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Post by cauldronbrewer on Nov 12, 2019 14:01:29 GMT
How was Midsommar, H? I haven't seen it yet, but definitely intend to. I watched Midsommar last night and thought it was great--one of the best "daylight horror" films I can remember seeing. It's full of vivid images, some beautiful and some grotesque. Plus an unexpected amount of dark comedy at the expense of the American anthropology dude-bros (my wife, who studied anthropology, rolled her eyes at them fairly often). Still, I can understand why not all viewers might like it: it's slow paced, and the main characters are mostly passive, unsympathetic, or both. Poor old Howie relentlessly pursued his own fate, but these folks sit around arguing or getting stoned while it strolls right up to them. The best description of the film I've seen is by film critic Rebecca Pahle: "All these people (with the exception of Florence Pugh, sometimes) think they are in Eat, Pray, Love when they are in fact in The Wicker Man!" (The shadow of that other film looms so large over this one that I spent a lot of time trying to guess how the plots would diverge). It might be fun to watch Midsommar and The Ritual as a double bill: two films about creepy Swedish paganism, one in bright colors, the other in shades of black and gray. I watched the theatrical version rather than the extended cut, so I missed one line I would've liked to hear in context (from Josh to Christian): “You didn't even know how to use JSTOR!”
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Nov 12, 2019 19:10:33 GMT
Is there something special to using JSTOR?
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Nov 12, 2019 19:20:03 GMT
Is there something special to using JSTOR? Not for an anthropology graduate student, which is a sign of how hapless Christian is as an aspiring academic. Or pagan fanboy, if you prefer.
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Post by jamesdoig on Nov 12, 2019 20:11:04 GMT
How was Midsommar, H? I haven't seen it yet, but definitely intend to. I watched Midsommar last night and thought it was great--one of the best "daylight horror" films I can remember seeing. I watched it not long ago and thought it was good - some pretty brutal scenes (the old couple committing suicide) and some nice touches (the swaying forest in the background). As you say, it's a bit long, and it's all leading inevitably to that conclusion. Florence Pugh is really good - she was great in Little Drummer Girl too.
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Post by helrunar on Nov 12, 2019 20:28:15 GMT
The grad students in the movie were ridiculously stupid as well as being snotty and terminally self involved.
I liked the photography and the costumes. The script failed to engage me on any level. I do not ever need to see it again.
H.
Wondering why this is on the "Sport is horror" thread... the movie was a horror to sit through, but perhaps not as the director had intended.
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Post by helrunar on Nov 12, 2019 20:30:18 GMT
OMGss Dem but a "This way to St Trinians playing fields" sign photo at the top of this thread... now THAT'S genius.
You don't get entertainment on this level for the sadly muddled dish-ups of today's would-be "auteurs."
yours in Croydon,
Mrs Smith (ret)
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Nov 12, 2019 23:36:48 GMT
Wondering why this is on the "Sport is horror" thread... the movie was a horror to sit through, but perhaps not as the director had intended. I suppose it all goes back to this comment earlier in the thread: The gang that had gathered on the lawn next door for that game included a lot of women who kept performing this synchronized sort of cooing and yowling that was reminiscent of moments in the recent horror film Midsommar. It should have been fascinating from the point of view of ethnography. But it wasn't. Now that I think of it, however, one could argue that the dance competition in the film qualifies as a contact sport.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 25, 2020 11:34:24 GMT
Harry Furniss Robert Marshall - The Haunted Major (Leicester Square Library, 1902. AKA The Enchanted Golf Clubs). "Nane o' yer new-fangled clubs for me," cried the Cardinal; "they auld things canna be bate. Tak' them wi' ye back tae whaur ye bide; bring them to the links the moarn's moarn, and as sure as we stand here this nicht - or moarn, fur the brak o' day is close at haun' - I'll be wi' ye at the first tee, tae witness sic a game o' gowf as never mortal played before. But eh! guid sir, as ye'd conserve yer body and soul frae destruction and damnation, breathe nae word o' this queer compact to man, wumman, or bairn. Sweer it, man, sweer it on this skull!" Thirty-five year old Major 'Jacky' Gore, who fancies himself a superb sporting all-rounder, rashly challenges his love rival, Jim Lindsay, to a round of golf, even though Lindsay is a serial champion while he, Gore, has never played the game in his life. The winner gets to propose to double millionaire, Katherine Clendenin Gunter, a beautiful American widow on whom they are both peculiarly sweet. Needless to say, the Major's swing is utterly hopeless, but he gains a powerful ally in the ghost of the infamous Cardinal Smeaton ("I've read a good deal about Your Eminence. I've often pictured you sitting at a window of the castle, watching with grim enjoyment young Dishart burning at the stake."). The Cardinal, who holds a golf-related grudge against the House of Lindsay, supplies the challenger with a set of enchanted clubs. To further improve Gore's chances, Smeaton strips to a skeleton to distract their opponent as he attempts a particularly difficult shot. It is all going so well ....
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Post by humgoo on Jan 25, 2020 14:33:28 GMT
Robert Marshall - The Haunted Major (Leicester Square Library, 1902. AKA The Enchanted Golf Clubs). I heard about this one, said to be one of the few successful humorous ghost stories (novels?) in English. For some reason never read it, though. Thanks for the picture and the synopsis!
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Post by dem bones on Jan 25, 2020 19:41:49 GMT
Robert Marshall - The Haunted Major (Leicester Square Library, 1902. AKA The Enchanted Golf Clubs). I heard about this one, said to be one of the few successful humorous ghost stories (novels?) in English. It's a short novel, very cheery, easy on the brain - and only the second I ever read direct from the screen (the first being Michael Avallone's masterly Partridge Family #2: The Haunted Hall). Was it ever filmed? I think it would have made for a great Ealing comedy. Version read is the later reissue as The Enchanted Golf Clubs.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 1, 2020 10:44:02 GMT
Dudley Hardy Barry Pain - The Unfinished Game: ( Windsor Magazine, Sept. 1909). Narrator Sanderson buys the Regency Hotel, Tanslowe at a ridiculously low price, recently widowed Mrs. Parker being suspiciously keen on a quick sale. Sure enough, the billiard room is haunted by the ghost of a Mr. Josiah Ham, who dropped dead mid-game having been exposed as a cheat. Bliss Nielsen Wood - The Twelfth Man: ( London Mystery Magazine, Sept. 1968). The touring cricket team are on a dreadful run of form until Hugh Prestwich, AWOL for a year following a bad motor smash, is restored to the first XI.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 27, 2020 5:05:24 GMT
Henry Leach - Colonel Belcher's Ghost Story: (The Golfer, 1910: Peter Haining [ed]. Hole in Fun: A Round of 18 Humorous Golf Stories, W.H. Allen, 1988). At the age of sixty-seven, Sir Walter Belcher of Gloomsby Castle finally takes a bride. Miss Dorothy Blessington, nineteen, is as celebrated for her all-round sporting prowess as she is her beauty, charm of manner, and general attractiveness. After many a sporting contest between the pair, Sir Walter, irate that his young bride is a champion of everything, designs the most treacherous golf-course with a view to putting the little madam in her place. Particularly hateful is a deep bunker which, try as she might, Dorothy can never conquer, though her husband invariably does so with apparent ease. Dorothy, a sore loser, gives up the game and, on Christmas Eve, while sick with fever, throws herself in the flooded bunker. A year later, Sir Walter, a broken man, sells up and moves abroad, driven out by the lonely ghost of his wife, who spends every night in their bedroom practising her swing.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 9, 2020 10:20:19 GMT
Robert Marshall - The Haunted Major (Leicester Square Library, 1902. AKA The Enchanted Golf Clubs). I heard about this one, said to be one of the few successful humorous ghost stories (novels?) in English. For some reason never read it, though. Thanks for the picture and the synopsis! Have only today realised that Robert Marshall's The Haunted Major is reproduced - with original Harry Furniss illustrations - in Rosemary Gray's Scottish Ghost Stories, for Wordsworth Editions.
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Post by bluetomb on Aug 9, 2020 12:40:02 GMT
Would Russian Roulette count as sport? Though I've not yet had too close a look at it, I recently came across the novel Death Game (1982, Methuen hardback, Magnum paperback) by Stuart White, that seems to be about a TV producer with a rather good wheeze for a new show...
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Post by bluetomb on Aug 9, 2020 15:51:05 GMT
And how's about Robert Sheckley's The Prize of Peril for a classic futuristic death sports story? Everyman Jim Raeder has fought his way to the top of a world of legalised murder on television. The ultimate game? The Prize of Peril, to be hunted across the country by mob assassins, helped (or hindered) by the public. Intercut with Jim's final flight are his adventures to the top, including bullfighting, and a competitive dive to the death for the most perfect treasure you can imagine in the circumstances. Satirical sci fi thriller, really, but certainly horror friendly, and, hailing originally from 1958, probably among the earliest/most prescient such stories.
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