Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:The analysis of sex and free will in Cabin In The Woods is quite entertaining. I can only imagine what they'd make of Damsels In Distress.
Here's a comment on that post: "I worked on this film. I can tell you that the sugarplum fairy (originally referred to as the lamprey ballerina) has nothing to do with oral sex." The blogger refutes that claim with another 6 paragraphs. Fantastic.
I haven't extensively read that blog, but it almost seems like a brilliant put-on. It's hard to tell these days.
The first Metacritic user review of the new James Gunn penned videogame Lollipop Chainsaw:
this game is so good so funny gory too with alot of swearing and skimpy outfit i love it she next larry croft only she teenage cheerleader.........................................................
The movie makes a brief appearance in the 1984 war film Red Dawn. When the protagonists return to their hometown occupied by the Soviet army, they walk by the "Serf" town cinema. The theater marquis says "All Saturday Come, Alexander Nevsky, Admission Free."
I get the image of some down-at-the-heels Russian nobleman working as a barker for a movie theater ...
The horror of Rebecca slides imperceptibly from beneath the comic weirdness. Maxim de Winter bullies, manipulates and insults Fontaine's character, but she's too naive to notice. In a scene of pseudo-revelation which Olivier cannily acts with overt staginess, de Winter declaims his ex as a lying, cheating, malicious flibbertigibbet who taunted him that she was pregnant with another man's baby. He mumbles insincerely: "I suppose I went mad for a moment – I suppose I must have struck her." She tripped, hit her head and died. A doctor then claims Rebecca was dying of cancer and unable to have children. So … it was OK to kill her accidentally because she was going to die anyway? In the novel it's even more nasty. Hitchcock shoots this sordid tale with light, slick cynicism.
As de Winter's cronies collude to absolve him, a beautiful fire ravages Manderley, representing Rebecca's rage at being so slandered. The house's charred remains are the perfect image of a great woman destroyed by smears, stories and sabotage.
I wouldn't say an icon and I'm not at all convinced that in the end the house represents Rebecca as simply as that, but the film and novel were both rich explorations of patriarchy in the Gothic tradition, which innumerable critics have engaged with. The essay in the Criterion booklet is far better as a brief take on all this than this Bidisha write-up, and a more thorough treatment that's well worth reading is Tania Modleski's chapter on it in The Women Who Knew Too Much, which considers the film partly by responding to earlier critical discussion of it in relation to Freud, and by discussing Selznick's disagreements with Hitchcock and determination to make it a women's picture with the novel's feminine touches intact, and what this meant for Hitchcock as ostensibly the film's author.
I don't even know what film this is a 'review' of, but my niece sent this text about a film she was watching: "It's really good. It's about aboriginals when they were getting put into missionarys."
This Netflix customer review of the restored Metropolis made me laugh.
A discerning critic wrote:Boring as Hell. And Shut Up about "required" Film Classics. I've seen more Classics then you'll know. I went to Film School. YAWN. (By the way, nice "pants" about 22 minutes in.)
I think "I went to Film School" (in title case, no less) is what makes it for me.
Has anybody noticed these phrases that keep being plucked out of Amazon reviews and given there own little centerpiece? I have no idea what criteria or algorithm they are using, but some of them are hilarious, like this one for Mel Gibson's Get the Gringo (2012):
Last edited by McCrutchy on Tue Jun 26, 2012 12:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
It is nice to see that Rationalists are ambivalent about sparkly vampires too (or was that the review only giving the film 4 stars for the lack of the same?)
The review of the Born on the Fourth of July Blu on Bluray.com is my new favorite thing. The audio section in particular is gold/has to be a pisstake.
The music has power and fullness, elegantly supporting additional audio elements. Soundtrack selections also carry good instrumentation and respectful placement. Dialogue is handed a solid frontal position, with richly emotional tones and confrontational sharpness, also processing Stone's use of chaos well, with clusters of voices carrying subtle reactions and lines. Verbal shrillness isn't felt. Surrounds are useful, capturing the community feel with verbal expanse and a nice handle on echo.
A man stayed-put wrote:The review of the Born on the Fourth of July Blu on Bluray.com is my new favorite thing. The audio section in particular is gold/has to be a pisstake.
The music has power and fullness, elegantly supporting additional audio elements. Soundtrack selections also carry good instrumentation and respectful placement. Dialogue is handed a solid frontal position, with richly emotional tones and confrontational sharpness, also processing Stone's use of chaos well, with clusters of voices carrying subtle reactions and lines. Verbal shrillness isn't felt. Surrounds are useful, capturing the community feel with verbal expanse and a nice handle on echo.
I can tell you as a former reviewer for DVDBeaver, it's really damn hard to think up something new and interesting to say about AV, especially when there are no real problems. You either end up repeating the same thing in each review (which I did more often than not) or you end up talking out of your ass like the guy above. I feel for him, but that is embarrassing. That being said, I'm still shocked that nothing I wrote ever ended up in this thread.
colinr0380 wrote:I simply have to put Bidisha's headslapping, point missing take on Rebecca into this thread. Presumably she is trying to make a case that the first Mrs de Winter is some sort of proto-feminist icon?
The horror of Rebecca slides imperceptibly from beneath the comic weirdness. Maxim de Winter bullies, manipulates and insults Fontaine's character, but she's too naive to notice. In a scene of pseudo-revelation which Olivier cannily acts with overt staginess, de Winter declaims his ex as a lying, cheating, malicious flibbertigibbet who taunted him that she was pregnant with another man's baby. He mumbles insincerely: "I suppose I went mad for a moment – I suppose I must have struck her." She tripped, hit her head and died. A doctor then claims Rebecca was dying of cancer and unable to have children. So … it was OK to kill her accidentally because she was going to die anyway? In the novel it's even more nasty. Hitchcock shoots this sordid tale with light, slick cynicism.
As de Winter's cronies collude to absolve him, a beautiful fire ravages Manderley, representing Rebecca's rage at being so slandered. The house's charred remains are the perfect image of a great woman destroyed by smears, stories and sabotage.
I always thought the Isabel Sarli movie FUEGO could have easily been the prequel to Rebecca.
Gary Tooze wrote:We have been telling stories with pictures since the dawn of man and a natural elevation to the fantastical seems only... appropriate. Film is just another graphic extension. Like many 'superhero'-based creations 'Mystery Men' goes to extreme lengths to parody the very genre it evolves from. This process, kind of, breaks down the third wall acceptable to many who refuse to suspend their disbelief.
This movie is HORRIBLE!!! Definitely Spielberg's worst! The story is so stupid. The fact is that shark's rarely eat humans. Overall I would've given it a zero but considering it was made in '75 I give it a one. I wish it could've more like Deep Blue Sea which actually had a plot and a reason for the shark's violent behavior.