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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 6, 2020 18:08:08 GMT
For what it is worth, I enjoyed all of DRACULA, except, perhaps, for the exceedingly sappy last few minutes. It was very entertaining, with clever references to all sorts of things---including HANNIBAL, the television show I thought only I and two other people liked.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 6, 2020 19:49:18 GMT
---including HANNIBAL, the television show I thought only I and two other people liked. Make this three.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 6, 2020 19:52:43 GMT
Right. I knew I read something about a movie some time ago, but couldn't remember the details.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 6, 2020 20:06:53 GMT
---including HANNIBAL, the television show I thought only I and two other people liked. Make this three. Oh cool; I have entered it into my Excel spreadsheet.
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Post by Knygathin on Jan 8, 2020 11:31:48 GMT
The last vampire movie I saw was Fright Night (1985), and I still watch it occasionally. Well, I did see Coppola's Dracula (1992), and regret it!; halfway through I immediately rejected it as a big pompous production made by some ambitious fat ass highflyer who doesn't really understand the supernatural, fantasy, and horror. I don't like to have my imagination tainted with substandard.
My favorite vampire film is Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot (1979), the full TV-series put together. And I enjoy watching the Hammer productions, mostly for the rich contemporary time settings, and for Lee's and Cushing's acting. Nosferatu (1922) is interesting too.
I don't watch television. Nor recent Hollywood or Disney productions. They are all political propaganda.
Less is more.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jan 8, 2020 13:11:36 GMT
The last vampire movie I saw was Fright Night (1985), and I still watch it occasionally. Well, I did see Coppola's Dracula (1992), and regret it!; halfway through I immediately rejected it as a big pompous production made by some ambitious fat ass highflyer who doesn't really understand the supernatural, fantasy, and horror. I don't like to have my imagination tainted with substandard. My favorite vampire film is Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot (1979), the full TV-series put together. And I enjoy watching the Hammer productions, mostly for the rich contemporary time settings, and for Lee's and Cushing's acting. Nosferatu (1922) is interesting too. I don't watch television. Nor recent Hollywood or Disney productions. They are all political propaganda. Less is more. All films are political propaganda. They are right wing if they question no aspect of society. They are left wing if they question any aspect of society. Or, they are all left wing if you are right wing, or they are all right wing if you are left wing.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 8, 2020 15:05:16 GMT
The last vampire movie I saw was Fright Night (1985), and I still watch it occasionally. Well, I did see Coppola's Dracula (1992), and regret it!; halfway through I immediately rejected it as a big pompous production made by some ambitious fat ass highflyer who doesn't really understand the supernatural, fantasy, and horror. I don't like to have my imagination tainted with substandard. I have developed a love/hate relationship with the 1985 Fright Night. Some parts still crack me up. The vampire whistling "Strangers in the Night" was and is hilarious. But Roddy McDowell - or better his character - is painful in its camp persona. The remake was the usual waste of resources. But the trash-friend in me likes the remake of Fright Knight 2 in all its gory splendor and Jaime Murray, who is a mean blood queen. Coppola's movie is okay for the first half in terms of pictures, his three brides are the best. The whiny second half is just terrible. Reincarnated love should be left to Mummy movies. And the first few issues of Conan's return to Marvel Comics which were utter excrement. From which point on - so far as I can tell - they've got worse. Yes, an absolute misfire. For that they had to terminate the Dark Horse license. A shame. Not that DH at the end still had anything to say about the character, maybe except the Truman/Giorello adaptions. You need a certain mindset to do Conan right, which will cost you the goodwill of the current reader generation. So it won't happen again. Especially as the average comic has become a luxury article.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 8, 2020 15:50:36 GMT
Michael Connolly, I hope someday you will write a book. Perhaps you are and have been for decades an established and well-known author--I apologize for this flippant, ignorant remark, if so. I know we have some celebrated names on here. That final salvo about the left wing/right wing thing was the stuff of genius.
cheers, H.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jan 8, 2020 15:56:25 GMT
Michael Connolly, I hope someday you will write a book. Perhaps you are and have been for decades an established and well-known author--I apologize for this flippant, ignorant remark, if so. I know we have some celebrated names on here. That final salvo about the left wing/right wing thing was the stuff of genius. cheers, H.
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Post by Knygathin on Jan 8, 2020 17:12:02 GMT
I have developed a love/hate relationship with the 1985 Fright Night. Some parts still crack me up. The vampire whistling "Strangers in the Night" was and is hilarious. But Roddy McDowell - or better his character - is painful in its camp persona. ... Pretty much agree with your views. McDowell's character sure is cringy. But he fits into the context. I really like the movie. It has the best of 1980s atmosphere. And the vampire is just great, one of the best, and his accomplice is perfect. But of course, it's nothing like the masterpiece Salem's Lot (1979), from which it is a spin-off; much less serious, more tongue-in-cheek and humorous.
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Post by Knygathin on Jan 8, 2020 17:45:35 GMT
All films are political propaganda. ... Not all. Some may be purely poetic. And if so, not responsible for others' political projections cast onto them. I could stand both left wing films of the 1970s, and right wing films of the 1980s/90s. When they still retained some artistic integrity. Good movies are still being made, but on rare occasions, and then by independent producers managing to stand free from the evil claws of Hollywood and the control of deep government dictatorship. Which is becoming increasingly difficult, especially if you want to make something big. The Lord of the Rings is the last I am aware of, before it finally got swallowed up by Hollywood.
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Post by Knygathin on Jan 8, 2020 17:58:28 GMT
Or, they are all left wing if you are right wing, or they are all right wing if you are left wing.
..... Do I here stand in the Face of Genius?
I think I may have a vague hunch what you mean ..... Possibly.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 8, 2020 18:13:47 GMT
I would like to write about my "favorites" of the past year but would have to review my personal diary as I am semi-amnesiac (it's not a medical condition, just the result of being a tired, OLD fag) and I can't recall, for instance, if I read The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst last year, or in 2018... it was an incredible read, whenever it happened! But not really Vault material.
I did think both The Favourite and The Lighthouse were excellent films... Lighthouse in particular was like being trapped inside of a nightmare for two hours. Harrowing and unforgettable.
Knives Out was a lovely pastiche of every dysfunctional rich family house party murder mystery one has ever stumbled over, from Mrs Christie to Columbo (and references to both were made)... maybe not great cinema but I thought it was a beautifully acted, tightly written, very fun ride.
Perhaps not a success but another film I enjoyed last year was an adaptation of The Aspern Papers starring Joely Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in a performance the friend who viewed the film with me found extremely bad but I actually thought worked for the character. Gorgeous Venetian photography and a gorgeously mounted, completely extraneous homoerotic supertext.
By and large modern film is a dreary, sterile landscape, all about "franchises", "product placement" (the products include certain celebrity-actors), extremely repetitive CGI and various competing agendas... Avoid at all cost, is my motto.
H.
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Post by pulphack on Jan 8, 2020 20:46:14 GMT
Mr Connolly is far too modest - but that's probably because I agree with him. The last election and the media was a case in point: the left wing media and press bashed Boris and bleated about Jeremy being picked on, while the right wing media decimated Corbyn and complained about the flak Johnson was getting. Truth is, as an anarchist who thinks they're all idiots, it looked to me like handbags at dawn on both sides. Eye of the beholder, etc. That's the problem with getting on board with dogma, it makes you look at things through one eye half-closed. Although it has to be said, the choice of Bozo, Magic Grandpa or the Leader of The Student Union made you yearn for the days of Ted and darling Harold, and they weren't exactly heavyweights in the MacMillan or Atlee class (both of whom were the last leaders of their parties to really have any perspective and intellectual clout, in my admittedly limited view).
But anyway...I kind of agree with Crom about a lot of film and TV. There IS good stuff out there, mind, it just gets harder to find. But in genre terms I do prefer old books to new. The best books of the 2010's I read were non-genre, 'general' fiction. He has made me head back to the shelves and dig out an Odhams volume I have where I've only read the William Haggard - the other two unread 1961 novels now beckon...
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Post by andydecker on Jan 8, 2020 20:49:08 GMT
Lighthouse movies must be in. I watched Cold Skin, which was recommended by John Probert in his blog. And I like Ray Stevenson, and it sounded interesting. i am not sure it worked, but it wasn't a waste of time either. Young bloke get to a lighthouse manned by an old guy who is in a war with a horde of Deep Ones. I have not seen the current one, but I like the setting. Always toyed with the idea to see Horror of Fang Rock someday.
I never heard about The Aspen Papers. Must put it on the list. I like Venecia as a setting, since watching Don't Look Now at an impressionable age. And I like Rhys Meyer.
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