So people are getting bent out of shape yet again by a sequel to an already-shitty movie about cartoon characters?
Oy. Talk about a typhoon in a teacup.
And “folie à deux”? (shared lunacy or psychosis, e.g. the Climate Apocalypticals) Adding a pretentious title to what appears to be an abysmally bad movie is not gonna help the box-office receipts grow any larger, folks.
Fucking morons. I hope Hollywood crashes and burns, along with most of its denizens.
…or more accurately, no memories at all. The still-lovely Isabella Rossellini laments:
Rossellini admitted struggling with being known largely for her parents at first, but now she wishes more young people appreciated her parents.
‘I used to be introduced as “Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini’s daughter,” and it bothered me, because I would think, “I am my own person,”‘ she admitted.
‘But now, the younger generation doesn’t know them, and it breaks my heart. Their reputations outlived them, but fame is very brief,’ she added.
I’m keenly aware of this, because my own kids, all in their mid-thirties, have not the slightest interest in watching any movie — no matter how much I extol its virtues — if it was filmed in black & white. They claim that they just can’t get past the “unreality” of the B&W monochromatic colors.
This is like refusing to read Shakespeare because it wasn’t written in modern-day English or in text-speak [spit].
What’s worse is that while there are a huge number of old movies that are, well, crap, there remains a body of work which is so much better than anything being released by the movie studios today that it scarcely needs an exposition — and that even allowing for the clunky special effects of those old movies which used them.
Side note: That’s not always the case. I remember an occasion when the original (and restored uncut) King Kong was shown to a group of movie students in Scandinavia somewhere, and the gruesomeness of the scene where giant spiders eat the hapless sailors actually caused half the audience to flee the theater.
What’s even worse is that the oldies were made for grownups, yeah, actual adults, before “adult movies” became a euphemism for thrusting naked buttocks and gynecological close-ups of female pudenda. I guess that part of this can be blamed on my Baby Boomer generation [sigh], when “young people” became a distinct market of “teenagers”, whose enormous buying power caused movie makers to make crap like Beach Blanket Bingo or Wild In The Streets, whereas ten years earlier such shallow and simplistic fare would have been roundly decried and boycotted. Throw in the Playboy ethos of the 1950s and, well, you know the rest. (I’m not decrying Hefner’s magazine for causing the sexual revolution, but it no doubt facilitated it.)
It pains me that B&W movies per se are going to disappear, not because of the propensity of generations to denigrate the output of their parents and grandparents (in the case of movies), but because so much incredible artistic work will disappear along with them.
And you’ll forgive me if I would be somewhat unimpressed by the efforts of some modern director like Michael Bay or Christopher Nolan to do justice to Hitchcock’s Rebecca., or a Quentin Tarentino redo of Casablanca.
I think I threw up in my mouth a little, just thinking of that. My heartfelt apologies.
Here’s Isabella’s mom, to atone:
“Dear Mr. Rossellini,
“I saw your films Open City and Paisan, and enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only ‘ti amo’, I am ready to come and make a film with you.” — Ingrid Bergman
It seems like only yesterday (actually, a month ago) when I made this comment about bars and pubs:
The business of a pub is to serve booze to grownups. End of.
You can imagine my irritation, therefore, when I saw this little bit of nonsense:
Two fuming mums have criticised a historic pub for not catering properly for their kids — and claim their youngsters were told to “turn the iPads down” while they were dining.
The angry mothers took to Tripadvisor to deliver two bruising one-star reviews of Victorian pub Sam’s Chop House after having Sunday lunch there.
They say that no children’s menus were offered, not enough high chairs were available and that they were left appalled when asked by staff to turn down the iPads their brood were watching in the restaurant.
The mums said they were told they were not allowed to take their prams into the restaurant, “which was fine”.
Big of them. Then:
“I’d rather have gone to Toby Carvery for half the price and a much more decent roast dinner than atrocious meal they call Sunday roast.”
I bet the staff, and all the other patrons, wished they had. All of which begs the question: why didn’t they go to Toby’s instead of a basement pub?
Okay, I have no plans to visit Manchester in the future (Mr. Free Market: “Never venture north of the M4, dear heart” ) but if I ever do, I’ll be heading to Sam’s Chop House, you betcha. It sounds like my kinda place. I don’t consult any of the so-called “ratings” websites like TripAdvisor much anyway, but if I were to do so and found a one-star rating like the above, I’d be more likely to go there because it means that Management has the right idea about how to run a drinking establishment.
Kids have no place in a pub. It’s not as though there aren’t enough fucking eating establishments everywhere that cater to the rugrats, that parents have to take their precious brood into a booze palace and disturb the serious drinkers.
Fach.
Via the Daily Express, I see that IMDB has just ranked its Top 10 British WWII movies, and to say I disagree with some of their choices would be putting it mildly.
The definition of a “British” war movie is that it needs to involve principally Britain and Britons, in and around Britain or in a British-only environment. This would exclude movies like The Longest Day, Where Eagles Dare (a junk movie anyway), and even A Bridge Too Far (which is not junk). Also, movies about war are not really the some as war movies (which feature soldiers, battles and killing and stuff) although there can be some killing on the Home Front, so to speak. So I’ve divided them into two lists, and here they are:
Kim’s Top 10 Actual British War Movies:
*Included because of its subject matter, and was so good a production that not even director Christopher Nolan could screw it up. I haven’t seen the 1959 movie of the same name, but I’m going to.
Then we have the movies which were set in 1940s Britain, but contained no actual battlefield combat.
Kim’s Top 10 British Movies about WWII:
*Essentially the same story; German paratroopers land in an isolated English village and take it over. But Went The Day is the more realistic.
You enter a competition for an all-expenses-paid Two-Week Dream Vacation, and you win. You have to pick your location from the pics provided:
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Pick which ONE you’d choose. Answers in Comments.
