Monster movie madness
Jun. 12th, 2005 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylDue to ill health, I spent yesterday unable to do much more than lie around coughing like a consumptive beagle, mopping my fevered brow and watching movies and TV. Thus, I was able to do some serious catching up:
The Thing From Another World
Not the excellent Carpenter remake, but the original B movie from 51. I taped it off the TV earlier in the week, watched it once on Wednesday and liked it so much that I went back and watched it again. It pretty much sets the the benchmark for monster movies - a remote location which has somehow become isolated; a relatively junior military man forced to take charge; a bunch of eggheads, who despite being Nobel Prize winners, insist that the monster means them no harm even while said monster is going round trashing the place and trying to kill them... There's a definite similarity between it and At The Mountains of Madness, at least to my mind. There's the polar location, aircraft journeys, the hazy radio reception, the Thing found in the ice that they believe is dead but which thaws out in cranky mood, the dogs getting freaked by the monster, stuff like that. There's even a distinctly dodgy (for the 50s) section involving bondage and whiskey. It doesn't get much better than that...
Destry Rides Again
Why aren't there more westerns where the deputy believes in telling stories about guys he new back in Kansas instead of shooting folks? I figure Eastwood coulda done his career a power of good, by following the lead of Jimmy Stewart. My only problem with the flick is Dietrich as Frenchy the burlesque singer - every time she shows I find myself thinking of Lilly von Shtupp the Teutonic Titwillow in Blazing Saddles and then I get a fit of the giggles. Well, I guess that's my problem and not her's.
28 Days Later
I managed to miss this when it came out. Not sure how. Anyways, I've finally got round to correcting the problem and I'm annoyed it took me so long. It was a pretty good zombie flick, more early Cronenberg than Romero, and having the whole thing caused by animal rights protesters was an amusing conceit. I totally loved all the early shots of a deserted London, which I seem to remember hearing were shot in the very early morning (although I'm still not sure how they managed to avoid losing shots to people in tower blocks turning on lights) and I thought it was kinda funny that they spent all their time after the apocalypse surviving on chocolate and pepsi - although why survive on the Lighter Way to Enjoy Chocolate when they're Milky Bar Goodness just waiting to be munched down? Surely it's like way more efficient or something. Also how come Selina managed to maintain an immaculately hairsprayed barnet despite end of civilisation and loads of pouring rain?
Dr Who
Who'd have thought it? The Daleks are behind Big Brother. Now it's been spelt out, it's kinda obvious - the electronic music, the faceless controllers, the cameras on stalks, the stairs thing - it's like totally blatant. Who else but the most evil beings in the universe could have come up with such a format.
Hey, here's a question that bugged me since, well, since forever: in 1984, who monitors all the telescreens? Since Orwell wrote it in 1948, when he'd have known bugger all about computers and even now computers can barely read number plates let alone monitor people for subversive deviations from Marxist doctrine, how the bloody hell did he think that the Ministry of Love would be able to monitor all the party members? I wonder if, during the Cold War, anyone in the communist world seriously worked on AIs to monitor the precise levels of departure from the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. For some reason, the idea of a compute obsessed with the minutiae of dialectical materialism is vastly amusing.
The Peacemaker
Not too appalling Clooney/Kidman flick, but it wasn't exactly Out of Sight either. I fell asleep halfway through and I can't remember exactly how it ends, but using simple extrapolation from every other action movie ever, I'm guessing that GC ends up bumping the dodgy east european Chopin fan with a nuclear weapon and a smart comment.
The Thing From Another World
Not the excellent Carpenter remake, but the original B movie from 51. I taped it off the TV earlier in the week, watched it once on Wednesday and liked it so much that I went back and watched it again. It pretty much sets the the benchmark for monster movies - a remote location which has somehow become isolated; a relatively junior military man forced to take charge; a bunch of eggheads, who despite being Nobel Prize winners, insist that the monster means them no harm even while said monster is going round trashing the place and trying to kill them... There's a definite similarity between it and At The Mountains of Madness, at least to my mind. There's the polar location, aircraft journeys, the hazy radio reception, the Thing found in the ice that they believe is dead but which thaws out in cranky mood, the dogs getting freaked by the monster, stuff like that. There's even a distinctly dodgy (for the 50s) section involving bondage and whiskey. It doesn't get much better than that...
Destry Rides Again
Why aren't there more westerns where the deputy believes in telling stories about guys he new back in Kansas instead of shooting folks? I figure Eastwood coulda done his career a power of good, by following the lead of Jimmy Stewart. My only problem with the flick is Dietrich as Frenchy the burlesque singer - every time she shows I find myself thinking of Lilly von Shtupp the Teutonic Titwillow in Blazing Saddles and then I get a fit of the giggles. Well, I guess that's my problem and not her's.
28 Days Later
I managed to miss this when it came out. Not sure how. Anyways, I've finally got round to correcting the problem and I'm annoyed it took me so long. It was a pretty good zombie flick, more early Cronenberg than Romero, and having the whole thing caused by animal rights protesters was an amusing conceit. I totally loved all the early shots of a deserted London, which I seem to remember hearing were shot in the very early morning (although I'm still not sure how they managed to avoid losing shots to people in tower blocks turning on lights) and I thought it was kinda funny that they spent all their time after the apocalypse surviving on chocolate and pepsi - although why survive on the Lighter Way to Enjoy Chocolate when they're Milky Bar Goodness just waiting to be munched down? Surely it's like way more efficient or something. Also how come Selina managed to maintain an immaculately hairsprayed barnet despite end of civilisation and loads of pouring rain?
Dr Who
Who'd have thought it? The Daleks are behind Big Brother. Now it's been spelt out, it's kinda obvious - the electronic music, the faceless controllers, the cameras on stalks, the stairs thing - it's like totally blatant. Who else but the most evil beings in the universe could have come up with such a format.
Hey, here's a question that bugged me since, well, since forever: in 1984, who monitors all the telescreens? Since Orwell wrote it in 1948, when he'd have known bugger all about computers and even now computers can barely read number plates let alone monitor people for subversive deviations from Marxist doctrine, how the bloody hell did he think that the Ministry of Love would be able to monitor all the party members? I wonder if, during the Cold War, anyone in the communist world seriously worked on AIs to monitor the precise levels of departure from the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. For some reason, the idea of a compute obsessed with the minutiae of dialectical materialism is vastly amusing.
The Peacemaker
Not too appalling Clooney/Kidman flick, but it wasn't exactly Out of Sight either. I fell asleep halfway through and I can't remember exactly how it ends, but using simple extrapolation from every other action movie ever, I'm guessing that GC ends up bumping the dodgy east european Chopin fan with a nuclear weapon and a smart comment.
