Have you ever seen Scarface? I hadn’t, and found it terribly disappointing when I finally watched it courtesy of Netflix–horribly dated, with bad sound, bad music, and a protagonist so utterly unlikable that I didn’t particularly care what happened to him. It’s hard to have a tragedy when you don’t care what happens to the tragic (anti-)hero. I’d be curious to hear what someone else coming to it with fresh eyes thinks of it.
My last 3:
Witness for the Prosecution: Loved this. I put it all together about two minutes before the big reveal at the end. Sunset Boulevard: Loved this too! “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.”
**Hal Holbrook: Mark Twain Tonight! **
@ Home:
Ordinary Decent Criminal
Mad Max
Key Largo
On deck:
The Road Warrior
Bullitt
The Wire: Season 3, Disc 1 et seq.
No I haven’t seen it - just the pop references to it.
While I’m here, Beowulf and Grendel was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I just watched Manos. At least *Manos *had a good excuse for sucking ($16,000 budget). *B and G *was just…terrible. But it’s clear they had the resources to make it awesome. They had all the money to make a sweet epic and they used the money instead to rape one of my favorites.
Just finished the very last DVD of the final season of Danger Mouse. The MST3K version of The Killer Shrews just arrived. Since I only had cable with MST3K late in its run, I’m working my way through them in no particular order.
Next up is Volume 4 of Danger Man/Secret Agent. We finished the half hour shows and are working on the hour ones. I watched as a kid, and they’re even better than I remembered. Next is His Girl Friday, and then Rocky and Bullwinkle Season 3, vol. 1. I own seasons 1 and 2.
Are you talking about the 1932 version with Paul Muni? I’ve seen the 1983 version with Al Pacino, and there was nothing wrong with the 4-track stereo sound.
I’m actually running low on things, and with the fall season, just don’t have much time. I’ve got the new Spider Man movie & Day Watch due to ship on Monday. Besides that, I’ve decided to work my way through Odyssey 5 & Space 1999, which I never got to see the first times through.
I loved “Scarface”! But then, I love cheesy disco music you can dance to. And I love Al Pacino. So I was actually more impressed than I thought I’d be.
I know, the accent is bad. He chews scenery. They do coke. It’s painfully 80s, from the music to the decor. But I dig all things Pacino, and that’s why “Scarface” is one of my favorite movies, and why I advocate that any big fan of him see it.
I think it may be more a matter of “bad in perspective” rather than “bad in context.” The gunshots–of which there are several, y’know?–sounded weak and tinny, in particular. The whole thing reminded me of an 80s made-for-TV, or an episode of Columbo, in its production values. That may be the result of a less than stellar DVD transfer (a google search turned up a few other folks complaining), or it may’ve just been the way it was and I came to it with unfairly high expectations.