We had the usual group round for fire, fillums and pizza. And a good evening was had.
We have a stack of dvds still to watch and we decided that people should pick their first 2 preferred ones and the most popular were chosen.
First up was “Innocence“. A mightily creepy little thing about a school full of young girls. At first there are no adults, just girls with a hierarchy based on age. We follow Iris from when she arrives (bizarrely in a locked coffin) and is then shown around a bit. There are restrictions such as not being allowed to leave the grounds. One or two of the girls do try, one dies and another just disappears.
The school seems to be there to teach these girls two things. The main one is dancing. There are ballet classes for all of the students. The other subject is biology.
Every night the elder girls all go away from the house and aren’t allowed to say why. Young Iris follows one day and we see things get a bit more disturbing.
We finish by following one of the girls as she graduates out of the school.
This movie was really very creepy. Loads of symbolism, quite a lot of discomforting images (one girl enjoying tasting blood rather too much, plenty of long damp tunnels, another girl being “chosen” to be removed from the school by the dodgy headmistress in a sort of talent and beauty contest, and the final image is of one girl standing opposite one of the first boys we see, in a fountain with a huge frothy plume of spurting water between them).
One comment I made at the end was “I wonder if this was made by a primary school teacher” as one of the teachers says to the graduater “You’ll soon forget us” with the sound of bitterness in her voice. And then someone else chimed in with “I wonder if it was made by a paedophile“.
It was a good fillum but not what you’d call “fun”.
And I knew I’d seen the ballet teacher somewhere before.
So after creepy and just a bit “wrong” we moved onto good old ghost story territory with “Ghost Game“.
This one is about a reality show that’s a cross between Survivor, Ghostwatch and Derren Brown’s Seance. This kids have to survive in a creepy old PoW camp, that was host to one of the worst wartime atrocities, without bolting in terror. The rather obvious twist in the fillum is that the ghosts are real rather than imagined or dreamt up tricks by the crew.
There’s no real sub-plot to note just a traditional “who will survive?” game to play as you watch. Will it be the fat girl (”She’s too fat to die”), how about the cynical one who is trying to prove it’s all a set-up, or possibly the cheeky lad who’s trying to get off with the model?
It was good and scary. Job done.
And it has to be said that these 2 brought the average quality back up to somewhere near “good”. We’ve seen some shockingly poor movies in recent sessions and these were a marked change.
2 fillums watched again with the usual crowd of masochists.
But before them may I just take a moment to decry the trend of declining quality in the fillums we have. They seem to have gone right downhill since the giddy heights of Ring, The Grudge and Ghost Watch.
Anyways.
First we had Versus. Lent to us by the lovely Philipp.
Starts with 2 prisoners escaping and reaching somewhere to be picked up by the associates of one of them. But odd stuff happens and you end up with zombies. Not just zombies but kung-fu lesbian zombies with guns. Sounds like it could be a riot. Sadly it was a mess. Appalling acting, gurning to out-do Eccleston’s Dr Who and atrocious dialogue. From about 15 mins in it was clear here was a fillum that would have lots of set pieces (all fights) and the only narrative progression would be that the baddies would be harder and more fun fights would ensue. A shame that the fun was missing then.
Another one we switched off before the end.
Second up was Tesis. Some woman at the local university is doing a thesis on violence on screen. She claims she’s horrified by violence but you know she loves it really. Well her prof dies and she nicks the fillum wot he was watching at the time. Ooh is it like “Ring”? Nope the vid doesn’t kill her 7 days later but does lead her into the world of snuff movies. Then the thing becomes a bit of a mess. She has one friend in her quest to find out what’s happening. He’s a nerd who’s into mondo fillums (stuff like “Faces of Death” - google it if you’re desperate). He figures out that the camera used is one particular model. So they trace sales of that model and bingo; it’s someone at the uni. Is it the handsome and slightly scary fillum maker? Has the nerd got something to do with it? Who’s the new professor? What about the handsome lad’s slightly psycho girlfriend? Fair to say that twists galore happen which frankly left me thinking the thing would have better simpler. Too many “oh good grief, so he is involved” moments for me. But the whole fillum was a sub-Funny Games rant against people professing horror at violence but lapping it up on screen. The movie closed with the news station playing the footage obtained and everyone around was watching avidly. As the scary professor says “Film is a business. Give them what they want.”
And that was that. Tesis was spectacularly better than Versus but not v scary and not anywhere close to some of the better fillums seen so far.
Well I said I was looking forward to this weekend and I was right to.
Saturday was the BCC, Sunday lazy until my folks arrived and today was grand too.
Folks turned up Sunday aft and we didn’t do a huge amount but they did have a go on WiiFit and embarrassed themselves thoroughly. Actually they weren’t bad and my ma came out at 45. A good 17 years younger than her actual age and younger than Charlie managed on her first go (NB This is work Charlie aka by far the fittest person I know)
Then they watched The Jungle Book and then to bed.
Today we didn’t rush in the morning before heading out for a walk in the country. We looked on a local map and decided a nice 8 mile round trip around Tilton would be a grand bet; and so it was.
Gorgeous weather, not too muddy ground and a nice pub half way round. As I said a grand day.
Me, Clurb and Rod headed out to watch El Orfanato at the Phoenix. Well worth the trip. Spooky, scary and with a good few jumps. It’s those fillums with kids that spook you.
Recommended.
Oh and I haven’t mentioned the very oddest thing wot’s happened to me this weekend.
I had an answerphone message from someone at the BBC saying
I’m researching Henry Stanley Tibbs and I’m after relatives. Can you call me back on……
Never heard of the guy but after googling him found this. Wow, another famous person in the family (t’other was StanleyvanBeers).
As I say though I’d never heard of him before.
Weird.
PS And Have I Got News For You with Brian Blessed was superb.
If you’ve read my previous post and seen Star Wars ep3 before you can already guess what’s coming.
OK then so what have they learned from the critical, public and my review of episode 2?
That you need a good script? That you don’t need pointless spectacle? That good actors can’t save a sack of bollocks?
After seeing ep2 at the cinema when it came out I avoided bothering with ep3. Seemed like a waste of my entry fee to the cinema.
So a freebie off me dad was a good opportunity to see it for free.
Only it wasn’t free. It wasted an hour of my life. My life is worth far more than this waste of my time.
You may notice I say “an hour”. Yup I gave up. I’ve rarely given up on a fillum or anything else.
I remember a time in Germany where I went to see an outdoor classical music concert. The headline piece was Orff’s Carmina Burana. But there was a first half to get through first. I didn’t like the omens. People at this concert seemed to feel that walking around and eating bratwurst was better than bothering to listen to the music. And the path between the rows of seats was gravel. Just what you want is some fat german crunching his way to the hotdog stall as you try and listen to some music. And as it’s outside you also had traffic noise, plane noise, people outside the venue shouting to mates inside etc… I spent the intermission wondering whether it would be a bigger waste to stay or leave. After seeing the dreadful “dancing” they insisted on foisting on this innocent classical piece I chose to leave. Definitely the better choice.
And this was repeated today. No germans, no crunching just sheer unadulterated poverty of vision, acting, plot, script and even the visual effects were ropey.
So I’ve given up on ever getting to the end of the second trilogy. I’d rather spend my life ooh I don’t know picking my toe nails, cleaning something that doesn’t need cleaning or whatever else.
Utter shite. Well done George Lucas. Take a classic franchise and kill it in a blaze of vacuous effects. You’re a moron.
OK so I may be a little non-contemporary but it’s annoyed me.
My dad lent me all 6 of the Star Wars DVDs. I’m through 5 of them and I’d like to make an observation.
Number 2 is really crap. I mean really totally awful.
Actors? Hayden is appalling, Natalie has gone so far down in her career since “Leon” I feel embarrassed for her, Ewan is struggling to maintain his accent and Yoda a coherent sentence together can’t string.
Plot? Utter shite. Dreadful rubbish leading to a big fight. Harks back to the B&W days when the Keystone company made fillums that had no particular plot but just needed to end with a chase.
Holes? Loads of them. One that stood out was Natalie’s character shouting at a soldier to get her to “that hangar” despite there being no possibility of her even knowing about “that hangar” as she’d fallen off the craft that went there a good while before any of us even knew about any hangar.
And when the hell did R2 ever get the ability to fly?
And where the hell has Queens who can only serve “2 terms”? Utter tosh.
Tying things together? Some fillums in serieses try to make all the strands tie together. This is not a major problem for me but I do occasionally like mystery. This fillum however tries to construct ties that just don’t need to be there. Do we really need to know who’s drawing up the plans for the Death Star? Do we really need to have R2 and C-3PO in these fillums? Why is it important to have them here? It just isn’t.
Preaching? One scene stood out. Obi-wan is in a bar trying to track down some random killer and sitting having a drink. Someone offers him “death sticks”. These look suspiciously like cigarettes. Cue the jedi trick of convincing him to go home and “rethink his life”. Oh cut the moralising please.
I’ve never seen episode 3. I do hope they had the budget to employ an actual screenwriter for it though because they seem to have done without in episode 2.
Nicky, Rod and P and C as per usual. Our first ones since Lizzah buggered off dahn sarf.
First one then:
Marebito - A fillum of 2 halves. Sadly the second half was considerably longer than the first bit. It started with a man commiting suicide ‘cos he was terrified of summat. We don’t know of what. The main man wanted to find out. So loads of wandering down scary corridors with weird creatures and more fiddling with video ala The Grudge. So far so good.
But then we hit the underground. Poor matte painting aside the thing was just going far too far down the Casshern-esque “utter cack” route. We meet a naked lady chained up. And then we’re back in the real world and this guy’s looking after her in his poky flat. It never really picked up again after that. A shame considering the promise it started with.
After an interlude for Nicky’s birthday cake we decided to watch a more up-tempo fillum and picked:
Switchblade Romance - Started off in a more modern version of Texas Chainsaw style and then headed off into dark and scary places. After the first 15 mins setting up the thing is basically a chase fillum with a twist at the end. This one worked for the group. Scares, gross bits and, possibly unintended, comedy bits. Definitely a winner.
Both of these were twisted psycho flicks. The main characters are seriously demented rather than being set upon by aliens or serial killers. For some reason they seemed to fit together. Just a shame the first one couldn’t keep up the creepiness of the first half hour. Ah well.
Have fun.
[edit: just been reading comments on IMDb and saw this. Interesting! I'm quite fond of the line "Worthwhile soft-porn". I'll never look at him the same again.]
Well what a day yesterday was: news comes in 3s it seems.
So we had Arthur C Clarke, Captain Birdseye and Anthony Minghella die on us in swift succession.
The only thing I remember about Arthur C Clarke was that he used to live in Africa and present a show about the world of the weird type stuff.
Captain Birdseye was a slightly scary hairy pirate who kidnapped children and put them to work on his galleon; getting pleasure from his fishy fingers their only reward.
And Mr Minghella was a fillum director. I can only remember 2 of his fillums. First was Truly, Madly, Deeply. Quite possibly the most nauseating drivel I’ve ever had the misfortune to see. It also allows the Mercans to wave it at us when we snigger at their ludicrous sentimentality.
The other one was “The English Patient”. A fillum so dull I had to watch it in 2 parts. A fillum that also has 2 love stories (at least) and they spent the lion’s share of it wittering on about the less interesting one whilst ignoring a great story with the other couple.