Well, MMT is my favorite Beatles album, but the film is probably my least favorite Beatles film. Still OK as a curiosity, I’d say.
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The atmosphere is what I am looking for. The reason why I tentatively categorized it with Candy as being a “sex flick” is as a result of a few blurbs which made it sound a bit salacious - but I don’t usually trust those to accurately represent movies. My cheap “impulse buy” copy is a German disc from EMS. It says it is only 88 minutes.
That is a good question! That’s another bit of psychedelic cinema I am surprised to not have seen yet. I remember listening to the Firesign Theatre discussing their issues with it on an old episode of one of their radio shows. They were annoyed that some facet of the Hollywood guild system prohibited them from having writer’s credit as a group, saying that there is no way that they would have written it as individuals without their collective gestalt personality. I can relate, forced individualism often comes off as forced selfishness.
IIRC it was pretty incoherent. It was a television special where they could get a bus and improvise something very silly on short order. I am not a huge Beatles fan, but MMT is one of my favorite of their albums also. The video is really more like a low-budget improvised long-form music video. I had it on VHS in my teens, but haven’t watched it for almost thirty years. Definitely more of an indulgent “let’s do weird stuff on camera” than the more traditionally cinematic work they did before with Richard Lester. I found it enjoyable, but not the sort of thing I could watch often.
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Tokyo Godfathers is brilliant and now one of my favourite anime/films.
Highly recommend.
Watch Le Samourai when you get a chance. Classic.
Classic classic.
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I need to see that one… I have been interested after the review on the GME podcast. If you haven’t seen John Woo’s The Killer (which is awesome in it’s own way) try and get a copy of that as it got a lot of comparison made to it by the reviewers.
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As it turned out, Arthur [C. Clarke] did not get to see the completed film until the US private premiere. He was shocked by the transformation. Almost every element of explanation had been removed. Reams of voice-over narration had been cut. Far from being a pseudo-documentary, the film was now elusive, ambiguous and thoroughly unclear.
Close to tears, he left at the intermission, having watched an 11-minute sequence in which an astronaut did nothing but jog around the centrifuge in a scene intended to show the boredom of space travel. This scene was considerably cut in the version put out on general release.
Now THAT I would like to see; as well as the voice-over version.
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Watched the new Ghostbusters over two nights, with the wife. Enjoyed it, although the pacing seemed weird.
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Fast forward six months and somehow “the pacing seemed weird” has become a misogynist dog whistle.
[Sorry, I don’t want to derail the movie discussion, but this joke is so funny to me I’m holding back laughs and crying a little. I get that’s it’s probably not as funny to anyone else. Yet here I am, expressing myself without regard to how it’s taken by others, and that just makes it funnier.]
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It felt to me like a movie which was overhauled significantly in editing and reshoots; while I liked quite a lot of it, it felt like there were chunks taken out and bits missing here and there, giving it weirdly uneven pacing.
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There were fast bits and slow bits, and the transitions didn’t gel. The setup of the troops in a dance-move didn’t payout in the main movie, but we did get to see it in the credits. It would’ve been shorter in the main film, I guess. My wife said “I enjoy watching [Chris Hemsworth] dance more than I should!” … She did not really appear apologetic in the least. The villain was weak, the animation of the final boss was great. I would like to see more team development, and am disappointed there won’t be more movies with the 4 if them. (5 as far as my wife is concerned.)
Also, the cameos were intrusive, except for Annie Potts and Ernie Hudson.
All in all, light-years better than GB2.
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Agree with every point here. I was actually worried they were going to stop the entire movie for a disco number, but then it seemed weird and awkward to have everyone in a disco pose for no reason. Sticking it on the end credits just made it more awkward, as if pointing out to the audience “here’s a bit we obviously edited out!”
Hated the villain, and not in a good way. Pretty much any scene with either Chris Hemsworth or Kate McKinnon was gold, and I was very much looking forward to more Holtzmann now that they’d gotten the “cameos and winking references to the fans!” stuff out of the way.
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Meh. Ed Harris is great, although his character is badly underwritten. Sy Richardson and Marlee Matlin have a nice moment or two. Rene Auberjonois needed subtitles. (In addition, either I’m going deaf or the sound mix in general really, really sucked.) Nice bit of history, but too chaotically filmed to really work as satire. Also, I’m inclined to say that it undercuts the moral lesson to keep taking time away from it to show off your cool spaghetti western moves, and this problem is made worse if you don’t actually have any cool spaghetti western moves. Good ending, however.
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Watched Life, Animated yesterday.
Didn’t know the first thing about it beyond hearing that it was good. Moving documentary about autism, telling the story of a kid who learned to communicate via animated films.
I think it’s up for an Oscar this year.
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Just caught Big Eyes on Netflix. I really enjoyed it. I kept skipping it, because the art work never interested me, but Amy Adams, sigh, I have the biggest girl crush on her. Great cast all the way around and a well done movie.
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Just watched Kubo and the Two Strings. I thought it was great. Really charming little film.
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Oh yeah, I saw Trainspotting 2, or should I say “T2 Trainspotting”?
What an awesome riff on, retrospective of, updated, more wise and cultured and self-aware version of the spirit of the first film. Look out for Irvine Welsh as Begbie’s crime boss friend amongst other tattie allusions.
Was very impressed, going back to see it again.
In parts hilarious, intimidating, vapid, deep, wry and a little bit arty without being shite.
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An upcoming movie, but for weirdness…
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Stephen “The Office” Merchant are making a movie version of the (really rather good) wrestling doco “Fighting With My Family”. Announced cast so far is Nick Frost and Lena Headey.
Cersei Lannister is going to be playing the most terrifying woman in wrestling, Sweet Saraya Knight. This is perfect.
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Watched The Lego Batman Movie today. Minor success, since Jr. sat through the whole thing with limited squirming.
I thought it was good fun. Perhaps a little overlong, but it was funny.
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Finally saw Trumbo! Quite an excellent film that I’d consider showing to a class to explain the blacklist.
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The Batman sequence form The Lego Movie was one of my favorite parts. Probably the best screen Batman so far. I will have to keep an eye on the cheap theater for that one.
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Yeah, it’s actually a pretty interesting characterization of Batman, behind a lot of jokes.
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