Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

From a cinematic point of view, this movie is basically perfect. It's got all those long slow takes where you see how sweaty everyone is, because they're all method actors. They're really sweating out there in the spaghetti west.

Charles Bronson plays the ultimate man, using the sexy slutty chick to his advantage while Henry Fonda and Jason Robards fight about railroads or something. If you get insomnia and have 3 hours to kill, this movie is for you.


I remember finding the fat keep-case dvd in walmart's $5 bin in the early days of dvds and thinking to myself how I was one step closer to becoming that smug arrogant film snob I so yearned to be.

Bronson was the coolest. Very moody movie. Almost trippy even, with that great/grating harmonica and score. This movie is Italian as fuck. Watch now in 4K where you can see everyone's faces in super high-def closeups.

#Review

Flyboys (2006)

For War Week, I only watched a few. I hadn't seen this one yet, nor any WWI movie for all I know, so why not? It turned out pretty good, too. Even for a PG-13 movie.

Franco joins the French military as they're trying to utilize and weaponize these new flying things called "airplanes". Pretty entertaining overall, and a few scenes stuck with me.

SPOILERS

When they first fly into the air against enemy planes, that one guy gets his plane shot down, and he crashlands his plane as best as he can... and actually survives. Yay! He gets out and the enemy aircraft sees him and guns him down. Poor fuck. I mean, this was "inspired" by a true story, right?

I also thought the last straw in that ending air fight, when Franco flies up next to the smug enemy pilot, pulls out his pistol, and shoots that asshole in the face? Bad-ass!

#Review

Best comedy series

I'm in the mood to watch something, series I havent seen anything for the last 20 years. Something along the following lines.

1. The Goodies
2. Bottom
3. Fawlty Towers
4. Red Dwarf // though later series are not so good
5. Father Ted, Blackadder (though early on)

The Vampire Next Door (2024)

Not a TERRIFIC film, but it got into my head in some ways.

First of all, one excellent reason to watch this is that two of the actresses are QUITE attractive, IMHO. One had a Megan Fox-y kind of appearance, but with a sexier voice. The other kept reminding me... mostly of Imogen Poots, (which I mean to be a compliment, I always thought she was beautiful), but she also reminded me a little at times of Amanda Detmer, and maybe Natasha Lyonne, always in a good way.

Also, most of the main characters are played by people who can really act. You can tell that this is a pretty low budget movie, so I was surprised at how capable most of them were.

Anyway, the basic idea is that a 20 year old guy, Cameron, who still lives at home with his parents, and who works in an ice cream shop, meets a new girl/woman his age, in the neighborhood. The guy is juuuuust a bit (totally) aimless and unfocused. He made me think of the Josh Hamilton character in Blowin' Smoke, AKA Freak Talks About Sex. Cameron is already interested in another girl in his neighborhood, and a girl he works with at the ice cream shop is throwing herself at him too. This is all a little implausible to me, because he is just kind of a slacker and not really THAT attractive, and two of the girls he gets mixed up with could be models.

One of the girls turns out to be a vampire, and she wants him to chauffeur her around as she kills OTHER vampires. A buddy of his has a crush on one of the other girls, and he agrees to help the buddy pursue that girl, mostly because he thinks the girl will see what a loser the buddy is and come running to HIM instead.

Soooooo that's the first three quarters of the movie.

OK, I shouldn't spoil the ending, just in case anyone actually watches this. Suffice it to say, complications crop up, and Cameron actually ends up growing up a bit.

The rules for vampires are pretty dodgy in this movie. They can walk around in daylight, and they aren't really soulless hell-things. They are much more like Twilight vamps, or maybe a little like some of the Interview with the Vampire vamps. The whole movie has kind of a girl power vibe, if you think about it. It's mostly power struggles between girls. Cameron isn't really much of a protagonist, exactly. He is just a character who kind of gets caught up in the worlds of vampires and girls, and has a few adventures.

Again, this isn't really THAT great of a movie, but the acting is solid enough. I felt like they did a decent job with what they had to work with. Also, this is embarrassing to say, but as someone who always thought Imogen Poots was beautiful, the actress who resembles her is kind of a "find" for me. Search Google Images for Bella Chadwick. That's her. I hope she does more horror or sci-fi movies in the future.

Alllllllll righty then. That's all, folks.

2024 Crime Challenge

Here is your annual Crime Challenge thread! Mark your spot and update your crime genre viewings here, because this is one of the greatest genres out there. It sure as hell is better watching a musical! Fuck you, Joker 2!


• Movies and TV shows count.

• Must have "crime" as a genre, obviously!

• Scored by runtime, 1 point per minute.

• From May 1st 12am to June 1st am.


This challenge is so easy, it's criminal! Mark Your Spot!

Music rants

So as not to clutter the shoutbox, heres a seperate thread.

In a Violent Nature (2024)

Imagine a Friday the 13th film, except the big silent killer is the main character. The camera follows him around through the majority of the film, and his victims are just in the periphery.

Obviously, this leads to very little character development, and little dialogue. There is also no musical score, just a little bit of source music in a few scenes. So there are times when the movie can feel a little bit too long and boring.

So yeah, I wouldn't call it great or anything, but I would still venture to call it a must see if you have any affection for the slasher genre. It is pretty creative, and the kills are VERY impressive. The effects are top notch, and one kill in particular is absolutely insane.

The ending was pretty anti-climatic, and kind of had me scratching my head. Overall I'd say I'm glad I watched it, but probably won't be watching it again any time soon.

The state of AI right now...?

Apparently there is "a new Michael Crichton novel" coming out in a few days. What that means is that it is a novel that he had done a lot of work on but did not finish, and now James Patterson has completed it and polished it up for him. Good enough for me. I am looking forward to it.

Does anybody here have a strong sense of how close we are to AI being able to just churn out content in the styles of various deceased authors? I bet they can do it already, but I have no idea how good the results are. I'm sure they are improving every day...

I'm just trying to picture a day, sometime soon, when we can literally get an app on our phones that creates works of fiction or nonfiction prose, of any length you want, in the style of Michael Crichton, Dr. Seuss, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Shakespeare, Dickens, Thomas Jefferson, etc.

Movies with Great Sound

My work had a 5.1 surround sound setup on clearance for $160. I saw it yesterday and figured I'd give it a day to mull it over. In that day, it dropped down to $120, so I took it as a sign. I set this fucker up and it was relatively painless, and it works.

What are some movies that really shine in surround sound? Probably some action movies where the bullets fly from every direction, but anything that helps with the immersion.

Thoughts?

I felt like Randall Flagg

Well, that subject line should grab people's attention (one would hope).

I just wanted to mention that I went for a walk last night, and felt a little like Randall Flagg. I was just out getting some fresh air so I could think more clearly about stealing a nuclear device to destroy a community of good people in Boulder, Colorado.... hey, maybe THAT'S why I felt like Randall Flagg! I didn't even think of that. Wow!

No, I was reminded of that character because of the stuff about him being The Walking Dude, and how it felt just walking down a long empty street alone at night, "clocking along," as Stephen King said. I kind of felt like that. It isn't necessarily a GOOD feeling, exactly, in the sense of being part of a community. It could be seen as a little scary, just that you're out walking with no social context, and there is a feeling of freedom and anonymity that could easily go down some dark path, if you were crazy in that particular way.

Anyway, just something about being out walking at night, with the wind in the leafy branches of the trees overhead... we have only had leaves on the trees for a little while where I live, this spring, and it still feels new. It just made me feel like a character in a book, in general, and also more specifically like Randall Flagg. Soooooo that was scary.

One thing that was actually good about me going for that walk was that I went out there at all, at that hour (which wasn't THAT late... maybe 10:30 to 11:30). You guys might remember that three years ago, in the spring and early summer of 2021, I got accosted TWICE in the space of just three or four months. Once it was just a bunch of local teenagers who were probably going out of their minds from all the Covid lockdowns... they stopped me when I was out for a jog, and really got in my face, for no reason at all. That sucked, but it wasn't too hard to deal with. I just find other roads to jog on. (I STILL don't jog or walk through the area where they live, there are a whole bunch of them and several of them are bigger than me). The other time I got "accosted" that spring was when I actually got mugged, right on a major traffic artery in the Boston metro area. It was very late at night that time, like 2:00 AM, and I was just finishing up a jog that I went on at that hour just because it was too hot to exercise during the day. I got "accosted" (mugged) by a bunch of guys with some kind of Middle Eastern accents who had stolen a bunch of mopeds, and were just riding down my street mugging people. I felt lucky they didn't knife me.... anyway, I have not gone out at night too much since that spring, so it was probably a good sign that I am feeling somewhat recovered from 2021 that I even went for a moderately long (maybe three miles) walk at that hour.

Sorry, none of this has anything to do with anything, I just thought it was interesting that I felt like I got a glimmering of that kind of mindset that Stephen Kiing might have been trying to capture when he made up the Randall Flagg character. Had to share.