Whatcha watching?

[Nashrakh]

Yep, I touched on the on-the-nose nature of the plot earlier in the thread, and how unsympathetic the characters were. It's a generational abuse story wrapped in an Evil Dead premise and it just does not work. I liked Rise, though. This one? Not so much.

I wonder what happened there. Evil Dead 2013 was also a rather thinly veiled allegory (albeit for substance abuse), and it worked REALLY well in my opinion. But the characters had depth, and the stakes were high. Capturing that same lightning in a bottle again, just with a family story, just wasn't possible I guess.

 

[WG Plum]

I wonder what happened there. Evil Dead 2013 was also a rather thinly veiled allegory (albeit for substance abuse), and it worked REALLY well in my opinion. But the characters had depth, and the stakes were high. Capturing that same lightning in a bottle again, just with a family story, just wasn't possible I guess.

My understanding is that the director is French and maybe a little of that French ultraviolence/grime/nastiness came through. I feel like the director didn't really get the whole Evil Dead thing. Even what lore was explored felt kind of forced and totally tangential at the same time. Yeah, two thumbs down.

 

[Wood and Wire]

I wonder what happened there. Evil Dead 2013 was also a rather thinly veiled allegory (albeit for substance abuse), and it worked REALLY well in my opinion. But the characters had depth, and the stakes were high. Capturing that same lightning in a bottle again, just with a family story, just wasn't possible I guess.

My understanding is that the director is French and maybe a little of that French ultraviolence/grime/nastiness came through. I feel like the director didn't really get the whole Evil Dead thing. Even what lore was explored felt kind of forced and totally tangential at the same time. Yeah, two thumbs down.

Well, I think you've both saved me some money, and I'll catch this on streaming instead.

I thought the first of the remakes (Fede Alvarez) was a pretty decent hell ride for the audience, but a pretty forgettable movie because we've seen it all before - even a young audience, who've never seen the original (Sam Raimi) have been exposed to it's influence across all sorts of media, which really dilutes the affect of a remake as a new experience.

You can throw a bigger budget at it, highly controlled cinematography, absolute state of the art practical and digital effects, highly trained and experienced actors - but that all gets trumped by originality, and the cultural shockwave of doing it first (even if the execution is pretty shoddy, in the cold light of day).

Evil Dead Rise (Evil Dead High-Rise? ) just felt like a remake of Demons 2 - which I always maintained was already remade as Die Hard.

It certainly had its moments, but one of the things that really irritated me was the syndrome of young directors more interested in shoehorning in irksome "cool" action, than those actions making any rational sense (when Spielberg had those kids throw their bikes on the ground, it was clear that he wanted an urgency to the scene, and stopping to gently lay the bikes down would kill the flow, and tempo of the camera move ; but as a result he made a generation of kids apoplectic over the treatment of such expensive BMXs, and a few of the crazier kids copy such behaviour. When Andy Muschietti makes a feature of the kids in "It : Chapter One" throw their bikes on the ground, it's because the kids in "E.T." did it).

From the mid 1950's, through the 70's it was fairly common for people to own 1/4" reel to reel tape machines in the home, and they were ubiquitous in schools, universities, and anywhere either music would be played, or recorded, or where verbal notation might be required.

It's completely ration that in The Evil Dead, someone would record themselves on a tape machine, and that years later someone would find the tapes, and out of curiosity play them on this out of date, yet still commonplace technology.

I was struggling a little bit with Evil Dead Rise, just on the silliness of the basement car park cave in, that reveals subterranean garages / storage units, and the the whole annoying movie teenage characters being annoying teenagers - but then we get to the vinyl...


Vinyl is "cool" again.

Apparently, late 90's DJ culture is the epitome of Gen-Z aspiration, and cultural relevance.

In the mythology of the Evil Dead reboots, either priests drag a vinyl cutting lathe around with them to record their dictation, or the church uses a commercial pressing plant to transfer field recordings from tape / digital to vinyl - and in the process of transferring those tapes somehow avoid the recorded incantation summoning a demon.

It's not stated how many copies are pressed, or if there is trade on the collectors market (what a car-boot-sale find...)

I quite liked Lee Cronin's "Hole in The Ground", and I quite enjoyed most of the experience of watching "Evil Dead Rise" but as I said, it's impressive craftsmanship couldn't really overcome the fact that I'd seen it all before, and the affect was greater the first time (even if the effects were greater this time).

His recent "The Mummy" was pretty frustrating - it managed to do some new, and interesting things against the backdrop of the classic Mummy movies of the past, but it just devolved into being another knock-off of both The Exorcist, and The Evil Dead, and it just got very repetitive, to the point I was struggling to stay awake.

Anyway, I haven't written him off - I just feel he could learn to be a bit more ruthlessly self-critical, when it comes to editing his own writing.

 

[WG Plum]

The Mummy was certainly not great, but I enjoyed it. If Jack Reynor is in a movie, I'm likely to check it out, same with Jack O'Connell.

I'm still bummed The Peripheral was cancelled.

 

[dwm74]

I've not watched any, but the U.K. celebrity series was extremely highly regarded (I think there's actually a second celebrity series in progress as we speak, which looked to have some interesting personalities in it, like Hanna Fry).

I don't know how well U.K. celebrities will translate overseas - but I guess you could effectively view it as an "ordinary people" series.

I'm almost finished with Celebrity Traitors UK...not sure which season but it has Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Kate Garraway, and company. definitely one of the better seasons, and light years better than the American Celebrity versions.

 

[MonetBass]

I'm still bummed The Peripheral was cancelled.

Same here. We really enjoyed that show.

 

[Wood and Wire]

I'm almost finished with Celebrity Traitors UK...not sure which season but it has Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Kate Garraway, and company. definitely one of the better seasons, and light years better than the American Celebrity versions.

I think that's the 2nd U.K. Celebrity series, but I haven't watched either yet (I'll probably watch the 2nd series, because I already know the result of the 1st series - hard to avoid spoilers, with it being all over the news).

 

[Jeff Scott]

 

[Gorilla Monsoon]

The better half pulled up “The Beast in Me”. Caught the first episode. Matthew Rhys again. Getting a rather low rating on IMDB, but im open minded. Giving it a chance despite the ratings.

 

[friskinator]

My understanding is that the director is French and maybe a little of that French ultraviolence/grime/nastiness came through. I feel like the director didn't really get the whole Evil Dead thing. Even what lore was explored felt kind of forced and totally tangential at the same time. Yeah, two thumbs down.

I'm just not sure what the point is of making more Evil Dead movies. It's a simple concept at heart (someone summons the Deadites, bad stuff happens, final guy/girl tries to kill them), but at this point they're just placing the same concept in different locations with new characters. We really don't need it.

 

[gln1955]

I'm just not sure what the point is of making more Evil Dead movies.

 

[MonetBass]

We just started re-watching (in my case, mostly watching for the first time) "The West Wing". What a great show.

 

[Gorn]

The Odyssey is weird. It's long. It's very very long. The stuff that happens to Odysseus and his crew on the Odyssey itself is pretty awesome. The stuff that happens around it is okay. It's loud like all of this guy's movies. Some of the dialogue is difficult to understand like all of this guy's movies. Some of the parts played by huge actors were little more than cameos and maybe should have been given to working actors looking for a shot instead of these established multi-millionaires that showed up for a few lines. I couldn't take Elliot Page seriously. It's a weird movie. It would have been better split into two parts or even as a TV show.

 

[GregC]

This seems like an ideal big-screen movie. But I'm waiting for streaming, because I absolutely hate Nolan's LOUD/whisper/LOUD techniques. At home, I can adjust the volume so it's not as bad.

 

[Gorn]

This seems like an ideal big-screen movie. But I'm waiting for streaming, because I absolutely hate Nolan's LOUD/whisper/LOUD techniques. At home, I can adjust the volume so it's not as bad.

It wasn't as bad as his other movies. There were parts of Interstellar where the dialogue was completely drowned out. The score for this was very unimpressive, but the monster sounds were great. The best parts of the movie were those scenes. The noises the cyclops makes were truly eerie and really good with a theater sound system.

 

[Gorilla Monsoon]

Can’t/wont do a Nolan flic. The machinery behind the hype is nauseating. Inception was all over the place and this latest offering lost me just with the casting. WHY?…Just WHY? …I don’t have a problem with any of the cast on any individual basis but I dont care to be hit over the head with what was surely an overdone approach to something that overshadowed a near three hour debacle before the opening shot.

Is he making a movie or is this a stunt? To my sensibilities, this strikes as sheer arrogance and perhaps the fall of Hollywood in general. Tone deaf indifference that will undoubtedly be reflected in box office disappointment. I think the mechanization will be less than truthful in the numbers, and even if the casting were more in line with expectations, two hours and 52 minutes is asking alot @ $25 for a revisiting of an ancient myth. Everyone knows the story, there’s nothing new in terms of a plot, I wouldn’t go for free.

 

[Jeff Scott]

Can’t/wont do a Nolan flic. The machinery behind the hype is nauseating. Inception was all over the place...

Yeah, Inception was weird, but if you want to watch a truly out there movie check out Tenet.

 

[Gorilla Monsoon]

That I would watch.

 

[Jeff Scott]

That I would watch.

Let me know what you think of it.

 

[Gorilla Monsoon]

Dunno how long I would last, Ive read some Reddit comments that are pretty unfriendly. I dont see it available on our streaming platforms. My problem with “Inception “ wasn’t necessarily that I found the plot to be hard to swallow, it was the absolute worship surrounding the film.

I like some of Inarritu’s movies, but found “Birdman” to be dreadful. Other recent comparisons to Best Picture Oscar winners, “The Shape of Water”, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, and especially “One Battle After Another “ make me think they're trolling us all.