Generic Business Oriented Website

God's Angry Man - 9
Requiem for a Village - 7.5

Hunter wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 1:41 pm
The Sting ('73) - 8.5/10 - was this responsible for the ragtime resurgence in the 70's, because I'll drop it a couple points for that...

what do you have against ragtime?!

THE KILL wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 2:16 am

Hunter wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 1:41 pm
The Sting ('73) - 8.5/10 - was this responsible for the ragtime resurgence in the 70's, because I'll drop it a couple points for that...

what do you have against ragtime?!

I remember a lot of singer/songwriter stuff of the 70's and 80's being heavily influenced by ragtime. It was in all the TV themes, background music, radio, etc... and it was pretty boring compared to Punk and New Wave for a hyperactive kid like me. The Sting theme still conjures and image of a pretentious white guy wearing suspenders and a fedora sitting in front of a piano, looking into the camera, crooning about the old times or something. But most likely I just wasn't a big fan of piano music of the time - oversaturated with Billy Joel and Elton John.

Haha, blaming the scourge of Elton John on The Entertainer. Is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly responsible for Kenny Rodgers?

infinity pool - 8

John Mullaney "baby j" - 8.5/10. This is the best special he's ever done

ghost boner wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 10:18 am John Mullaney "baby j" - 8.5/10. This is the best special he's ever done

The wife and I both loved it too (8/10), but New in Town is still my favorite.

Evil dead rise - 5/10. Skip it or if you must see it wait til it's streaming

That sucks, i heard good things

Yeah, I kinda was looking forward to it as well...

Hunter wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 8:27 am I remember a lot of singer/songwriter stuff of the 70's and 80's being heavily influenced by ragtime. It was in all the TV themes, background music, radio, etc... and it was pretty boring compared to Punk and New Wave for a hyperactive kid like me. The Sting theme still conjures and image of a pretentious white guy wearing suspenders and a fedora sitting in front of a piano, looking into the camera, crooning about the old times or something. But most likely I just wasn't a big fan of piano music of the time - oversaturated with Billy Joel and Elton John.

Oh, I see. Growing up in Germany, you rarely came into contact with ragtime at all. There's a very well known singer/ songwriter in Germany, Udo Jürgens, and it used to be every kid knew a certain song of his which was used as intro music for the Tom & Jerry cartoons in Germany, and it's a rag and just a fucking brilliant song ("Thanks a bunch for the flowers"):

Nope - 8

The Bill wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 5:07 pm Haha, blaming the scourge of Elton John on The Entertainer. Is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly responsible for Kenny Rodgers?

Haha, now hold on a minute here - I'm also taking into consideration all the "The Sting" soundtrack records I've seen in used bins over the years, not to mention it won an oscar for Best Music. But I don't know if it was the official kickstart of the piano guy movement of the 70's, but if it was, I WILL dock TWO POINTS from my official scoring of The Sting, which is 8.5/10. I've already docked it a half a point because I still think the music is bad, goddamn it.

THE KILL wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2023 1:23 pm Oh, I see. Growing up in Germany, you rarely came into contact with ragtime at all. There's a very well known singer/ songwriter in Germany, Udo Jürgens, and it used to be every kid knew a certain song of his which was used as intro music for the Tom & Jerry cartoons in Germany, and it's a rag and just a fucking brilliant song ("Thanks a bunch for the flowers"):

Completely understandable! And I wouldn't expect anyone NOT over 45 and who grew up in the US to have the same opinion I do - I don't think ragtime got popular again at any point since then. It played itself out pretty quickly. That Tom & Jerry tune is the epitome of that era for me, combining the trends of four-on-the-floor disco and ragtime piano.

Mafioso - 8
The Thief of Paris - 8
Inside - 7
Orson Welles: One-Man Band - 9
Almost True: The Noble Art of Forgery - 9

Evil Dead Rise - 4 - Fanboy bullshit

Das Boot - 8.5/9

Gaslight - 7.5

Seven Days In May - 6.5

Night of the Living Dead (68) - 10

The Pope's Exorcist - 0

Dream Lover - 5.5
The Hands of Orlac - 8.5
Tightrope - 6.5

The Manchurian Candidate - 10

Alien Director's Cut 8/10
Aliens DC 9/10
Alien 3 DC 6.5/10
Alien 4 DC 7/10
Alien Resurrection is a strange film with lots of things I enjoyed (great and memorable OST, Brad Dourif, fantastic handmade special effects for gore and spaceshippy stuff, some really effective horror scenes like the laboratory scene, the Alien queen, Alien/ Ripley hybrid) and lots of bad decisions (Winona Ryder is an awful actress and turns every scene she's in into a cringefest, some dialogue is soul crushingly stupid, fuck Ron perlman's character, middle part is pretty boring, Alien cgi isn't as horrible as in Alien 3 but still quite bad). So strange that they gave the director's job to Jean Pierre Jeunet of all people.

Dr Strange Multiverse bla 6.5/10
Technically, I should have enjoyed much of it since it's quite Sam Raimi-esque, but CGI, no matter how well it's done, makes most films sterile and lifeless. Maybe it's just me though...

Dr. Strange 2 pretty much sucked imo. I felt like a bizarre amount of time was spent explaining things - it was people teleporting into a room and receiving exposition about things that had just happened in that room. I was already done with the Marvel stuff before that came out though, so I'm sure I went into it with a pissy attitude. Those flicks were never exactly 10/10 but it's amazing how fast they fell off once the pandemic hit.

how about that music fight, though? felt like vintage raimi/elfman and gives me a bit of hope for beetlejuice 2

Hey let's be fair here, there's definitely some cool shit in the film. It does have a clumsily told story, quippy dialogue, and an overly slapsticky Bruce Campbell cameo (he gets his own post-credit scene, though!), but at times, it managed to evoke that crazy 80s-travelling between splintered worlds and minds in a psychedelic fashion-atmosphere many comics had in that time. Their walk through the destroyed (not really) universe to the building at the lake (?) and many other setpieces were visually really impressive. Having the hero posess the corpse of himself from a parallel universe to save the world is something that sounds like it's straight from a Sam Raimi movie. And although I'd argue they stole the idea of "someone uses instrument to turn notes into blades" from Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle (assuming they came up with it, with Hongkong films you never know if they took a story element from a particularly outrageous myth or story from the past), the scene built on that idea nicely. Yet, the film felt hollow and clichéed to me at times.

The one that really surprised me was Thor 4 - it got a pretty mixed response but when I saw it for myself I thought it was really unique. The kiddy stuff didn't bother me at all, and there was an insanely dark spit-take gag in the middle that fucked me up good.

I think people were grousing that it was another "pass the mantle to a diverse new character" which is literally the opposite of what happened- it seemed like it intentionally defied both sets of expectations.

Hunter wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 8:27 am

THE KILL wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 2:16 am

Hunter wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 1:41 pm
The Sting ('73) - 8.5/10 - was this responsible for the ragtime resurgence in the 70's, because I'll drop it a couple points for that...

what do you have against ragtime?!

I remember a lot of singer/songwriter stuff of the 70's and 80's being heavily influenced by ragtime. It was in all the TV themes, background music, radio, etc... and it was pretty boring compared to Punk and New Wave for a hyperactive kid like me. The Sting theme still conjures and image of a pretentious white guy wearing suspenders and a fedora sitting in front of a piano, looking into the camera, crooning about the old times or something. But most likely I just wasn't a big fan of piano music of the time - oversaturated with Billy Joel and Elton John.

Hey I just remembered it even made its way into the first Star Wars as the Cantina Rag

WHOLESOME

I didn't know Richard Donner directed the goonies