Passages

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Feego
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:30 pm
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Re: Passages

#6651 Post by Feego » Fri Aug 18, 2017 7:08 pm


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MichaelB
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Re: Passages

#6652 Post by MichaelB » Fri Aug 18, 2017 7:48 pm

GaryC wrote:Bruce Forsyth, at 89. He had occasional acting roles, but he was a household name in the UK as a television presenter and entertainer. He was recognised by Guinness for the length of his career - he appeared on British TV in 1939 at the age of ten or eleven, making him one of the last remaining people to have appeared on television before World War II.
When I interviewed John Krish a few years ago, we both had a good laugh about the fact that the voice emerging from the telly in his devastating documentary about old-age loneliness I Think They Call Him John was all too instantly recognisable even today. Krish said it was an inspired (if accidental) choice, because he wanted a voice that would sum up the essential vacuousness of much British television, and he could easily have picked someone who'd be long forgotten now.

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Dead or Deader
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Re: Passages

#6653 Post by Dead or Deader » Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:35 pm


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bearcuborg
Joined: Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:30 am
Location: Philadelphia via Chicago

Re: Passages

#6654 Post by bearcuborg » Sun Aug 20, 2017 7:13 am

CBS Sunday Morning ran a great piece on him last month.

Joe Morton's play based on his life was pretty inspirational. In today's political climate, he'll be missed all the more.

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domino harvey
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Re: Passages

#6655 Post by domino harvey » Sun Aug 20, 2017 4:09 pm


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antnield
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:59 pm
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Re: Passages

#6656 Post by antnield » Mon Aug 21, 2017 8:19 am


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Dr Amicus
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:20 am
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Re: Passages

#6657 Post by Dr Amicus » Mon Aug 21, 2017 9:30 am

antnield wrote:Brian Aldiss.
A huge loss, one of the key figures in post-war British Science Fiction not only as an author but as a critic, historian and anthologist. The Helliconia Trilogy was one of my favourites as a teenager, with Hothouse, Frankenstein Unbound and Non-Stop as later discoveries. His history of SF, Billion (Trillion) Year Spree, is also a great, hugely entertaining read.

Incidentally, as at last night certainly, many of his books are available on the Kindle for a very low price.

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Passages

#6658 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Aug 21, 2017 12:27 pm

"Supertoys Last All Summer Long" can be read at Aldiss's own site. This, of course, was developed by Stanley Kubrick into A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Passages

#6659 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Aug 22, 2017 5:03 am

I'd only had the chance to read Hothouse by Brian Aldiss so far, but loved its vision of a future ecologically transformed Earth turned parasitic jungle where humans are just one part of the ecosystem, and perhaps not the most important ones. That's a vision of what Avatar could have evolved into if it took its cues from that rather than Ferngully! (Though I like to imagine the main character being taken over by a 'morel' or parasitic fungus, is alluded to in Futurama with the brain slug! Where Fry only is only saved from being taken over because the slug starves to death for want of any brain activity in its host!)

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Professor Wagstaff
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Re: Passages

#6660 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Wed Aug 23, 2017 12:41 am


flyonthewall2983
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Re: Passages

#6661 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Aug 24, 2017 1:39 pm


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bearcuborg
Joined: Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:30 am
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Re: Passages

#6662 Post by bearcuborg » Thu Aug 24, 2017 2:52 pm

Jay Thomas

You could spend a few good hours looking up hilarious interviews with Howard Stern or David Letterman. Jay always had great stories.

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domino harvey
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Re: Passages

#6663 Post by domino harvey » Thu Aug 24, 2017 3:11 pm

Always enjoyed him on Murphy Brown growing up

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hearthesilence
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Re: Passages

#6664 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Aug 24, 2017 3:16 pm


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mfunk9786
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Re: Passages

#6665 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Aug 24, 2017 5:09 pm

Jay Thomas had the only other radio show that's currently airing on the Howard 100/101 channels on SiriusXM, and now that those stations have become so excellently curated with Howard's current and older shows instead of specials and one-offs (like the also deceased Riley Martin's show, Jackie Martling's show, etc), it's always jarring to hear Jay Thomas' voice instead of Howard's when I turn on the radio in my car. I guess that won't be the case anymore, which is sort of a strange thing. Always was incredibly vibrant and seemed to be having a great time, even if I personally didn't listen.

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bearcuborg
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Re: Passages

#6666 Post by bearcuborg » Thu Aug 24, 2017 5:24 pm

Jay always had this Charles Grodin like quality. I loved when he would angrily throw Shuli and others out of the studio.

Abe Kanan from 101 has pretty hilarious podcast if liked his show...
Last edited by bearcuborg on Fri Aug 25, 2017 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Passages

#6667 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Aug 25, 2017 1:39 pm


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dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: Passages

#6668 Post by dwk » Sun Aug 27, 2017 3:04 am


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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
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Re: Passages

#6669 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Aug 27, 2017 5:31 am

I'm very sorry to hear that. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is an amazing, shattering film. Its strange to think of the low tech, grubby setting in the context of Hooper's later films, especially in the 1980s where the phantasmagorical special effects became so much the focus. Poltergeist was probably the turning point, but that pulls off almost the perfect balancing act between a grounded sense of a well defined family unit versus all of the special effect sequences later on (the later sequences only being so powerful because of the relationship built up with the family over the early section of the film). For all of the rather unnecessary 'who directed it?' questions, Poltergeist does feel like its in the same tradition of Texas Chain Saw Massacre in its big themes about an older way of life coming back to prey on the modern, rather clueless as to the history of the area they've moved into, characters. Its probably the ultimate film about callous urban development and the way that it relies on its inhabitants having an acontextual sense of their own place in the world, let alone historical context. With people more deeply rooted in the area being seen almost incomprehensible monsters! (His TV mini-series of Salem's Lot is also excellent, and features a lot of the same themes)

After that, and with the Cannon Films, things got a little too broad and goofy for my taste. Though I am starting to warm up a bit to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (especially the Dennis Hopper scenes!) and its complete 180 on tone and style, foregoing the ultimate in gritty and harrowing tension with surprisingly little onscreen bloodshead for broad, goofy neon-tinged comedy and graphic gore everywhere. Its such a tonal whiplash that its quite audacious, but I remember really not liking it at all for the longest time.

Plus of course there's LifeForce, which is similarly overblown but played with a straighter face ("What about the bodies?" "Collect the pieces and watch them!") a fantastically entertaining almost comic-book take on an apocalyptic Quatermass-type story, even if it feels a bit like three or four different films bolted together! At the very least it features Patrick Stewart getting slapped around before his most memorable screen kiss!

The problem with going so far into special effect spectaculars is that you have to keep upping the ante, and after LifeForce (and Invaders From Mars) pushed things to such an extreme, there seemed nowhere left to go. After Cannon and its crazily huge budgets, Hooper had to scale things back to mixed success, and the lack of budget to simply power through the sillier moments really showed up the flaws in the high concept ideas (and he unfortunately wasn't able to pull it back with a big success, as Wes Craven managed with the Scream series). There were still fun moments though such as in the return to the TV movie genre with 1990s I'm Dangerous Tonight (about a possessed cloak!), featuring Anthony Perkins. The Toolbox Murders is a pretty average slasher film and quite badly harmed by taking on the recognisable name of a really good 1978 film for no particular reason (I sort of bracket it in with that House of Wax remake from around the same time). Called anything else and it might have been able to be assessed on more of its own terms.

And the last film by Hooper that I've had a chance to see, 2005's Mortuary, sort of encapsulates that problem that Hooper had after the 80s. Its not a bad film and is about a family moving to a house with an old funeral home in it and then having to fight off hordes of reanimated zombies and the monster of one of the previous family members who has been festering in the basement (very Poltergeist or Salem's Lot-esque, but blunter). It actually has a pretty good action climax, and its great to see Denise Crosby (the ill fated Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation) in a rare starring role there as the mother. But its a really silly premise for the action, especially when compared to the care taken compared to the incredibly grounded and believable set up of Poltergeist. The themes are the same, but Mortuary is in a more generic horror film world - I like Mortuary, but I'm thinking of it more in context with something like Lucio Fulci's The House By The Cemetery! Or even Phantasm, but without Phantasm's dream-like quality. And while that appeals to me as a horror fan, that's very far away from capturing the zeitgeist in the way that Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Poltergeist did. But to have left us with two classics that defined their respective decades in horror (plus Salem's Lot, which uses its longer mini-series running time extremely well to create a slow burning tension and invest the audience into the characters; and LifeForce, which I'd argue anyone with a sense of humour, and a curiosity about naked space vampires, should see!) is still a fantastic achievement! Just think of how differently toned just those four 'successful' features were!

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MichaelB
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Re: Passages

#6670 Post by MichaelB » Sun Aug 27, 2017 8:32 am

I think the best "Tobe Hooper" film since Hooper's own heyday is Aleksey Balabanov's Cargo 200 - it's one of the very few films I can think of that manages to recapture that same sense of clammy, grubby panic that infuses The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and some other Hooper films (but very, very few others), to the extent that it works brilliantly as a horror film even if you're not the tiniest bit interested in the political background.

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rohmerin
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Re: Passages

#6671 Post by rohmerin » Mon Aug 28, 2017 6:02 am

Mireille Darc, actress and Alain Delon's companion

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colinr0380
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Re: Passages

#6672 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Aug 28, 2017 6:11 am

rohmerin wrote:Mireille Darc, actress and Alain Delon's companion
Most famously appearing as the handbag obsessed, mutually murderous wife of the jaded couple at the centre of Godard's societally apocalyptic "film found on a garbage dump/adrift in the cosmos" Weekend. The perfect film for a Bank Holiday getaway weekend!

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MichaelB
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Re: Passages

#6673 Post by MichaelB » Thu Aug 31, 2017 4:06 am

Károly Makk, by any yardstick one of the greatest of all Hungarian filmmakers, although since his films were much less flamboyant than those of Miklós Jancsó, István Szabó et al, they tended to be appreciated more by connoisseurs prepared to make the effort of seeking them out. But the masterly Love (1971) has been a fixture on Best Hungarian Films lists for almost half a century, and with good reason.

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Bikey
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2005 4:09 am

Re: 4 Love

#6674 Post by Bikey » Thu Aug 31, 2017 4:28 am

RIP Károly Makk.

It is with sadness we report the passing of another great filmmaker - the renowned Hungarian director and screenwriter Károly Makk has passed away at the age of 91.
Second Run have had the honour and pleasure of working with Károly Makk as we released several of his works - including one of our favourites: the exquisite LOVE (Szerelem, 1971), which Derek Malcolm also selected in his 'Century of Films'.

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Fiery Angel
Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:59 pm

Re: Passages

#6675 Post by Fiery Angel » Thu Aug 31, 2017 2:02 pm

Sad news about Makk, one of the true greats. Aside from the abortions that Facets put out and Second Run's releases, are any of his films available in English-friendly editions?

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