The Queen of an Imaginary Land
Yesterday was fantastic, a genuine surprise – ‘Superman’ is as close to a perfect version of its particular story as you could imagine; ‘The Black Hole’ looks astonishing and sounds awful – who knows what they were trying to do, but one can certainly imagine Disney not being all that happy with producing movie that ends with the evil genius inside the body of a robot presiding over Hell; ‘It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World’ shocked Jett and I into the realisation that something so insane simply has to be Jett’s new favorite film, and ‘Back to the Future’ turns out to be even more fun that I remember it when I was ten because the jokes make more sense.
We were delighted to see some of our dear listeners at the festival, two of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves enough to justify the fact that they drove 5 hours to get here. It’s been a strange experience to re-visit these movies that meant so much to us, well, actually me. We’ll talk about it on the next episode of the podcast (don’t forget our ‘Where the Wild Things Episode‘ which is posted below.) Today’s the last day of the Escapism Fest, so Jett and I are returning to the Carolina Theatre, for a day that includes the following items of nostalgia:
The Savior of the Universe
The King of Skateboards
The Inspiration/Ruination of My Childhood Dreams
It was more like 3.5 hours, but well worth the drive to experience the improbable splendor of 'The Black Hole' with an audience. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but not for the reasons I expected. My 'inner child' was wholly unaccessed, but my 'outer adult' had a blast.
Thirty years have mutated ‘The Black Hole’ into a genuine camp classic. The script isn’t just bad; it’s extravagantly bad. Among other things, this film has the best *comic* performance ever given by Maximilian Schell. He stalks the screen like the bastard child of Dr. Moreau and Rasputin, with an unflappable earnestness that would’ve impressed Peter Cushing.
And oh, the dialogue! I will not soon forget, “Something caused all this. But what *caused* that cause?”
Magnificent.
This film also includes a scene that is so perfectly bad, it should be taught in film schools. I refer to Old Bob’s death scene, wherein the camera cuts between two inanimate objects while tinny voice-overs (Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens) recite the requisite lines of the weary “I’m not leaving without you” scene. It’s like watching a death scene between two hand puppets (only less expressive).
I suspect this scene was written by an early model of ScriptBot (version C64?). It certainly feels like dialogue written by a robot, for robots.
(For a more recent example of this exhausted trope, presumably written by a newer model of ScriptBot, please see ‘District 9’.)
A satisfying movie experience.
It was more like 3.5 hours, but well worth the drive to experience the improbable splendor of 'The Black Hole' with an audience. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but not for the reasons I expected. My 'inner child' was wholly unaccessed, but my 'outer adult' had a blast.
Thirty years have mutated ‘The Black Hole’ into a genuine camp classic. The script isn’t just bad; it’s extravagantly bad. Among other things, this film has the best *comic* performance ever given by Maximilian Schell. He stalks the screen like the bastard child of Dr. Moreau and Rasputin, with an unflappable earnestness that would’ve impressed Peter Cushing.
And oh, the dialogue! I will not soon forget, “Something caused all this. But what *caused* that cause?”
Magnificent.
This film also includes a scene that is so perfectly bad, it should be taught in film schools. I refer to Old Bob’s death scene, wherein the camera cuts between two inanimate objects while tinny voice-overs (Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens) recite the requisite lines of the weary “I’m not leaving without you” scene. It’s like watching a death scene between two hand puppets (only less expressive).
I suspect this scene was written by an early model of ScriptBot (version C64?). It certainly feels like dialogue written by a robot, for robots.
(For a more recent example of this exhausted trope, presumably written by a newer model of ScriptBot, please see ‘District 9’.)
A satisfying movie experience.
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