ScoJo wrote:The question remains, is it recognisable from an actual lived 80s childhood, or from the movies about childhood from the 80s that we (ie old fucks) protectively claim as our Golden Age?
it felt like an 1980s movie made by people who didn't grow up in the 1980s.
There you go- more succinctly put and yes, I have to agree. But still enjoyable nonetheless.
However, you gotta wonder about all of the 80s reverance just now. To quote Bono (!!):
'Don't believe in the 60s, the golden age of Pop, you glorify the past when the future dried up'.
An insightful read! In the UK we got pretty much sweet f.a. all through the 80's in regard to anime. The only show I vaguely remember is battle of the planets (gatchaman) but I was like 3 or 4 at the time. I think the first anime I knowingly got into was Akira. I have a kind of love hate relationship with the movie, because it was so well made but still violent and dark like a lot of the b grade ovas so when I searched out other similar genre anime there was always the discussion it was poorly animated compared to Akira, which is somewhat true I guess.
I still got into the scene a little though around this time thanks to the MANGA UK VHS releases, fist of the north star, tank police, 3x3 eyes. I even got hold of an anime club VHS that had ranma 1/2 amongst other things on it. All in Japanese with no subs of course :D.
It was the cost of the videos that caused me to stop following at this time (early 90's?) It was something like £20 for a VHS that may contain less than an hour of footage. Being a young boy with drugs and rave music on my mind my funds were limited :).
I only, slowly, got back into it over the last few years. I had been ashamedly ignorant of the Ghibli rise to popularity. I remember looking down on Ghibli's crazy high ratings on imdb (with out knowing anything about them) thinking stupid kids they need to see the proper old anime like Akira :D, how foolish was I, even though it's the earlier Miyazaki & Isao stuff that really enthralls me.
It's so great the work that die hard fansub communities have done for these old shows, without them I think alot of this stuff would not have found eventual official releases. Stuff like the Anime series VOTOMS, which outside of Japan is hardly known about. Think Rambo meets blade runner meets the incal. Or Miyazaki's Future boy conan TV Series, which still has no official rerelease outside of Japan, one of the best TV series I have ever seen.
Will have to check out ping pong club @deaf I have seen some episodes of golden boy, fucked up but very funny too :D
Will also try and check out some of the other things you mentioned, I remember we always used to talk about crying Freeman but nobody had the money to buy it at the time, and then it was gone.
I finally watched Upgrade last night and it was fun, if entirely predictable. And I mean entirely. Still, I miss good old fashioned mid-budget action pictures that don't tax your brain one iota. Solid flick. B-
There's a big difference between winging it and seeing what happens. Now let's go see what happens.
Mateo Sanboval wrote:I finally watched Upgrade last night and it was fun, if entirely predictable. And I mean entirely. Still, I miss good old fashioned mid-budget action pictures that don't tax your brain one iota. Solid flick. B-
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment.
What Keeps You Alive was an interesting view. At first I thought I was going to be like a lesbian Revenge version. But that was not the case. Well made small film. Score was okay. It had a Silverchair anthem in it...
@ScoJo - Vitali was here in Portland for a Q&A with that doc a couple months ago. Gutted to say I was unable to attend, and the reports from friends about how incredible his personal stories of Kubrick were has me agonizing for missing it.
@Mateo - Upgrade is on my watch list. I might even try to get Jamie to sit through it with me, if possible. Any advice before I attempt that? Haha...
@Dollarhyde - I totally hear you on the *cough* limited funds in the early/mid 90's, haha. Seriously, if the tape wasn't booted, rented, or stolen we weren't watching it. My eyes were opened at a young age to the cost of original VHS tapes when I foolishly asked the video store clerk how much the new copy of Transformers: The Movie would be to purchase ($80 USD in 1987 if I remember correctly, which is about $172 today with inflation). Prices were a bit better in the early 90's, but my social circle never had money to actually buy new tapes, and barely enough to rent them. We even struggled to get two working VCR's together to make any copies. By the mid-90's, I also remember Manga Entertainment releasing proper dubs on domestic VHS. I was so infatuated with Ninja Scroll that I diligently saved up enough to drop the $30 + plus tax to land a shiny new copy of the tape, which I still have somewhere in the vault (now a solid VG grade, haha). There is a lot of stuff I missed out on though as well. Remember watching those "Manga Entertainment" intro/promo reels and trying to track down all the titles? I still have never seen Genocyber or Neo Tokyo... or Violence Jack either. I think I might need to finally rectify that, at least for Genocyber. I will also add VOTOMS and Future Boy Conan to the list.
For both @Dollar and @inksb - Crying Freeman is definitely one of the series that really stands out in my memory from all those years ago. It was very serious in tone compared to all the other comedy/lolz OVA, and obviously has a lot of adult material and violence but no scifi, just straight yakuza assassin business.
Totally random here... but I just love everything about this, even the theme song:
Supposedly, this was the first anime show to feature mechas with a human pilot in a cockpit. The show was also dubbed in Spanish and was huge in Mexico in the 1980's. It influenced Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim. Ah well, at least I got to catch Robotech back then.
Beautiful doc about Kubrick's assistant since Barry Lyndon, Leon Vitali. Bought a tear or two.
I lost track of this doc somewhere along the way and didn't even realize it had been released yet.
deafmetal wrote:@Mateo - Upgrade is on my watch list. I might even try to get Jamie to sit through it with me, if possible. Any advice before I attempt that? Haha...
None. I watched it on my own late last night and, afterwards, mused if Mrs Sanboval would've enjoyed it. In the end, I decided against it. It's a straight ahead sci-fi actioner and while she probably would not have minded the film, I can't swear she would've loved it either. Plus I need to save those bullets for films like Ghost Dog and Bone Tomahawk.
Bezulsqy wrote:What Keeps You Alive was an interesting view. At first I thought I was going to be like a lesbian Revenge version. But that was not the case. Well made small film. Score was okay. It had a Silverchair anthem in it...
On it. In spite of the Silverchair.
There's a big difference between winging it and seeing what happens. Now let's go see what happens.
Just watched summer of 84... entertaining and serviceable for the first two acts....and then the third act comes along and rockets that shit into high gear. The last 20 minutes are legitimately chilling and made what was a fun pastiche of a nostalgia that is just about drained, into something seriously haunting and well executed.
I have been in this business a long time. Now if I don't want to do a show, it's not because I got stage fright. It's because some creature from beyond doesn't want me to do the show. Now gangway.
static14 wrote:CTN barfing that grub is one of the best gross effects ever.
No doubt... that scene scarred my young mind. It wasn't years later that I found out the creature effects had originally been designed by H.R. Giger. The dental braces scene also f'd me up, as I had them at the time and was around the same age as the kid in the film.
It's pretty good, as far as sequels to classics go. The scenes you mention are standouts, as well as every creepy mother effin minute with Julian Beck- he is what really scarred me as a yoot.
Recently listened to great podcast interview with co-writer of both films Michael Grais. He suggested there were quite a few things which were more thoroughly explored in the original script (such as Will Sampson's magic spear) which goes someway to explaining why the ending feels so rushed. It's a real shame every time I rewatch, they dip into the Other Side for like 45secs for the 'big battle', whereas it feels like the movie has earned a full third act set in limbo. The deus-ex-machina of Angel Granny has always been a moment of 'ick' which I can see actually working if it wasn't so abrupt/perfunctory. Definitely feels like eithet script was cut for budget or film was cut by nervous studio types.
Goldsmith's score, as pointed out by someone (Hatter?) here recently, is quite stunning.
Hatter313 wrote:Just watched summer of 84... entertaining and serviceable for the first two acts....and then the third act comes along and rockets that shit into high gear. The last 20 minutes are legitimately chilling and made what was a fun pastiche of a nostalgia that is just about drained, into something seriously haunting and well executed.
So I finally was able to watch Summer of 84 last night. Being completely honest, I was let down by the film. As you said @hatter, the last act was great, my wife hated the final interaction but I thought it was brilliant and a great way to leave your mark on someone. You would never feel safe, plain and simple. My biggest issues with the film is the length and the four main actors, aside from the big guy they all feel like they are trying really hard to act their parts instead of naturally feeling like 4 friends. I just didn't like them. When you have a film based on 4 friends banding together to solve something, you should care for the characters, none of them were likable except the big kid and girl next door. I've seen people say (not sure if it was here) that the directors seemed to make a 80's film but it's like they didn't grow up in the 80's. I didn't feel that way, the way I saw it was it was a film trying to capture the feeling of films like The Monster Squad or Fright Night. And while I like Le Matos, their score was a little much during the film, I felt a lot of it could have been dialed back and more ambient at times.
ScoJo wrote:It's pretty good, as far as sequels to classics go. The scenes you mention are standouts, as well as every creepy mother effin minute with Julian Beck- he is what really scarred me as a yoot.
Recently listened to great podcast interview with co-writer of both films Michael Grais. He suggested there were quite a few things which were more thoroughly explored in the original script (such as Will Sampson's magic spear) which goes someway to explaining why the ending feels so rushed. It's a real shame every time I rewatch, they dip into the Other Side for like 45secs for the 'big battle', whereas it feels like the movie has earned a full third act set in limbo. The deus-ex-machina of Angel Granny has always been a moment of 'ick' which I can see actually working if it wasn't so abrupt/perfunctory. Definitely feels like eithet script was cut for budget or film was cut by nervous studio types.
Goldsmith's score, as pointed out by someone (Hatter?) here recently, is quite stunning.
Oh it was me for sure, and I was watching it yesterday too haha, I love that movie and wish that the full third act had been left alone, between beck’s death and studio interference there was a lot left on the cutting room floor and unfilmed. Some of Geiger’s designs made it in the film, but a lot never quite got there.
The novelization based on an earlier script goes into Taylor’s connection to Kane more, which is really pretty insteresting and explains Kane’s “oh, so that’s what he calls himself now” line to Stephen at the door.
I have been in this business a long time. Now if I don't want to do a show, it's not because I got stage fright. It's because some creature from beyond doesn't want me to do the show. Now gangway.
ScoJo wrote:
Oh it was me for sure, and I was watching it yesterday too haha, I love that movie and wish that the full third act had been left alone, between beck’s death and studio interference there was a lot left on the cutting room floor and unfilmed. Some of Geiger’s designs made it in the film, but a lot never quite got there.
The novelization based on an earlier script goes into Taylor’s connection to Kane more, which is really pretty insteresting and explains Kane’s “oh, so that’s what he calls himself now” line to Stephen at the door.
Awesome sauce, Hatster- might just have to seek out the tie-in literature :)
If you're innerested in that Grais interview, it's oneof the earlier episodes over at Forever Midnight (around ep 5 I think). He drops some Poltergeist nuggets which hasn't revealed before (so he says.) Sadly one of them isn't 'TOBE DIRECTED EVERY MOTHERFUCKIN FRAME, FOOLS'
;-)
