BS: Movies to avoid

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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 - 07:42 PM

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

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: 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: 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: 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: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 01:51 AM

'The Hours'...Terrible!

GfS

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.