I was talking about the parody of Bergman that was Madeline Kahn’s first film that was linked to the YouTube copy of it in burpo_the_wonder_mutt’s post (post #7314 on this thread). The film was called De Düva: The Dove. It’s a 15-minute film from 1968
You don’t have to. The YouTube video was already posted by @burpo_the_wonder_mutt in post 7314.
I just watched Polite Society. It’s about two Pakistani sisters. One’s about to get married and her younger sister doesn’t want it to happen. Pretty standard comedy-except that the younger sister wants to be a stuntwoman, practices martial arts and loves a good kung-fu movie.
I really liked it and everyone did great work. In particular the stunt work. The music was great too!
I tried to watch The Cosmic Man (1939). What a turd. The only good thing about it was it cleared up what was a mystery to me: what movie had I seen a half century ago that had an orb suspended 10 feet off the ground which was unmovable by the idiots that inhabited this flick. It’s sort of a “wise alien comes to Earth to show us the error of using atomic weaponry”, or something like that. It truly is dreadful.
I tried to re-watch CHARADE last night, as a means to figuring out how to express the spoiler in tetrameter (see my “Spoilers” thread for more details) and found it unbelievably silly and incoherent. The Audrey Hepburn character, in particular, seemed to have no motivation–she vacillated between being timorous and repulsed by men and being reckless-brave and a nymphomaniac, seemingly at random. This is one of those films (I saw it when it first came out in 1964) that I blame for messing me up, giving me the misguided idea that women want desperately to be married–her chasing after Cary Grant, who consistently lies to her and scares her and expresses no interest in her, is practically pathological.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023). In the original Dracula story, the vampire was transported in his coffin from Romania to London by ship. That ship was the Demeter. In this retelling of that chapter, Dracula is far more grotesque and violent than the urbane Count portrayed by Christopher Lee in the Hammer film franchise. Dracula here is much closer to the extremely creepy creature in the classic 1922 silent film Nosferatu from F.W. Murnau, and that is fully intentional, according to the film’s own credits.
The high production values are immediately apparent, as are the special effects and excellent cinematography. The care that went into the technical production is reflected by the fact that this film has one of the longest end credits I’ve ever seen! All of which is rather undermined by a thin plot line that is both insubstantial and slow at times, though there’s no lack of gore once Dracula gets his teeth into it, so to speak.
Recommended for fans of gothic horror and Dracula-themed movies, but be forewarned that creatively it’s a superficial story albeit with excellent technical qualities. It also violates a couple of traditional movie taboos – dogs and little kids aren’t supposed to get killed.
After this, I think I’m due for a re-watch of Dracula: Dead, and Loving It (1995) with Leslie Neilsen – another work of genius from Mel Brooks!
Dracula, as Renfield tumbles to the ground from an upper-story window:
Renfield, you idiot. I fly. You don’t.
Is the ending different than the novel?
And did they actually film it in water? You can usually tell.
No, Dracula eventually arrives in England. There’s even an end scene alluding to his purchase of the Carfax castle. So it’s consistent with the original story.
Yes, as I said, the production quality was excellent.
I watched Seven Days in May yesterday. It was really good! A thriller without chase scenes or shootouts (not that there’s anything wrong with those in the right movie).
I thought it a bit convenient that the public turned against the treaty so decisively after the Senate, a body of politicians who presumably want to be re-elected, ratified it but I chalked that up to the media campaign behind Gen. Scott.
Uncharitable thought once I read the IMDB entry with the cast list: Ava Gardner didn’t age so well.
I thought it odd that nobody addressed that
Summary
the Spanish plane crash was clearly intentional. If it wasn’t, the coup plotters had God Himself on their side, and that clearly wasn’t the moviemakers’ intent.
No mention when the President confronted Gen. Scott that his
Summary
military plotters destroyed a likely-foreign airliner full of mostly citizens of other nations over foreign territory, arguably an act of war among other bad things, just to kill one man to suppress one piece of paper.
Even the TV Tropes entry for the movie treats
Summary
the air crash
as suspicious at worst rather than
Summary
obvious mass murder
.
I just spent the morning watching RRR on Netflix. That was a great watch. I wasn’t expecting any of that. Really good fun.
I saw that with Ingmar Berman’s Shame. I remember me and my friend being the first people in the theater to realize that they were speaking English not Swedish.
I loved the novella this was based on (The Djinn and the Nightengale’s Eye). I’ll have to look for it now, knowing that’s the source.
Gran Turismo (2023). Although it is named after the video game, there is not that much video gaming going on. They do give the history of the game before they launch into the main story and the game is what launches the main character forward into basically a racing movie. That said, it is a good racing movie with lots of interior and exterior shots and not as much dramatic shifting as these types of films tend to have. I was glad to see it in the theater to experience the sound of the racing, though probably I should have seen it in IMAX to really feel the races.
It is based on a true story though of course they change some details to make it more dramatic and one of those changes is controversial. I knew about it before watching the movie and I won’t say that my knowledge detracted from my enjoyment of the film, but I do think it would have been better for me to find out afterward.
Overall I enjoyed what was an uplifting sports movie. I would definitely watch it again. Also, having been making my way through the Fast and The Furious movies, it was nice to see a film that actually was about racing, something that franchise left in the rear view mirror a long time ago.
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More precisely, the speakers were Americans who only spoke English but knew little bits of Yiddish, German, Latin, and Swedish. They all apparently watched some Bergman films before acting in the film (or writing it). They were told to speak (and to write, for the writers) the lines they were given in a Swedish accent, simply making up words at times. Even if you don’t know any Swedish, you may be able to figure out that it’s not really Swedish they’re speaking.
De Düva: The Dove came out at the height of Ingmar Bergman’s critical reputation in the U.S. During that time, you weren’t considered a very good film fan unless you spent a lot of time seeing movies at an “arthouse cinema” (which was the term used then and sometimes now for a movie theater that avoids showing blockbusters and instead shows foreign and independent films). As you may suspect, there were some movie buffs who didn’t actually like Bergman’s films, so they hated the fact that they had to watch a movie in a foreign language they couldn’t understand and instead had to watch the subtitles carefully.
Raising Arizona (1987). Another absolute gem that I had somehow overlooked, possibly because the central plot line of stealing a baby because you can’t have your own didn’t seem that appealing, and I’m not much of a fan of Nicholas Cage. I should have just reminded myself that this is Coen brothers, who both wrote and directed. I’m a big fan of these filmmaking genuises. How can you go wrong? You do have to get past the fact that almost everyone in this movie is unsavoury, but it’s all in fun. This is a fun, funny and thoroughly entertaining adventure that has just about everything. Highly recommended!
I did notice this earlier comment about it:
We obviously have different tastes in some cases, but the Coen brothers (note the spelling) are an indisputably major force in filmmaking, and not just comedies – though they’re very good at those. Though opinions may vary, Raising Arizona does average a 90% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It gets my approval because it made me laugh – a lot!
Finally got around to GotG3. It was OK. I mean I did cry in a couple of places, but that’s what an upswell of music will do for ya.
I also rewatched The Meg because my wife and son hadn’t seen it yet. It was just as dumb as the second time, but dumb fun anyway.
Inside Man (2006). The “2006” here is important, as there are three different unrelated movies with that same title. This is the one about a Manhattan bank heist turned into a hostage situation, with Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster. Also stars Christopher Plummer as the suave chairman of the bank who has a more significant role here than one might expect. It was supposed to be directed by Ron Howard but he was pulled off into another project and that job eventually went to Spike Lee.
Well acted, well executed, and with some fine plot twists and surprises that put it several notches above the average cops-and-robbers thriller.
The Exorcist (1973, directed by William Friedkin). Mentioned upthread in less than flattering terms, although I suspect those viewers watched it through the lens of modern standards, and the film has to be considered within the context of the early 1970s. I’ve always found it to be creepy, but not terrifying or anything. For the first time, I had to laugh at some of the nastiest parts, a reaction I’d heard about from others and one that I finally understand. To be clear, I laughed because I enjoyed the impact of those parts, not because I thought they were badly done. Very good acting and photography, sometimes excellent, and even most of the script was pretty good, although some of the dialogue seems contrived (the references to the film industry and movies) and the story wanders a bit in the beginning (too much time spent on some of the characters toward the beginning).
The Wikipedia entry and the IMBD trivia page are worth reading for their abundant information and anecdotes. If you aren’t aware of the commotion that the film caused back in the day, you’re in for a big surprise. I think some of that was studio hype that has become lore through repetition. Recently deceased director William Friedkin seems to have been equal parts jerk and genius. I noticed a couple of shots that reminded me very much of Kubrick, who was impressed by the film, according to what I’ve read. Here are two anecdotes that I find interesting:
Director William Friedkin wanted vultures to fly around the statue of Pazuzu in the opening Iraq prologue, so a slaughtered lamb was placed nearby. After a few days, no vultures appeared but rumors began that a strange man from America was offering sacrifices to the demon Pazuzu.
He certainly seems to have been a strange man from America (from Chicago!). Check out the links for more on this. For example:
To get an authentic reaction when Father Dyer blesses Father Karras during the climax, Friedkin slapped Father William O’Malley, who was a real priest and not an actor, across the face, causing him to be visibly shaking in the final film.
This ties in with another SDMB thread from a week or two ago in which it was mentioned that some directors physically and psychologically abused actresses. He was so old-school that he did it to old priests, too. 
His IMDB and Wikipedia entries are also interesting.