I watched the second Spinal Tap movie yesterday and really enjoyed it. It’s a little thinner than the original, but I LOL’d a number of times. There was a very effective little scene with Christoper Guest and Michael McKean that was obviously from the first movie, but I don’t remember it. Was it an outtake? The actress playing Hope was in a series set in Whistable where she runs a seafood restaurant across from the oyster beds while moonlighting as a private detective. Good series and she’s as appealing in it as she was in this. I loved the concert, and the woman drummer.
My favorite Stephen King novel and as I understand it, the first novel that he wrote (not the first published.) Full disclosure: I haven’t read it in a long time.
This is a good adaptation of challenging source material. The movie really leaned into “this is a metaphor for war” but it did so to good effect. Since the film couldn’t have the interiority of the novel, it emphasized the relationships between the competitors more. I expected it to be grim dark but there were actually a lot of moments that were flatly inspiring. I want to be more like the protagonist.
So this is a movie that made some changes from the book but did so in a way that was thematically on-point. I was wondering if the movie would take the creative risks the novel did, and it did. It’s not exactly the same story but it achieved the same purpose, IMO.
I enjoyed the film and the movie has stayed with me days later – unfortunately often when I’m trying to sleep, but hey, this is dark stuff!
2003’s Bad Santa. I remember when it came out I wanted to see it, then never did, then forgot about it, then remembered, then forgot again, now finally remembered, and watched.
I LOL’d out loud several times. It’s by no means a stupid film. I probably would have been rolling in the aisles in '03. But by fucking god fuck me, Santa! it is a shit filled fucking vulgar movie! I’m 23 years older now and I’m watching it going “Isn’t this all a bit much?” Every sentence consists of a subject, a verb, an object, and some form of the world fuck.
I swear, the Kid, Therman Merman, simply has to be the model for Russell in Up. They look similar and they have the same earnest cluelessness and naivety, and the same charm.
Interestingly, the blu-ray had two versions: the theatrical and the Bad(der) Santa unrated version. I went with the director’s cut. I figured the other version just would have nudity (I don’t think it could be possible to be more vulgar), but no. It’s a reedited version. Yes it has one nude scene, but the rest of the changes are “this scene is added, this scene is cut, this one is extended, this one is shortened.” They go in the same direction and get to the same ending, but the path varies. I think you could just put them together and make one and it would be fine. I mean, shit, fucking great.
What makes Bad Santa work is its commitment to the premise. Almost everyone in the movie is bad, not just Santa. The ones who aren’t outright evil are bad in other ways, like stupid or pathetic. And even though there’s a redemption arc, it involves Santa being bad in a less-bad way. And at the end, The Kid becomes less pathetic by absorbing some of Santa’s badness.
The dialogue in the movie is hilarious, as is its use of music. I’ll never think of The Toreador Song the same way again.
I’ve not seen that in years but you’re right, it is very crude and very funny. Do yourself a favour though and don’t bother with the sequel. It is terrible.
Good god, no. The 1987 Arnie version (I assume his picture on the currency was an Easter egg/callback) had nothing to do with the book - a B movie shlock-fest with the bad guys in various forms of powered armor.
This version mostly hit the high points from the novel, and I think the ending worked (and the book ending was likely considered problematic post 9/11, and of course Hollywood loves a happy ending).
Regarding the 1987 version of The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, we (my college friends and I) saw it back then and it was fun enough, particularly for the dumb jokes when Arnold’s character defeated each villain.
Peter Hujar’s Day, nominated for four awards. Very indie, very My Dinner with Andre, it’s a reenactment of an interview from 1974 with NYC photographer Peter Hujar, the day he photographed Allen Ginsburg and did some other stuff. Hujar is portrayed by Ben Whishaw well enough, but I didn’t care and became bored. I don’t get bored much by movies, hell I’ve probably used the term slow cinema half a dozen times in this thread, but…I was b o r e d. Just smoking cigarettes and talking.
I see it’s 6.3 on IMDb and 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that kinda summarizes it.
Looks like Netflix has some of the Bond movies. I’ve probably seen all of them at some point, but my memory isn’t as good as it was, so they’ll be worth a second watch. I’m about half way through No Time To Die and enjoying it.
I know all the tropes, I know the quotes, and I know the story, but I never actually watched the movie, so I resolved that yesterday. It is indeed a very good movie. It is over 3 hours and it does move slowly at times, but that’s not a bad thing. The pacing gets you into the story and characters, imo. The actors really bring it in a way that I think just wouldn’t be done today.
Eating Raoul
Well the title gives away the ending. Paul Bartel co-wrote and directed this and stars alongside Mary Woronov as an uptight couple who put out a classified sex ad and start killing the men who respond. They then get mixed up with shady handyman/burglar Raoul (Robert Beltran) who helps them along the way then seduces Mary. I’ll never tell what happens next.
The Quick and the Dead 1987
based on the 1973 novel by Louis L’Amour, starring Sam Elliott, Tom Conti, and Kate Capshaw
On Prime.
I had forgotten this Western existed. Prime offered it to me.
Has any actor looked more natural on a horse than Sam Elliott? He always has that grizzled beard and weathered face. Sam looks out of place in dramas. He’s the perfect cowboy actor. Sammy is doing great now in Landman, a neo-western.
The Quick and the Dead is a pretty good film. Reminds me of Shane with the honorable wife affections torn between two men.
Sam Elliott was born in 1944. In 1969, he was clean-shaven in movies. Starting in1970, he began wearing a mustache and then he began being grizzled-looking. That’s why we now think of him as always looking like that.
I just saw One Battle after Another, or the first 45 minutes of it. Incoherent, dumb, boring, confusing. So I decided to re-watch a caper movie I enjoyed when I was a kid in 1964 or so, Topkapi. It was worse. Slow, self-indulgent, and incredibly poorly cast. They decided that a fairly unattractive 40-something woman, Merlina Mercouri, who looked like she might have been sixty-something, should play the irresistible love interest. When I figured out they weren’t making fun of her, I stopped watching. I think she was the director’s girlfriend. Or she had compromising pictures of him.
