While i love Fulci shlock fests like The Beyond and Zombi Duckling is a really brilliant film in an entirely different way. Actually it's more of this strange religious repression tale and has a proto-Martin melancholy to it more than the gratuitous titties and gore glee of the other giallo films.

I hate the shlock fests, Beyond in particular and the only other Fulci movie I liked decently was The New York Ripper but that was also let down by a severely sloppy ending. This one though in comparison is terrific and a very good film on its own. Good point about the religion theme. It's quite an unsettling film without resorting to any shock tactics.

I've got Fulci's Spaghetti Western, 4 of the Apocalypse lined up for tonight. Seen it? Any idea?

Having a fever at the moment, I did the best possible thing under the circumstances...watched Apocalypse Now, which more than exceeds my memories of it being one of the most incredibly visionary films of all time. Copolla's story may not have anything new or different to say, but the way he tells it completely blows away even most of the other good war films made.

Actually the Brando bit was a little underwhelming after all the stuff before it, but then that's likely because FC was getting completely screwed over by Brando who only shared the quality of unmitigated nut-headedness with his character.

ravenus wrote:
Having a fever at the moment, I did the best possible thing under the circumstances...watched Apocalypse Now, which more than exceeds my memories of it being one of the most incredibly visionary films of all time. Copolla's story may not have anything new or different to say, but the way he tells it completely blows away even most of the other good war films made.

Is this the Redux version? You and me both. I pull this movie out once every few years and it blows me away each time.

Actually the Brando bit was a little underwhelming after all the stuff before it, but then that's likely because FC was getting completely screwed over by Brando who only shared the quality of unmitigated nut-headedness with his character.

Oh dude, that "A worm crawling along the edge of a straight razor, it was a dream... it was a nightmare" dialogue gives me goose bumps every single time. Okay, he may have really fucked Copolla over but what a fucking! Damn, now I want to see it again.

^Totally. I think around that time Copolla was probably the greatest working director. In the two Godfather films, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, he made four of the greatest films ever, three of whom are absolute benchmarks for their respective genres.

He was a much better director than someone like say, Kubrick IMO because, apart from technical prowess, he wasn't as cold and calculated. He let his films breathe and much of what made something like Apocalypse Now great was the fact that there was a great deal of improvisation involved to tackle the real logistical problems that he had to deal with during production. It gives a certain immediacy and poignancy to the film lacking in most others.

You guys out to check out the Hearts of Darkness documentary made by his wife on the making of the film. It's probably the most problematic production ever and it's a miracle that he got a film out of it.

The Last Vampyre, a feature length Granada Sherlock Holmes film with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke.

I had once seen this a long while back and found it singularly contrived and dull. But the generally good to excellent quality of the Granada Sherlock Homes adaptations, and the fact that I'd dozed through several moments of the film then, made me decide to give this another chance.

The verdict holds. Even casting aside any purist notions, this is an unforgivingly sloppy and contrived script filled with complete cockamamie that goes nowhere and turns up nothing in the way of entertainment.

A couple of days ago, I'd gone with my cousins to watch Fashion. The groom thought it was nice till about the 3/4th, and that it was dragged pointlessly from then onwards, while his new wife and the rest of the gang enjoyed it a lot. For me, it was simply fucking painful to sit through even five minutes of this crap, and then it was literally painful because I had to sit for, what, 3 hours? You better not make movies that long unless you're Sergio Leone.

I think the high-point in the movie was when Priyanka's character hit the absolute rock bottom as a model and a person. This was shown by her getting fired, followed by reckless partying with junkies, then she zomg snorts coke only to wake up in horror to learn that she's just fucked a BLACK GUY. The way they showed the pitch-black guy sleeping in the white contrast background was fucking OTT funny. Madhur Bhandarkar needs to be gang-raped and bukkaked by a gang of this black guy and his countrymen for thinking up shit like this, if not for basically milking novice-for-life minds by giving them his "movies based on reality".

^ Exactly. They should break in on him when he's posting on stormfront commiserating with the white supremacist yahoos about the 'Obamanation' that's visited America. I thought that was a definite humour highlight of the film. The other being Geetanjali Nagpal screaming "Bachshurd!" over and over.

Finished Absent Friends by John Le Carre. It's an extremely well written book about spying and double dealing from the Cold War to more contemporary times. It's not particularly original or unpredictable but Le Carre is easily among the best writers operating in a field where too much time is generally spent masturbating over the colour, year and place of manufacture and bullets used everytime someone pulls a gun.
His protagonist Ted Mundy is born in the newly formed Pakistan and the book traces his life from early years spent in the company of his alcoholic dad, a former army officer, to a rebellious phase being a socialist/communist protestor in Berlin in the late 60s and early 70s. It's there that he meets Sasha a fellow reactionary and they become, for better or worse, friends for life. Through Mundy's life, particularly at times when it seems to have achieved a certain measure of stability and comfort, Sasha shows up full of revolutionary zeal to change the world, pressganging Ted into schemes that generally have very dire consequences. The last few chapters are quite brilliant with Le Carre lashing out against the American establishment in a very unrestrained manner; seeing as it was published in 2003, one suspects he got on the bandwagon fairly early. Definitely worth checking out.
America Has Gone Mad by Le Carre. Written in January 2003. By the time Absolute Friends was published in December 2003, Le Carre was even angrier.

^^ thats Absolute Friends, right ?

Oops yeah! Absent Friends or rather For Absent Friends is a song by Genesis. Argh

Saw Hearts of Darkness after Bala's recco and it's quite an awesome doc. Also saw another Giallo called Torso with a serial killer cutting down young women from an art school. High on the sleaze and gore and not so much on atmosphere with a very dull score but overall decent timepass if really hot Italian girls getting butchered is your thing.

Finished reading A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson's courageous and largely successful attempt at trying to give a newbie-friendly chronicle and insight into the scientific work that went (and continues to go) into revealing the origins of our world and life as we know it. It's a book that I'd heartily recommend to all. This is how science should have been taught in school.

Also saw this French heist movie called Le Cercle Rouge aka The Red Circle by Jean-Pierre Melville (famous for that kickass hitman flick Le Samourai). Standard story but pretty nicely made, austere and paced like a well-oiled watch, with some great use of simple editing techniques that sustain the tension. This is quite worth your time even if the proceedings are a little too low-key at times as the French are wont to do, trying to give a preposterous crime flick as this an arty existential air.

just saw Slumdog Millionaire, which was like Salaam Bombay revisited. Shot beautifully but the story is very weak. Especially when you compare it to the greatness of SB, it makes it look even worse.

Yesterday saw two really fun movies. First up was Zakhmi Aurat starring everyone's favourite MILF Dimple Kapadia. DHK is raped and revenging cop, who with a similarly wronged doctor, and a whole bunch of assorted rape vicitms (all of whose rapes are shown in great detail) decide to go on a rampage, castrating and mocking their rapists. Superawesome fun.

Fright Night a tremendous shlock horror comedy of the sort that only that most glorious of all decades, the 80s could do a convincing job of producing. The plot is fairly simple - snoopy kid discovers his neighbour is a vampire, tries to convice the cops, is disbelieved and turns to an old fraud to help out. A spectacular performance by Roddy McDowal who plays TV's Vampire Hunter Peter Vincent. His nuanced and very convincing performance makes this a tad more than a shlocky cliched enjoyable horror flick.