MovieChat Forums > MichaelJPollock > Replies
MichaelJPollock's Replies
The Abyss and The Fan (1981).
Makes so much sense I don't even remember what comes after that line (and I've seen the film at least half a dozen times...) and it is, in my mind, the de facto last line of the film.
And Brawl in Cell block 99 too. Don Johnson even plays a very similar character in both.
He already did, it was called "Slackers" and it was made in the actual 90's.
You know that famous 1967 Aretha Franklin song?
Your punishment, young man (or lady), will be to copy its lyrics 100 times. And then watch Brett Ratner and Uwe Boll's whole filmography back to back as well.
And if you don't, there it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0
No contest to your closing statement, I think.
But I also find the generally accepted opinion that Brian Cox was unimpressive as Lecktor unfair. He was going for a different approach than Hopkins', one more subtle and, I believe, better documented and more accurate, when it comes to the behaviour of real life psychopaths. Of course, accuracy needn't be a factor when judging of the quality of a film or artistic performance...
Hopkins plays Lecter as Dracula and is quite obviously a dangerous monster. Cox's mannerism is subdued and quietly charming, he doesn't telegraph that he wants to murder and eat you. Plus he does that great white shark dead eyes thing that many psychopaths have very well.
Not to say that Hopkins' performance isn't great or fascinating, of course.
Dear poster-formerly-known-as-eCarle,
Your are one of the best things about MovieChat and we all read your fascinating posts with the greatest of interest, but we simply cannot let you get away with saying that Brett Ratner's 'Red Dragon' abomination is in any shape of form better than Michael Mann's 'Manhunter'!!
We shall therefore think of an appropriate punishment and let you know once we have found one that fits the grave nature of your offence. Maybe force you to watch Brett Ratner's entire filmography back-to-back, Ludovico treatment style. Followed by Uwe Boll's.
Kind regards,
MJP
I'd say it's not "woke" because it shows that a very progressive, colour-blind (Sky marshal is a black woman) and gender-equal society (mixed gender showers) can nonetheless be a fascist society, broadcasting around-the-clock propaganda ("Would you like to know more?") and sending its kid to war over a dubious casus belli.
Interesting thoughts here, friend. Not sure I agree with everything though.
"...black Americans being systemically terrorized by white supremacist culture for the entirety of the country's history."
> Would you include the parts of American history when 365 000 men, the majority of them white, died in a fight to end slavery, or when a black man was twice elected president of the United States?
"the black American experience."
> Would you say that, for example, Georges Floyd, Trayvon Martin and Condoleezza Rice, Neil deGrasse Tyson or Barack Obama, have all had the same 'black American experience', or different ones?
Well, it's an interesting question, isn't it?
Because causality is inverted, it's the equivalent of asking for the non-inverted world "where was all the matter that composes the universe before the big-bang?" (including the parts that compose the car, the materials that compose the parts, the atoms that compose the materials, etc. in the non-inverted world).
What is the 'original cause that is not caused' in the inverted world?
If you're religious, 'God' created the car, already crashed and burned (or rather it created the atoms that remain after the car is completely burnt and decayed and its remains are transformed/recycled until the end -or rather beginning- of time).
If not, then the car "just happened", same as the big-bang "just happened".
At any rate, it seems unfair to ask Nolan to provide a reply to such a huge question in a summer blockbuster. I'm not sure a writer should necessarily be expected to provide a full theology or theory of the origin of the universe to underpin their fictional world.
But the question is interesting indeed.
Haha! Good come back. I'll use it again.
Also, I learned a word today: "adumbration". A first on MovieChat.
That's exactly right.
Carpenter is a "low-key" supremely smart man and director as well, one of the greatest artist of his generation (you recognise them not by how many biological offspring they beget that indulge in the same art, but by how many young directors -and in Carpenter's case, musicians as well- follow in their tracks) yet neither he nor his films became pompous.
Well, he did dis on Robert Altman (another genius artist) in the late seventies, but he made it clear it was a matter of artistic taste, not Altman "not understanding what he was doing" or him being a better director than Altman was. Plus he said it when Altman was still alive.
It's sad what happened to Cronenberg. And saying that, I'm not even a big fan of the Shining, and my "Kubrick period" is long past (still have a lot of love for Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut though).
And yes, Romero and Hooper (who are sorely missed) were the same class of great artists who never took themselves too seriously yet left an indelible mark in the history of cinema, if only (but not just) due to the monumental masterpieces that 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and 'Night of the Living Dead' were.
Yes, I think in time (it's already started...) Fincher's Alien 3, despite its problems, will be recognised as the great film that it is. And I'm not even speaking of the 'Assembly Cut', which does nothing for me, but the actual theatrical cut.
Alien
Alien3
Aliens
Alien Resurrection
The rest. Don't care for it.
And now we also have to contend with the atrocious films of his offsprings, that try so very hard to be "Cronenbergian". It's a shame they're visually and thematically aiming at early Cronenberg's "body horror" opera, but are already late-Cronenberg pompous and stale right at the beginning of their young careers (the Brandon Cronenberg films at least, haven't seen the Caitlin Cronenberg film yet...).
Not really, I think. I mean, he's quite obviously very intelligent, but Cronenberg has gotten so very full of himself in the last 20 years or so, as he started to see himself as an independent author or high art films, and it's really a shame. All of his first films are fantastic, but he hasn't done anything remotely interesting since 'Existenz' in 1999 (well, I like 'A History of Violence' and 'Eastern Promises' a lot too in spite of their broken third acts).
Films like 'Cosmopolis' and 'Maps to the Stars', are bloated catastrophes that are very difficult to watch and reek of self satisfaction. But that's what happens the moment an artist starts taking themselves too seriously.
Jean-Baptiste Thoret (French film critic, historian and director) explains that he interviewed Cronenberg when 'Crash' came out in 1996, and told him 'Crash' had "already been made" 15 years ago by Jean Baudrillard in his infamous "Simulacra and Simulation" (which can be seen in Neo's hands in 'The Matrix', and the same author that Chris Hemsworth's character reads in his cell at the beginning of 'Blackhat'), which contained a critic of J.G. Ballard's book on which Cronenberg's film is based and that more or less said the exact same thing (spoiler: I've read it and it does).
Cronenberg allegedly took it very badly, said it was nonsense and that he never read Baudrillard anyway (which is very hard to believe from an intellectual like Cronenberg, who was a pupil of Marshall McLuhan).
But that's because Cronenberg is not interested in discussion anymore, but rather in providing a ready-made intellectual analysis and interpretation of his films during interviews, that should not be challenged.
Cronenberg has become intellectually rigid and artistically ossified. He's not the artist he once was and it's a shame.
Me: Michael Jackson Pollock!
(Although Jackson is my middle name...)
That'll be true when people get shot or beheaded over it.
We don't have to. We've already seen what the consequences are. And it was in France too.
Republicans = nazis.
+
Nazis deserve to be executd mercilessly.
=
Republicans should be executed.
Am I following your logic? Do you think Republicans should be executed?
If so, do you still think so 10 months later? And if yes, would you be willing to do it yourself?