On Mon, 1 May 2023 14:05:49 -0700 (PDT), Jack Bohn
<
jack.bohn64@gmail.com> wrote:
I had extra time in April, and TCM went to an all Warner Bros. schedule to celebrate their 100th anniversary. [1] Not that Warners had the least fantastical films of the Great Eight[2] -- I would guess Fox or Paramount over the course of the century --
but it forms the least part of its "personality" and I'd find it hard to point out factors which would make one of their sf films (with the exception of the DC superheroes) particularly Warners'.
But that's beside the point. What I've done with my extra time is to start randomly checking out some of the DVDs I've been randomly accumulating. My evening matinee began with the 26-episode anime "Last Exile" as the serial, but no need to talk about
that here.
The movies, first, the ones everyone has an opinion on:
A.I. (2001)
Avengers (2012)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
The Marvel movies I checked a few favorite scenes (with audio commentary) just to make sure the disk worked. Watched all of AI. Like ET before it, it doesn't really need a rewatch. The second disk of extras provided shorts for several days of the
matinee.
Now some only a few would see:
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972)
The '33 is a star-studded adaptation before '35's Midsummer Night's Dream. The only stars that will be readily recognized after these 90 years are Gary Cooper as the White Knight and W.C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty. Told Cary Grant was the Mock Turtle,
my response would be, "He was?!?" Cartoon fans might hear the voices of Edward Everett Horton and Charles Ruggles as the Mad Hatter and March Hare; they did "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Aesop and Son", respectively, for Bullwinkle. Sterling Holloway as
the Frog footman was also the voice of Winnie the Pooh (and the Cheshire Cat in Disney's). A few others I knew were Ned Sparks, Jack Oakie, and Edna May Oliver. The costumes and special effects range from good to not. Alice's growing is a optical
stretching, which doesn't look great, but matches the book's description of her opening out like a telescope.
The '72 was made in England. The recognizable actors are Ralph Richardson as the Caterpillar, and Peter Sellers as the March Hare. (There's a '66 adaptation made by BBCTV (and not destroyed!) where Sellers plays The King of Hearts!)
Atomic Brain (1963) No different from non-atomic brain swapping. About what you'd expect.
The Beastmaster (1982) Hadn't seen it before, now I have.
Counterblast (1948) British. Nazis escape prison camp near the end of the war. They are organized enough that after the war they can steal the identity of an Australian doctor coming to the UK. Their plan is to find the cure for some plague that
they can then release on the public. The speed at which they do suggests we should have Paperclipped these guys, but where'd the story be if they couldn't? Fairly good.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) Midlist Terry Gilliam. Amazing that he's made enough films to have a midlist. I'm not sure anything was said here that wasn't in Baron Munchaussen.
Heath Ledger's last film. Forget the hype about /The Dark Knight/.
They had to get three friends to finish the film by doing the "inside"
scenes.
In the Shadow of the Moon (2007) A documentary on the Apollo program. Shocked to see them mixing footage between missions, but in Hollywood accuracy is not as important as looking cool. DVD includes enough deleted scene footage to make a B-feature of
its own.
Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015) A parallel universe where Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman still fight for justice, but in a much darker manner. Superman is still a Kryptonian, not quite the one we know; the other two have different origins.
Their story is made clear, but the opponents to their tyranny are references to characters in DC comics that may require you to web search on your phone in the middle of the movie. I didn't, which left me with the uncomfortable feeling that I was
missing something about some of them. Otherwise, a very good story.
I saw it, but I don't remember it.
Since it is animated and I did /not/ buy it on DVD, I must conclude
that I was not impressed.
Morons from Outer Space (1985) British. Dire. The morons of the title are British lower class. From space, but of British lower class look, clothing, attitude, names, interests, equipment (well, their RV is a space RV with good special effects) -- I
suspect only the lack of a product-placement agreement caused a made-up a brand name for the beer they drink.
Oculus (2013) Karen Gillan! Er, I mean, a horror story about a mirror that drives people mad. Her family was destroyed by it a decade or so ago, her parents killed and her brother blamed and put under psychiatric observation. Away from its influence
long enough, he has come back to his senses, and has been released. She has figured out a way to destroy the mirror that its mind-bending powers won't protect against. But first, an array of video, audio, and other electronic recorders will capture
documentary proof of its influence!
I vaguely remember this one.
The Raven (2012) Edgar Allan Poe is contacted by the police about a number of murders containing details from his stories. A common use of historic authors, perhaps not as common as the trope of their stories having been inspired by secret hidden
events in their lives. Had this been done with practical effects rather than cgi, the pit with the pendulum might have been scaled back, or given the filmmakers insight about the time and money that would have had to been put into it, but then again,
making sense seems less important than looking cool.
If this shows Poe doing a reading in front of an audience, then I
believe I saw this. Like the more recent film with Poe as a character,
I didn't find it (or whatever I am confusing it with) all that
interesting.
The Southern Star (1969) OK, not sf, but based on a novel by Jules Verne. George Segal and Ursula Andress in an unlikely caper stealing a just-discovered diamond of that name.
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) Corman inserted a touch of fake gore at the beginning and end of what could otherwise be a Twilight Zoneish tale. Almost lives up to the legends about it.
I remember seeing it /and/ buying and reading the comic version.
Anybody else seen any of these?
[1] The month began with Beau Brummel (1924) and ended with Argo (2014), not that they were all chronological, I suppose even classic movie fans have their own least favorite decades, and at three days per, would start to wonder what the channel was
good for. With Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies filling the interstitials!
[2] Wikipedia tells me MGM was formed in April of 1924! TCM has MGM's film library into 1986 due to Turner's deals with MGM/UA! MGM had THE sf film of 1950 and of 1960! UA generally allowed the copyright of the films they distributed to stay with the
artists who united to form it. Its 1919 anniversary was missed, anyway. TCM has a lot of RKO's pictures, too. It was founded in 1929, but will never be older than 30!
That's three majors and a minor of the Great Eight. They have had agreements with the other two minors, Universal (1912) and Columbia (1918), but I haven't paid attention to the current status. Paramount (1912) is unclear in my mind: Universal holds
the rights to 750 of their films from 1949 and earlier, which get play on the channel. 20th Century Fox (1935) had also had a deal, I don't know their current status, but there's a lot of tome here for negotiation.
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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