Movies and TV Shows

Tonight I pulled down a DVD that I got from a garage sale and promptly forgot about for years, Fortress (1992).

I can't believe I had never seen this movie before. I knew from quickly scanning the case that it starred Christopher Lambert (Highlander) and Kurtwood Smith (That 70s Show, RobCop), but I was not expecting to see my favorite actor of all time, Jeffrey Combs, especially in such a prominent role. There is almost no marketing copy on the case, so it was a hugely pleasant surprise.

The movie takes place in the distant future of 2017, when the United States has implemented a one-child policy and total ban on abortion, in a flatly contradictory scheme to control a booming population (and harvest babies from newly criminalized mothers). Lambert plays John Brennick, husband to Karen (Loryn Locklin) who is pregnant with her second child. While trying to cross the border into Canada, where they can have their child in peace, the couple are captured and sent to The Fortress, a massive underground Panopticon, lorded over by Poe (Kurtwood Smith) and the AI control system Zed-10 (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon).

The Fortress is a private prison run by Men-Tel, and they treat the prisoners to a hilarious guided tour with heavy reliance on the slogan/motto "Crime Does Not Pay." Zed-10 and Poe inform the prisoners of the security measures in place, including the 'Intestinator,' a combination belly bomb and remote pain device. There are also red and yellow lines that the prisoners are not supposed to cross, upon pain of death. As soon as this is established we see a prisoner cross those lines and set off his Intestinator, and then the lines are never seen or mentioned again. Just a tough break for that guy I guess. The cells within the prison have laser-grid bars, and a series of ceiling-tracked robot cameras serve as Zed-10's eyes and ears. We get to see a surprising amount of full frontal male nudity as the incoming prisoners are processed, which is the only nudity in the film apart from a psychedelic wet dream reconstructed by a computer later in the film, so points for breaking the mold there.

After the tour, Brennick meets his cell-mates, including Gomez (Clifton Collins Jr) the other newbie, Abraham (Lincoln Kilpatrick) the old timer, Stiggs (Tom Towles) the skinhead rapist, and D-Day (Jeffrey Combs) the hippie-dippy bomb-maker. Another prisoner, Maddox, is alluded to but not seen. Stiggs and Maddox are purely stereotypical prison skinheads, and they attempt to rape Gomez pretty much as soon as the prison part of the film starts. It's cheap, gross, homophobic, and easily the worst part of the film. It's a pretty graphic, if brief, depiction, and the only redeeming factor is that it's not played for laughs (in that one scene at least, there is some other homophobic stuff sprinkled throughout).

Zed-10 and Poe are the weirdest part of the movie. She has a camera that can see prisoner's dreams, and seems to be a fully general AI. She and Poe run the prison together, and neither one seems to be totally in charge. Zed-10 controls all of the infrastructure, but we see Poe talk her into all kinds of things, often by making emotional appeals. The best line in the movie is when he yells through a locked door, trying to convince Zed-10 to open it, "Do you know what they'll do to you? You'll be lucky if you end up a Speak-and-Spell!" Over the course of the film we learn that Poe is a cyborg, and that he himself was a baby taken by Men-Tel under the one-child policy. He was modified as an infant and spent his entire life in the control room of the Fortress. Clearly the experience has taken a toll on him, because he spends his time watching the wet dreams of prisoners, to Zed-10's consternation, when he should be punishing them for 'unauthorized thought processes'. The more we learn about Men-Tel and the cyborgs, the more horrific they become, and it's honestly a very effective slow-burn escalation.

A lot of crazy shit happens in this movie. There is a fun gyroscope ride that wipes your brain, leading Karen to use Zed-10's dream camera to Inception her brain-dead husband back to life. Brennick gets savaged by dogs, beaten to a pulp by Maddox, and Intestinated all in one day. D-Day uses the power of magnets to remove everyone's belly bombs, and some fun is had with them after that. Several people get just massive holes blown in their torsos, and once the cyborg soldiers start dying we see some excellently creepy practical effects for their innards, all caked in blue goo. Zed-10 possesses a truck.

I just love Jeffrey Combs' commentary on everything as it happens. When they first take out one of the cyborg guards, he pokes around in the innards, muttering to himself "the shit they're coming up with these days!" He also refers to the bombs in their Intestinators as 'TNT on PMS' which made me giggle a little. Unfortunately, this movie conforms to the standard model of dystopic actioner, and everyone apart from the core couple has to die before the runtime is over, and D-Day is no exception. He gets a triumphant send-off which is nice, but it would be great to see one of these super silly action movies where a few more of the secondary characters make it to the end credits. They even get Gomez in the last few moments, and Abraham was marked for death from the moment he appeared on screen, in all his budget Morgan Freeman glory (He's the other one I would have liked to see live, the non-rapist cellmates were both fun characters with more stories to tell, they should have lived).

This movie is pretty stupid from start to finish, but there are so many elements that I love about it, it's hard to decide what score it deserves. I think I'm going to call it a 2.5/5. If the completely unnecessary prison rape trope was excised completely, I would bump it up another half star at least, but it's more than just a line of dialogue and so it has to be reflected in the score. With that major caveat, I would still recommend this one for fans of Christopher Lambert's hilarious accent, Kurtwood Smith's unnerving smile, or Jeffrey Combs' genius everything.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — What would Bob Ross think?

The artist who brought painting to the people, with works completed for PBS viewers in less than a half-hour with little more than a large bristle brush, putty knife and plenty of encouragement, certainly wouldn’t have envisioned one of his works going up for sale for nearly $10 million.

But that’s the price a Minneapolis gallery is asking for “A Walk in the Woods,” the first of more than 400 paintings that Ross produced on-air for his TV series “The Joy of Painting.”

“It is season one, episode one of what you would call the rookie card for Bob Ross,” Ryan Nelson, who owns the gallery, Modern Artifact, said of the work created in the show’s debut, which aired Jan. 11, 1983.

Growing up in a small town, Nelson said he was introduced to art through Ross’ show and loves his paintings. He doesn’t expect a quick sale given the high asking price, which he sees as an opportunity to display the painting for a larger audience.

On that first show where he painted “A Walk in the Woods,” Ross — sporting his beloved perm, full beard and unbuttoned shirt — stressed that painting didn’t need to be pretentious.

“We have avoided painting for so long because I think all of our lives we’ve been told that you have to go to school half your life, maybe even have to be blessed by Michelangelo at birth, to ever be able to paint a picture,” Ross said. “And here, we want to show you that that’s not true. That you can paint a picture.”

Ross, who died in 1995, hosted the show from 1983 until 1994. In each episode, he would speak directly to viewers whom he encouraged to paint with him as he created idealized scenes of streams backed by mountains, waterfalls and rustic cabins and mills — all done very quickly.

None of Ross’ paintings, including “A Walk in the Woods,” would be confused for masterpieces. But that wasn’t the point.

“What this piece represents is the people’s artist,” Nelson said. “This isn’t an institution that’s telling you that Bob Ross is great. It’s not some high-brow gallery telling you that Bob Ross is great. This is the masses, the population in the world that are saying that Bob Ross is great.”

The first season of “The Joy of Painting” was filmed in Falls Creek, Virginia, and the painting from Ross’ first show was sold months later to raise funds for the local PBS station. A volunteer at the station bought the painting for an undisclosed price and hung it in her home for 39 years until getting in touch with Nelson, who has bought and sold more than 100 of Ross’ works.

Nelson bought the painting last year and then gave it a “not for sale” price of $9.85 million, said publicist Megan Hoffman.

Hoffman said the asking price is far more than any other Ross painting has sold for, but “A Walk in the Woods” is unique and Nelson isn’t looking for a quick sale. She notes that Ross’ popularity has soared in recent years, with 5.63 million subscribers to a YouTube channel featuring his shows.

“Ryan would prefer to take it out, tour it around to museums and things like that so people can enjoy it and appreciate it,” Hoffman said. “He will take offers but he’s not in a hurry to sell it.”

Yesterday, popular authors including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and George Saunders joined the Authors Guild in suing OpenAI, alleging that training the company's large language models (LLMs) used to power AI tools like ChatGPT on pirated versions of their books violates copyright laws and is "systematic theft on a mass scale."

“Generative AI is a vast new field for Silicon Valley's longstanding exploitation of content providers," Franzen said in a statement provided to Ars. "Authors should have the right to decide when their works are used to ‘train’ AI. If they choose to opt in, they should be appropriately compensated.”

OpenAI has previously argued against two lawsuits filed earlier this year by authors making similar claims that authors suing "misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence."

This latest complaint argued that OpenAI's "LLMs endanger fiction writers’ ability to make a living, in that the LLMs allow anyone to generate—automatically and freely (or very cheaply)—texts that they would otherwise pay writers to create."

Authors are also concerned that the LLMs fuel AI tools that "can spit out derivative works: material that is based on, mimics, summarizes, or paraphrases" their works, allegedly turning their works into "engines of" authors' "own destruction" by harming the book market for them. Even worse, the complaint alleged, businesses are being built around opportunities to create allegedly derivative works:

Businesses are sprouting up to sell prompts that allow users to enter the world of an author’s books and create derivative stories within that world. For example, a business called Socialdraft offers long prompts that lead ChatGPT to engage in 'conversations' with popular fiction authors like Plaintiff Grisham, Plaintiff Martin, Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown, and others about their works, as well as prompts that promise to help customers 'Craft Bestselling Books with AI.'

They claimed that OpenAI could have trained their LLMs exclusively on works in the public domain or paid authors "a reasonable licensing fee" but chose not to. Authors feel that without their copyrighted works, OpenAI "would have no commercial product with which to damage—if not usurp—the market for these professional authors’ works."

"There is nothing fair about this," the authors' complaint said.

Their complaint noted that OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman claims that he shares their concerns, telling Congress that "creators deserve control over how their creations are used” and deserve to "benefit from this technology." But, the claim adds, so far, Altman and OpenAI—which, claimants allege, "intend to earn billions of dollars" from their LLMs—have "proved unwilling to turn these words into actions."

Saunders said that the lawsuit—which is a proposed class action estimated to include tens of thousands of authors, some of multiple works, where OpenAI could owe $150,000 per infringed work—was an "effort to nudge the tech world to make good on its frequent declarations that it is on the side of creativity." He also said that stakes went beyond protecting authors' works.

"Writers should be fairly compensated for their work," Saunders said. "Fair compensation means that a person’s work is valued, plain and simple. This, in turn, tells the culture what to think of that work and the people who do it. And the work of the writer—the human imagination, struggling with reality, trying to discern virtue and responsibility within it—is essential to a functioning democracy.”

The authors' complaint said that as more writers have reported being replaced by AI content-writing tools, more authors feel entitled to compensation from OpenAI. The Authors Guild told the court that 90 percent of authors responding to an internal survey from March 2023 "believe that writers should be compensated for the use of their work in 'training' AI." On top of this, there are other threats, their complaint said, including that "ChatGPT is being used to generate low-quality ebooks, impersonating authors, and displacing human-authored books."

Authors claimed that despite Altman's public support for creators, OpenAI is intentionally harming creators, noting that OpenAI has admitted to training LLMs on copyrighted works and claiming that there's evidence that OpenAI's LLMs "ingested" their books "in their entireties."

"Until very recently, ChatGPT could be prompted to return quotations of text from copyrighted books with a good degree of accuracy," the complaint said. "Now, however, ChatGPT generally responds to such prompts with the statement, 'I can’t provide verbatim excerpts from copyrighted texts.'"

To authors, this suggests that OpenAI is exercising more caution in the face of authors' growing complaints, perhaps since authors have alleged that the LLMs were trained on pirated copies of their books. They've accused OpenAI of being "opaque" and refusing to discuss the sources of their LLMs' data sets.

Authors have demanded a jury trial and asked a US district court in New York for a permanent injunction to prevent OpenAI's alleged copyright infringement, claiming that if OpenAI's LLMs continue to illegally leverage their works, they will lose licensing opportunities and risk being usurped in the book market.

Ars could not immediately reach OpenAI for comment. [Update: OpenAI's spokesperson told Ars that “creative professionals around the world use ChatGPT as a part of their creative process. We respect the rights of writers and authors, and believe they should benefit from AI technology. We’re having productive conversations with many creators around the world, including the Authors Guild, and have been working cooperatively to understand and discuss their concerns about AI. We’re optimistic we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together to help people utilize new technology in a rich content ecosystem.”]

Rachel Geman, a partner with Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel for the authors, said that OpenAI's "decision to copy authors’ works, done without offering any choices or providing any compensation, threatens the role and livelihood of writers as a whole.” She told Ars that "this is in no way a case against technology. This is a case against a corporation to vindicate the important rights of writers.”

Sitting close to a giant tv just isn't the same as seeing something on a legit giant screen.

I went ahead and made Deep Rising (1998) the finale to my underwater marathon.

Released in '98 rather than '89, Deep Rising is a fun, dumb, summer schlockbuster.

This movie has a pretty stellar cast. Treat Williams, who I will always love for playing Berger in the Hair film adaptation, plays Finnegan, a hopelessly trusting mercenary boat captain of some sort, who lives by the motto "If the cash is there, we do not care," a credo that immediately lands him in hot water as he takes on a crew of heavily armed criminals without even asking where they are going. Finnegan's ship is crewed by Joey the engineer (Kevin J O'Conner, Beni from The Mummy (1999)), and Leila (Una Damon) who dies so early and unceremoniously that I was sure it was a fake-out all the way until the credits rolled. The fabulous Wes Studi plays Hanover, the leader of the thieves, and his gang includes some great character actors, particularly Jason Flemyng and Djimon Hounsou. Simultaneously with Hanover's heist, cat burglar Trillian (Famke Janssen) is also attempting to rob the floating casino that serves as the location for most of the movie. Anthony Heald rounds out the main cast as the loathsome capitalist behind the Argonautica cruise ship, Simon Canton.

The dialogue is truly terrible, but in a way that wraps around to being fun again. Everyone speaks exclusively in cliches, and the first few minutes include three different characters angrily shouting "X, my ass!" in a way that lets you know the screenwriters thought they were really doing something. The little moments between characters are frequently funny, even if no line of dialogue ever feels like it was delivered by an actual human being. I think my favorite moment is a one such quiet exchange between Finnegan and Joey; "Whatcha got there? Peanut. Peanut? Peanut."

The basic plot is that Hanover's crew have hired Finnegan to get them to an undisclosed location along with a cargo that turns out to be a bunch of torpedoes. They plan to rob the vault of the Argonautica and then scuttle the ship. Canton, the businessman, serves as their man on the inside, hoping to cash in on the insurance policy for the boat to bail him out of his poor financial decisions. These schemes are interrupted by the presence of giant, tentacled worm monsters from the deep. They aren't mutants, or aliens, or prehistoric crustaceans this time, just a nasty beastie that apparently lives in the area, according to the opening text dump. The creatures quickly consume nearly everyone aboard and our heroes have to make their way around the stricken vessel, avoiding the monsters and searching for the loot.

Treat Williams looks and acts bizarrely like Lonestar from SpaceBalls in this movie, but everyone else is so ridiculous that it doesn't stand out as an oddity. Famke Janssen is gorgeous and fun, while Hanover's crew all chew the scenery like mad dogs. Joey was the standout character for me though. He plays the long-suffering-nerd archetype, and does it well, although it really bothers me that his relationship with Leila is made use of in a scene exactly twice before she is killed, and he spends the whole movie not knowing that she's dead, until the end, and then he goes right back to wisecracking after a moment of emotion. The writers clearly did not have a strong direction for his character, so he ends up as the repository for all the comic relief jokes that didn't fit anyone else. The fact that Kevin J O'Conner is genuinely super funny turns the role from one that could have been incredibly abrasive into a solid comic sidekick.

The CGI for the monster is very inconsistent. There are a couple of shots that look very good, especially for 1998, and then there are plenty that look just bad, even for 1998. It was a very ambitious creature design, and I feel that it mostly works, but I will always dock points for CGI creatures where they could have been done more effectively with practical effects, and I do feel that is the case here. The limited locations in the film meant that they could have spent the time putting in place some really good looking animatronics and puppets, but they went 100% digital all the way. The explosions in this are also just terrible, copy-pasted stock effects. I should probably also mention the stupid guns Hanover's crew use. They have rotating-barrel assault rifles, like little mini-miniguns, apparently the cutting edge hardware in China. There are just so many problems with them, but the question that hangs over it all is why someone thought that this movie about CGI tooth-worms needed a fictional firearm in the first place. The prop designer must have been the director's nephew or something.

I had a blast watching this one, but it is truly trash-cinema. I'll give it 3/5, and that's probably too generous.

Recently I've been all about the curated collections that The Criterion Channel puts out. For those that are unaware, they'll pick a couple themes and put together a list of 6-12 movies complete with a blended trailer and overview of the theme. Right now for instance they have "70s Car Movies" and "High School Horror". My only complaint is that it obviously only lists movies that are available on The Criterion Channel.

Is there anything similar out there, be it a blog, YouTube channel, whatever, but that will regularly curate lists without regards for where to actually watch the movie?

I know I could just search for best whatever genre movies I'm interested in watching, but sometimes I don't want to think about what to watch. Additionally, the curated list for a given theme gets me to branch out from what I may typically watch in that I know it's generally going to be a good movie.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/317329

The Blues Brothers is a 1980 American musical comedy film directed by John Landis. It stars John Belushi as "Joliet" Jake Blues and Dan Aykroyd as his brother Elwood, characters developed from the recurring musical sketch "The Blues Brothers" on NBC variety series Saturday Night Live. The script is set in and around Chicago, Illinois, where it was filmed, and the screenplay was written by Aykroyd and Landis. It features musical numbers by rhythm and blues (R&B), soul, and blues singers James Brown, Cab Calloway (in his final feature film role), Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Chaka Khan, and John Lee Hooker. It features non-musical supporting performances by Carrie Fisher, Henry Gibson, Charles Napier, Kathleen Freeman and John Candy.

More detail

I finally just got around to watching this, and I have a couple things on my mind...

First of all, why oh why would you have another baby, knowing that to do so puts them in danger, as well as the rest of your family?

The girl was a liability the whole time. By my count, she:

• got her littlest brother killed
• almost got her other brother killed at least twice
• left her pregnant and due mother alone, during which she almost got killed
• made choices that led to her father getting killed
• got a raccoon killed

Cool concept, annoying characters. Where was all the sand coming from? Won't watch again.

Anyone here happen to remember this, or watch it recently? I was browsing about trying to decide what to watch and its art style caught my eye. No clue who was behind it or what was up with it, and finally got around to watching it, and it was absolutely worth it!

It's a scifi flick about a couple of amnesiacs waking up naked outside a city with no clue how they found themselves there, but they're hungry and want some clothing so they just raid the city for both and things spiral out from there. It's almost nonstop action with only some brief breathers throughout and it's uh, well, mature and immature simultaneously, so nothing you'd want to show your kids or more, ah, reserved sorts.

If you're down for an absolutely ridiculous, relentless animated action movie, I'd easily recommend this. Very much put me in the mind of Shoot'Em Up (2007).

I continued the underwater theme today with Leviathan (1989). Another of the 1989 underwater thrillers, this film follows almost exactly the same beats as DeepStar Six, but I feel that it has both higher highs and lower lows than that one.

Our team of underwater roughnecks this time are miners extracting silver from the sea bed. I have no idea if this is an economically viable setup, or even if there is silver at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, but it could not matter less, because it never comes up in relation to the plot.

Peter Weller plays Beck, a geologist tasked with leading the mining team. He is completely monotone the entire film, and I can't decide if he hated making this movie, or if he's just like that. The only non-RoboCop role I have seen him in prior to this was Buckaroo Banzai, where I also noticed that he had a particularly flat aspect compared to the rest of the cast. Was Weller typecast as the stone-faced straight-man, or is this just how he performs every role? If so, I can see why he was picked for RoboCop in the first place. It's not a bad performance exactly, it's just that his emotional reactions (or lack thereof) are jarringly at odds with the scenes happening around him. If he was going for cool and unflappable, it kind of works, but Beck's character arc in this film is about gaining the confidence to stand up to his corporate overlords, so having him be cool as ice from the start is at odds with the text of the film. I'm probably overthinking this, because I want to like Peter Weller, but so far the first RoboCop is the only movie where he seemed to understand the assignment (Although to be fair, he's barely in RoboCop 2 at all).

Richard Crenna (Trautman from First Blood!) plays a world weary and cynically detached Doctor Thompson, in probably the standout performance of the picture (other than Jones). Daniel Stern (One half of the Wet Bandits from the Home Alone movies) plays Six Pack, the requisite drunken sex pest member of the crew. Williams (Amanda Pays) is a posh and proper Brit, who fills the role of Beck's love interest. Cobb (Hector Elizondo) and Jones (Ernie Hudson, Winston from Ghostbusters!) are miners and good union men. Bowman (Lisa Eilbacher) plays the apparently also requisite role of 'girl who likes the drunken sex pest character'. DeJesus (Michael Carmine) is the final member of the team, and I thought he was going to basically be analogous to Miguel Ferrer's character in DeepStar Six, but that ended up being Doc Thompson. Cult movie regular Meg Foster plays Ms. Martin, the human face of Tri-Oceanic, the corporation which owns the mining platform, and who repeatedly delivers the news that the team is not going to be rescued.

The creature in this movie is both far creepier and better looking than the crustacean in DeepStar, and the plot nonsense around its creation is a lot of fun. Basically, the russkies were playing around with genetic engineering, trying to make a fishman, and made something much worse instead. This picture heavily borrows from The Thing, in addition to the standard Alien stuff, and the body horror is done pretty effectively. I noticed that this movie had almost triple the budget of DeepStar, but it really doesn't look like it apart from those effects. The diving suit sequences are great, but there is almost no actual underwater footage in this one, and much fewer miniatures. It doesn't look worse than DeepStar, but apart from the creature, it doesn't look better either. They just failed to make back their budget, so it seems like the audiences felt the same way at the time (DeepStar Six made almost their whole budget back, but certainly was not a success either).

The chemistry between the characters is somewhat lacking, and while there are some funny lines, there doesn't seem to be the kind of easy camaraderie among the crew that is so important for establishing audience buy-in in this kind of movie. They just don't seem like people who have been working together for 87 days at the start of the film. That said, Hudson's Jones is a welcome ray of sunshine in a number of scenes (even if he's complaining in most of them) and his comedic chops do a lot to carry the movie. That's probably why he was one of the longest surviving crew-members, somewhat contrary to the stereotype (Although ultimately giving in to it in a frankly disappointing display. I wanted Jones to live, and his death was not cool enough to be better than letting him survive in terms of audience satisfaction. The movie was already basically over. That was probably the lowest point in the film, which sucks because it was during the climax. This parenthetical has gone on way too long now.) and why he was the only crew member really shown to have a relationship with more than one of the others.

One of my favorite lines actually was delivered by Weller. He threatens Six Pack at one point, telling him "I'll pop your top. All six of em". At least, I assume that was a threat, it kind of reads a little bit like homoerotic innuendo. The true comedic standout, Jones, responds to the news that Six Pack has some kind of skin condition with "The only 'skin problem' I see is white people," to the white doctor, which is pretty hilarious. Upon the revelation that the creature has eaten the blood supply in the infirmary, he shouts "we got a goddamn Dracula in here with us?" and I will never not find it funny when people refer to all vampires (or blood-sucking lamprey creatures) as Draculas.

While DeepStar focused mostly on stealing the suspenseful elements of Alien, Leviathan opted to lift more of the grungy industrial vibe, and the flamethrower specifically. We only get to see them used briefly, but for much of the film members of the crew are carting around a set of flamethrowers that would not look out of place in Warhammer 40K, as well as some other formidable looking chainsaws and pole-axes.

The action is fairly well paced, although as mentioned, the emotional responses by the characters to what is happening to them are bizarrely muted, again with the exception of Jones. I'm fairly sure that the ending was actually at least two different endings that were cut together, because we see the creature pretty definitively die on-screen, and then it returns to kill Jones. The post-rescue scene has a comedic tone to it that is completely at odds with the entire rest of the movie, culminating in a slapstick gag where Peter Weller punches a woman in the face (with a comic sound effect) and then makes a quip about it. I am convinced they added that bit after realizing that Beck's character arc didn't have a resolution without a confrontation with his boss, because his core flaw had been established as a reluctance to stand up to her, and he doesn't do that in a meaningful way prior to escaping the mining platform.

Overall I enjoyed this one maybe a little more than DeepStar Six. The plot is more ambitious, and the creature far more effective. That's why I feel weird about this, but I'm also going to give it a 3.5/5. I think watching this movie did more to make me cognizant of DeepStar's structural flaws, many of which it shares with this movie, than it did to leave a distinct impression. DeepStar probably should have been a 3, or even a 2.5, and this one only squeaks over to a 3.5 because the creature is so much better, and Ernie Hudson put in some real work here.

Watched season 1 back when it was first airing, but never got around to season 2. People seem to hate it but I can't quite tell if that's because it wasn't up to the standard of season 1 or if it was just bad TV.

Should I skip it and go straight to season 3? Or is it worth watching on its own merits?

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/468313

Black Orpheus (Portuguese: Orfeu Negro [ɔɾˈfew ˈneɣɾu]) is a 1959 romantic tragedy film directed by French filmmaker Marcel Camus, and starring Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello. It is based on the play Orfeu da Conceição by Vinicius de Moraes, which set the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice in a contemporary favela in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval. The film was an international co-production among companies in Brazil, France and Italy.

The film is particularly noted for its soundtrack by two Brazilian composers: Antônio Carlos Jobim, whose song "A felicidade" opens the film; and Luiz Bonfá, whose "Manhã de Carnaval" and "Samba de Orfeu" have become classics of bossa nova. The songs performed by Orfeu were dubbed by singer Agostinho dos Santos.[6] Lengthy passages of filming took place in the Morro da Babilônia, a favela in the Leme neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.

Black Orpheus won the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, the 1960 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the 1960 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film and was nominated for the 1961 BAFTA Award for Best Film.

Important to note, there's some controversy over the film in Brazil:

While the 1959 adaptation has been celebrated internationally, it has been criticized by Brazilians and scholars for exoticizing Brazil for an international audience and reinforcing harmful stereotypes.

and...

The Palme d'Or and Oscar-winning film was celebrated internationally and criticized in Brazil; Vinicius de Moraes, author of the play Orfeu da Conceição upon which the film was based, was outraged by the film and left the theater in the middle of the screening. Critics of the adaptation by Marcel Camus argued that it reinforced various stereotypes about Brazilian culture and society and about Afro-Brazilians specifically, portraying the characters as "simple-minded, overtly sexual, and interested only in singing and dancing." Setting out to make itself more "appealing" to foreign audiences, the film resorts to a "cheap and problematic exoticism" of Brazil.

Wikipedia

This movie is an explosion of cinematic joy de vivre, unique in the energy it brings to a classic tragedy, and a unique picture of Brazil in the late 50s, I've decided to let the audience decide where their opinions sit in the controversy above.

Captions in English available in settings -> captions on the player for those that don't speak Portuguese.

We've been getting rain for the first time in months, and I wanted to celebrate with some underwater films. Tonight I watched Deepstar Six (1989).

1989 saw the release of about a billion underwater thrillers. The Abyss, Leviathan, and even The Little Mermaid came out that year. Deepstar Six falls into the sub-category of underwater films that were also Alien rip-offs, which is not a small number, but I feel it handles the premise fairly well. For what it's worth, this one was a TriStar picture, and that Pegasus (especially the classic version) has rarely steered me wrong.

The plot follows a team of Navy technicians working on a deep-sea underwater platform to install missiles on the seabed. The project is apparently headed by a private citizen, Van Gelder (Marius Weyers), and he is pressed for time for some reason. This urgency leads him to rush the job and call for his team to detonate explosives over an undersea cavern. The entirely predictable consequences of that act play out over the rest of the runtime.

I was happy to see Miguel Ferrer again, and he had a sizeable role in this film as Snyder, which I enjoyed immensely. The cookie-cutter 80s action badass lead is McBride, played by Greg Evigan (Looking this guy up led me down a rabbit-hole ending in TekWar, a sci-fi series by William Fucking Shatner). There are three women among the crew, which was a refreshing gender balance for this kind of movie. Collins (Nancy Everhard) is McBride's love interest, and I'm not sure what her actual navy job is. Scarpelli (Nia Peeples) is some kind of scientist, and she is the first to raise concerns about the cavern and its possible inhabitants. Dr. Norris (Cindy Picket) is the base's medical officer, and one of the most level headed and competent members of the crew. Captain Phil Laidlaw (Taurean Blacque) does a serviceable Carl Weathers impression, aided by a glorious mustache. A young Elya Baskin also appears in this as a geo-scientist of some kind. Thom Bray and Ron Carroll play submarine pilots and the first hapless victims of this film's creature.

The last member of the crew is Richardson, played by Matt McCoy. I had an instant dislike of Richardson, and I couldn't put my finger on why (other than the fact that he's a smarmy, leering creep in this movie), so I googled him and realized that he's the bad guy from that episode of Star Trek where Troi and Crusher do jazzercise in the hallway.

The miniatures and practical effects, as well as the designs of the mini-sub interiors were all excellent. This film had a budget of only 8 million dollars, and they spent their money well. It's not the best looking movie that came out that year, but it's far from the worst. The creature design is great, and Sean Cunningham does a good job of teasing it out over the course of the film. The first time we see the creature, it has already claimed several lives, and it erupts from a hatch like an aquatic Graboid. That first look is impressive, but the monster has a few more tricks up its sleeve that keep the tension up even once it has been partially revealed. There are some very nice gore effects, including a chest explosion from a shark dart.

The crew have a chemistry that works, despite being so clearly cribbed from Alien, down to the breakfast table they all talk shit at. Both the Navy folks and civilians, with the exception of Van Gelder, exude an easy blue collar competence that I appreciate in this kind of movie. Snyder is visibly at the end of his rope from the first moment, but the other crew members manage him to varying degrees of success, with the familiarity of people who have been living and working together, in tight quarters, for months. The dialogue is cheesy, and most of the jokes are lame, but there are moments of real humanity between the crew, and especially between each of the crew members and Snyder, as his mental state deteriorates.

The sequences that were actually shot underwater were well done as well. The movie takes the time to establish that McBride can hold his breath for long periods without needing to spell it out, or like lampshade it with a swimming trophy in his bunk, which I appreciated. In general all of the action and stunts were quite grounded, and the only places where the budget really showed through were in the exterior miniature shots of the mini-sub rescue scene, because the miniature kept moving around in ways I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to.

In the latter half of the movie things conform pretty closely to the formula for 80s thrillers, with each character revealing some heartwarming personal detail shortly before they are killed off, and a final couple forming as the survivors are picked off. Greg Evigan does a serviceable job as McBride, but neither he nor Nancy Everhard's Collins have much in the way of charisma, and once they are the last of the crew left alive, it's kind of a relief that the movie is nearing it's explosive conclusion (that would be recreated almost exactly in Deep Blue Sea years later). That's not to say that I didn't enjoy this one, I very much did, but the core couple are not the strongest part of the film.

One last thing that I thought was funny is how casually it is revealed that the missiles they are installing are nukes. I guess it would have been obvious in 1989, but the cold war was in its last sputtering months when I was born (at least according to the history books I read in school, I imagine the books written in the future will have something different to say about this period) a few years later, and that subtext completely flew over my head until it was spelled out. The base is also powered by a nuclear reactor, which provides a nice ticking clock for the climax, as it approaches meltdown.

Overall, this is a fun mashup of genres that failed to really stand out from the crowd upon release, but I think it's one of the better attempts to cash in on the trend of the year while still making something watchable. I give this one a 3.5/5 stars, mostly for the miniature and prop work, and Miguel Ferrer's performance as Snyder.

Now, the most important question, has anyone here watched TekWar? I am so tempted to binge watch the series, but I can easily see it being the kind of thing that's not even 'so bad it's good'. I love Bill Shatner, but the man has made some real turds in his time.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/465146

Why are you such a derelict? Such a piece of human junk? The answer's simple. You're a scanner, which you don't realize. And that has been the source of all your agony. But I will show you now that it can be a source of great power.

CW: Exploding head. David Cronenberg. Genetic manipulation. Homeless escalator acrobatics. Involuntary suicide. Thinly veiled Thalidomide allegory. Did I say exploding head? Exploding head.

Wikipedia

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.film/post/1243382

!horrormovies@lemmy.film

You can ~~blame~~ thank @nieceandtows@programming.dev for suggesting this community and @Skoobie@lemmy.film for his seconding the motion (I'm fingering everybody!).

But since you're here anyway, might as well yell Trick or Treat! For all of you wannabe Tom Savinis and Rick Bakers, the King will point you to your Halloween goody: the Famous Monsters Of Filmland Monster Do-It-Yourself Make-Up Handbook by Dick Smith, courtesy of the schizophrenic-as-of-late Internet Archive.

So I'll leave you all to it…whatever you sick people do all alone in the dark. The Evil Dead? Carrie? I Know What You Did Last Summer? Profondo rosso? The Saw saga? Filipino zombie movies? Have at it! Just don't expect me to change your sheets after watching such trash!

I followed up Gymkata with Bloodsport (1988).

Let me begin by saying that the real life Frank Dux is a delusional fraud, and literally one of the subjects of the original Stolen Valor. For the rest of this review, you can assume that any time I refer to Dux, I am referring to the 100% fictional character, and not the real-life fraudster.

The story of Frank Dux (in one of Jean-Claude Van Damme's first leading roles) is a simple, bloody spectacle. Dux is a young man who was taken under the wing of a world-renowned martial artist and who wishes to achieve the dream of his master's late son to seize victory in the Kumite. The Kumite is an underground, full-contact martial arts tournament held every five years by a clan of ninjas to determine who their greatest fighter is. The Kumite depicted in the film is the first time the event has been opened up to westerners, and fighters from all over the world have flocked to Hong Kong to take part.

Dux is some kind of military badass, and he has to keep his participation in the tournament a secret from the higher ups, who are apparently more concerned with him getting hurt in an MMA fight than whatever it is that he does for the military. Not getting shot at, I guess. Maybe he's a translator or something, and that's why they care so much about him? In any case, he goes AWOL and two agents (one played by a young Forest Whitaker) are dispatched to ineffectually tail him and periodically threaten him with tasers.

On his way out of the country, Dux stops at the home of his aging master, Tanaka (Roy Chiao) and we are treated to a flashback sequence that details all of Dux' history with Tanaka, while occasionally cutting back to Van Damme's impassive face to remind us that there's a present-day narrative that we'll be getting back to any day now. Most of the training montage content of this martial arts flick is also flashback content, like a delicious trope sandwich.

Once he's in Hong Kong, Dux quickly encounters Ray Jackson (Don Gibb), a foul-mouthed and publicly drunken sex pest, but an instantly loyal friend to Dux. Gibb's performance reminded me a lot of Mick Foley's in-ring persona Mankind, and I kind of wonder if he was a fan of this movie. The two men share a strong physical resemblance as well. Leah Ayres plays Janice, a reporter in Hong Kong to uncover the secrets of the Kumite, and to be Dux' love interest.

The Kumite takes place within the Kowloon Walled City, which is a fascinating little bit of geography itself that sadly (or happily, probably, I never had to live there) no longer exists. It is also apparently regulated by the 'IFAA' or the International Fighting Arts Association. It's just so like a sports movie to have an organizing body for an illegal underground fighting ring. With the regulatory body apparently comes a need to demonstrate that you belong in the tournament, which Dux does by performing the Dim Mak, the 'death touch', on a stack of bricks, shattering the bottom brick but leaving the others intact. It's a fun moment.

The tournament makes up most of the rest of the movie, and it's pretty great. Lots of different fighters with different styles get to show off, and despite being coordinated by real-life fraudster Frank Dux, the fight choreography is more than competent, it's flashy and fun. The Heel role is filled by Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) who performs with charm and style. He does the Terry Crews jumping pecs thing a lot too, which is fun. The editors did him a little dirty by not dubbing in any sound for his cheers and celebrations, making him look like a silently screaming weirdo in those sequences. Jackson abuses his opponents on the mat with the drunken grace of a trailer park wrestler, which is a nice contrast to Dux' more refined and reserved style. They both make really wild facial expressions though, which is great. The fights are filled with great moments, like Dux uppercutting a sumo wrestler in the 'nads, and Chong Li snapping a kick-boxer's femur.

The dialogue in this film is serviceable, with some genuinely funny jokes sprinkled throughout, and a lot of line readings that are elevated to unintentional comedy by their scenery-chewing deliveries. Probably the best line is Jackson retorting "I ain't your pal, dickface!"

This movie mostly takes itself very seriously, which is funny because it is a deeply silly premise and the lead actor could barely speak English at the time. The blend of unintentional humor and solid fight sequences make for a thoroughly enjoyable watch, and I feel like this one is a solid 4/5 stars. The end credits begin with a series of title cards claiming a bunch of bullshit about Frank Dux' mythical achievements, but they're worth ignoring because the credits roll to the theme song 'Fight to Survive' which is a fucking banger. I recommend this one if you enjoy martial arts flicks, goofy Orientalism, or want to see Van Damme in one of his first roles.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2450622

"I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show's premiere until the strike is over."

Drew Barrymore is officially hitting "pause" on production of her daytime talk show.

After days of enduring backlash surrounding her decision to resume The Drew Barrymore Show amid the writers' and actors' strikes, the host announced that she will no longer move forward with new episodes until the strikes end.

"I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show's premiere until the strike is over," Barrymore wrote on social media Sunday. "I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today."

She added, "We really tried to find our way forward. And I truly hope for a resolution for the entire industry very soon."

Barrymore announced plans last week for her Daytime Emmy–winning show to resume production without its three Writers Guild of America writers who, along with the rest of their union, have been on strike since May, demanding higher wages, clearer contract provisions, and more.

The star quickly became the center of controversy, earning criticism from striking members of the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), in addition to others of the industry. Following her decision, the National Book Foundation also rescinded its invitation for Barrymore to host its annual awards event.

Her show resumed filming last week as picketers protested the choice outside the CBS Broadcast Center in New York. Some audience members said they were escorted out of tapings for wearing WGA-branded pins. A spokesperson for the show told EW in a statement that Barrymore was "completely unaware of the incident" and that their team is "in the process of reaching out to the affected audience members to offer them new tickets."

Barrymore initially defended her decision in a now-removed video she posted on Friday, explaining, "This is bigger than me and there other peoples' jobs on the line."

She continued, "I weighed the scales and I thought if we could go on during a global pandemic and everything that the world experienced through 2020, why would this sideline us? I just wanted to just put one foot in front of the other and make a show that's there for people regardless of anything else that's happening in the world."

Barrymore, a member of SAG-AFTRA, insisted that the show's return was "in compliance with not discussing or promoting film and television that is struck of any kind," according to strike rules. When season 4 was first announced, a CBS spokesperson confirmed to EW that the series would "not be performing any writing work covered by the WGA strike."

While Barrymore herself was not in violation as the series' host — daytime talk shows fall under a separate contract, the Network Television Code contract — resuming production meant that it left its writers behind. As the WGA-East announced on social media, "The [Drew Barrymore Show] is a WGA-covered, struck show that is planning to return without its writers… Any writing on The Drew Barrymore Show is in violation of WGA strike rules."

Cristina Kinon, a writer for the show, told The Daily Beast that she was disappointed to see Barrymore resume production on the series without its writing team. "It is frustrating," she said, "because it will prolong the strike, and we just want it to end."

When news broke that the series was coming back for a fourth season, CBS issued a statement to EW. "While our show has been largely an unscripted talk show from the beginning, the new shows we are producing this season will be completely unscripted until the strike ends," it read in part. "No one on our staff will fill a writing position. If you watch the show, it is obvious that Drew has always brought raw, unfiltered, spontaneous, open, and honest conversations to her viewers, and that will continue. The show also moves forward with important consideration to our staff and crew comprised of over 150 people, as well as our loyal viewers. We fully support Drew and her entire team 100 percent."

The show was set to return with new episodes on Monday, Sept. 18.