so i have watched some more videos (discs, look you see). oddly, actually five (5) and not just 3 (three). certainly no more than that. as i think i possibly alluded to in the last post of watching a few films i did indeed gone done selected fancy videos to watch, or if you will blu ray discs.
as ever i would have absolutely no idea what to do with this information beyond posting it here, so here we are, here we go. do be warned, of course, that them "spoilers" things are almost certainly going to crop up for a few of them. not sure they will in a film which is (ostensibly) of The King, Elvis Presley doing His thing, but all the same, warned you have been.
it's at (the very) least worth trying to point out there is no "right or wrong" here, just my views, my experiences of watching some videos (discs). this is particularly pertinent for one of the below, as it is not a film i care for as much as a vocal majority do. disagreeing with anything i write here is just a level of normality existing.
no of course these will not be in the order shown above. for that matter they are not even in the order i tried to upload (or add) the pictures, blogger has gone done its thing again. yet exactly how much is one supposed to complain about a gratis service?
moving on then, and first it seems it (the way the pics have uploaded) wants me to write of one of two films here i would suggest contest being the "best" of this batch. which is Repo Man. hadn't seen it for years, browsed the web, found the video (disc) for somewhere agreeably north or south of £10 and went right ahead and procured it.
quite possible this doesn't get the credit it (full tilt) deserves in terms of "influence". by that i mean in the broader sense, as in proving an audience exists for the abstract and giving certain film makers some clarity on how to present the abstract. i understand this is probably going to upset some devout fans of someone i really like, but is hard to imagine that David Lynch in particular was not informed by the approach of this one?
plot? essentially a going nowhere fast punk kid (Emilio Estevez) accidentally ends up becoming a car repossession man, mostly under the mentorship of Harry Dean Stanton. going out and about doing their job sees them seeking out a mysteriously high value job to repossess a Chevy Malibu.......
little about this film isn't superb, so long as you buy into the abstract. the soundtrack is excellent, the performances are top level, with the story and pacing being spot on. it is full of lovely touches, with even the most minor character (the lady complaining about garbage on the street, the chap that wants to be near the window in the laundry) feeling inexplicably fleshed out with substance. anyone out there who(m) is a fan of, say, Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks, or even maybe X Files, that has not ever even heard of this one could do well worse than give it a watch. bonus points for the fancy video disc featuring the really, really strange tv edit of the film.
for a change i did not watch all of these videos (discs) alone at my lodgings in this era of exile. of late my two (known) sons have suggested watching a film, bravely of my choice, when i see them weekly. the first one of them was Mad Max 2 which we found on one of them "streaming" things in its glorious, uncut form. then i brought over the video of Commando, assuring them that it was the greatest film ever made in all of history.
the boys remonstrated with me as far as they dared, suggesting that it was not the greatest film ever. for some reason they felt two they had seen recently, The Odyssey and New Spider Boy Thing, were better. i asked them to please explain the parts in those films (and you have had a spoiler warning) that were on the same level as, say, breaking someone's neck on an airplane and then jumping off that plane, ripping a phone box out of the ground and throwing it at security guards or rowing to an island and knacking an entire army of soldiers. they could not do so. further, i did explain to them that a pivotal scene in the movie has had a massive influence on late 20th century (and 21st century thus far) acting.
WARNING! THE BELOW SCENE CONTAINS NAUGHTY MATURE WORDS!
sadly Schwarzenegger does not get the credit he fully deserves for his acting, particularly not his 80s film roles. if you, for the moment, accept that Bill Duke serves as a foil here, watch the above paying attention to the subtle skills on display around the use of the word "you". note his elegant, Sir Roger Moore use of eyebrow motion to convey emotion, and the accentuation (or whatever, the pitch and tone) when saying "you". it may seem throwaway, but that has inspired generations of actors, with the likes of Day Lewis, Di Caprio, Oldman and (to a certain extent) Penn all clearly being disciples of this approach to acting.
other choice terms from my two (known) sons review of Commando include "it wasn't as sh!t as we thought it would be", "what the f*** is Bennett supposed to be" (an effete, well fed Australian who rocks the Freddie Mercury look was my answer) and "what the f*** was that". these i shall take as positives, thanks.
people really do not enjoy conversations about Terminator 2 with me mostly because i didn't really like it at the time (despite watching the original nigh on daily on video for a while) and very little on that view has changed. so if you are huge fan and wish to argue that it is "the best ever" you might want to skip this next part.
rather unexpectedly i am seeing a whole load of fuss being made of the fact that it is, this year (2026), the 35th anniversary of what a few call either the greatest action film of all time or the greatest science fiction film of all time. hadn't seen it in years (was bored at the cinema, tried on video a few times), so when i saw the fancy video on sale down the market, i went yeah, go on, let's give it another go.
calling this the "greatest action film" of all time is just ludicrous. and it's not that it has been surpassed since, it wasn't "better" than ones which came before. it was not even (at that time) the best action or science fiction film James Cameron had made by then, with the answer to both of those being Aliens. for those claiming "ah but it was Arnie's best action film", well, see Commando above, and then have a look at Predator, please. beyond that, well, which part(s) exactly of this disjointed, badly paced film make it the "greatest" action film, exactly? if they mean the chase thing where the truck crashes off of a bridge, i refer you to either of the "tanker chase" scenes in Mad Max 2 for something superior. should they mean the bit where they destroy the building (including the helicopter thing), well, Die Hard was a few years before this one. yes, the special effects were kind of smart, but nowhere near as revolutionary at the time as made out - the "morphing" thing the T-1000 does was done by James Cameron a few years earlier in the somewhat more impressive The Abyss.
as for the film itself, well, it's a bit dull. this was the first real step in the gentrification of Arnie, and making him a "good" terminator was really boring. it keeps contradicting its own logic with either time travel or time displacement, whichever they called it. sure, a bit of Arnie's mangled arm remains in a machine off of a T-1000 fight, so the technology could be replicated, yet the end it suggesting that they stopped Skynet from ever existing. which would mean time travel / displacement either would not exist, or Reece would never have been sent back in the first film. why, then, does John Connor not just immediately disappear Marty McFly style? let us skip asking any questions about why, exactly, it is so that the T-1000 writhes and screams in pain and agony as "he" gets melted at the end.
yes, there are cases where a sequel is superior (or more better) than the original film, but Terminator 2 is absolutely not one of them. for the life of me i cannot understand any reason regarding how or why so many seem to claim that it is.
telling you that a film made by the highly celebrated Coen brothers (off of Big Lebowski) and Sam Raimi (of Evil Dead and at least two decent Spider Boy things) is just about all rubbish seems absurd. alas that is exactly what Crimewave (or any variation on name, it had a few) is. easily the biggest
problem is that the film has no idea what it wishes to be, or (perhaps worse) does and fails. if the idea s to be a comedy then mostly it isn't funny, if horror then it isn't scary, if a thriller then there are no thrills.
knowing full well that i wasn't really going to enjoy the film once more prompts the (entirely reasonable) question of why i even bothered purchasing it (south of £10 on a sale) let alone put the video (disc) in the machine. well, it so happens that in the midst of abject mediocrity there are two random scenes of pure comedy gold. i have elected to pirate them for you (VHS style) to save you from punishing yourself with the film entire.
merrily there is a second scene with the same kid, featuring the same location. this does (somewhat) have a bearing on the plot, but not much. from what i can gather some sort of "warning" is best applied before you click play. everyone is so sensitive about everything these days one can never be sure if a term used is "outdated" or otherwise "offensive".
once more, then, to be safe (to be sure), i must caution you against ever trying to watch Crimewave. no, not even Bruce Campbell turning up and being Bruce Campbell for a few minutes can save the mess. at the least the immense talent involved (and squandered) in making this went on to do considerably better stuff, and they shall always know what the worst thing they made was.
finally, then, one that i had not seen before, although it (very much) felt like i had. you would think i would have rushed to see EPiC as soon as possible, but a sense of doubt had me be cautious. mostly, sadly, this caution was correct.
make no mistake, when EPiC does what it says on the box, which is showcase The King, Elvis Presley live in concert, it's brilliant. any enjoyment of this is marred if not ruined by the self-indulgent, egotistical "edits" the (apparently) complete tw@t of a "director" made to it all.
very early on one gets a warning that things shall not be smooth, for the name "baz lurhman" is presented as large, if not larger, than that of The King, Elvis Presley. pretty sure he lets his name linger on screen much longer too. sadly this ominous credit sequence does indeed render the film as feared. just as you are enjoying a brilliant performance all of a sudden gets edits, cuts, overdubs and what have you for no good reason at all. really a frustrating use of the material, quite like when that tw@t had unbelievable access to David Lynch and effectively made the (weak) documentary a lame excuse to impose a massive picture of his own head on screen at the end.
i am very much calling bullsh!t on the claim that this is mostly "recently unearthed footage". no it (most certainly) is not. quite clearly the "unseen" stuff are songs from the performance recorded for the brilliant That's The Way It Is film, and just didn't get used in either the original version or special edition. reasonably sure, without getting the video (disc) out, that the Madison Square Garden footage featured in the brilliant Prince From Another Planet box set. unless (in regards of the That's The Way It Is footage) they are going to claim that Glass Eye went to a second show in the same suit and sat in the same place and The King, Elvis Presley wore the same outfit.
there is no good nor valid reason i can think of for them letting this mess be made. really all they had to do was take the "unearthed" footage and present the entire show which was filmed. undoubtedly fans like me would have appreciated it more. and, you know, the whole (entire) point of this film was surely to surely to showcase how great He was, not what editing tricks this baz bloke had learned down at film school.
phew. rather a lot of waffle here, some views (or reviews) that will likely upset some loyalists, and a few video clips likely to "offend" someone somewhere. thanks, at the least, for taking the time to read some comments on some films that possibly differ from the ones you have on at least some of them.
right, i have procured yet more "regular" video (discs) from down the market, so no doubt the next post along these lines shall be of the less ("fewer") fancy variety of watching. indeed mostly, or for the most part, i have gone right ahead and picked up a load of films that i have already seen, if quite some time ago.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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