Author Topic: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 395901 times)

GothamCity151

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #470 on: June 23, 2010, 05:45:53 PM »
Resurrection!

If someone wanted to resurrect that, I would be fully up for it.

pixote

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #471 on: June 23, 2010, 09:04:33 PM »
Perhaps I can distract you by suggesting you go check out the 90s Far East bracket :D.

After kicking out my beloved Streetwise, GC is no longer welcome over there.  :P

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pixote

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #472 on: June 23, 2010, 09:37:06 PM »
Streetwise is in my Top 100, incidentally.  As for that other film:


To Live and Die in L.A.  (William Friedkin, 1985)
I have no idea what I watched here.  I want to take a Masculinity class just so I have an excuse to dissect this shit shot by shot.  So frickin' weird.  Everybody should Wang Chung tonight, though.
Grade: C
Hmm, yeah, I guess there's still room for greatness there.

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pixote

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #473 on: June 23, 2010, 11:01:08 PM »
To Live and Die in L.A. will face Beetlejuice in the next round, by the way.

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flieger

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #474 on: June 23, 2010, 11:37:08 PM »
Siesta vs The Shining

Siesta (Mary Lambert, 1987)
Tomorrow, at the beginning of my siesta, come for me.

Claire (Ellen Barkin) wakes up near the runway of an airport, blood all over her dress, and realises that she is in Spain, and that something terrible has happened.

We flash back, finding out that Claire is a daredevil skydiver about to perform a perilous stunt, thought up by her husband, Dell (Martin Sheen). She will jump from a plane without a parachute, onto a flaming net suspended over the mouth of a volcano in Death Valley. She receives a mysterious letter, and she has to leave for a couple of days… for Spain! There, she meets

Augustine (Gabriel Byrne), a trapeze artist. She used to be his pupil and his lover, which means he can say stuff like this:
"Listen to me Claire, I taught you to fly, you chose to fall. What you're doing has no meaning. Your life means more to me than my own."
"Is that why you married someone else?"

Later, meeting secretly (and for the last time, apparently) at his siesta, they reminisce:

"Do you remember when we were working at the circus and we crept out in the middle of the night, then made love in the cage with the lion sleeping inside?"
"I remember it was so dark. I didn't even know he was in there."


He is recently married to Marie (Isabella Rossellini). Things are not looking good, flashback-wise


Back to present time, and she now realises she has done something bad, something really bad, and she thinks, "please let it be her, not him."


So, she's essentially on the lam, with no money, and she comes across these characters:


Alexei Sayle as a Spanish taxi driver, who will take her where she wants to go, but... "F*ck first, then Angeles…


A pre-Accused Jodie Foster (god I miss that Jodie…) as Nancy, with big shoulder pads and a British accent: "Here I am. In a bathroom, utterly pissed, alone on my birthday. Without love, without money. Asking myself, what else is there?"


And then Julian Sands as Kit, wearing a white linen suit. He recites bawdy limericks like
The c*ck of a fellow named Randall,
shot sparks like a big roman candle,
he was much in demand,
for his colours were grand,
and the girls found him too hot to handle.

and shoots off lines like "Would you like to put your hand inside my pants?" The girls love him, though.
He has a senstive side: "Give to the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you. This means a lot to Claire.


And even Grace Jones as Conchita! Conchita has a pet rat.


We also get bedroom scenes where Jodie and Julian (wearing a pearl necklace) get it on, while a newly shorn Barkin lies next to them, having flashbacks of her own tryst with Gabriel.


Then she tightrope walks. (It really is Ellen!)

The film, is, of course, batshit crazy. Being an 80s Ellen Barkin film, there is up-top and down-low nudity. That's just the way it is. It was good to see a couple like Byrne and Barkin, with their matching bumped noses.
It also seems custom made for cultish deification, with heightened dialogue and acting, a Miles Davis soundtrack, and a modish 80s pop-art sensibility. As it is, it was as fun as I remembered it being, and I was definitely never bored. Crazy sh*t just kept happening. Weird timeshifts, random nudity, crazy lines, and frenetic sets of characters, storylines and dream logic that just never lets up. An awful lot of window dressing, but also an wilful, guilty indulgence. Great stuff.


The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

Let the screenshots do the talking. [SPOILERS!]





















The film is a stroke of perverse, black comedy, tension-laden genius. Submerging much of King's supernatural concerns into a study of writer's block, failure and domestic violence. It's also a radical deconstruction of the haunted house motif (heck, a whole ton of horror motifs), paring it down to a gorgeous, shiny, modernist veneer, and having a good laugh at the squirming of the audience.
It's probably my favourite use of music in film. The terrifying, overwhelming soundscape of dissonant avant garde modernists (I had the headphones up way too high, and I loved it!), or the silly humour where the clanging of the cymbals, or drums, or whatever signify another title card. Then there's Jack throwing the tennis ball against the Indian mural. Hilarious.
There's the relentlessly tracking camera, following everyone as they walk through the enormous hotel. Danny on his trike (the hum of the wheels on the hard floor, the silence as he goes over the rugs), or Jack with his axe.
There's also the stilted, polite, and slightly absurd dialogue, especially the small talk between newly introduced people. An intense concentration on mundanity, showing the family through the hotel, talking to Jack about his responsibilities over winter, preparing food. It creates an odd, unsettling atmosphere of something lurking, unspoken, just beneath the surface.
This makes Jack's slow burn, and then break down, all the more enjoyable. His simmering resentment - "This is so f*cking typical of you to create a problem like this when I finally have a chance to accomplish something. When I'm really into my work… Wendy, I have let you f*ck up my life so far, but I am not gonna let you f*ck this up!" - is stripped down to its bare essence in the isolation of the hotel. Faced with failure, a complete inability to accomplish anything, psychotic violence is the only corrective.

***********

Verdict: enjoyable though Siesta was, there's really no competition when it comes up against the greatest of all black comedies. The Shining wins.

mañana

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #475 on: June 23, 2010, 11:48:13 PM »
Siesta seems kinda awesome.
There's no deceit in the cauliflower.

Bondo

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #476 on: June 24, 2010, 12:21:19 AM »
I still prefer the King approved TV movie version of The Shining (filmed at the actual Stanley Hotel, natch) to Kubrick's. Though Kubrick's certainly is packed full of historic moments. Fun fact about the Stanley. It is pretty much right in Estes Park...in no way isolated from society and snowed in all winter. But that would ruin the suspense.

We also get bedroom scenes where Jodie and Julian (wearing a pearl necklace) get it on, while a newly shorn Barkin lies next to them, having flashbacks of her own tryst with Gabriel.

Must resist pearl necklace joke.

jbissell

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #477 on: June 24, 2010, 10:12:06 AM »
Siesta seems kinda awesome.

Seriously! Somehow I'd never even heard of it.

pixote

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #478 on: June 24, 2010, 01:10:46 PM »
Great verdict, flieger.

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GothamCity151

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #479 on: June 24, 2010, 04:04:36 PM »
The World According To Garp vs. Airplane!


The World According To Garp



This film was very nice. It was not great; it was not bad. It was, just, nice. Robin Williams gives a really great performance has T.S. Garp. It shows that he really has some great acting chops. Glenn Close is great in the first half of the movie, but then for about 75 minutes her character disappears in the middle of the film, which is a shame because then the female lead is taken over by Garp's wife Helen, played by Mary Beth Hart, who really is not that intriguing. John Lithgow is amusing as the former football tight end turned woman, and adds some interesting comedic relief, but is ultimately underused as well. The story is your typical coming of age flick, nothing new thrown into the genre. The plot is satisfying, but, frankly, well, let's just stick with satisfying. A problem with the film is that too many things happen for no reason and do not serve the plot. Two spring to mind instantly. One is that there is this crazy driver in the neighborhood that Robin Williams will always chase after when he comes through the neighborhood. Why is this necessary? It isn't. Another aside is that a plane flies into the house that they are about to buy, and is never mentioned again. Also, why could the film not have ended about 2 minutes earlier than it did? The ending put forth is not needed. All in all, it is a good film, just not a great one.



Airplane!



Coming into this matchup, Airplane! was one of my all time favorite comedies. After another viewing, it strongly remains there. It is in my belief that every joke lands in this film, and holds up from viewing to viewing. The writing in the film is so dry and so literal that I crack up on almost every line. The actors are able to deliver the dialogue beautifully in such a great dead-pan manor. Leslie Nielsen is amazing as Dr. Rumack, who gets to say the best lines of the film, including the most famous: "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley." Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Robert Hays, and Julie Hagerty are also brilliant in their respective roles. The film is a perfect parody of disaster films, whether they take place on a plane or not. It is immensely quotable, and many, if not most, of the lines have entered my daily vernacular. I love this film, and, most likely, always will.


Winner And Advancement To Next Round: Airplane!

 

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