'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[Gregory]

2001: A Space Odyssey was one big adrenaline rush? Anyway, it seems like this writer has confused the science fiction and "action" genres.

[domino harvey]

This isn't ridiculous, it's awesome, but we don't have a thread for awesome things. From Tumblr:

Strangeness of economics

Apropos of nothing, let’s say you want to buy Gidget: The Complete Series (1965) (32 episodes):

* Download from iTunes: $21.99
* Video on Demand from Amazon.com: $17.99
* DVD from Amazon.com: $39.95 $14.99

Those are, at least, a more-or-less direct comparison. Acquiring the films is another story. There were three films: Gidget (1959), Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963). The first was shot in CinemaScope (2.35:1 aspect ratio), the other two in regular widescreen (1.85:1).

* DVD from Amazon.com: $19.94 $14.99 (all three films, in 1.33:1 pan and scan, Amazon reviewers are uniformly upset about this)
* Download from iTunes: $14.99 (first film only, 2.35:1 widescreen)
* Video on Demand from Amazon.com: $9.99 (first film only, 1.78:1 widescreen)

For the sake of being really geeky, let’s compare these by price per volume of picture. Imagine each frame of film was printed out as a photograph, and placed in a stack. The space taken up by that stack is the amount of picture we are buying. Thus, we can define “volume of picture” as the area of a single frame multiplied by the running time of the film (the height of the stack).

The original film has a runtime of 95 minutes and was shot in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Thus it has a volume of 2.35 x 1 x 95 = 223.25. (We could turn the aspect ratio into a unit, like inches, but then we would have to choose a specific size of screen, and in the end it would be the same as multiplying all of our numbers by a fixed amount; the comparisons wouldn’t change.) That’s the format that iTunes carries, at a price of 6.71 cents per unit.

The Amazon download is cropped to 1.78:1, reducing its volume to 169.10. So it’s a lower price but for less picture, at 5.91 cents per unit.

Finally, the DVD set has clipped the picture to 1.33:1, reducing its volume to 126.35. But it also includes two other films, at 101 minutes and 104 minutes, for a total of 300 minutes in the set. That’s a volume of 399, at a price of 5 cents per unit.

Paging swo17...

[swo17]

Why are you only paging me? Isn't that how everyone rates the Gidget set?

[MichaelB]

What happens when you show a stupid person a clever film, in this case Wojciech Smarzowski's brilliant The Dark House:

Drunken Cops and Bad plots

As the title says its really bad, some of it is funny. It is a polish film i don't really know what to make of some of the things i seen in this film. Apparently it takes roughly 8 police and 2 civilians and a witness to examine a crime scene. Doesn't help that the police are swilling vodka like its going out of style, also one of the cops has a baby during this movie. None of these things tie the storyline together or really have anything to do with anything really. It was entertaining to see drunk people/cops get smashed and fight each other and act like general retards. The murders are equally silly and the people doing that part were generally unbelievable as the police. I'd stay away from this movie unless you like watching drunken people on screen acting like tards

I particularly like the emphatic "None of these things tie the storyline together or really have anything to do with anything really", as though it was a statement of indisputable fact.

Granted, the film doesn't spell out in especial detail why its two parallel narratives are set in October 1978 (the month the first Polish Pope was elected, setting in train events that would ultimately lead to the collapse of Communism) and February 1982 (a couple of months after martial law was declared), as it presumably assumed its Polish target audience would be well aware of their significance. I also imagine that the film's ultimate satirical point, that the police (actually militia) are so keen to blackmail and inform on each other that solving a three-year-old murder is not merely inconvenient but actively undesirable, is hard to grasp without realising this.

But surely it must be clear even to a prior ignoramus that there are equally satirical reasons for the militia to be portrayed as "drunken people on screen acting like tards" and attending a crime scene in such clearly excessive numbers, in the process filling out endless pointless forms and arguing over correct protocols? Evidently not.

[dustysomers]

From a re-cut Ferris Bueller trailer description:

My aim was to make it look more like an indie coming of age film; perhaps the kind of film Sofia Coppola or Godard might make.

That Godard. Such an indie kid.

[Gregory]

Re: the ubiquitous seller feedback posted as product reviews on Amazon, I like seeing that it goes the other way, with movie "reviews" somehow posted within the detailed seller feedback form. I was looking at a seller's feedback and saw this had been posted under "Comments about your experience with this seller":

"Harrison Ford played in His Finest Role. These kind of True Movies make you think and dream about."

[Minkin]

Eh, when I sold my gross old set, I received:

Collection 3 was even better than collection 2. I love the Twilight Zone.

[Morbii]

Not a film, but from a review of an iPhone application (yes, these reviews are a breeding ground for inane behavior, but I felt this one was quality)

Boring doing sane [sic] thing over and over again and same thing every time u start the game. Fun game.
....

[Murdoch]

Not a review, but rediculous nonetheless, this set of what is basically snuff makes me fear for humanity. Although the reviews are pretty mind-boggling, so I guess it does belong here.

[domino harvey]

Yeah, it might be horribly life scarring for a seventeen year old to see human beings eviscerated on camera. If you're eighteen or over though: cakewalk

[Murdoch]

I just noticed under Actor it simply says "Dead People." Classy.

[Grand Illusion]

I just noticed under Actor it simply says "Dead People." Classy.

I'm not going to buy the set or anything. That said, the credit is some pretty hilarious gallows humor.

[Steven H]

Netflix reviewer on Tokyo Story:

The film is visually stunning, a little too stunning for my money. In this it recalls a Bertolucci film, 'Red Desert'. That film was so relentlessly artistic it left me feeling beat up at the end. No question, the director is an artist and the show is well done. However, the piece screams propaganda to me. The US defeated the Japanese with a home front campaign featuring gross racism. "We'll slap the Jap right off the map!" etc. We had also defeated Germany and Italy. France was in ruins and the US took it upon itself to 'rehabilitate' its former enemies and friends, Particularly through the cenema. The purpose of this well shot and mounted film was to make the Japanese seem 'human', complete with family problems. This is a nice cozy Halmark hour that got really bloated. Not my cuppa.

[Tom Amolad]

Netflix reviewer on Tokyo Story:

The film is visually stunning, a little too stunning for my money. In this it recalls a Bertolucci film, 'Red Desert'. That film was so relentlessly artistic it left me feeling beat up at the end. No question, the director is an artist and the show is well done. However, the piece screams propaganda to me. The US defeated the Japanese with a home front campaign featuring gross racism. "We'll slap the Jap right off the map!" etc. We had also defeated Germany and Italy. France was in ruins and the US took it upon itself to 'rehabilitate' its former enemies and friends, Particularly through the cenema. The purpose of this well shot and mounted film was to make the Japanese seem 'human', complete with family problems. This is a nice cozy Halmark hour that got really bloated. Not my cuppa.

I started counting my mental WTFs but lost track around line 3.

[matrixschmatrix]

Whoa, whoa, whoa... the US defeated Germany and Italy? Fuuuuck

[aox]

Ozu's films are pretty intense though. He's like a Japanese Passolini or a Japanese Oshima. All three from countries, I should add, defeated by the US in WWII.

[oldsheperd]

I love the reviews on Amazon where the customer leaves feedback for the purchase, like: "Shipped quickly very pleased."

[Matt]

I will never stop laughing at "cenema."

[HistoryProf]

the US Americans gave Japan barium cenemas.

[Murdoch]

"Too stunning for my money" is a great pullquote.

[Steven H]

There's a part of me that hopes "No question, the director is an artist and the show is well done." pops up in every other film specific thread henceforth.

[SpiderBaby]

Netflix reviewer on Tokyo Story:

The purpose of this well shot and mounted film was to make the Japanese seem 'human', complete with family problems.

What?

[Mr Sausage]

For some reason I read "Toy Story" for "Tokyo Story" when I first looked through that review. I can't even begin to describe the insanity I thought I was seeing.

[Thomas Dukenfield]

Netflix reviewer on Tokyo Story:

The purpose of this well shot and mounted film was to make the Japanese seem 'human', complete with family problems.

What?

Meaning (as far as I can tell), Tokyo Story is post war propaganda from the liberals to make Americans feel bad for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This had to have been one of the more difficult liberal media conspiracies to coordinate, considering the film was Japanese and not even widely released in the U.S. until the 70's (or so I've heard). The bunker truly runs deep.

Also, the same guy gave Heartbeeps five stars, so the above review might be a brilliant bit of satire. I'm not gonna bet on it though.

[SpiderBaby]

It just sounds like he said Japanese people are not human (or wasn't human when the U.S. was at war with them aka, racist way of saying they were "monsters" I take it), and that they are so advanced that they had to make up "family problems" in a film because they never have any. lol.