Report from movie night

[mmcirvin]

1. We're sorry, Tom.

2. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie isn't any more comprehensible the second time.

3. To sit through all of The Apple takes a stronger constitution than was collectively present.

4. Breakfast of Champions really honestly is a moderately faithful movie adaptation of the novel Breakfast of Champions. I'd never have thought it.

5. I hope they enjoyed Zardoz because we had to go home before Sam could learn that The Gun Is Good And The Penis Is Evil.

Comments

Anthony Newley = 300% weird

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Any movie with Anthony Newley involvement (http://us.imdb.com/Name?Newley,+Anthony) is pretty much guaranteed not to be your normal kind of movie.

I've heard particularly horrifying things about Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? It sounds like it's basically Newley's equivalent of Burn Hollywood Burn An Alan Smithee Film or Neanderthal Park: a movie-length meditation on what a misunderstood genius he is and how women keep doing him wrong, with lots of bizarro ham-fisted symbolism.

Re: Anthony Newley = 300% weird

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I kind of admired Meet the Feebles, actually, because Peter Jackson actually tried to give it a plot that made sense and flesh out the characters instead of just belaboring the central joke. It's far better constructed than Garbage Pail Kids, whose A-plot seems to be that of a completely different movie pasted in more or less at random.

Unfortunately Meet the Feebles' reach exceeds its grasp; I think it would have worked better at about 30 minutes. But you could definitely see the director's potential.

Re: Anthony Newley = 300% weird

[(Anonymous)]

I've just looked at his filmography, and I have just realized the only movies on that list I've seen are "Doctor Doolittle" and "Willy Wonka", and I don't remember him in either one. he looks familiar, though, but I think it's because my mother watched a lot of "Hart to Hart" and "Magnum, P.I.".

Talysman the Ur-Beatle

[jwgh]

No mention of My Ass Is Bleeding? For shame! (My take on it is that it's about as good and tasteful a treatment of its subject matter as could reasonably be expected.)

Hm ... I guess we also watched the Insult Comic Dog make fun of Star Wars geeks on the Conan O'Brien show.

Actually, after you guys left we ended up watching the actiony bits of The Human Tornado. The actiony bits were not all that actiony, except they were sped up so they looked a little bit more actiony than they really were, but not really. Also, there were two torture chambers. Then everyone was tired so we ended up not watching Zardoz (plus I think I was the only one there at that point who hadn't seen it).

Breakfast of Champions was pretty decent. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, as you say, makes no sense on any level (from 'who thought that making this movie would be a good idea' all the way on down to any given individual plot point. Also, do any other children's movies have Gandhi cameos?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Not much you can say about My Ass Is Bleeding. Yep, his ass was bleeding, all right.

I still say the guy was secretly a young Tim Burton.

I missed The Human Tornado, but I hold out hope that, at least, in this case they did not kill off the black man before the climax. (Why, why, WHY did JOHN SAXON have to outlive Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon? This was not fair!)

TEH HUMAN TORNADO!

[(Anonymous)]

actually, they *did* kill off one of the black mens in the movie, but there were lots of black mens in the movie and it was pretty violent, so that's pretty much to be expected.

but they did not kill the title character. or maybe they did. I'm sorry, I can'y explain that part without it being a major spoiler.

as for the Breakfast of Champions question, I have only read one Vonnegut novel ever (Cat's Cradle), but I liked the movie enough. but then, I also like weird stuff, moreso than I like bad stuff, which is why if I'd had my way, we would have been watching "Hedvig and the Angry Inch" instead of "The Apple".

unfortunately, I can't think of a weird equivalent to "The Garbage Pail Kids The Movie" movie. maybe "Meet the Feebles"? I've always wanted to watch that one.

Talysman the Ur-Beatle

Breakfast of Champions

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I'm also not sure that any non-Vonnegut fan unfamiliar with the book, or at least with some of Vonnegut's interconnected work, would like Breakfast of Champions or even have much idea what was going on. It didn't do much for Sam, but Sam's never much appreciated Vonnegut, and Breakfast is probably Vonnegut's single most intensely Vonnegutian novel.

After Dwayne Hoover's freak-out at the arts council party, the movie has a more or less new ending that feels a little more Hollywood-standard than everything that came before it, but this is forgiveable. Since they had Kurt Vonnegut personally on hand, they actually could have filmed Vonnegut's ending, in which the story falls into a metafictional vortex and Vonnegut starts personally performing miracles as the creator of the book's universe; but they probably felt that it would leave everyone feeling ripped off.

The movie also provides further proof that, within a limited range and given good material, Bruce Willis is a fine actor.