What was the last film you watched?

[James from London]

not his most epic theme

It's not an epic film really so that makes sense.

I seriously wonder if it has inspired the creators of DEXTER.

I never would have made that connection, but listening to them together, there is a similarity! It's like Dexter's upped the jauntiness to represent all that ironic Florida sunshine while The Ipcress Files's downbeat theme reflects an overcast London.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

not his most epic theme

No, but there's something hypnotically mysterious about it.

I've never been able to skip it when it comes on - I'd feel like I might miss something, even though I've heard it many times before.

I seriously wonder if it has inspired the creators of DEXTER

My turn to run to YouTube.

Yes - there's definitely a tonal kinship. If I'd heard the Dexter theme independently of this conversation it would probably drive me mad trying to work out which piece of music it reminded me of.

It's like Dexter's upped the jauntiness to represent all that ironic Florida sunshine while The Ipcress Files's downbeat theme reflects an overcast London.

I like it!

 

[Willie Oleson]

And also the video aspect - making coffee and getting dressed. I think Dexter borrowed that too.

 

[James from London]

And also the video aspect - making coffee and getting dressed. I think Dexter borrowed that too.

Oh, good thinking! Grinding your own beans and making your own coffee must have seemed so exotic in 1965 that it probably warranted the film's opening credit sequence for novelty value alone.

There's a great scene later on where Michael Caine is wheeling his trolley round a supermarket and another character says, "I don't really care for these American shopping methods [but] one has to move with the times, I suppose."

 

[Willie Oleson]

Michael Caine is wheeling his trolley round a supermarket and another character says, "I don't really care for these American shopping methods

I systematically refuse to use a shopping trolley. Everything goes into the basket, and will use my other arm for the toilet paper if necessary!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

It's fascinating to see central London in 1965

There seems to be nothing more mid-'60s than London, and nothing more London than the mid-'60s.

 

[Toni]

The Time of Their Lives (2017) with Joan Collins.

I was delighted to see her in a new movie that had actually been showed at the cinema. The role of Helen really fits her. Although Joan is far from a has been like the character she portrays and in much better shape, as Helen can barely walk without a cane. She does look significantly older in this movie than we are used to seeing her and I think she's supposed to look old. So it's brave of her to take on such a character.

But yeah without spoiling too much of the plot I can say that at the heart of the movie it's a story about an unlikely friendship between two older women who go out on an adventure together. As the journey progresses they learn to take a good look at their lives and how their past experiences has shaped them into the ladies we meet in the film.

I just watched this one today. It was fun and heartwarming. I honestly think that Pauline Collins stole the movie from Joan, with the latter´s ok (because she is one of the producers, maybe symbolically). PC plays basically the same character that she did in "Shirley Valentine" minus the Greek background. Collins certainly is brave to appear with no makeup in some scenes but when she is photographed from her left side (right for the viewer), the camera makes her look 20 years younger, really beautiful. I think that she looked much older in "The Royals"...The subplot of her past, well, it´s very underwritten to be kind, and Joely Richardson is wasted. But it makes you wish for more Collins, which is good...

 

[Willie Oleson]

There seems to be nothing more mid-'60s than London, and nothing more London than the mid-'60s.

 

[Richard Channing]

There seems to be nothing more mid-'60s than London, and nothing more London than the mid-'60s.

Speaking of Michael Caine and London in the 60's, this is a pretty good documentary (On Netflix, this side of the pond anyway) hosted/narrated by him on the subject.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

It's on the iPlayer until tomorrow afternoon!

Well, how could I resist. I dived into the film this evening.

Very enjoyable. I especially enjoyed the muted colour pallets: lots of washed out greens and yellows with grey. And then bold flashes of teal, red or rich browns. And with long shadows everywhere indoors. It had a very distinctive and attractive look. I was reminded of what David Fincher would be doing three or four decades down the line.

there's some brilliantly groovy camera work which makes the film feel gritty and psychedelic at the same time. The main fight scene takes place on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall and for no apparent reason is shot from inside a nearby telephone box, but it looks great.

It does. The dutch angles in the library, and shots through phone boxes, light shades, disembodied spectacles and parking meters. I liked that some of these shots seemed to be used for emphasis or symbolism. In the phone box, he'd dialled a number that was unobtainable and then when he got hands on with the fight immediately afterwards, his target proved equally unobtainable. The phone box framing the fight subtly foreshadowed the outcome. At least that's how I saw it, watching with your comments fresh in my mind.

 

[James from London]

Very enjoyable.

Oh great, I'm glad you liked it.

The dutch angles in the library, and shots through phone boxes, light shades, disembodied spectacles and parking meters. I liked that some of these shots seemed to be used for emphasis or symbolism.

Yes, those shots were all so cool. The film as a whole has that 60s thing where it feels mainstream and accessible on one hand and artistically experimental on the other. I guess the Beatles and Beach Boys etc., were doing that in music at the time -- breaking new artistic ground without alienating the public -- and it was reflected in film and other parts of the culture too.

In the phone box, he'd dialled a number that was unobtainable and then when he got hands on with the fight immediately afterwards, his target proved equally unobtainable.

That makes sense!

I just watched this and really loved it. At times it feels like an intimate personal story told in an epic way and sometimes it feels like an epic story told in a personal way. It's the opposite of The Ipcress File visually in that its made up of lots of long takes where the camera watches everything in a very calm, serene way, even when all hell is breaking loose on screen. It's really beautifully made. Too good for the Oscars, I think!

 

[Willie Oleson]

 

[Willie Oleson]

 

[darkshadows38]

happy time murders (2018) and i'm not much of a Melissa McCarthy fan but i love the muppets and it was made by Jim Henson's company in fact. and directed by Brian Henson which is Jim Henson's son too. check it out folks but here's a warning it's NOT for kids at all it's rated R and it has no human nudity though it does have muppets screwing in it and

one jizzing all over the place. it's not a film kids should watch at all. but if you can laugh at stuff like that like i can you will like it, also watch the deleted scenes if you rent it from Drug Mart like we did. i loved it and in fact i intend to buy it at some point, just thought i'd give ya a warning that's all and like i said Jim Henson's company made this film i wonder what gave them the idea? and i hope there's more of them but i really highly doubt it

 

[Karin Schill]

Okay so I watched "Fail Safe" (1964) today with Larry. The first part of the movie was going a bit slow and by the time he finally arrived on the screen I was just about to fall asleep on the movie. Then it quickly picked up in pacing and it was actually better than I had expected. I didn't expect the ending that we got and it left me with a creepy feeling since the storyline still seems current today, except for the part that the cold war is long over. Yet it is scary with all the nuclear weapons in the world and how they could be used to wipe out a whole civilization.

Also on the extra material someone talked about what a talented actor Larry was since it was a difficult role and looking at the talent info it seems like all the other major names on the movie had won Oscars so that once again reminds me how underrated Larry was as an actor. I mean he didn't even win an Emmy and he certainly deserved one!

 

[Alexis]

The Greatest Showman.


I'm a bit late to this one, but I finally watched the DVD tonight. I loved it. It's a great musical, and the songs sound great because the vocals weren't recorded live on set. This is more in line with how I wanted Les Miserables to be, only ya know, less perky, more miserables. That film was ruined for me by recorded live vocals that sounded strained and pained. Showman is as the title suggests, a big sparkly bombastic musical. Perhaps overly sentimental and maybe too inspirational, but I'm fine with that in a musical. The songs are really great as are all the cast. It just made me want to belt out all the songs at the top of my voice. The choruses and hooks are such earworms. Totally loved this film and I'm going to buy the soundtrack right now along with the soundtrack reimagined.

I need to have the songwriters who worked on this submit about 5 songs to Celine Dion for her up and coming album. I could imagine her singing almost every song featured in the film. Yea, I need this to happen now.

 

[darkshadows38]

i haven't seen this one yet to be honest, i'm glad you like Celine Dion but i have never liked her music so to each their own. my mom likes her though but she doesn't go out and by her albums though. i haven't seen Le Miz yet though we do own it on blu-ray i just haven't gotten around to watch it though. i don't mind if it's done live. also wouldn't you prefer to have her write her own material that someone else?

anyways i was watching American Horror's which is a channel/app on Rooku and they played one called "Creepy Classic's from (1987) and the host was Vincent Price and it was about horror films ranging from (1957 i think to about (1968) it was only 30 minutes long so it wasn't that long. it was one of those things that were Originally put on VHS back in the day so i was needing to see it as i will watch anything with Price. i'd say it was 8/10

 

[James from London]

I watched both film adaptations of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd over the weekend. Both depict a very potent world - a place of wild, wide-open spaces and dark forests with clifftops overlooking a raging ocean, yet it's also a place where the smallest things -- mishearing the name of a church, sending a Valentine card as a prank, an over-excitable sheepdog -- can have terrible, life-destroying consequences.

The 1967 version is directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man) and stars Julie Christie, Terence Stamp (the same Terry and Julie who meet "every Friday night" in the Kinks song 'Waterloo Sunset'), Peter Finch and Alan Bates. It's about an hour longer than the more recent version (there's even an intermission!) and is filmed in a similarly sweeping, epic style to other big films of the period (Dr Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, etc.) Yet there are also a few moments of wonderfully freaky camera work that feel quintessentially '60s (Terry and Julie's fantastically weird sword scene, for instance.) It's lush and romantic, but also dirty (dirty as in "muddy" rather than "naughty") in a way that the 2015 film isn't. You get more of a sense of the wider community as well.

The 2015 version (Carey Mulligan, Michael Sheen, two other fellas whose names I didn't recognise) is leaner, tauter, more concentrated on the main characters. I found myself rooting more for the characters in this version whereas I was happy to just let the "bigness" of the earlier film wash over me.

Story-wise, I think the biggest difference is the portrayal of the heroine, Bathsheba Evadine. Julie Christie makes Bathsheba's (initial) reluctance to be tied down to a man seem like the result of a kind of dreamy idealism ('60s idealism, perhaps?). There's also something of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music about her (she even runs up a hill, a big smile on her face, at one point.) The actions of Carey Mulligan's version of the character spring more from an innately independent, proto-feminist nature. She refuses to be defined by a man because -- well, why should she be? If that sounds like it's bolted on in order to appease a modern audience (the old "she was a woman ahead of her time" cliche), it doesn't feel that way. Her defiance is all in Hardy's original text apparently, and watching the newer version you can see why The Hunger Games might have named its own tough heroine, Katniss Evadine, after her in a way than you don't when you watch the '67 one. A line from the novel that leaps out of the newer version, "It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language chiefly made by men to express theirs," doesn't appear at all in the earlier one.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Another one I’ve not yet watched. Your description makes both versions sound appealing James.

Story-wise, I think the biggest difference is the portrayal of the heroine, Bathsheba Evadine. Julie Christie makes Bathsheba's (initial) reluctance to be tied down to a man seem like the result of a kind of dreamy idealism ('60s idealism, perhaps?). There's also something of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music about her (she even runs up a hill, a big smile on her face, at one point.)

Every time I see or hear the title my first thought is of the spoof announcement on Round The Horne for their very thinly disguised version: Far From The Maddening Julie Christie.

After reading the paragraph above it becomes clear why.

 

[Alexis]

also wouldn't you prefer to have her write her own material that someone else?

Not really... I don't see why because someone has a natural ability to sing very well that they should also possess the same ability to write music and lyrics. I'm happy for her to leave it in the hands of professional songwriters.