Random thoughts and observations...

HARRY POTTER and the never ending pit of money... (shhh, that was a joke)

One of the networks ( HBO most likely) showed both of the DEATHLY HALLOWS movies back to back...

It's close to a six hour marathon but the combined effect is to really bring all the themes of the other movies to one final message. Most cycles in books do not have the clear vision that Rowling had from the opening of the very first book to the close of the last.

Masterpiece Mystery - Sherlock Holmes and the HOUNDS of the Baskervilles...

A not unpredictable take on the Conan-Doyle tale. However, a very satisfying one from the way that this modern Holmes is drawn on the screen. He really is an arrogant, snobbish prick but lots of fun. Watson is learning and not playing the TSTL sidekick or mere chronicler. The writer does work to move the story into the modern age and give it a new twist and look at a new aspect of the relatively tired Conan-Doyle stories.

BATTLESHIP

just keeps creating commercials because it opened the wrong week for a SciFi movie.

THE AVENGERS

keeps control of the box office and breaks more records. It seems that the one stinging, nasty, bitchy, ugly and really hard-hitting review from that reviewer in the NYT did not blunt the opening. Gee, Golly, Whizzies, does that say something about critics.

PROMETHEUS and "In the Mountains of Madness"

SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT

Obscurely, Guillermo del Toro has announced that he is quitting work on the adaptation of Lovecraft's book - In the Mountains of Madness" ... The why is that PROMETHEUS (That's a movie that might or might not, a cutesy "is" and a cutesy "isn't," a sequel to ALIEN) will have the same set pieces and same themes as In Then Mountains of Madness...

And Guillermo del Toro says he will not work on a duplicative movie.

(Holy effing horse shit batman) is that one hell of a SPOILER...,

Are we that bereft of ideas for horror themes that two such different concepts reveal the same old, same old...

PS, I have reached my saturation point on PROMETHEUS HYPE.

I read all the Potter books and saw all the Potter movies. I enjoyed them, and even went back for seconds. The books have brilliant sections of virtuoso writing. Even so, I don't think Potter had any lasting effect on me. I don't find myself returning to the books or the movies, either in memory or imagination. Potter has a few simple lessons to teach, and no more. Rowling's genius is to have made so much of so little.

I just finished watching the first two seasons of Sherlock. Steven Moffat, the chief writer, is also responsible for Doctor Who. (The Doctor will have a reduced season because Moffat didn't have time to do both shows justice.) Sherlock is the most satisfying screen version of Holmes that I've seen. The sparks that fly when Sherlock interacts with normal people are delightful. We're all arrogant in secret, but learn as children to conceal it. It's delicious fun to see a character act as arrogant as we all feel, and to be justified in his arrogance.

I saw The Avengers again, and haven't changed the so-so opinion I expressed in the Avengers thread here. I'd like to plug Dark Shadows, the new Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film based on a 70s TV show. Depp is at his epicene best. The film is witty and imaginative - a posh fancy-dress party. There's a spirit of play about Dark Shadows that's missing from the earnest Avengers. It's been swamped by the Avengers at the box office, a sure sign of quality.

Battleship and Prometheus I don't know. I was a Lovecraft fan back in high school. He was not a polished writer, but his ideas drew on a deep and genuine intuition of human dread. His books and stories survive through sheer force of imagination. I remember that feeling he evokes of living inside a nightmare world with its own nightmare laws. I'm unfamiliar with another writer who does the same.

I've never seen a satisfactory film based on Lovecraft's work. I think that may be because the effect of film is to make things literal. Even the most baroque fantasies are rendered somehow prosaic when we watch them on screen. What becomes of Lovecraft's atmosphere of dread on a movie screen? When we see Cthulhu, rather than imagining his unimaginable horror, isn't he reduced to just another Hollywood beastie? Effects which are powerful in the written word may become weak on screen. I hope these new films surprise me, but I have little hope of a good Lovecraft movie.

As far as I can tell, BATTLESHIP is more like TRANSFORMERS than Lovecraft. I don't say that in a bad way but it's a board game turned into an action film with a RAH RAH bone thrown to the Navy. I haven't read any bad reviews of it. Soldiers and Sailors beat alien invaders can't lose as a plot, not with those special effects. Michael Bey might have given us TRANSFORMERS as a gagalicious set of dumb movies but they weren't (As the kids say) Craptacular, merely too much the same thing in each movie.

PROMETHEUS is something else. I liked and enjoyed ALIEN and then they wasted my time with more than one sequel.

The movie nerds always wanted to know where the ALIENS came from.

SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT

Remember how "In The Mountains of Madness" ends with the ultimate horrors hidden over the other side of the mountains?

Danforth looks back and sees something that drives him into madness. That something is more horrible than the Shoggoths, more horrible than Cthulhu locked in the Sunken City, more horrible than the Elder Gods, and more powerful...

And with that, I can almost see the action and climax of PROMETHEUS.

I am hell on plots...

AT least the new Sherlock Holmes tries to be new and different.

I know that sounds snobbish but I like being challenged and most scripts merely entertain.

Prometheus sounds promising. They'll make a fatal error if they actually show us the horror on

Dave (imported) wrote: Tue May 15, 2012 8:42 pm the other side of the mountains.

Nothing is as frightening as the unknown. Show us a monster and we automatically compare it to every other movie monster. Hint at overwhelming monstrosity and we're overwhelmed. Lovecraft was canny enough to let us scare ourselves with our own fears.

Sherlock is really smart and also really funny. I can't think of any other Holmes films that managed to take Holmes seriously while having so much fun with his differences from ordinary people. The movies starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law do some of that, but not so well.

Dave (imported) wrote: Tue May 15, 2012 8:42 pm As far as I can tell, BATTLESHIP is more like TRANSFORMERS than Lovecraft. I don't say that in a bad way but it's a board game turned into an action film with a RAH RAH bone thrown to the Navy. I haven't read any bad reviews of it. Soldiers and Sailors beat alien invaders can't lose as a plot, not with those special effects. Michael Bey might have given us TRANSFORMERS as a gagalicious set of dumb movies but they weren't (As the kids say) Craptacular, merely too much the same thing in each movie.

...

I came back because BATTLESHIP opened this weekend and suddenly reviews that LIKE the movie are showing up against the total trashing of the movie that happened before it opened.

I said this:

Dave (imported) wrote: Tue May 15, 2012 8:42 pm Soldiers and Sailors beat alien invaders can't lose as a plot,

and I will come back to it. IF you make an entertaining movie with some humor and lots of action for the Summer audiences, you will have a hit. Throw in something, anything patriotic and that means throwing in double amputees, WW2 veterans with gray hair and GUNG-HO navy men fighting for the survival of the world against alien invaders,

YOU CAN'T LOSE.

I watched the episode of Sherlock, "A Scandal in Belgravia", this week, with an occasional professional dominatrix, a beautiful young trans woman. We were blown away. The character of Irene Adler, who in Conan Doyle's tale is described as "an adventuress," but here is a professional dom is by far the best and most erotic depiction of a dominatrix we had ever seen in a movie or TV show. Wonderful episode.

It can be watched online here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/wat ... ravia.html

Transward

Dave (imported) wrote: Sun May 20, 2012 6:52 am I came back because BATTLESHIP opened this weekend and suddenly reviews that LIKE the movie are showing up against the total trashing of the movie that happened before it opened.

I said this:

Dave (imported) wrote: Tue May 15, 2012 8:42 pm Soldiers and Sailors

Dave (imported) wrote: Sun May 20, 2012 6:52 am beat alien invaders can't lose as a plot,

and I will come back to it. IF you make an entertaining movie with some humor and lots of action for the Summer audiences, you will have a hit. Throw in something, anything patriotic and that means throwing in double amputees, WW2 veterans with gray hair and GUNG-HO navy men fighting for the survival o

f the world against alien invaders,

YOU CAN'T LOSE.

It has all those things, but I have questions about the intelligence of anyone over the age of ten that likes this dog. All these were clichès that have been used time and again. I've discussed it in my review of Battleship. Just a note, though...I walked out on Transformers before it was over. I should have walked out on this one.

Slammr (imported) wrote: Sun May 20, 2012 2:41 pm It has all those things, but I have questions about the intelligence of anyone over the age of ten that likes this dog. All these were clichès that have been used time and again. I've discussed it in my review of Battleship. Just a note, though...I walked out on Transformers before it was over. I should have walked out on this one.

That's what a summer blockbuster is aimed at.

10 year olds

Dave (imported) wrote: Sun May 20, 2012 5:12 pm That's what a summer blockbuster is aimed at.

10 year olds

Avengers, when I went to it, was playing to sold out crowds. On a Saturday morning, the theater wasn't even half full for this flick.

Cinema has been such a disappointment to me over the past few years that I have all but given up. The last movie I went to see in a theater was "The Green Hornet" with my then-12 year year old godson. Need I say more? Even he was ready to leave at 30 minutes in. Before that, we had gone to see the debacle and blasphemy which was called "The Last Airbender".

We did, however, brave the theater to see HP/DH 1 & 2. I was quite disappointed; he was impressed.

Any more, I go for foreign films or the straight to DVD releases. The boy, however, is allergic to subtitles, so we do not share the foreign gems that I sometimes find.

Our next adventure will be "Men in Black 3". It's hard to screw up with Wil Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. We'll see.

The one thing that bothered me about Harry Potter, though, was this - after all the times that Lord Voldemort failed to kill Harry with magic, then why didn't he just bludgeon him to death with a large tree limb in the forest of the DH2 when he had the chance?!