R_F_Fineman wrote on Feb 19^th, 2013 at 11:05pm:


Sorry to say that was not me leading the sing along (I was napping upstairs.)

Some random replies...

kirok wrote on Feb 19^th, 2013 at 8:27pm:


Hey, I've said this for a long time. An inordinate percentage of modern SF films are just action films dressed up with science fiction trappings. Look at the lineups of any marathon from the recent past and its pretty much the same story, not to mention the Box Office in general. Just look at the Saturn Awards Best SF Film nominees this year: "The Avengers","Chronicle","Cloud Atlas","The Hunger Games", "Looper", "Prometheus - Every one of them would qualify in some way or another in your definition.


Dinsdale wrote on Feb 19^th, 2013 at 7:23pm:


1984-ish future/alternate society films are generally considered squarely within the SF genre. Did anyone else catch the irony of John Hurt playing 'Big Brother' in VENDETTA and having played Winston Smith in the 80s version of 1984??! 


Jay Seaver wrote on Feb 18^th, 2013 at 11:00pm:


Totally agree, the "Glasses!" shout-out was by an A-Hole who deserves a VERY uncomfortable space in Marathon Hell alongside the dingleberry who kept shouting out "Yabba Dabba Do!" every time the leader of the workers appeared in METROPOLIS many years ago at the 'thon.

David the Projectionist wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 12:10am:


David, this is truly one of the better layman's terms explanations of why Digital looks so 'milky'. Digital compression also explains why some like Jay may have felt the Production Design looked less than impressive. Digital tends to flatten the depth of field and kind of washes out details (VENDETTA looked quite good in 35mm upon its initial release.
Anybody with keen eyesight must have noticed the dramatic difference in the blackness level between VENDETTA and the film prints of ESCAPE/L.A. and FIFTH ELEMENT that followed it.

It's a phenomenon I first noticed back in the early days of digital with PHANTOM MENACE. There was a scene in a meeting room that had a giant window looking out to a city scape. It was painfully obvious that the digital rendering simply could not handle the contrast between the darkly lit meeting room and the bright candy-colored view outside. I can't imagine what the opening scene in THE GODFATHER must look like!! (Brando in the super dark room stroking his cat contrasted with the bright windows full of afternoon sunlight).

L.A. Connection wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 8:04pm:

I thought the Leeloo costume was pretty good but the multi pass bit seemed a little weak. But good for her for getting in the spirit of things and playing along.

John Carter - Add my voice to the chorus of those saying that this movie got a raw deal. Is it perfect? No, but it's fun, with an interesting world and a lot of fun, memorable characters. The best thing about John Carter is that it's like watching a Superman movie based on the very earliest Superman comics, since both characters seem to have the same power set of jumping far and super strength.
My very favorite thing of all about this movie that isn't named Tars Tarkus is Dejah Thoris. Not only is she a princess, not only is she a warrior princess, but she's a SCIENTIST warrior princess. I keep expecting Robert Heinlein to rise from the grave and propose to her.

"In Memorium 2013" - It's a good experiment, but just needs a little more work.

Reptilicus - God, this movie... I loved it, because it's the perfect sort of thing to see at the marathon. Useless female characters who add nothing to the story. Ropey effects that reach their apotheosis with that photo cutout farmer being eaten by the puppet lizard. The way the movie stops dead for about ten minutes of footage by the Copenhagen tourism board. The very strange homoerotic tension between the useless oil drill engineer and that American major who is mysteriously in charge of everything. I'm so glad this one played so early. After the rip-roaring, big budget cheese of John Carter, this was a nice slice of cheese of a different flavor and vintage.

The Ghastly Love of Johnny X - I'm kind of torn about this. On the one hand, I like musicals and this sci-fi musical pastiche was obviously made with a lot of love. It was no Lobsterman from Mars or Trail of the Screaming Forehead. On the other hand, it desperately needed an editor. Some of the scenes dragged out to deadly lengths. And the tone just wandered all over the place, with characters switching from villain to hero and then having surprise daddy issues thrown in as a third-act twist. I wasn't wild about it, but it seemed to go down fairly well with the crowd.

War of the Worlds: Goliath - This was another oddball, but a likable one. It played like the pilot of an animated series that you just know will never be made, but it managed to pull off a good amount of well-realized alt-history action. My favorite thing was the mecha design, with the Earth forces having a nice mix of aircraft and battle tripods and the Martians showing up straight out of Classics Illustrated with a better military budget. My only major problems with it were plot points that turned into blind alleys (e.g. - Irish dude whose brother was in the IRA. That whole weapons smuggling thing sure did...happen, I guess.) and the God-awful "We're trying to look like manga!" character designs. I had to laugh at how, since this was a Malaysian coproduction, we had the handsome, cool Malaysian member of the team who was clearly there to remind us that Malaysia exists. He got a pretty cool knife kill on a Martian, but nothing could top seeing Teddy Roosevelt facing down the Martian horde before being saved by the Red Baron and then taking to the streets atop a war tripod while hosing the enemy with a portable heat ray. Price of admission was worth just seeing that.

Asternauts - Um... I went to dinner and missed it. Sorry.

Battle Royale - Disclosure: I'd avoided this movie for years because the subject matter just didn't sound appealing to me at all, so I approached this one with a bit of trepidation. That said, I really enjoyed it and see why it got its following. It really is a gripping movie, whose violence is somehow not fetishized as much as I'd feared. In the end, I found it strangely uplifting, seeing how these poor kids struggled to find some winning strategy in a hopeless situation. Their stories were interesting and I found myself rooting for most of them. The Blu-Ray did have some problems (Like the amazing mish-mash of greys that formed every shadow), but the upside of video releases is that a.) we can show them and b.) subtitles are actually readable.

Safety Not Guaranteed - Another film I'd blinked and missed in general release. This was another in the growing genre of films I like to call "Is it time travel or just mental illness?" This genre currently seems to consist of this film, Happy Accidents, and 12 Monkeys, and this one is the only one of the trio that isn't a remake of La Jetee. It's an amiable tale of what people are looking for in time travel, with everyone either yearning to return to the past to fix a mistake or else stay stuck in the present. As someone else here said, it's a rare movie that can have us all cheering an empty lake at the very end. I'm glad it was here.

The Twilight Zone - I've seen this episode dozens of times and know the depressing punchline. I decided to stretch my legs instead. Even so, I'm glad we can now easily show TV shows on disc. It opens up some interesting material that we couldn't show before.

The Incredible Shrinking Man - This is a really odd movie, when you stop and think about it. It deals with all these themes of emasculation and alienation before turning into what is essentially a silent fight for survival and then ending with the bittersweet "death" of the main character as he comes to accept his vanishing from our world. It's one of those films that really make me wonder how they pitched it to the studio back in the 50's. "We've got this story of a man who shrinks down, gets depressed, grows so small that his wife thinks he's dead and abandons him to fight the web-spinning tarantula in the basement before shrinking out of existance at the end. It's the feel-melancholy movie of the summer!"

Death of a Shadow - Another oddball short, but very pretty and with a neat little concept driving its admitedly thin plot. It came and went and left a fairly good impression on me.

Phase IV - I really wanted to watch this one, but the early-morning time slot and the deadly-dull nature of this artifact from 1974 just did me in. I recall great microphotography of ants, dull scientists, strange geometric mounds in the desert, and a head-scratching ending which was apparently less head-scratching than the original lost ending. One of these days, ants, I'll watch your movie and judge you more fairly. As it stands, I came away feeling like this was the world's most depressing episode of Ark II.

Motivational Growth - And then there was this, the movie that triggered near rebellion. Looking back at my tweets during the movie, I see myself losing more and more patience with this meandering, self-indulgent mess. Yeah, I suppose it was technically impressive in some ways, but I hated the characters and just knew 15 minutes in that our "hero" was going to end up a pile of mold himself, and I think I might have punched somebody had I not walked out 20 minutes before the end. Seriously, I never walk out of movies. I may skip them or I'll watch them half-heartedly, but this one made me leave the theater feeling angry. I hated everyone in this story. I will urge people to avoid it, lest they be left feeling angry, too.

V For Vendetta - I know Alan Moore kept his name off of this adapation of his famed graphic novel on the need for anarchy, but I do like it. For all the liberties it takes with the original story, a ton of it is still in there, and I think it works. There really is something about it that makes me a bit misty eyed, seeing the silent army of the state's victims watching Parliament explode and finally getting a smidgen of justice. Purists may hate it, but I was happy to see it again.

La Luna - It was pretty and cute. Next?

Escape from L.A. - Wow, this hasn't aged well, has it? I was kind of shocked by how cheap some of the sets looked, especially Sunset Boulevard and the hilarious digital fire that consumed everyone in the back of that CGI helicopter. Also, I really loathe Snake for pretty much ensuring the deaths of most innocent bystanders in the industrialized nations, since a total loss of power and transport means mass starvation in the Earth's major cities within days. Um, thanks, Snake. You're a real anti-hero, aren't you?

The Fifth Element - Some people love it, others hate it. Still more wish that Chris Tucker would just shut the hell up and stop all his screeching. Me, I love this movie to death. It's the best English-language adaptation of a French comic that never ran in Heavy Metal magazine that can't decide if it's an action movie or a straight-up comedy. The thing I like best about it is its vision of New York City in the future. With its gigantic skyscrapers, vertical elevator-trains, and layers of flying traffic, this New York looks like a place that would be endlessly interesting to visit. It's ridiculous, and yet somehow I can buy it as being a real place. Moreso than in other, more serious movies. I think the real test of this film is Tucker as Ruby Rhod, the Pinkie Pie of this story. You either find him hilarious or else wish that one of the million rounds of ammo expended in the move would find its way between his eyes. The movie's a glorious mess that only a French action director in the 90's could give us. And even with two breakdowns due to film burns (An event I'd seen maybe twice in my life before this marathon showing), I'm so glad we ended this year feeling great after seeing this movie. Leeloo Dallas, your multipass is welcome wherever you go.

Joe, this is a nice insight. One of the reasons I don't go to as many small festivals (yes, even in L.A. there are tiny fests) as I used to, is because the lesser known ones tend to be filled by movies that couldn't get booked in more prestigious ones. Some of these films travel from obscure fest to obscure fest literally for years (I know they need a copyright date, but wouldn't it be smart to hide in some extint language or something to disguise the fact that they are pawning off a 3 year old movie as a "Premiere"??).

So yes, I think Joe's idea of finding smaller films that have already been vetted by getting released AND having good reviews/word of mouth is a damn solid one.

(like a broken clock even Joe.......... )


Joe Neff wrote on Feb 21^st, 2013 at 9:51pm:

Joe Neff wrote on Feb 21^st, 2013 at 9:51pm: