very tightly written with a suspenseful plot and character development. I think many of the Academy voters think that Best Pictures are like Cod Liver Oil. The bad taste left in your mouth means it must be good for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 02:04 PM

It lost to "The Hurt Locker" which had a script more conducive to displaying the actors' abilities and was socially relevant in a more obvious way.

It is important to note however that being produced after 1991, neither movie had either plot or character development.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Amergin
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 02:02 PM

I wasn't that impressed with The Hurt Locker. It's about a guy whose a bomb disposal expert in Iraq, who takes risks, endangering his mates. I apparently saw it twice, and the first time I forgot I ever watched it, until I watched it again. Apparently, not that memorable of a film.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 02:00 PM

My God!!!

If you don't like catty remarks don't make them yourself.

I say that I don't like a movie because it does not have a plot and your response is basically that you have no respect for movies and no movies since 1991 have had plots. You dismissed my reasoning with a trite condescending stereotype about Hollywood and that is your idea of "lightening things up?"

If that is your idea of humor. I respectfully disagree. But you don't have to leave the whole website over one silly thread. If you can do that, there isn't much keeping you here in the first place. By the way, don't think that you have hurt or disturbed me in any way threatening to leave. I could not care less whether you go or stay. And again, if you don't want catty, don't be catty.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 01:46 PM

Even Transformers 3 seems like another DARPA creation to glorify the DOD which keeps secrets from the President.

While I agree with LH in most things except Chimps, I think Avatar did win many awards. Best Picture went to what? I don't remember. But saying Avatar 'lost' due to the military Industrial Congressional Complex, is one cospiracy theory too far.

Avatar did give the best sensation of flight, while sitting motionless, in my life. I also felt the message of the film was presented in a sledge hammer manner every 2 minutes. I only wish that Native American Indians could have gained more respect and understanding as a result of the film. It seemed like a missed momment.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Stu
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 01:32 PM

"Ah so this was meant seriously? OK, we'll play that game. I respectfully disagree sir. Virtually all Hollywood movies have a plot and character development. But you are entitled to your obviously well reasoned and considered opinion. I do not feel as though your remarks were at all snide, trite or condescendingly dismissive."

no it was meant light-heartedly and in the spirit of the discussion. Really. Genuinely. But like so many discussions on this board these days, it's gone sour. So here we are. After about a decade of being a daily visitor, I've had enough. I just can't stand these catty remarks and all-too frequent misunderstandings. Now there's nothing more than a complete lack of respect for other's opinions, way too frequent transatlantic misunderstandings that never happen in person and too many people picking a fight. I have been guilty of this occasionally, but in past years I've walked away and I'm doing so now. Life is too short.

Iechyd da.

SFJ

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 12:58 PM

I agree that the script isn't very good in Avatar. There are some really crummy, hackneyed lines in the dialogue. The movie was so strong in other areas, however, that it managed to become a great movie regardless of the primitive script (in my opinion).

Keep in mind that I have never seen Ferngully. ;-)

Jack - Why on Earth would anyone even start watching a movie called "Kickass"??? You must be a glutton for punishment! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 12:55 PM

Watching Avatar for the script is like watching Casablanca and complaining about the special effects.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 12:48 PM

HITMAN is a good choice for movies to avoid. I tried to watch it twice on HBO in hotel rooms. On second thought, don't avoid, use it as a sleep aid.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 12:45 PM

I watched Avatar in 1D. That's when you close your eyes and listen to how bad the script is.

Previous joke stolen from Jon Holmes.

I started to watch Watchman but didn't finish it. Also, DO NOT WATCH HITMAN. Play the game if you want to know about 47, but the film is "Look, secret assassin who's famous for getting in and out without anyone knowing. Let's give him 20 automatic rifles and a cop squad chasing him. Oh, and let's just throw some breasts around".

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 12:39 PM

>>"As I said, no plot, no character development."

I dunno Jack - that's every film to come out of a major studio for the last 20 years. "<<

Ah so this was meant seriously? OK, we'll play that game. I respectfully disagree sir. Virtually all Hollywood movies have a plot and character development. But you are entitled to your obviously well reasoned and considered opinion. I do not feel as though your remarks were at all snide, trite or condescendingly dismissive.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 12:29 PM

Kickass,

Probably the most obscenely violent movie I have ever seen.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Stu
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 12:00 PM

Sigh.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 10:50 AM

Ha ha, Sugarfoot Jack you are so funny and witty!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Stu
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 09:58 AM

"As I said, no plot, no character development."

I dunno Jack - that's every film to come out of a major studio for the last 20 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,DOnMeixner
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 08:00 AM

Jack, I had heard that Flemming's idea of how Bond should look was Hoagy Carmichael. No joke.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 07:47 AM

>>OK, this might sound a tad pretentious, butI thought the way the film was structured reflected the nature of the poem, and the way the beats used to write their prose and poetry. In the conventional sense it didn't have a plot (not a bad thing, most modern films' plots are glaringly obvious) that was a hook; the plot was the poem, which ran alongside the plot involving the court case, played out in the courtroom. The two then evolved in parallel, with the conclusions to both being resolved together.<<

As I said, no plot, no character development.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 07:05 AM

I just read (a couple of days ago) that Flemming based Bond on a Romanian.

Was he supposed to be exclusively English. Aren't there plenty of Scots "in Her Magisty's Secret Service?"

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Stu
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 06:37 AM

"What was the plot? Where was the character development? Was was good about it? Specifically?"

OK, this might sound a tad pretentious, butI thought the way the film was structured reflected the nature of the poem, and the way the beats used to write their prose and poetry. In the conventional sense it didn't have a plot (not a bad thing, most modern films' plots are glaringly obvious) that was a hook; the plot was the poem, which ran alongside the plot involving the court case, played out in the courtroom. The two then evolved in parallel, with the conclusions to both being resolved together.

I loved the animation, but that is of course subjective. I thought it worked well as a device to illustrate the poem, although I never felt it imposed this interpretation on the viewer, which is just as well. I loved the scenes where he's reading the poem in the club in Greenwich Village which gave a sense of how exciting it must have been to be there at the time. I loved the interaction with the other beats. I loved the film.

LH - You know, you're right. I typed Sean Connery first, then decided George Lazenby wasn't a bad Bond and I quite enjoyed Moonraker at the time . . . however on reflection I agree that Roger Moore was pretty awful. I also love the idea that the best incarnation of the quintessential English hero was at his best when played by a Scot.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 28 Jul 11 - 06:09 AM

Anything with an 'all star cast' because in theory it should be good but not usually the case.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 05:30 PM

I can recall one romantic comedy that was good. "Mermaids". It had Cher and Winona Ryder in it, don't remember the names of the male leads.

And another with Cher that was good too: "Moonstruck"

To put it briefly: Cher is one hell of a good actress.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 05:15 PM

"All Rom Coms"

Yes, Yes, YES!!!
..to paraphrase one such pile of wearyingly unfunny bilge.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: michaelr
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 05:03 PM

"You will meet a tall dark Stranger". One of Woody Allen's worst.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 04:21 PM

"I loved Howl, thought it was superb."

What was the plot? Where was the character development? Was was good about it? Specifically?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 04:06 PM

You like Roger Moore as James Bond??????????????????????

GAAAAHHHH! When I see that effete Ivy League clothes horse playing James Bond, I think to myself, "Why isn't he modeling men's clothing on the runway in Milan or entertaining the Ulster Ladies Guild by doing a Tom Jones style routine or serving as a headwaiter in some haught cuisine establishment in London or Paris?"

Sean Connery was the classic James Bond. You could believe he was a truly dangerous man. Of all the succeeding actors who played the role, the only one who has come up to Connery's level, in my opinion, is Daniel Craig in the most recent series of films.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Stu
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 03:54 PM

I loved Howl, thought it was superb. I disagree with almost every point Jack (ducks).

However, I can't abide:

Any John Wayne film

2012

Hollywood remakes of great films (i.e. Let the Right One In)

Any James Bond post Roger Moore

Modern Disney (but deffo not Pixar)

Most comedies (waiting for the Arrested Development film though)

All Rom Coms

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 03:37 PM

Wow! Great description. ;-) You should go into movie reviewing, Jack. Devastating reviews of lousy movies make great entertainment for the reader.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 01:50 PM

What was not to like in "Howl"?

I guess it is a matter of taste.

I like story, structure, well written lines and credible acting. Those qualities were totally lacking.

Also the subject matter was boring and Franco played an asshole; an extremely self-indulgent, rude and unlikeable character. The photography was ugly and the animation crude and childish. There was no real dialog or character development at all and the courtroom scenes were like watching paint dry.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 12:57 PM

Well, yes, I've heard that, DMcG, it's exactly what a friend of mine says.

But....I have not seen "Ferngully". ;-) Therefore I attended Avatar in complete innocence of the fact that Ferngully previously did the same basic story better and I thereby enjoyed Avatar immensely, and wasn't disappointed by the comparison.

******

On the big screen it is a simply marvelous movie with breathtakingly beautiful scenes, moreso than any other film I've ever seen.

One thing I would say about the screenplay of Avatar...they definitely could have gone into more intellectual depth and greater complexity of character profiles, etc. For instance, the Marine commander was portrayed as an utterly one-sided and really hateful individual. It would have been far more effective to show him as a flawed man with some good qualities, but caught up in serving a system. That would have been more tragic, and it would have given the story more depth.

In the forest battle it would have made far more sense for the natives to employ guerilla tactics of "hide and snipe" amongst the big trees, rather than mounting a mass charge against heavy weaponry and getting mown down. Seems to me that the Na'avi would have had the smarts to figure that out pretty fast, and using such guerilla tactics they could have pretty easily defeated those Marines on the ground and lost few people in the process.

But the mass charge made for more exciting viewing, right? ;-) And it allowed the spirit of the planet to send the animals in to save the day...another spectacular scene...so Cameron did it that way to make a more marketable movie.

As for the battle in the sky, that was handled in about the only way it could have been under the circumstances. Stealth was used initially, but once the fighting began it had to be in the open.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: DMcG
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 04:49 AM

Sorry, LH, but the kid's film 'Ferngully' said everything 'Avatar' did and IMO with rather more intellectual depth. Of course, I might be mildly biased as I have only seen it on a ten inch screen

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MAG
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 04:20 AM

What was not to like in "Howl"?

"The Limey" had a complicated time line which added to the intrigue. The Limey came to find out had happened to his daughter, and that couldn't have been clearer. The comic scene with his dialect was a scream.

Anymore I watch a lot of good documentaries. missed the Werner Herzog thing about the cave paintings, and will miss the one on the terrorist save-the-earth one, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: EBarnacle
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 03:45 AM

I don't consider making people who are paid [or not] to participate in his movies look childish satire. It is simply abusive.

He could use his presence to be a great actor. Having met him, I say he is a jerk.

Of course, I say the same about Streisand. I was present as a "civilian" when they were shooting Funny Girl. She was acting like a spoiled brat, abusing those around her. Granted, she turned out a great performance. I still do not like her as a person.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 02:25 AM

He rattles people in areas that they are very hung up about or in areas where they are simply unconscious of their own stupidity/prejudice/fears/bigotry/pretensions/etc. I think there is some value in that sort of satire. People's dirty laundry gets exposed by him, and that's why they don't like him, but anyone who is capable of laughing heartily at their own foibles and weaknesses shouldn't have much trouble with Sacha Baron Cohen, in my opinion. All you have to do with a guy like that is not lose your temper.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: EBarnacle
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 02:18 AM

There is no question that Baron Cohen has presence. The fact that he uses it to abuse people is what makes him objectionable.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 01:16 AM

My "mispelling" of America as "Amerika" was a deliberately altered spelling of the word, Don, in order to make a political point about the USA's present role on the world stage. I don't think I need to explain that further, do I?

Yes, I think that the fix was most likely in at the Academy to award "Hurt Locker" the prize instead of Avatar...and for political reasons of keeping up wartime morale and not questioning the basic ethos of America during a war...but I do not think for a moment that the iniative to do that came from Mr Obama. I think it came from other sources. There are a variety of sources who could have exerted pressure of one kind or another. It wouldn't be the first time that politics has been played at the Academy Awards.

However, I don't know that for sure. I merely think so. I think it's probable. That's an opinion about probability, not a statement of total certainty. It's my opinion that a number of powerful people with much influence on the Academy felt that Avatar was essentially very subversive in its values, very anti-war, and very anti-establishment, therefore it suited them that it should not win Best Picture at that time when the USA was occupying 2 foreign nations, but that Hurt Locker should instead in order to boost fighting spirit and "patriotism", and they pulled strings.

It may have happened. I'm not saying I KNOW that it happened, I just think it probably did, that's all.

As you say, there are times when a cigar is just a cigar. Sure. And this might have been one of those times, I just think it probably wasn't. Avatar was such an extraordinary movie that to not give it Best Picture that year strikes me as ridiculous.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 27 Jul 11 - 12:27 AM

Always fun to read these lists and see what I enjoyed that others hate and the other way around. For instance I think Taken is a perfect movie. I tells the story without a lot of secondary crap to get in the way.

I look at Sacha Baron Cohen and Woody Allen and wonder why?

I go to the movies to be entertained and I am easily entertained.

Re Avatar ( A wonderfully entertaining film. )

"Guess why it didn't win best picture that year? Because it was a direct philosophical repudiation of our entire present military-industrial aggressor civilization, that's why, and they couldn't let THAT message win "Best Picture" in imperial Amerika. No sir. They had foreign wars to fight, so they gave Best Picture to a film about an American bomb disposal expert in the "War on Terror". Just what Dr Goebbels would have done, I expect. Fascists don't like ideas such as were presented in Avatar. Those ideas are a complete rejection of all that Fascists stand for...and the Fascists lost out in Avatar. For once!"

Hurt Locker may have won because the fix was in but I doubt it won because the Government said it had to. Saint Barak the Chosen would surely have trumped the Loons on the right.

Not everything is political. I noticed that America was misspelled in the quote. Funny how we get reamed if we say we live in America instead of The United States and yet we live in Amerika if it makes a silly point. Remember what Sigmund said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

The best movie I have seen in years was Serenity, the worst was Tess.

D

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 11:21 PM

>>"I love music too much..." to like musicals.

Translation: "I have narrow tastes. Particularly don't like anything romantic--which most musicals are. Also I consider myself above corny humor.   I prefer bitter satire which reflects my nihilistic world view."<<

I would translate it as "here is a witty way to say that the music in music generally is not to my taste."

I happen to agree with the sentiment and found it witty.

I generally love Dame Elton's music, but the song in "the Lion King" make me a little queasy.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Ron Davies
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 10:45 PM

"I love music too much..." to like musicals.

Translation: "I have narrow tastes. Particularly don't like anything romantic--which most musicals are. Also I consider myself above corny humor.   I prefer bitter satire which reflects my nihilistic world view."

Look, it's--obviously--de gustibus.    Some of us have wide-ranging tastes--which include musicals.   And some musicals even have somewhat sophisticated humor.

It was just a slight tipoff when the poster said he liked virtually no musicals onstage either.

If this is wrong, he can tell us a few romantic comedies he likes-- in any form.

It's also likely the poster is not a singer.   Good singers tend to enjoy musicals--especially those from the "Golden Age of musicals"---which of course is now over.   One reason we like them is that the songs are often so much fun to sing.


But "I love music too much" won't wash.

Now the real question is does the poster just enjoy being an agent provocateur.   Of course not. Perish the thought.

I wonder how that would fit in "Gigi":    "I enjoy being an agent provocateur."

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 04:30 PM

I don't mind Meryl Streep, Shimrod...but I don't think I want to see her in a musical. ;-)

Sacha Baron Cohen I find hard to evaluate. He varies from tasteless to excruciatingly funny. I can't sort it out, but he can be very amusing and wickely satirical at times. I loved some of the scenes in the recent "Bruno", but the general public seems to have been a little too uncomfortable with what he was showing them to really go for that movie. He rattled their cages most effectively. That is something I can appreciate about his work. He's good at exposing hypocrisy and stupidity where it calmly dwells in everyday stuff that most people take for granted.

As for "Taken", yeah, that was crap all right. But the fact that Liam Neeson was the protagonist made it watchable. The man really has presence. He was way too good for that movie.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:57 PM

Little Hawk asked:

Was "Sweeney Todd" a musical? I liked it. Generally I can't stand them.

Sweeney Todd, as a STAGE

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: EBarnacle
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:45 PM

One of the things Lady Hillary and I do is work as background in various movie productions. Based on what we have seen so far, we strongly recommend the coming [note I did not write upcoming] movie by Sascha Baron Cohen. In it he manages to make people act stupidly again. That was the only scene we were part of but I suspect the remainder of the film will be just as bad, just as his other "works" are.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:39 PM

'Saw' in 3D. We had to run out after 3 mins, shook all the way home. Horrible!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: PoppaGator
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:32 PM

I disliked all musicals from earliest childhood until well into my 30s, for the same all-too-familiar reasons that everyone else mentions. My wife, with whom I have always agreed about most other sibjects, was always a big fan, and eventually I came to understand her point of view. I now can enjoy all the best-remembered musical classics (Fred-and-Ginger, anything with Gene Kelly, Gigi, etc., etc.); the bonus is that, to me, many of these older films are completely NEW, since I avoided them like the plague throughout the first half of my life...

Then, there are the more recent rock-era musical films. I enjoy all those late-50s-early-60s "exploitation" films like "Rock Around the Clock," "The Girl Can't Help It," even "Hootenanny Hoot"... And who will say a bad word about "Hard Day's Night"? Or even the not-quite-so-wonderful "Help"?

One of my very favorite recent-ish musical films is "That Thing You Do," the story of a "one-hit wonder" band, set in the mid-60s. Tom Hanks produced the film, appears in a supporting role, and has a number of songwriting credits for the score. And it's the songwriting that is so impressive in this film; the cental characters get to go on one of those all-star bus tours with a number of other acts signed with the same record company, and they all perform ~ we hear original songs that sound just like real hits in a wide variety of pop/rock subgenres: there's a soulful girl-group, an aging solo girl singer, a lounge-singer Bobby Darin type, and then of course our heroes, who have accidentally stumbled upon a "Beatlesque" sound. There's even a subplot that involves some nice mellow West Coast jazz.

Get the long version, or "director's cut," or whatever they call it. I saw it in the theater, and again when it first came out on cable TV. A year or two later, flipping through channels, I caught it about a half-hour in and suddenly saw scenes I had never witnessed before. A new version, about 20-25 minutes longer, had been released on DVD and to the cable stations. Some of the added-back-in material is story/exposition, but a lot of it is simply more music. Well worth it to seek out the improved longer version if you're motivated to watch this for the first time.

And oh yeah, one more thing: this is NOT one of those musicals where people inexplicably burst into song in the midst of conversation (which is a common criticism of "musical-comedy" plays and films). The film is about performing musicians, and ALL the songs are shown to us in the context of performance or rehearsal ~ in other words, "realistic."

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 02:49 PM

Everything with Charlton Heston in it.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 08:35 AM

I loved Garp when it first played. But I suspect that, like most Irving works, it will not have aged well.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 08:25 AM

Donnie Darko the Director's Cut - totally destroys the magic of Donnie Darko
The World According to Garp - what an appallingly smug little pain in the arse of a film

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 07:10 AM

Avatar in IMAX in 3D, was by far the best cinematic experience I have ever had. The colors, effects and graphics were great. It had elements stolen from a lot of other movies. But they were all James Cameron movies! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 07:00 AM

Anything that announces it is in 3D which really means in cinemaspeak is that it has no decent script and the acting is average, one of the reasons why I am not in too much of a hurry to see Harry Potter. Most of the teen flicks. The original Wicker Man is overated I think, it was made late 60s early 70s? So it can be excused for not having too many effects but the acting was pretty wooden although the gyrating dance by Brit Eckland is worth looking at for a laugh.

Movies that I really have to avoid not because they are particularly bad is anything that has an animal being hurt. I just can't watch and off it goes, I just can't.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 06:37 AM

As a fan of most of the fantasy genre I can put up with most things but 'Ator the Fighting Eagle' takes some beating in the B movie stakes!

I also like superhero films as a sub-genre of the above and round about the worst ever must be Catwoman with Halle Berry.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Max Johnson
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 05:38 AM

'Taken'. Because it's crap.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 04:31 AM

OKlahoma, West Side Story, Music Man, Sound of Music, just for starters.

Thing is, I love MUSIC too much to have any sympathy for MUSICALS at all. Childhood? Yeah, my mother was very hung up on WSS for reasons that were very personal to her (so at least I got the reference to Officer Krupke in Curb Your Enthusiasm) but she went about it with quiet dignity and never enforced it. Like I say, The Wicker Man is an exception because the musical sequences are an integral part of the fascistic volkish subversions being portrayed. And it didn't start life as a STAGE SHOW - which is another genre that fills me with dread dark fear. Other exceptions include The Four Marx Brothers films - such as The Cocoanuts which a) is a musical (at a stretch, though it does contain the Monkey-Doodle-Doo sequence which is the perfect expression of 20s exotic modernism) and b) was orginally a stage show. However, in this life there MUST be exceptions, and (despite the occasional flash of comedic genius) we'll never see the likes of The Marx Brothers again. Still, one wonders how they would have fared in the TV age (and I don't count Deputy Seraph) rather than the Vaudeville era which honed the comedic genius that translated so readily to celluloid.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 03:56 AM

Right, LH, you've asked for it! MERYL STREEP!! Ha! Serves you right, that's all I can say ...

Anyway I recently watched a truly, truly awful film from about 20 years ago. It was called 'The Limey' and starred (I think)Terence Stamp. It was about an English gangster who goes to America ... for some reason which escapes me. In one scene he gets beaten up by some American gangsters, who after giving him a thorough pounding, throw him out into the street. THEN, and only then, do we discover that he's carrying a gun (which the American gangsters have failed to notice) and he goes back into the establishment from which he's been ejected and shoots his assailants!

In another scene some criminal or other has a house on top of a hill and there is a road spiralling round the hill to the bottom. TS shoots someone in the house and then is involved in a car chase and shootout down the spiral road. In the meantime the house owner calls the cops who drive up the spiral road and FAIL TO NOTICE the shootout happening half way up!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Janie
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 12:19 AM

The Original or the remake of True Grit.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 12:09 AM

I absolutely loved Avatar...and NOT because of the 3D which was utterly inconsequential to me. The first theatre I saw it in didn't have the 3D feature, and the movie looked better without it. I later saw it in a bigger place with the 3D. Still wonderful, but not as good as without the 3D, because the colors look quite a bit better with no 3D.

I've rarely seen any movie in my life that I liked better than Avatar, because it presented a visually gorgeous world, a marvelously beautiful alien race, a marvelously worthy philosophy of life held by that race, and it showed for all the world what our own evil empire is really up to every day, everywhere it goes, exploiting natural resources, regimenting and enslaving people to serve it mindlessly, and creating ugliness and waste and death and pollution wherever its big giant technological foot lands. the evil empire being the big military-industrial machine that our taxes pay for every day of our lives.

That movie had many good and powerful messages in it, messages that humanity ought to heed before this planet is totally trashed. The Na'avi as shown in the film were our far better selves, the real gems of humanity that lie mostly hidden in people, the highest potential in all of us, and there's almost nothing in the corrupt society we presently live in to encourage our better selves to come forth...except whatever wisdom we can find in in the inner silence of our own hearts.

Nope, I wasn't in a temporary state of insanity when I loved that movie, Number 6. It's our military-industrial society that is in a temporary...or a permanent state of insanity, and it's criminally insane. The Na'avi were everything we could be, should be, and CAN be...if we just had the courage and the vision to do it.

Guess why it didn't win best picture that year? Because it was a direct philosophical repudiation of our entire present military-industrial aggressor civilization, that's why, and they couldn't let THAT message win "Best Picture" in imperial Amerika. No sir. They had foreign wars to fight, so they gave Best Picture to a film about an American bomb disposal expert in the "War on Terror". Just what Dr Goebbels would have done, I expect. Fascists don't like ideas such as were presented in Avatar. Those ideas are a complete rejection of all that Fascists stand for...and the Fascists lost out in Avatar. For once!

Thank you, James Cameron.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:47 PM

Battle of Los Angeles

IT comes straight out of the DOD.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:46 PM

Avatar ..... remember that one? At the time it was declared by audiences everywhere as the greatest movie ever made ..... I truly believe most people who agreed with that declaration were in a temporary state of insanity induced it's primitive technical effects of 3-D .... yeah 3-D, whatever happened that moronic idea .... seems to me it makes it's rounds in Hollywood about every 50 years or so.

3-D ..... House on Haunted Hill(1959) ..... Avatar (2009) .... go get your special 3-D glasses kids and a bucket of popcorn.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Skivee
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 09:08 PM

I sorta like Julia Roberts. I know opinions vary. That being said, "Eat, Pray, Love" had me praying for death by the 158th hour. The scripts was written by someone who may have had the original book described to them...badly.
We turned the movie off before the ending. My friend read a couple of excerpts from the book, later. All the clever and interesting had been wrung out of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Amergin
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 07:40 PM

Human Centipede...boring, shockingly boring, and pointless....I only watched it because of South Park.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: ranger1
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 06:19 PM

Valhalla Rising. It couldn't make up its mind as to what kind of a movie it wanted to be - ultra-violent gorefest one second, attempted art house film the next. There's a lot more, but then I'd have to dredge up memories of it, which is more effort than this film was worth.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: saulgoldie
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 06:13 PM

"Musicals - Every Single One of Them (Apart from The Wicker Man) - The cinematographic genre from hell."

Sorry, Suibhne. With all due respect, you are wrong, wrong, wrong, and quintuple WRONG, here! Too many excellent musicals to list. (OKlahoma, West Side Story, Music Man, Sound of Music, just for starters. C'mon!) But there are many that are well worth the watching. Perhaps you were forced when young to watch a bad musical on your birthday when you really wanted a party with a pirate clown???

Saul

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 05:51 PM

Heh! Heh! Heh! (eeevil cackling laughter)

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 05:48 PM

"How about a romantic comedy starring Robin Williams, Julia Roberts AND Barbra Streisand? ...with cameo appearances by Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro AND Whoopi Goldberg!"

NOOOOOOO!!!!! The horror! The horror!!

LH, how could you be so cruel? Not Barbara Streisand!! Oh please, NOOOOOOO!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 05:38 PM

Was "Sweeney Todd" a musical? I liked it. Generally I can't stand them.

I too usually find Andie McDowell hard to take for some reason...but I liked her in Groundhog Day and in Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan.

I've never seen The Full Monty or Matrix Revolutions or The Passion of the Christ...or 4 Weddings and a Funeral.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 05:18 PM

Off the top of my head....

Apocalypse Now (Redux) - the worst movie in the world; Apocalypse Now being the best!

Herzog's Nosferatu - Sub-Hammer schlock made worse by the lovely opening sequence.

Witchfinder General - the other Folk Horrow film, watched it a month back on holiday in darkest Herefordshire thinking it couldn't be as bad as I remembered it. It was. Worse. Much worse.

Brassed Off - We have a great tradition of home-grown films (Shane Meadows etc.) of which this is a pale and paltry parody.

Full Monty - Ditto.

Four Weddings and a Funeral - Or Four Funerals and a Cemetery as an old mate once called it. It's not that I hate Andie MacDowell (okay, I hate The Smile, but her performance in Groundhog Day is actually quite enjoyable) but in this smugfest even the excellent Charlotte Coleman gets swamped by the excessive goo.   

The Passion of the Christ - the worst story ever told? Quite possibly. Stick with the Last Temptation.

The Life of Brian - I saw it the week it came out and I've been trying to like it ever since; all the more iksome as I'm a huge Python fan & Holy Grail is among my all time favourites.

The Matrix Revolutions - What went wrong?

AVP Requiem - So bad it's actually a work of pure genius; I've got the special edition on DVD.

It's A Wonderful Life - No. It's a very overrated film. Loved my millions, hated by one.

Musicals - Every Single One of Them (Apart from The Wicker Man) - The cinematographic genre from hell.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:53 PM

"The Green Berets" with John Wayne.
"Barbarella" with Jane Fonda.
Anything with Woody Allen.
Almost all porn films.
Anything labeled an "Art Film."
Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet".

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:52 PM

EXCEPT this Jim Carrey film, goatfell: "Man In The Moon"

I recommend it most highly. If you don't like it, you deserve to be cast into the 7 pits of hell, dismembered, and gnawed upon by famished shrews! ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:50 PM

"Songcatcher" is a beautiful motion picture compared to box-office smash "Kick Ass."

Doubt me at your own risk.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: goatfell
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:13 PM

any film with Jim Carrey

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:09 PM

How about a romantic comedy starring Robin Williams, Julia Roberts AND Barbra Streisand? ...with cameo appearances by Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro AND Whoopi Goldberg!

And what about some more Woody Allen films about existential despair and 21st century malaise and hypocrisy in Manhattan? Anyone dying to see one of those?

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:00 PM

Any film with either Robin Williams or Julia Roberts in it should be avoided like the plague!

Also any 'rom com' films involving 'big name' Hollywood stars - i.e. Robin Williams (natch!), Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro, Whoopi Goldberg etc., etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 02:00 PM

Most of them, sadly.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:39 PM

I enjoyed song catcher. It was not a great story but the music an photography were good.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:34 PM

You're probably right, Jack. ;-) Fortunately, I have avoided the aforementioned toxic sludge entirely, this due only to the fortunate purchase of a Ktel Toxic Sludge Detector that I acquired many years ago. It is designed to enable one to track down and home in on rare Ktel albums in bargain bins, but I use it instead to warn me away from REALLY bad movies. It makes a sort of Godzilla screech sound when nearing any commercial outlet where such a movie is playing...and the screech intensifies with proximity to the point of sale.

I somehow missed Song Catcher too. But it hasn't played anywhere around here...for some reason....

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:28 PM

Oh dear. I hate to admit it but I loved Independence Day and Armageddon. Disaster movies are like candy to me. Can't get enough of them.
Of course, if you are looking for award winning acting...stay away from the falling buildings.


Recently saw Song Catcher and seriously considered suicide about half way through it. My god what a mess.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:27 PM

ANY movie directed by the idiot who directed Independence Day, Armageddon, and several other blockbuster films of the past decade or so.

His films are vapid but...
Nothing he did was anywhere near as bad as the toxic sludge mentioned in my first posts.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:22 PM

ANY movie directed by the idiot who directed Independence Day, Armageddon, and several other blockbuster films of the past decade or so. His most recent abomination in CGI overkill and vacant plot and terrible acting was "2012", soon to be invalidated, I trust, by the arrival of the actual year. No matter what happens, I doubt it will be half as bad as the movie. ;-)

I haven't seen those comedies about a family called "the Fokkers". I'm guessing I haven't missed much, right?

Regarding the Rocky films...the first one was darned good. The others declined gradually, getting worse and worse as they went, but I'd say that the very last one actually was a bit of an improvement over the 2 that preceded it.

I saw a joke poster once of the movie "Rocky XXIII". He was about 110 years old, emaciated and whitehaired, in a wheelchair, wearing boxing gloves and shorts, and still tryin' to "go the distance".

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:19 PM

The Tamarind Tree. It stars two of my betes noir, Omar and Julie.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:14 PM

Perhaps it would.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 12:07 PM

Having this list is fine...I've seen none of them...some I've not even heard of. But better yet would be a brief reason why your choices should be avoided.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:43 AM

Toy Story 3 was excellent.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:40 AM

Poster appears to be Donuel

---

Cars 2. It is not even close to other Pixar movies.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:07 AM

The one with Will Smith?

Yeah!

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 11:01 AM

HAPPINESS ~~ award after award and the most obnoxious film EVER...

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Amergin
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 10:59 AM

Voyage of the Dawn Treader...it really pissed me off how they ruined a great story.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 10:56 AM

Any Jaws but the original.
Any Rocky but the first.

Subject: RE: BS: Movies to avoid
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 10:51 AM

Jaws 3, I watched it last night specifically intending for it to send me to sleep. It worked a charm.

Subject: BS: Movies to avoid
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 10:37 AM

"Howl"
with James Franco

Worlds Greatest Dad
with Robin Williams