Hmm… I seem to remember the Peter Lorre character, the German commander a a few other characters dying in Casablanca. Not to mention all those Nazis running around, and World War 2 raging in the background. That movie had a lot of unpleasentness in it.
Tell me, Dougie, what is your opinion on the works of William Shakespeare? Do you only enjoy the Comedies?
FYI, I have watched Casablanca and I know full well about World War II and the death of Peter Lorre’s character, among other things. And as I mentioned earlier in this thread I also noticed the Japanese aircraft shooting at the Caine in The Caine Mutiny. Why the difference?
In more recent movies, they go into far more graphic detail about what you’ve commented on, the things I acknowledge are “unpleasant.” Perhaps if Casablanca had been made more recently, the brutal death of Lorre’s character would have been graphically portrayed, presumably to appeal to the viewer’s sadistic sentiments (so far as the Hollywood moviemakers have perceived them).
You–meaning all of the Teeming Millions–must have heard the news items in recent months concerning a subtle effort by the movie companies to lure 12- to 17-year-olds into R-rated movies, regulations be damned; obviously the adolescents’ ticket money spends as well as anyone else’s. Well, the moviemakers would do well to mark my words and remember them, considering the furore that ensued for the tobacco industry after they cooked up the Joe Camel character.
OK, not really a spoiler for the mass majority of movie fans, but the end of the movie has a real shocker!
What I object to is the recent video release which totally removes the shock by putting the pivitol scene on the cover!
Believe it or not, there are new people growing up everyday who don’t know the ending, but no chance of them being surprised with the video cover giving away the secret.
Dougie, no one is trying to take away your freedom to choose which movies you see. It’s just that your reasons for not seeing a particular movie strike the rest of us as rather odd, bizarre, peculiar and unrealistic.
The fact that we can watch violent movies and you can’t stomach them doesn’t make us evil and you good. Hollywood is no more an evil place than any other place that creates or created violent entertainment. If you were to read the original, un-bowderized texts of ancient Greek plays, I think you’d be just as revolted as you were by Hollywood’s latest blood-fest.
And you really should learn about Grand Guignol.
With regards to gratuitous nudity, it’s there simply because it draws people to the theater. There are plenty of movies with nude scenes, probably a vast majority of them, that contain nudity that could be cut out completely or merely inferred or obscured. The thing is that there are people who will see a movie just because they know that Actress X is going to bare her bod. Sure, it may add nothing to the plot, character development, or the emotional impact of the movie, but it does sell tickets.
As far as pet peeves go, mine would have to be anything that stands in the way of suspension of disbelief, whether it be a deus ex machina plot device or a blatant misrepresentation of the real world. Sure, I understand artistic conventions, and I can easily live with the fact that computers are more graphically interesting in movies than in real life. On the other hand, that does not excuse a movie, supposedly set in the real world, where Jeff Goldblum can whip up a virus on his Mac laptop in half an hour that infects and neutralizes the entire network of a totally alien culture as in Independance Day. I can accept that Bruce Willis can get the crap beaten out of him and keep going like the Energizer Bunny, but when he is sitting in the cockpit of a C-130 cargo plane as 15 grenades are tossed in the window over a period of 30 seconds or so, that weakens said suspension of disbelief. But it’s totally destroyed when he ejects out of a plane that doesn’t even have a canopy let alone an ejection seat. It goes beyond mere “artistic license” and into “the moviegoers are ignorant fools” territory. I mean, it doesn’t take special knowledge of aircraft to see that an ejection seat is going to rocket him straight through the metal skin of the plane!
Gr8kat- I think that both the vehicles you refer to were county work vehicles, and I thought at the time that maybe they keep the keys on the visor so that anybody on the work crew can drive it without finding the keymaster. But yes, it annoys.
Phtalis- what about the movie (damn, brain fart, no title available) where a chase is going on through the Chicago Art Institute, the fleeing hero & girl run through a door and come out in the SCIENCE MUSEUM, miles away!
Wow, what amazing control over time & space!
And dougie, neither moviemakers nor anyone else will mark your words or take you seriously.
Need a reason? Read your own posts.
EJsGirl, in Independence Day, it was a county work vehicle, but I thought in T2 it was just a plain old station wagon?
To Jab1: I haven’t read any of the ancient Greek tragedies, although I know that in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex,–well, as Tom Lehrer put it:
When he [Oedipus] found what he had done
He tore his eyes out, one by one.
A tragic end to a loyal son
Who loved his mother.
When I was a high school sophomore, in the English class we studied Julius Caesar in great detail. The teacher even played a sound recording (not too high tech, but this was 1965) of various scenes; as a joke he even played–several times–the passage where Caesar is stabbed by Brutus and Cassius and the others. (after we’d been reading the play for a while we started calling it “Julie Babe.” :D) If someone said, or I read, that “A” stabbed or shot “B”, that’s considerably different than if I were to watch a prolonged illustration of blood gushing out of the wound (cf. King Kong) and hear an agonized scream from the victim. Tell me: Isn’t this (the character’s suffering) what people go to movies for in the first place–these days?
A 1982 movie I saw on video (it came out about the same time as Time Bandits) was Zapped!, with Scott Baio (Chachi from Happy Days). Part of the story line involves Baio’s character discovering he has psychokinesis–the ability to move things with his mind.
To make a long story very short, he covers up for a friend of his–who got some big strong guy’s girlfriend to pose nude–by using the power at the senior prom, to pull just about everybody’s clothes off (How were the other kids to blame for the transgression of Willie Aames’ character?) Of course, the event was ruined; I sense that part of the appeal was the anticipation of the stripped-naked kids’ anguish (supposedly funny to someone), and the parents’ financial anguish when they had to pay from the ruined prom clothing. If I had seen something like this in my senior year (1967), you couldn’t have gotten me to attend my prom that year at the point of a gun! (As it was, I had no transportation from other than my parents, and so I only stayed for the opening ceremonies. I attended no other social event in four years of high school and few since then.)
Dougie, you are a fucking FREAK. Seeing Zapped! would make you skip the prom?!? Ever heard of Carrie? Check it out, you’d love it.
Well, I agree that seeing a filmed or staged “murder” has more visceral impact than reading about one. But I’d sure like to know which version or sequel to King Kong you’re referring to. None of the ones I’ve seen show someone’s blood gushing out of his/her/its body.
No. We go for escapism, to see cool EFX, to see nekkid people, to hear some good music, to be, you know, entertained. Do you know why it’s necessary for a character to suffer? To show how strong (or weak) he is. What he does about his suffering shows us what kind of person he is, if he’s heroic and brave or craven and cowardly. If he didn’t suffer, he’d have no reason to act. He’d just lay there and watch TV or jerk off. Or both. (Not that that’s necessarily a bad way to spend one’s free time, but it ain’t what most of us go to the movies to see.)
I’ve never seen Zapped!. Now I must (for research purposes, you understand 
).
How were the ordinary Egyptians responsible for the enslavement of the Hebrews? Yet God slew their first-born just as He did the first-born of Pharaoh, who was really the only person responsible. He even slew innocent beasts who REALLY had nothing to do with the Hebrews’ plight.
What I’m pointing out here (and I know I’m being silly comparing a dumb movie to Exodus) is that in each story, the victims were there to show what the main character (God, Scott Baio) are capable of doing. We aren’t supposed to empathize with them, we’re supposed to identify with the main characters. No one else matters.
And now I see what the problem is: You tend to identify with the victims in a story, even the ones who are incidental, even irrelevant to the story. The rest of us identify with the main characters, the heroes. We don’t grieve for all the Stormtroopers killed when Luke blew up the Death Star, we identify with Luke.
You’re a bit like my mother. At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, she was more concerned over the Nazis killed by whatever came out of the Ark than she was over the fate of Indy and Marion. Some people are like that.
I hate most movies. I never go to a movie just to please someone else. The last time I did that was the movie Taps - which I hated.
dougie_monty, try what I do. I go to http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ and read all the bad review. Then I go to http://www.jabootu.com/default.asp which reviews bad movies. I just can’t get enough of people making fun of movies! I miss Mystery Science Theater so much. I’ve asked for the book Mike Nelson’s Movie Megacheese for Christmas.
I hate movies to the point where it’s backfired on me. My brother was watching something wretched on HBO once. So I started making fun of it. He started in too. About 45 minutes later I asked why he was watching such a bad movie. He said - because my comments were so funny!
The version I referred to is the Dino deLaurentiis version of about 1975. When the fighter planes attack King Kong in that version, he gushes blood out of his torso, much as Shemp did (gushing whiskey, not blood) in at least one Three Stooges short.
To EJsGirl, and anyone else who is curious about it: Yes, I feel for the victims, of whatever status. I was bullied a lot, especially by my older brother, during childhood and adolescence. And by other people. I tend in any case to be sympathetic to the victim(s) regardless of the movie’s putative appeal.
And forget about Carrie:
If I understand the plot of King’s book aright, Carrie was the victim of a cruel prank, when, wearing a lovely gown, she got drenched with blood. One thing leads to another, and by the story’s end, she has killed not only the pranksters but everyone else in town. Shades of Kristallnacht and the Warsaw Ghetto…
Wrong, dipshit. Why do you bother?
Then again, why do I?
Dougie Monty: Get off the 'net and rush and and rent Fast Times at Ridgemont High, NOW. It is probably the best movie about American teenagers ever made. The “dimwitted student” (a/k/a The Stoner) is played by Sean Penn in the role that made him famous: Jeff Spiccoli, surfer dude.
There are a lot of things I could say in praise of this movie, but probably the most pertinent is this. I wholeheartedly agree with those who posted that gratuitous T & A is really, really tired. But this movie was bold enough to turn that double standard on its head. There’s an awesome scene were Judge Reinhold (sp?) is fantasizing about his sister’s friend, played by Phoebe Cates. He imagines her removing her bikini top to seduce him, and she ends up walking in on him jerking off in the bathroom. Now that is not something you get to see in movies very often.
Other things to savor in this movie: Forest Whittaker (the guy in Ghost Dog) as a football player whose sports car Spiccoli wrecks. Advice on how to succeed on a date: “The lady will have the linguine with clam sauce and a coke with no ice.” Jennifer Jason Leigh’s first sexual experience: which lasts about 14 seconds.
Seriously–this is a classic that may well change your mood about movies in general.
I just finished viewing At First Sight with yummy Mira Sorvino and Val Kilmer. Well, here is what upset me: in the scene when Virgil, after recovering his sight, asks Amy to strip so he can see her for the first time, the director plays with camera angles and shows frontal nudity only through a screen located next to the bed. What a jerk!
First mistake: Mira’s breasts contributed to the plot since the guy is requesting her to take off her clothes in order to verify if she indeed was as hot as he had pictured her. We are led to believe by his reaction upon first laying eyes on her naked figure, that indeed her boobs rock big time. But we are never provided convincing proof that they are as great as he makes us think. (Read: we never see them). Don’t get me wrong, I am pretty sure Mira’s bodily attributes are great but in order to fully comprehend what Virgil is experiencing we should have been allowed to see what he was seeing. By not doing so the movie fails to adequately convey the degree of physical beauty that the lead female character exudes and thus negates us, the viewers, a critically important introspective view into Virgil’s perceptions regarding this most vital matter. I want tits, God damn it 
In any case, I can accept, even though not share, the director’s decision. That’s standard Hollywood practice. What I could not understand was this:
Second Mistake: Nathan Lane takes Val Kilmer to a strip joint and they show naked breasts floating all over the place. WTF? Not that I mind seeing them, heck, I was entitled to them as a retribution for the aforementioned teaser, but their presence in this case is entirely gratuitous whereas in the original instance it would have enhanced the description of what Val Kilmer’s character was seeing. Had they provided us with his view of that wonderful panorama we would have gained deep insight into his innermost feelings.
Did anybody say boobs? 
I am so upset that I can not even type properly: in the scene WHERE Virgil…
Quasar, as I’ve not seen this movie I shouldn’t perhaps intervene. But allow me to say that often a suggestively represented or unrepresented image is much more powerful than one that is clearly represented. Case in point: what is in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction?
Apart from the simple fact that Sorvino probably doesn’t want to lower herself to the task of a pornstar, perhaps the idea is to suggest that this body was to this beholder so sublime as to be representatable only to the viewer’s own imagination.
Imagination–remember the thing you used to have before your senses became dulled by overexposure to literal, graphic images?
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Had they provided us with his view of that wonderful panorama we would have gained deep insight into his innermost feelings.
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Wrong. Had they provided you with this view of that wonderful panorama, you would now be an expert on Mira Sorvino’s chest. But you would almost certainly have far less insight to anyone’s innermost feelings–on or off of celluloid.
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I want tits, God damn it
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That is abundantly clear.
How come you know so much about this, EJsGirl? Is it because you are full of your subject?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
And to answer a question of yours directly, Yes, if I had seen Zapped! at the time of my own senior prom I would probably not have gone. Could you imagine eating spaghetti when the table’s centerpiece is a plate of live worms? Certainly you know you’re eating spaghetti, not worms, but it wouldn’t help your appetite at all.
When I found out, about 15 years ago, that moviemakers gear their product primarily for teenagers, I was well past 30 and thus I would expect most of them not to appeal to me anyway. Well, most of the movies playing when my parents made me go to the movies in the 50s were primarily for an adult audience, too. And the recent news items concerning the movie companies’ trickery–inducing kids under 18 to go to R-rated movies, regulations be damned–didn’t help any.
I don’t know if anyone in the world, other than me, ever saw the movie The Chase, with Charlie Sheen, it’s an awful movie. Basic plot, he is a wrongly accused murderer who escapes from jail and kidnaps the daughter of the richest man in town to help him escape. It takes place in Newport beach, and the whole movie is them leading a chase down to Mexico. Which mean the whole movie is set in a car.
Pretty basic scenes, not a lot of reality or anything, but the best part of the movie is near the end, and I am going to spoil it for you people so you might want to skip this. The kidnapped girl realizes that in the hundred or so miles they have driven, she has fallen in love with him. Now this momentous event is marked by a glimpse of a road sign that says. border 10 miles, or something like that, the ten miles is correct.
THEN she climbs across the seat, straddles him and they begin to have sex. While he is driving. At a hundred miles per hour (they show the speedometer) With a bunch of cops on there tails. Ten miles from the border. The scene is set to romantic music, they use slow motion, the sun sets in the back ground behind them. It goes from mid day to pitch dark, and they still haven’t reached the border yet! It’s hilarious if incredibly stupid.
Now I could get mad at the artistic license used, by the complete and utter disregard for the rules of real life, instead, I just laugh, it’s only a movie.
And if I ever find a guy that during sex, can change night into day in less than the time it takes to drive ten miles at 100MPH, I’m keeping him close.