Last Watched

[rischka]

animals trying to move in on us while we've been locked down

also louis jouvet is MINE

Rattlesnakes will be crawling up your sink any day now

i did find a scorpion in my bathtub

[Roscoe]

THE WITCH -- Eggers' first feature, a tasty little horror movie that held my attention from start to finish, handsomely made and performed. Is Eggers some kind of genius with child actors? With this and the slightly less excellent THE LIGHTHOUSE, I'll be sure to see whatever he comes up with next.

[thoxans]

meet john doe (frank capra) cynicapra > capracorn all day every day. so prescient. the individual crushed under the weight of the collective. from martyr to pariah, how quick the folks who flock to fashionable movements find themselves in reality at odds with their own idolatry, eventually devolving into an angry uncontrollable mob, hurling literal trash at the very symbols that they once professed to worship. some people simply require some cause to cling to; and if they can't find one, they'll create one, right out of thin air, just like a john doe. and there's your happy ending, sadly

[sally]

I feel you, I went for a run the other day to break the ennui and encountered an agressive gull. It kept swooping down and flying past me, could feel the breeze from it. Was kinda like a North by Northwest/The Birds crossover. It's nest was probably close by.

i would claim sympathy with the birds, but gulls are fucking mental. one actually knocked me over last year on scarborough seafront when it yanked the chips i was holding into the clouds. they are so big.

this year i haven't been to the seaside but i have been divebombed by lapwings and curlews when i've walked past their ground nests. curlews are critically endangered in the uk and i keep yelling at them that they should be more cowed when they're whizzing at my head, but it has no effect.

i have found a little corner tho, where there's a house in a dip and the path skirts round at the level of the eaves, and on balmy evenings the swifts and swallows shoot out around your ankles and skim round your shoulders in gentle darting breaths. THAT's lovely.

[rischka]

my power was out this afternoon so instead of staring at screens i sweated it out on the porch watching a hummingbird feed its baby i should get out more often

[greennui]

I feel you, I went for a run the other day to break the ennui and encountered an agressive gull. It kept swooping down and flying past me, could feel the breeze from it. Was kinda like a North by Northwest/The Birds crossover. It's nest was probably close by.

i would claim sympathy with the birds, but gulls are fucking mental. one actually knocked me over last year on scarborough seafront when it yanked the chips i was holding into the clouds. they are so big.

this year i haven't been to the seaside but i have been divebombed by lapwings and curlews when i've walked past their ground nests. curlews are critically endangered in the uk and i keep yelling at them that they should be more cowed when they're whizzing at my head, but it has no effect.

i have found a little corner tho, where there's a house in a dip and the path skirts round at the level of the eaves, and on balmy evenings the swifts and swallows shoot out around your ankles and skim round your shoulders in gentle darting breaths. THAT's lovely.

Yeah, they can be right nasty, the other year I got some bruises on my head after being attacked by one as a I was walking through a residential area in Stockholm.

There's def something comforting and pastoral about seeing swallows whizzing past.

[rischka]

watched one of sirk's first hollywood films an ott gothic thriller about a sleuthing nun played by claudette colbert. it wasn't terrible!

[flip]

on this island i moved to there are signs everywhere warning that red-winged blackbirds like to attack people, i see the birds all the time but have yet to see one get aggressive

[rischka]

cactus wrens like to threaten me and cat, very bold but they're all squawk

https://twitter.com/PabloRochat/status/ ... 20320?s=20

[kanafani]

Desire (frank borzage, 1936). Super-charming and lovely. Some parts are really as good as the best of Lubitsch. Dietrich ♥♥♥. Gary Cooper in a great comic role. This one is a keeper.

[rischka]

good movie!! ^ ^

surveying the hellscape is forcing my retreat into fantasy today so i watched



which has the haunting fantasy/horror vibe of night tide from 2 years later.



well done ♥

[Roscoe]

THE WEIR -- a play by Conor McPherson, a production from NYC's Irish Repertory Theatre done via ZOOM where five actors in five different US states performed the play, all clearly shot via home video equipment and edited together skillfully enough to make it not as much of an issue as it might sound at first. A sad little play about sad little people in an Irish bar that involves ghost stories both literal and figurative.

Yeah, I know, not FILM and all.

[wba]

Sounds like a film to me.

[serri]

The Fog (1980) dir. John Carpenter
Liquid Sky (1982) dir. Slava Tsukerman
Zombi 2 (1979) / Zombie dir. Lucio Fulci
Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980) / City of the Living Dead dir. Lucio Fulci
Body Bags (1993) dir. John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Larry Sulkis
Quella villa accanto al cimitero (1981) / The House by the Cemetery dir. Lucio Fulci
Knives Out (2019) dir. Rian Johnson
...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà (1981) / The Beyond dir. Lucio Fulci (rewatch)
Miro (1979) dir. Sarah Maldoror (short)
The Comedy of Terrors (1963) dir. Jacques Tourneur
白髮魔女傳 (1993) / The Bride with White Hair dir. Ronnie Yu

zombie is top shelf. i wouldn't spend your time on this knives out business.

[Roscoe]

STAR WARS on a Saturday afternoon where it belongs, and good fun, this is the one least affected by Lucas's idiotic digital tweakjob in the 90s, and I somehow feel I've just seen it for the last time, I'm not sure I'll ever need to see it again.

[Roscoe]

SADIE THOMPSON (1928) Raoul Walsh's film with Gloria Swanson about Miss Sadie Thompson, the fallen woman in the South Pacific who arouses the spiritual ardor of Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Davidson, and trouble ensues. I don't know why I'm surprised at how good Swanson is here, her enshrinement as the stately mad Norma Desmond is probably why. She's funny and appealing with charm to burn, and she's more than a match for the turns the story takes. A pity that the film's final scenes are missing and had to be re-created with still photos and footage from a later sound version of the story. There was very likely a gut-punch of major proportions lurking in that lost footage. Well worth seeking out, and that's a madly appealing Raoul Walsh himself in the mix as the guy who loves Sadie anyway.

[wba]

^^ yeah, too bad that ending is missing. And that Walsh had his car accident and didn't act anymore...

Am currently watching a 78 minute long version of GENUINE [1920] (with Italian intertitles, using google translate a lot), and it's fantastic, so far (much better than Caligari!).

[Lencho of the Apes]

Somebody tipped me off about that improved copy of Genuine, so I ran a d/lon their rec.but I haven't looked at it yet. I aagree that it's peak Wiese, though, even fromthe lesser version that I saw before.

I firmly believe that Norma's mannerisms were Swanson's way of poking fun at one of her old rivals -- Dolores del Rio (sometimes/often) chewed scenery in exactly the same way.

[rischka]

I firmly believe that Norma's mannerisms were Swanson's way of poking fun at one of her old rivals -- Dolores del Rio (sometimes/often) chewed scenery in exactly the same way.

i can totally see this being a thing

[Lencho of the Apes]

totally

Dolores going full Norma, cued up:
https://youtu.be/tkVgfVcbM1I?t=5580

[Roscoe]

There was a good deal of that fun-poking going on -- check out Marion Davies' brutal takedowns of Lillian Gish etc. in THE PATSY.

[Roscoe]

That lovely Blu-Ray of Laurel & Hardy restorations got into my hands, and there was nothing for it but to watch the restored BATTLE OF THE CENTURY, and pure ecstatic delight was mine mine mine for about twenty odd minutes. That pie fight is one of the joys of this life. And then I watched BERTH MARKS, and about half of SONS OF THE DESERT, which I'll be going back to shortly.

[Joks Trois]

Boomerang: first time I've seen this since 1992. Did not realise what a big influence it was on the 'yuppie black comedies' of the late 90's and 00's. It was slightly better than I remembered, but it's hard to become too invested in Murphy's relationship problems when he is ultimately forced to choose between Halle Berry and Robin Givens. Some dilemma! 5/10.

Super Size Me 2: Not bad. Perhaps slightly better than expected, but Spurlock could have gone further with some of the ideas presented here. Pretty alarming how big industry crushes small poultry farmers though. 5.5/10.

[pabs]

Wish You Were Here (Leland, 1987)

I have to say, the British do kitchen-sink/social realism bloody well, and this David Leland film is no exception - top notch. Emily Lloyd is perfect playing Lynda, a bored, horny teenager stuck in a dull, slow English seaside town, looking to bed a local or two (and piss her tiresome father off into the bargain). Trouble is, all the available guys are either cads or out and out horrors, but then Lynda's no Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, either. She swears like a trouper and is often terribly impertinent to those around her. Such a rude little so-and-so you just want to slap her sometimes. But that's probably mainly due to the fact that she's bored to death. Anyway, I was completely immersed in foul-mouthed Lynda's dead-end world. That dirty old man made my skin crawl.



A bit bleak for some, but very authentic, and that counts for a lot in my book - and it pretty much sums up my dismal view of all English seaside towns, to be honest. Sorry if that offends anyone. The English do other things much, much better, okay?

7/10

[MrCarmady]

Yeah, good movie, great performance! Didn't know much about Lloyd, sounds like she had a pretty tough time in the aftermath, would be interested in seeing her in something else.

[pabs]

sounds like she had a pretty tough time in the aftermath

Wow, I had no idea until you brought it up. I did some research after reading your comment. Poor woman! I really hope she's better now.

[Roscoe]

Good old WISH YOU WERE HERE -- it's kind of fallen off the map, hasn't it. There's another tasty film based on the same woman's life, Terry Jones's PERSONAL SERVICES, which film made me forever Julie Walters's obedient humble servant.

[Roscoe]

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT -- a movie I've always enjoyed, there's a gravity to it that never quite overwhelms it, despite some low-budgetitis. I do hope, after film's end, that Quatermass indulges in some good old fashioned "I told you so!"

[rischka]

ebirah horror from the deep!!~ a godzilla picture directed by jun fukuda. i'm mainly here for mothra but the youth orientation of this picture was fun, someone on letterboxd suggested an elvis/godzilla pairing. very colorful esp yellows. the title monster is a giant crawfish (?)



not the original peanuts!



mothra finally awakens with ten minutes left in the picture

[nrh]

watched what i think is my first george sherman, dawn at socorro from 1954, last night and have to say it was very good - economical even for the genre (it's basically 2 very good extended set pieces, a stage coach ride and a night in a casino, bookended by two very good shootouts), and distinguished by an air of regret and melancholy that not only clings to rory calhoun's grey-templed, coughing gunfighter/dandy but piper laurie's reluctant saloon girl and alex nicol's alcoholic gunfighter as well.

definitely hurt by being cropped to 4:3 in the available prints (a card in the climactic card game gets cropped off screen!) but the attention to light and color evident nonetheless.