Pete Walker after this, making one of the great left turns in genre movies, from 'I make pictures as delivery mechanisms for female nudity' to 'I have found my muse, & she is 54 year old unheralded character actress Sheila Keith!'
Random movie reckons. Mostly genre pictures, Gialli, French and Italian crime movies, horror from '30s-'60s. Occasionally going overboard in the Alt Text
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Pete Walker after this, making one of the great left turns in genre movies, from 'I make pictures as delivery mechanisms for female nudity' to 'I have found my muse, & she is 54 year old unheralded character actress Sheila Keith!'
The Flesh & Blood Show (1972) A bunch of young actors go to an end-of-the-pier theatre to rehearse & are bumped off one by one This is ok. More concerned with showing flesh than blood, but the 'murders in a creepy theatre' format is always solid enough
My five yr old has recently constructed a rather complex cosmology, comprised of Labubu's & KPop Demon Demon Hunters, with her as a sort of Godhead figure at the center of it Apparently if I don't let her have more ice cream then I will not see the light of heaven
Yeah, they say themselves they want to use it as a proof of concept to go wide with the tech & fuck that. All the same, I can't help but feel like Ambersons is a special case due to it's significance to Welles' career & the fact that it was deliberately defaced the first time round
Like I don't actually think they'll carry it off, but if it was released without any claims to being more than an approximation of what original might have looked like then I wouldn't have a problem with it Of course it'll be used as a shop window for more GenAI slop, so there's that I suppose
Surprised myself, but I don't hate this on sight. Might meet v. narrow criteria where this sort of thing could be interesting: original material is gone: what we have is a butchered cut; there's enough original material + script notes etc to have a rough idea of what the missing material looked like
No I think it's a fair point, particularly because those unfamiliar with the timeline could come away thinking he only stayed in Cuba briefly post-revolution I wonder if part of why it's not there is that it would have been too hard to maintain the the film's neutral tone in the face of executions
I did see some criticism that it was a hagiography but don't think that's fair. In Part II he's something akin to a cult leader, & there's the moment near the end of Part I when he offhandedly mentions a wife & child in Mexico that, as viewers, we haven't seen him give a 2nd thought to before that
I might be giving Soderbergh a pass here, but I thought the use of Guevara's UN speech where he's unrepentant about the executions got the point across. But yeah there's a difference between mentioning it & showing it
It would appear so www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Missed it when it came out, must keep an eye out for it
Yeah there was definitely post-Iraq/War on Terror micro-trend going on
Yeah, think I'll have to try & find my Mesrine I & II DVDs just to round out my 'late aughts political violence movie' marathon
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) Kinetic retelling of the nasty, brutish & short careers of the 1st generation of members of the Red Army Faction terrorist group Successfully walks a fine line in presenting the RAF as deluded fanatics while acknowledging the political context in which they emerged
That everything about the "2" here (the colour, the font, the fact that it's ever so slightly tilted) makes it look like a zany comedy sequel, is especially funny
Proper bureaucrats to these people
There are fascinating details, like the shifting alliances between various Warsaw Pact & Middle Eastern regimes, & the fall-out of the end of the Cold War But, because the focus is so tight on Carlos, much of the final 3rd in particular feels like it's about events taking place within a vacuum
Carlos (2010) Olivier Assayas' epic retelling of the career of terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, AKA Carlos The Jackal Impressively made &, at over 5.5hrs, expertly paced. And built around a magnetic performance by Édgar Ramírez. But Carlos is such a hollow person it's hard to say what it adds up to
Mr "Make Crime Illegal" is from Tipperary
😱
Jeepers, what type of crazy hail do ye get over there?
This is perpetually on my 'to watch' list but never high enough to actually get round to watching
Poor George had no luck with aquatic creatures youtu.be/DF24lyzxFSo?...
Kenneth Branagh the director was surprisingly reluctant to frame Victor Frankenstein (as played by Kenneth Branagh the actor) as the villain in the 1994 version. Who knows why The Monster in that version definitely has a mean streak but yeah even then he's a tragic figure
Certainly looks like a foul spinach pudding
Hammer's Quatermass movies Each one is a classic, but Richard Wordsworth in The Quatermass Xperiment stands out for me as the highpoint With his gaunt face & painful stillness, he's like some early Christian martyr, transported to the atomic age & suffering through his own private crucifixion
My father was similar, youngest of 7 but effectively raised as an only
Yeah this sounds right. Only child myself, married to another only child, & we both wanted a big family *in theory* but then decided that one&done was right for us Sibling Relationships - a faraway country of which we know nothing
Maybe he could have his wife put them in a letter to the IT
God it's weird that that sentence makes sense in a way that wouldn't have seemed plausible even last year
'Part of respecting our flag is displaying it in line with protocol, on a flag pole, in a place of honour, raised & lowered at sunrise & sunset, if flown at night then properly illuminated by a spotlight. Tying a flag to a lamppost, & then forgetting about it is not respecting our national flag'
Black Tuesday (1954). Bleak and nasty little prison break thriller, steeped in an awful sense of doom. It is pretty much just a succession of people waiting to die. Edward G. Robinson is electrifying as the moral black hole at the middle of it all, a sort of half-human avatar of violence
Broadly yeah, if the supernatural element isn't tied to in some way to communal beliefs/practices &, the protagonist just stumbles across it In terms of non-folk cult horror, I think both types of stories often have the same basic narrative engine but, as Ray said above, folk also has its own vibe
Fair point, suppose I was thinking along the lines of something aimed at/about a specific individual in difficult/tragic circumstances, but I don't pay attention to her feed so that may already be par for the course
Are the 2 not slightly more enmeshed than that though, potentially, eg if one the cast starts making "Just so you know, I'm here under protest" noises as a result of something JKR does? As you say it'll be the "toxic set" angle that gets traction but that drags everyone involved into the discussion
I think this ☝️ nails the key distinction for me. "Outsider goes to isolated area &, by themselves, runs afoul of a primal entity", not necessarily a folk horror "Outsider goes to isolated area & runs afoul of a community in thrall to a primal entity", almost definitely folk horror
Bearing in mind that the new (adult) cast knew what they were signing on for, it does seem inevitable that at some point Rowling won't be able to stop herself saying something controversial enough that at least one actor says I need to respond to this and/or I'm walking
It's sounding great so far. My neighbours may not share that sentiment
As long as it gets the job done
Cheers man!
Decided to reward myself for surpassing my incredibly low expectations
Your whiskey is missing an 'e' 😏
And it's so much better than a 'it's got TITS in it!' movie of its era needed to be
New bad movie review out now! www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP_Q...
Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974) Hammer's last best chance to launch a new series is a fun swashbuckling horror romp But it is hobbled by largely serving as an opener for sequels that never happened, such that "Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter, a Bit, Mostly At the End" would be more accurate
If nothing else, Stewart Lee will hopefully get some good gags out of the new Bradley Cooper movie
The first one cuts back & forth between the Revolution & Guevara's attendance at the UN in 64. The 2nd is pretty much entirely his final year in Bolivia But the narrative in both is, episodic isn't the right word, more immersive than relying on dramatic beats
Craig suffered from some of the worst scripts in the franchise. Measure of how cack handed they were was Albert Finney's character in Skyfall. Clearly written for Connery, but when he didn't do it they just left the character intro as this big 'OMG it's him!!' moment, which died on its arse onscreen
SUPPORTING ACTOR SUNDAY #supportingactorsunday BORIS KARLOFF For 12 years before FRANKENSTEIN, Karloff was in the supporting cast of dozens of films, silent and sound. Sometimes, like his 30 seconds as a drunken sailor in Raoul Walsh's THE YELLOW TICKET (1931), he got no billing at all. 📽️ #filmsky
There are definite advantages to being a small enough country that a critical mass of public understand that splendid isolation is a ticket to nowhere
Looking from across the water, & without pretending we don't have serious problems ourselves, the collective loss of confidence at the institutional level of UK is staggering
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle of Filth
Exactly! It's the betrayal that hurts
I hate you C Chord. I hate your rotten guts
They are but I think you never see his full face, it's like a shot of his eyes here, one of his mouth there
Thing that struck me towards the end of Part I was 'Hang on, has there been an actual proper close-up of Del Toro in this whole picture?'
Think that's a very fair assessment. I didn't find Part II a slog though, possibly because I watched them back-to-back & Part I built up such a head of steam
On a technical level, Part I's final battle for Santa Clara is particularly impressive, never really allowing you to geographically orientate yourself, but conveying a remorseless sense of forward momentum by the attacking forces which provides all the scenes with a coherent through-line
It's a portrait that emerges from Soderbergh's focus on the wider events that Guevara took part in & inspired, with Part I's ground level depiction of what successful revolutionary activity entials & Part II's failed insurgency as increasingly desperate exercise in futility
Che (Parts I & II) (2008) Watched these last night, after remembering they existed, & was blown away by how Soderbergh avoids almost all the usual biopic tropes & still manages create what feels like a definitive portrait of Guevara
Going to tell my kids this was Harrison Ford hanging out with Roger Moore on the set of Octopussy
Or even at Roger Corman who famously, as long as they were delivered on time & on budget, also had no objections to his productions being good
All a bit "I Appreciate The Muppets On A Much Deeper Level Than You" tbh
Wild to come back after a bit of a hiatus & find people earnestly, if unknowingly, trying to revive Mill's theory of higher & lower pleasures in order to tell others that they should feel shame for enjoying children's media &/or, God help us, 'trash' Once again, aesthetics =/= morality
Ruin a book by adding "Tom Clancy's" to the title "Tom Clancy's Just Above My Head" .......what ya doing up there Tom?
Counterpoint re the ad as the non-driver parent, sometimes kids wear you down, and also I am very lazy
The dubbing artists working at the time were insanely talented so it's always possible
I'm 99% sure it's Reed doing an accent, based on his speech pattern & that it's not a million miles away from the accent he used in The Hunting Party
Hang in there mate
It's a shame the EU legislative process doesn't provide ample opportunities at *every* stage to slow walk a proposal that nobody in EU wants, or to quietly drop it as 2028 approaches
But if you knew anything, or cared, about children's TV, would you go all in on 'Harry Potter & the Post-Bedtime Broadcast Slot of Doom' in the 1st place?
I too can hear Queens of the Stone Age from my house, which is 1.6km away from where they're playing, and honestly...
As it goes on (& on) that thread increasingly reads like it should be connected via red string
a few personal reflections on rewatching The Omen the other day: letterboxd.com/jamesewand/f...
Every day so far
"my eight year old will never grow up" *and* "HBO's Harry Potter will not have to compete tooth & nail with any other children's media for their attention" Which, as the parent of a child on her 5th re-watch of KPop Demon Hunters in a fortnight, seems unlikely to me
Cheers! Almost there
Wonder if they'll use Éire or Republic of Ireland on the extradition warrant
Alternatively persuade Daniel Day-Lewis to sink his teeth into another Presidential role. 7 year term would probably fit into his filming schedule as well
As my co-worker once said of our boss "he wouldn't be seen playing golf in the summer, people might think he didn't own a yacht"
Happy days!
Hope it's sorted soon
Ireland had worst of all possible set-ups, where a) domestic water rates were abolished & b) costs still fell on local government. But even if rates had still been in place, several LA's would have struggled to offset costs of required treatment infrastructure upgrades
Without knowing the state of UK water treatment infrastructure at the time of privatisation, net impact of losing water rates might not have been that much if situation was anything similar to Ireland where cost of meeting EU standards was ruinous for some local authorities, & non-discretionary
I think there's something at play in terms of 'was old enough to remember the war' vs ' didn't experience the war but grew up on a steady diet of 'our finest hour' war movies'. Which might also contribute to diff between UK vs European boomers
In the home & in schools. From listening to my parents & their contemporaries, education in late '40's through the '50's just riddled with violence & undiagnosed PTSD
We're doing a major house clearance at the minute, so not much time for movies, or being on here, right now. But here's my last 3 watches The Rocketeer (1991) - not nearly enough rocketeering The Sadist (1963) - that boy ain't right John Carpenter's Vampires (1998) - fuck yeah!
I never went to a youth centre (& yes think it's basically the internet) but when I was a teenager there were, en route between my school & bus stop, 3 pool halls, 2 arcades, & at least 1 pub that would serve you if you were at least 15. They were a part of our daily commute & they're all gone now
Would've loved to see a McGoohan Bond, just to compare & contrast the differences, but I didn't realise, until I watched The Frightened City a while ago, how inextricable the classic Bond persona is from Connery. The charming/mean/charming aspect was stuff he'd done before onscreen & brought to Bond
Thunderbolts* (2025) Not the biggest Marvel fan but this was big time fun. Earns its place on the front of the Wheaties box
Cheers!
Yes in substance I think it really works, & liked where the story ended up. Just didn't think the drip feed way it played out added much
If you're a man who always knew you didn't have particularly large hands, but never thought you had particularly small hands, then learning guitar will properly humble you
Jack's mysterious back story really feels like Gatiss writing tick. Not the details of the story itself mind, just the dangling mystery
#BOTD Peter O'Toole in a bravura performance from The Old Vic - JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL.... youtu.be/g6cYbZe1WYU?...
I immediately had to watch the 1st 20 minutes for the Denis Shaw story
This (petty crime) + public realm still a bit ragged compared to pre-crash + a lot of people who, while not necessarily causing any trouble, are clearly on hard drugs Public transport has a certain edge to it when the bloke sitting opposite you on the tram is clearly high on cocaine at 11am
One partial answer to this might be that of 'collector' hobbies (watches, guitars stamps, toys...) can be both obsessive & largely invisible apart from online or at things like trade fairs or con's