"I feel like the music was a real deal breaker. It destroyed the film. [Ladyhawke] was a perfectly good, serious-toned film that was just completed annihilated, because of the music alone. It's so sad because I did enjoy so many of the scenes.
I feel like they should rescore the movie. If it was rescored it would be an amazing film to watch.
But nooooo I don't think people should sit through that. It's not enjoyable."
Dan, 2018
I can understand why Melancholia is described as a science fiction film. The premise is, after all, about a planet crashing into Earth and ending the world.
But I think promoting it this way sets up a mismatch of expectations. I think it's better understood as an art piece. With the impact of Melancholia a metaphor for the impact of Justine's depression on her life, and those of the people around her.
https://www.movieoubliette.com/e/melancholia-with-catherine-mary-stewart/
I've just been listening to the Movie Oubliette review of No Escape (released here as Escape From Absolom). Their comparisons to Waterworld and The Postman reminded me how bored I got with post-collapse stories.
Then it occurred to me, was all this post-collapse porn a the primordial ooze from which SolarPunk emerged? Superficially at least, there's a lot of parallels.
(1/?)
"[The early pioneers of science] ... dedicated their lives to driving back the frontiers of knowledge, for the benefit of mankind.
But in the modern world that's no longer valid. Because now they push back the frontiers of science for the benefit of the joker that's paying, and no one else. And the joker that's paying makes sure that no one else can have that knowledge."
#GeoffMurphy, Director, #TheQuietEarth
https://www.movieoubliette.com/e/the-quiet-earth-with-serge-bodnarchuk/
It's funny hearing people panning the 1984 adaption of Dune and raving about the recent adaptions. I loved the Lynch version as a child, and I found part 1 of the new version dull. I haven't seen part 2 yet, hopefully it's more exciting;
https://www.movieoubliette.com/e/dune-1984/
#TIL Tom Baker was offered the role of Gandalf in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, but chose instead to be in the famously bad 2000 movie Dungeons and Dragons, so he could spend a few days filming in Prague instead of more than a year filming in Aotearoa;
https://www.movieoubliette.com/e/dungeons-and-dragons-with-michael-french/
Listening to the Movie Oubliette podcast episode on Enemy Mine, it occurs to me that the Dracs could be read as an analogue for Jews, and Davidge and the expansionist humans as an analogue for anti-Semites. I remember really loving this movie as a youngster, and I still think it was very progressive for 1980s Hollywood. But rewatching it as an adult, I have to admit it hasn't aged well.
https://www.movieoubliette.com/e/enemy-mine/
It's easy to scoff at the B grade material Disney has been putting out under the Star Wars name. But I challenge anyone to watch Battle Beyond the Stars, Roger Corman's 1980 space opera take on Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, and tell me Disney couldn't have done any worse. Here's the Movie Oubliette podcast dissecting the movie:
https://www.movieoubliette.com/e/battle-beyond-the-stars-with-michael-french/
