Starship Troopers, right on baby! A very rare bird. A mainstream Hollywood movie with a Go Fascists! sentiment.

Yes, but it's a very arch, campy, anti-fascist "Go Fascist" thing.

Not that I'm pro-fascist... but I don't think the stuff in the movie is fascist. After all, the bugs destroyed Buenos Aires for no reason whatsoever... and yet the movie treats humanity's desire to wipe them out as some sort of irrational jingoist genocidal impulse.

Whereas I would just call it "plain fuckin' common sense."

Ace, I agree it's camp. I also think Verhoeven probably wanted the tone to be, as you said, "anti-fascist". However, if that was his intent, he failed. Camping up something does not automatically create disdain for the subject in the audience (see Waters) and often times renders it more human or accessible (again Waters). You make an important point about the Bug threat being real. If the movie was supposed to be anti-fascist wouldn't it have been more effective, and the movie much worse, if Verhoeven had used the standard Hollywood conceit of a weak or created threat serving as the basis for the fascist impulse? By making the threat real, and the response "rational" isn't there an implication that fascism is sometimes the appropriate answer?

I thought "A Knight's Tale" was pretty good. Campy to be sure, but fun.

"A Knight's Tale???" I think Ace is a closet romantic...;-)

Ok, when is this Rosie thing?

The Rosie the Retard short bus tour is at 9 et on cbs. No offense to those actually mentally disadvantaged.

Ubergeeks (like me) know that the shadows of fascism present in that movie (from the general attiude to the SS-type uniforms) were a dig at Heinlein (the original author), whose conservative politics often got him labeled as a Nazi. That's one of the lesser reasons why I hated that movie.

Later,
bbeck

I liked Starship Troopers. It was just plain dumb fun. But, A Knight's Tale? Say, it isn't so, ace!

A Knights Tale. Yeah, I bought it.

I expected to hate it when I first caught it on cable. What can I say. I dig inside jokes about Chaucer.

"A Knights Tale" is a good example of a bad plot and worse direction being made bearable by a talented supporting cast with some great lines.

Later,
bbeck

Heh. You're going to watch a Rosie {expletive deleted, according to the Ace obscenity filter} movie. Next thing we know you're going to start claiming that the only reason you own the "Beaches" DVD is because it was on clearance.

"Starship Troopers" was bad, but in a watchable sort of way, but "Knights Tale"??? I'd rather watch Rosie as a mentally disabled bus riding heroine.

That was me, by the way. Above.

The "Golden Years" Dance scene in A Knight's Tale was worth the price of admission alone.

And that chick... she's weird at first, but she grows on you.

I tried watching Knight's Tale but couldn't. The combination of (apparently) serious Middle Ages knights-'n'-damsels movie combined with a cheesy high school rock soundtrack just jarred. And this is coming from someone who used to lie awake at night playing Yes' Close to the Edge album over and over writing (really bad, awful, never-to-be-seen-by-the-public) fantasy stories.

Starship Troopers was the first 'real book' I ever read (no that wasn't last week smartasses) so the movie was disappointing. I've always thought a good filmaker could make a first rate film from a Heinlen novel but sadly that hasn't happened yet.

"Kate & Leopold."

I'll never think of you in the same way again . . .

Ace, the chick was pretty but her costumes were ridiculous and she couldn't act...but the acting thing was okay since that was her first film. She was discovered at a party where she was the DJ.

Heh, I didn't care for the dance scene, but I loved Paul Bettany and lines from the sidekicks like "It's called a lance, Helloooo..."

And Andrea, bad awful fantasy stories get published all the time. :)

Later,
bbeck

I think Kate & Leopold is for those special moments when Ace asks the ladies to come up and see his 'etchings' :)

Good haul, Ace.

I've got that collector's edition of The Thing-- the documentary's pretty nifty. Then again, we've talked about the movie before-- it makes my top twenty, maybe ten. Carpenter in his prime, no chicks, no kids, no CGI, Rob Bottin's effects, great claustrophibic paranoia, a real "end of the fucking world/we're doomed" atmospher, and one walking spider-head.

Yeah, that movie still kicks serious ass.

BTW, I don't know why more horror directors don't appreciate that film-- or if they do, they certainly don't emulate its great qualities. Take your plot seriously, don't share any in-jokes, and employ actual *adults* rather than the teen queen of the week, and you're already halfway towards a classic.

Instead, I get to watch another effin' ripoff of My Bloody Valentine. Sheesh. . .

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

That should be "while writing" but you know what I mean.

Hey it takes a guy who's very secure with his masculinity to admit he likes Kate and Leopold, even though it was thrown in between all those other titles as if it might not be spotted.....

Ace, the chick was pretty but her costumes were ridiculous and she couldn't act...but the acting thing was okay since that was her first film. She was discovered at a party where she was the DJ.

She sort of can't act, yes, but that sort of wooden thing she does... I don't know. I dig it.

I know the story about her being discovered as a DJ.

Re: Kate & Leopold

Are you not conservatives? The film has an overt conservative theme. It practically smashes you over the head.

Blast From the Past is similarly a not-so-stealth archconservative romcom. Tried to find that one, too.

The film has an overt conservative theme.

I'll take your word for it, Ace. I couldn't get past the first 20 minutes.

I think the reason Carpenter's remake of "The Thing" isn't more recognized is because the movie was very graphic for its day -- SO graphic it's hard to watch. The spider head was cool but I would have preferred it if they'd left a little more the the imagination; it was gross but not scary. The BnW version is actually really good for an old SF film and it's on my Amazon wish list.

Later,
bbeck

Eh. True Lies is the only one on the list that I've actually seen, but even if everything else is crap, it justifies the expedition.

"Have you ever killed anyone?"
"Yeah, but they were all bad!"

(That was me.)

Plus:

"Women. Can't live with them, can't kill them."

Best line from True Lies:

What kind of a sick bitch takes the ice cube trays when she leaves?

bbeck noted: "Carpenter's remake of "The Thing" isn't more recognized... because the movie was very graphic for its day -- SO graphic it's hard to watch."

Yeah, really. My wife couldn't make it past the dog pen scene, and she's not all that squeamish. Even I find myself fast-forwarding past some bits when I watch it on my own.

Well,I liked The Thing--the Carpenter version. Both versions were based on the short story "Who Goes There?" written by John Campbell back in the 30s, and Carpenter's version was much more true to the nightmarish, totally paranoid atmosphere of the story.

Plus, as Dave rightly notes, it's one of the few horror flicks that doesn't rely on teens behaving like nitwits to drive the plot. A little of that goes a long, long way.

The "Golden Years" Dance scene in A Knight's Tale was worth the price of admission alone.

Oh yeah. Ace IS a romantic. No doubt.

My favourite movie that few others can stand: The Butterfly Effect.

Shattered Glass has a Sully angle, you'll be pleased to know ...

HWWNBN was the editor of TNR who hired Anakin - er, Steven. In Glass's first year (and Sully's last) Glass didn't BS, at least not to anyone's notice. But then Sullivan got fired, and Michael Kelly got hired. The date was 11 Nov 1996.

According to this, Glass produced his first mound of Steamin' Ass in the next month. Since the movie is about Glass's BS it covers the Kelly-to-Lane transition and has no Sully in it.

As far as I know, Sully feels betrayed by Glass because of how he turned into Darth Scrawl after he left, which puts his meter at "red" but for good reason.

Red Rock West is a gem. Good choice.

I'm not gay, but if I were, I' d do Dwight Yoakam.

I love The Thing. My story: I went to see it in a two-screen theater with my mom and my sister -- who went to the other screen, where a re-release of Bambi was showing.

I was 13 and I didn't know anything about what to expect from the movie. When the Thing started to slice like a f***ing hammer in the kennel, I got up, boldly marched to the snack bar, and asked, "Can I join my mom and sister in Bambi?"

Later I read the novelization (by Alan Dean Foster, IIRC, who also did the novelization for Alien) and eventually got to see the whole thing (er, Thing) as God intended it. It's been in my Top 5 ever since.

Oh, BTW, the Russell/Carpenter team makes some fairly entertaining DVD commentary tracks.

Oh, BTW, the Russell/Carpenter team makes some fairly entertaining DVD commentary tracks.

Yeahp. They're very good. I listened to them on both BTILC and The Thing.

Most commentary tracks are awful -- "This is a beautiful shot," "What an extraodinary performance he gives here," etc. -- but those two know how to do it right. They criticize the movie slightly, and add in lots of background details. And they're just fun.

Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are even better, as they bust each other's chops. In one scene in AoD, Raimi shakes the camera to indicate tension or something in Bruce Campbell's character, and when Campbell asks him why, Raimi says, "I was trying to achieve through trickery what the performance couldn't."

Those two actually criticize the movies fairly seriously in a detached "Here's where things went wrong" kind of way.

I never noticed it until they brought it up, but in AoD, they "lose the character" of Ash halfway through when he stops being Ash and starts being a fairly conventional action-comedy hero. He just stops being a jackass and a dick and a bully, and Raimi and Campbell themselves criticize their own movie for that flaw.

My favourite movie that few others can stand: The Butterfly Effect.

Godawful. A horrible, horrible piece of shit.

If you want a good modern-day time-travel/paradox movie, rent Frequency or Donnie Darko.

Ace IS a romantic.

Nahhhh.

But I do own some very fine Chinese etchings.

Re: Starship Troopers, I'm amazed to have finally found somebody else who likes it. *Everybody* else I know has this seemingly-irrational hatred of it -- not just middling dislike, actual seething hatred. And now, I have an inkling why. Most of them are moderate-to-conservative, and apparently I'm some kind of scary super-right-wing nutjob: they seem to have viewed it as a lampooning of the "fascist" system, while I took it at face value. On reflection maybe that should worry me. "You have to be in the military to vote? Fuckin' A!" Stuff like that. Hrm...

*Everybody* else I know has this seemingly-irrational hatred of it -- not just middling dislike, actual seething hatred.

Guilty!

James, the reason I didn't like the movie is because they took a thoughtful, provocative story full of machismo and heroism, put it in a frilly pink dress, bent it over a cheap linoleum counter, and bleeped it up the azz in a very un-Viking-like fashion.

Hopefully that gives you a very odd but accurate mental image of what I thought of that film.

Later,
bbeck

John Carpenter's The Thing and Alien: Best fucking sci-fi horror films ever!

Kurt Russel with a stick of dynamite and a blowtorch is more important than Jesus!

Wasn't Kurt Russel in Alien as well?

Hell yeah!

There is only one effective way to deal with deadly aliens from outer space, and that's to blow a lot of shit up.

I'll watch modern horror films when the explosives mass increases.

[Totally over-tired.]

[Kurt Russel, fuck yeah!]