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MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH - The Debate (Read 49173 times)
Reply #15 - Feb 25th, 2013 at 4:46pm

L.A. Connection   Offline
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Running Scared and Capricorn One aren't bad. Star Chamber is B movie fun. And, the Marathon crowd liked Outland and had a decent time with Timecop, though it's an admitted time-waster. If you can put 2001 out of your thoughts, 2010 is decent mainstream sequel. It was hardly hooted off the Marathon screen - NONE of the three were booed off the screen like MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH or STAR CRYSTAL.

Sure, I'm grading on a curve, but, the point is that you can't compare Peter Hyams to the directors of the straight to oblivion folks who made Folklore, Niagravation etc. The relevant comparison is Hyams to the Director of FOLKLORE -not Stanley Kubrick. YOU might not like them but Hyams' films at the Marathon haven't gone over too badly with the exception of BLUNDER (and it was booked EXPRESSLY FOR that purpose)
 
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Reply #16 - Feb 26th, 2013 at 12:04am

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Oy. This is a polarizing film, isn't it? It certainly made for the most, erm, unique viewing experience this year.

Sonya From The Balcony and I hadn't heard that HANDS OF ORLOC was off the schedule. We got back to our seats as MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH started, and thought we were getting a short before the feature. We were both really looking forward to watching Conrad Veidt do his thing, so it was a big, big disappointment forty-five minutes in when we realized that nope, this was no short and we had been watching forty-five minutes of nothing for, um, nothing. That's not the film's fault, though. Everything else? Well, yeah.

I liked the overall concept, though, with the shut-in who's gone so crazy he talks first to an invisible audience about his daily routine and then to his sentient bathroom mold, while every now and then he envisions things as a video game. And then when his last connection to sanity breaks down, so does he. Okay. That's a decent idea, there's some torpor and insanity to play with, and then there's the process of finding one's way out of the rut. That development is something that the film's title seemed like it wanted to imply along with the whole mold joke. I've had at least one year of existence between jobs where I pretty much stayed in my apartment and went out of my mind; I could sympathize with the guy whose apartment becomes his entire world. I'm pretty sure this film was therapy for at least one person involved in the creative process.

Couldn't sympathize with the rest of it, though. The problem was that it tried too damn hard to be weird, edgy and unconventional for the sake of being weird, edgy and unconventional, and that never gets anyone anywhere. Not even Seth MacFarlane. Secondary characters came in, spoke in crazy mad ciphers, licked television sets, and then left through either the door or gruesome means. Were we supposed to care about them? Apparently not, and boy howdy that makes for compelling film. I love sitting in a theater for two hours watching characters I couldn't care less about. Were we supposed to view everything through the crazy shut-in's perspective? Perhaps, but dark voyages into a tortured psyche have been done much, much better and without someone who looks like Zach Galifianakis in tighty whities.

And then there was the problem of the film continuing. And continuing. And continuing. Audible groans from the audience every time a new title card popped up. It felt like a student project, and not a good one at that, one of those projects written in an echo chamber where every crazy idea you get seems like a great one, and you're gonna do it just cause you CAN, man.

And of course, when you can do whatever you want because you can, that means WACKY CRAZY RANDOM DEATHS! Sonya FTB wanted to leave the theater after the first Wacky TV Repairman Guy licked the screen and had his face melted off. I insisted on staying if only because, after sitting around for absolutely nothing, I wanted the satisfaction of the film ending. I wanted proof. If I didn't get that proof, we may still be in the Somerville lobby yet, waiting for the damn thing to end.

But then the Wacky Grocery Delivery Chick got randomly offed because HEY IT'S CRAZY AND DARK AND EDGY, and that's when we both knew we'd had enough. That's it, time to drop the mic and get the hell out.

We hung out in the lobby with other refugees. Stories were told of DEMONLOVER, of BREAKFAST OF ALIENS, of the legendary Cinema 1 reaction to THEY CAME FROM WITHIN. Perhaps MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH wasn't that bad in context, but lord, it wasn't good. A later escapee asked "Did you leave before or after the delivery girl was dismembered?" Suddenly we realized we were lucky to get out when we did. Reading the summary later also confirmed it; there was no way in hell I could have derived any satisfaction from that ending.

I hated the film and I hated what potential it squandered in the name of edginess, but at the same time I realize this is the stuff that Marathons are made of. For every 'Thon film you revisit with love, every wonderful new discovery, every piece that affirms your faith in science-fiction (ASTERNAUTS became surprisingly touching at the end, and I liked it) there's a bad film. A real stinkburger. One you'll tell newbies about. You think TRANSFORMERS 6 is bad, Marathonner From The Future? Man, you didn't sit through MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH. Let me tell you about it. You're not going to believe it.
 
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Reply #17 - Feb 26th, 2013 at 10:52am

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1.  Some famous (British?) party giver from the 1930s once said that to every party one must invite a certain mix of guests - and one of them should always be a person that everyone else at the party hates. 
2.  At each film showing, some of the viewers' pleasure derives from the opportunity to be judgmental (certainly true for me, anyway).
3.  "Motivational Growth" was both.
Smiley
 
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Reply #18 - Feb 27th, 2013 at 12:38am

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I wasn't there for M. G.  But which marathon was "Demon Lover" and which version was it?
 
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Reply #19 - Feb 27th, 2013 at 2:06pm

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sas wrote on Feb 27th, 2013 at 12:38am:
I wasn't there for M. G.  But which marathon was "Demon Lover" and which version was it?


Filmography link is at the top of the page: http://sf.theboard.net/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1319772249/0#0

DEMONLOVER showed at SF/29 - the year at Dedham. It was the R-Rated theatrical cut. Still, a bit raw for some Marathoners. Worse, it's a European Arthouse film which most folks weren't expecting or wanting..........
 
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Reply #20 - Mar 7th, 2013 at 4:45pm

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[ftp][/ftp]The choice to run "Motivational Growth" took the place of "The Hands of Orlac". Many of us, particularly those who had seen "Motivatonal Growth" the friday before the Marathon, were let down. We wondered what we had missed. Wonder no more!


 

21st Century Man
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Reply #21 - Mar 7th, 2013 at 7:27pm

L.A. Connection   Offline
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First, I'd recommend getting the Kino restoration (which is the copy we were going to show and is the best copy out there  - http://www.kinolorber.com/video.php?id=897

Second, weren't you able to glean all kinds of new details & insights into MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH the 2nd time around? Maybe, the Mold...uh...grows on you on repeated viewings......

R_F_Fineman wrote on Mar 7th, 2013 at 4:45pm:
[ftp][/ftp]The choice to run "Motivational Growth" took the place of "The Hands of Orlac". Many of us, particularly those who had seen "Motivatonal Growth" the friday before the Marathon, were let down. We wondered what we had missed. Wonder no more!



 
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Reply #22 - Mar 25th, 2013 at 9:05am

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Just saw a posting on the Boston Sci-Fi facebook page that Motivtional Growth won best picture at the Rocky Horror Picture Show Film Festival. Okaaaay.
 
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Reply #23 - Mar 25th, 2013 at 10:02pm

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It's actually the LITTLE ROCK Horror Picture Show. Doesn't look too big. Here was the "competition" for what it's worth:

http://www.littlerockfilmfestival.org/2013/03/19/passes-on-sale-now-for-little-r...

Lile wrote on Mar 25th, 2013 at 9:05am:
Just saw a posting on the Boston Sci-Fi facebook page that Motivtional Growth won best picture at the Rocky Horror Picture Show Film Festival. Okaaaay.

 
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