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Sean 
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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 Posted - 03/14/2007 : 02:25:58
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SNAP!
(That's the sound my arm made after relentless twisting by Koli.)
OK, I've netflixed it and put it at the top of the list, and will report back when I get it and have watched it.  |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 03/14/2007 : 02:42:32
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For the record, it must be nice to have your opinions so completely in tune with the general public, but if you wanna ask me, IMDB voters are wrong all the freaking time.
Furthermore, I would not at all try to cut myself off from so-called "bad" movies, many of which are far more interesting than supposedly "good" movies. |
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Koli 
"Striving lackadaisically for perfection."
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Posted - 03/14/2007 : 21:25:48
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quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
quote:
Originally posted by Koli
And some show that it's appreciated by public and reviewers alike:
1. The #1 Scariest Movie of All Time on Bravo's TV Special "100 Scariest Movie Moments: Even Scarier Moments."
Hmmm... which is more likely, I wonder... (a). that the scariest movie of all time was made the same year Bravo TV made it's special, or (b). the average voter has the memory (and appreciation of good horror) of a goldfish and can only remember the most recent horror film they saw?
Oh how cynical Mr Clews. What will it take to convince you?
Okay, so I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. But what about the other award I mentioned? |
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Koli
"Striving lackadaisically for perfection."
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Posted - 03/14/2007 : 21:28:04
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quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
SNAP!
(That's the sound my arm made after relentless twisting by Koli.)
OK, I've netflixed it and put it at the top of the list, and will report back when I get it and have watched it.
So that 'influencing and persuasion' training course I went on in January was worthwhile after all.  |
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MisterBadIdea
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 03/14/2007 : 21:31:34
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| Bravo's Even Scarier Moments is a sequel to their original 100 Scariest Moments -- meaning that Hostel was the best of the movies they didn't think of for the real list. |
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benj clews 
"...."
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Posted - 03/14/2007 : 21:58:42
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quote:
Originally posted by Koli
Okay, so I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. But what about the other award I mentioned?
Er... not sure. Who/ what are La Monde? |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 03/14/2007 : 23:33:11
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quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
For the record, it must be nice to have your opinions so completely in tune with the general public, but if you wanna ask me, IMDB voters are wrong all the freaking time.
Hmmm, not sure I follow. How can anyone have their opinion in tune with the 'general public' for Hostel (look at the score spread) when the general public don't have an opinion on it? They either think it's brilliant, or total garbage, or anything in between and are evenly spread between the two extremes. So any opinion on this movie is in tune with the general public. And if those who voted at IMDb wrote reviews for it, one's opinion on the movie (from reading the review) would be totally dependent on whose review you read. Hence I add all the opinions and get an average (which includes the views of those who loved it and those who hated it) to decide whether I want to watch it or not. My guess is that my opinion for Hostel would be in line with those who scored it 5 or 6, which don't represent the 'general public', as only 23% gave it that score.quote:
Furthermore, I would not at all try to cut myself off from so-called "bad" movies, many of which are far more interesting than supposedly "good" movies.
That's a good point. It's quite possible that I miss out on some movies that would be fun to watch simply because they have a poor score. Do you have any to recommend? I.e., poorly scored movies that are good? My guess is though, that if the majority think a movie is crap then I'll probably agree. |
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rabid kazook 
"Pushing the antelope"
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Posted - 03/15/2007 : 15:59:04
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Sean, if you have exactly the urge, I could maybe get you some Cynthia's movies.  |
Edited by - rabid kazook on 03/15/2007 16:04:53 |
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Koli
"Striving lackadaisically for perfection."
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Posted - 03/16/2007 : 13:48:19
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quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
quote:
Originally posted by Koli
Okay, so I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. But what about the other award I mentioned?
Er... not sure. Who/ what are La Monde?
I'm no expert, but I think it's a fairly heavyweight French newspaper. Presumably it's the French equivalent of The Times Guardian (it's described as 'left-leaning') or the Washington Post.
You can read more here in the English language online version (published monthly), though I haven't found anything more about its movie awards on the site. |
Edited by - Koli on 03/16/2007 14:10:20 |
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benj clews
"...."
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Posted - 03/16/2007 : 14:26:06
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quote:
Originally posted by Koli
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
quote:
Originally posted by Koli
Okay, so I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. But what about the other award I mentioned?
Er... not sure. Who/ what are La Monde?
I'm no expert, but I think it's a fairly heavyweight French newspaper. Presumably it's the French equivalent of The Times Guardian (it's described as 'left-leaning') or the Washington Post.
You can read more here in the English language online version (published monthly), though I haven't found anything more about its movie awards on the site.
Hmm... I don't usually take too much stock in general newspaper or magazine film opinions, just like I wouldn't put too much value on Empire or Premiere's opinion on what makes a good inline skate. I guess the biggest question is who compiled the Best Of list at La Monde- some highly regarded film buff or 'Jean-Pierre Public'?  |
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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 03/16/2007 : 15:34:50
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quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
quote:
Originally posted by Koli
Okay, so I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. But what about the other award I mentioned?
Er... not sure. Who/ what are La Monde?
Oh, you mean the French newspaper which gave me possibly the best notice I ever received on 29 April 1969 when it reviewed my theatre company's presentation at the Nancy Festival, and called me "a genius - the word is not too strong ... she brings an intelligence and wit to every moment, rediscovering a level of humour so long forgotten."
That Le Monde!
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ChocolateLady 
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 03/17/2007 : 10:19:05
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quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
quote:
Originally posted by Koli
Okay, so I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. But what about the other award I mentioned?
Er... not sure. Who/ what are La Monde?
Oh, you mean the French newspaper which gave me possibly the best notice I ever received on 29 April 1969 when it reviewed my theatre company's presentation at the Nancy Festival, and called me "a genius - the word is not too strong ... she brings an intelligence and wit to every moment, rediscovering a level of humour so long forgotten."
That Le Monde!
Harumph! Those French are artists at understatement, apparenly!
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 03/20/2007 : 12:34:11
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OK, I saw Hostel. Wasn't expecting much, so wasn't disappointed. But the first 40 minutes were far worse than I could have imagined. It was boring and totally B-grade. OK, sure I liked the cute chicks with their tits out  , but I don't need to rent a movie just to see that.
So, first 45 minutes:- Poor acting, poor script, totally B-grade feel. And every woman in it was a braindead bimbo slut whore. Was this necessary? Sure, perhaps the point was to show males treating women as meat, but this could also be done with a good script, good actors and entertaining plot. In fact it would have been more effective to have the female characters with some depth, and the guys still treat them like meat. I'd give this bit 2.5/10.  (Would've been 1.5/10 if it wasn't for Barbara Nedeljakova who's gone straight onto my Hot Babes List.)
Next 45 minutes:- Much better, although it certainly wasn't scary in any way at all. I've seen much nastier torture scenes, e.g., Syriana was much worse, it actually felt real. I'd say I'm used to general splatter in movies and it has no effect on me any more, so I'm more interested in plot. Some plot elements here were good, as it was never clear what exactly was going on until near the end, and it wasn't clear how deep the 'carnage business' went (as others have mentioned). I'd give this part 6.5/10, i.e, a pass mark for thriller entertainment. Scariness gets a 1/10, it wasn't scary at all as I had no connection whatsoever with any of the characters.
Other comments:-
Implausible characterisation.
- The two chicks who sourced the 'prey' were on the one hand bimbo slut party-girls, on the other hand must've been psychopaths. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I tend to think of people sourcing prey for killers as weird hunchbacked nutters, or cold evil psychos, or something (perhaps I've seen too many movies?  ). Those two were too vacuous and 'normal' to be psycho-killer-helpers.
- The main character (Paxton) seemed to be finding it hard to keep a smile off his face even while escaping from unimaginable horror. He didn't do a good job of acting as if he had missing fingers. Also, nobody being tortured did a good job of acting being tortured. Gore means nothing if the actors on the receiving end aren't acting as if it's real, you might as well be splashing around red paint in a painter's study. I suppose this is why you hire good actors if you can afford them. I had no connection with any of the characters, so I couldn't care less who got the chop next or how agonisingly painful it was. I didn't even care about the Japanese chick who got torched, she was just there to be a victim. I suppose overall the characterisation was about as deep as in any teen-slasher-flick, they're just there to be slaughtered and we're supposed to laugh when they get it.
So, overall I'd call this a "soft-core-porn-slasher-flick", and give it 5/10, it wasn't really worth the bother watching. The second half was, but I was thinking "F**k this is shite!" for the first 30-40 minutes. So IMDb's 5.8 was correct again. |
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MisterBadIdea
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 03/20/2007 : 13:57:40
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I would point out that the two party girls weren't killers, they just worked for killers. All they had to do was take their clothes off, get some drooling morons' guard down, dance with them and maybe make sexytimes, and then wait for them to be abducted; people have done much more difficult and far worse things for a buck.
As far as I'm concerned, the IMDb only measures how well a movie works on the surface. B-movies too often get the shaft. Here's movies that I feel are much too underestimated by the viewers at large:
FINAL DESTINATION 3
IMDb rating: 6.0
Final Destination 3 is one of my favorite movies of all time. Of all the films in the big '00s horror resurgence, this is the only one I think really captured that sense of post-9/11 creeping dread, the idea that the worst is coming and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. It's surprisingly heartfelt too; while we cheer the deaths of the more shallow characters in the movie, the main characters are well-acted and surprisingly deep. When the hero tells the heroine that he would have married his now-dead girlfriend, we see the heroine biting her tongue because she knows that his girlfriend had been about to dump him. It breaks my heart every damn time I think about it.
THE PUNISHER
IMDb rating: 6.2
Revenge movies are so damn simple. This guy is bad and he hurt the hero. The hero kills him. The end. Yay, Maximus killed Commodus, whoopee, movie over. The Punisher puts some of the guts back into revenge. There are two things here that The Punisher does that are gut-twistingly painful, and both of them are psychological. One is how he makes a mob underling believe he's being tortured; the other is how he gets the main bad guy to kill his own best friends. This movie put the brains and the guts back into revenge.
POOTIE TANG
IMDb rating: 4.2
To think people liked Wedding Crashers over this. Pootie Tang is a movie that's just so damn stupid that you can't not laugh. It's not only inventive in its stupidity, it's far more creative than any high-budgeted Adam Sandler movie (who was never better than in the incredibly dumb Billy Madison).
JACKASS: THE MOVIE and JACKASS NUMBER TWO
IMDb rating: 6.2 and 7.1
Another set of fine comedies; if you like the Farrelly Brothers but not these guys, consider yourself either wimps or hypocrites. This is lowbrow made as well as can be, and consider: Using a huge budget to make a weird, plotless documentary about insane people doing insane things is pretty damn daring. I hear these films have gained a critical following as surrealist art films.
ANOTHER 48 HRS.
IMDb rating: 5.1
Underneath a tired vehicle for a slumming Eddie Murphy movie is a surprisingly smart and ambiguous genre movie about how the cops use and abuse their power. Nolte and Murphy debate about whether criminals have it coming, both are victims of authoritarian abuse, and Nolte even gets confronted by a guy who he arrested for having sex with a girl the guy didn't know was underage, in a car he didn't know was stolen. Highly underrated.
THE BREAK-UP
IMDb rating: 5.8
The biggest problem with this movie -- it's a comedy that's almost never funny -- is also its greatest strength. The jokes fall flat (seriously, most of them are awful), but the character interactions are spot-on. I was blindsided by this film's unflinching look at how people who love each other can irreparably harm each other. It's the romantic comedy version of Closer, and I'd argue that it's considerably more honest than that movie. |
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Koli
"Striving lackadaisically for perfection."
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Posted - 03/20/2007 : 19:37:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
So, overall I'd call this a "soft-core-porn-slasher-flick", and give it 5/10, it wasn't really worth the bother watching. The second half was, but I was thinking "F**k this is shite!" for the first 30-40 minutes. So IMDb's 5.8 was correct again.
So does this mean I'll never be able to get your arm to breaking point ever again? Is my credibility completely blown? 
I'm now feeling moderately guilty for persuading Sean to watch it. I've made a note not to watch Syriana; if it features torture scenes more grueling than the ones in Hostel it clearly isn't for me.
Have you looked at the 'extras' on the DVD about how it was made etc? I found it made me like the whole enterprise more than before. |
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Hostel - gender contrast
