MovieChat Forums > roger1
roger1 (2445)
Posts
May 2024: Amazon Prime Offers Some Key Hitchcock Movies "for free"
"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" ...Done Silly
Its like What Happened Between "Batman" (1989) and "The Two Jakes" (1990)
Anthony Perkins, Bruce Dern, and Karen Black -- Hosting SNL in the 70s and 80s
Only One Post? Ever?
Nicholson's Worst Major Movie? (Done for Money and To Relieve 9/11 Trauma)
The Trademark Cleverly Written Predictable Schmaltz of Aaron Sorkin
The "Amiable" Family Plot Has Something Terrifying In It
David Fincher to Direct Remake of "Strangers on a Train" for Netflix (FOR REAL THIS TIME?)
OT: David Fincher to Direct New Strangers on a Train for Netflix(FOR REAL THIS TIME?)
View all posts >
Replies
Claude 3.5 would already I think easily toast both Biden and Trump if it was allowed on stage with those guys at a debate - it would transparently be much more coherent, sensible, knowledgeable, thoughtful, etc.. Some future Claude *will* be voted in as President by humans, and 'getting humans out of most high public offices' *will* be a political and economic rallying-cry of, I dunno, the 2050s. The future is coming up fast.
---
Ha. Well, it does seem to me that our current line of Presidents are so beneath the standards once set that anything could be better. Except I think that current line of Presidents is pretty much here ON PURPOSE. For someone else to "run." In earlier decades, Biden would have been removed on mental competency issues(and replaced with his Democratic VP)...I leave Trump to HIS haters but at least he seems capable of thought and can improvise for hours on end. But the point is, our Presidents are now held about 200 levels down in importance from other notables in this world...its like "somebody else" will be making any nuclear decisions from here on out. Oops -- I saw THAT movie too(Fail Safe, War Games).
TWO: We keep getting told that Bogart and Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne can be "brought back," all human and with the same voices and faces. But the human face has a lot of muscles..its hard to look "real." Still, even if they CAN bring back old movie stars in new movies...who will REALLY KNOW WHO THEY ARE? I'm of one of the final generations who even knows who Bogart and Monroe WERE. Hell, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen are now forgotten or unknown.
I suppose the experiment might be: bring all these old stars back to life in new movies and see IF...they all become stars ALL OVER AGAIN. If they had it then...they might have it now, for a new generation.
CONT
We await the truly enterprising youtuber who will put together a couple more generative-ai technologies and produce a (i) seamless QT talking head to go with the AI-QT audio, and (ii) have one of the better AI-oracles (in my brief experience with it, Claude 3.5 writes about as well as I do) write the underlying text. We could then have AI-QT visibly opining on the details of almost any movie you like.
---
As with a lot of things in life, I need time to fully understand "what is everybody talking about?" WHY is AI such a boon and at the same time...such a threat? This perfect AI QT is part of my education.
Usually I learn something when it personally HITS me. Example: self check out at grocery stores. First I noticed the units arrive and people use them. Then I noticed a CUTBACK in LIVE clerks to check me out. Eventually, I learned how to use self check out. Educated.
Two thoughts on AI and movies/TV:
ONE: AI scripts can now be written? Well in a 1967 book called The Studio -- written by one of those Dunne brothers with him given "total access" to 20th Century Fox -- there is a chapter in which a group of TV writers gather with scripts they have previously written -- and they trade the scripts so that , say, an episode of Daniel Boone can be turned into an episode of The Felony Squad. Same script, a few changes(the 1800s to today), a new writer's name on the script. So they were doing AI scripts a LONG time ago. But only with "bread and butter TV series production." I do sometimes marvel at how -- in oppositon to the care put into the plotting and dialogue of a MOVIE -- a TV series(say, The Man From UNCLE) had to come up with about 30 plots a YEAR...quickly written, no big deal, the same old formulas..
CONT
Changing topic ever so slightly.... QT's thoughts on Dirty Harry (from his book Movie Speculations) are presented in full in the following video on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcGEUXyP6AE
QT's text is read not by QT himself but by an, in my view, impeccable, flabbergastingly accurate AI-simulation of QT. It really does sound *exactly* like QT doing an audio-book. I didn't notice any giveaways *at all* that this reading was a machine-product. Jesus. The tech has gotten so good now that, within six months at the outside (at least if there's no major new regulation), literally no human will ever physically record another audio book.
---
I went to the several QT "AI audiobook videos" and -- wow indeed. Sounds just l like him --with certain verbal emphasis on certain words like a human talking -- though MAYBE a bit too "yelling all the time." Otherwise, I thought that was HIM.
I've read Cinema Speculations and what's wild is that I read , say, his entire speech about The Outfit versus Point Blank ("Cast with TV actors like an episode of Cannon...fish lippped Lloyd Bochner") and in this AI version of QT's voice, its like hearing the writing EXACTLY as I pictured QT SAYING it. (Side-note: in many a book, critic David Thomson has extolled the greatness of Point Blank -- he even had it topping Psycho in his book ON Psycho -- but here is QT dissing the movie, the "TV cast" and even Lee Marvin a bit. Blasphemy!)
CONT
If I was to categorise it, I would call it a 'blockbuster' - which encapsulates a number of genres, but sets it apart as the first real monumental summer hit at the cinema.
---
"the first real monumental summer hit at the cinema." I agree with that statement, with "further explanation and an astrerisk":
ONE: Further explanation: In the 70's before Jaws hit in summer, Hollywood indeed tried to get its intended blockbusters out at CHRISTMAS: Dirty Harry, The Poseidon Adventure, The Sting, The Exorcist, The Towering Inferno. The Godfather missed a Christmas 1971 release date and went out at Easter of 1972. ..and JAWS missed a Christmas 1974 release date and went out ...perfectly...in the summer of 1975 and almost instantaneously the blockbusters moved to SUMMER. (Well, most of them - Christmas time still saw some big ones over time, like Lord of the Rings.
TWO: An "asterisk": Psycho (again.) A 1990 article in the Los Angeles Times on the 30th Anniversary of Psycho said that IT was the first summer blockbuster. A shocker. Lines around the block and up the street. Big moneymaker. But Hollywood "didn't understand its own concept." They HAD the first summer blockbuster, but they didn't know they should follow that template...not until Jaws.
Also, weirdly, Psycho had TWO summer runs: the East Coast of America in June, the West Coast of America(and the rest of America) in August. Jaws locked in "massive number of screens on the same day." In America. Today, we have "massive of number of screens on the same day" ALL OVER THE WORLD.
That's another thing about movies in the 60's. A blockbuster like "Mad Mad World" could take a YEAR to roll out in different parts of the US, for weeks in "showcase theaters" and then on to "neighborhood theaters -- at a theater or drive-in near you." It could take a year to EARN all the money on one blockbuster. Jaws broke that pattern.
--
Hope you find your vinyl copy!
Me too!
Do you consider Jaws a 'horror' movie roger1 ?
---
Oh, partially. Your "blockbuster" definition rather fits mine. You wrote:
--If I was to categorise it, I would call it a 'blockbuster' - which encapsulates a number of genres, but sets it apart as the first real monumental summer hit at the cinema.
--
"encapsulates a number of genres" -- THAT is what is going on in Jaws. It is a suspense thriller AND a horror movie AND an "adventure at sea" movie AND a "male buddy movie"(with three wary buddies), and (a little bit) a comedy(funny bits always help ease the tension...like Dreyfuss crushing a styrofoam cup in his hand, or Brody's sudden jump up at the shark ("We're gonna need a bigger boat.")
But it surely is a monster movie, and the shark is the monster. My own father -- a rather serious fellow of adult sensiblities, saw Jaws and told me "that was just a monster movie" as if that somehow made it less great.
By the way, I always point to Hitchcock's Psycho as ALSO being a "hybrid" -- a thriller and a horror movie, and a Gothic movie and "the first slasher movie" and (a little bit) a comedy, and it too was a blockbuster.
To the extent that I see Jaws as a horror movie, it is in the manner of ever-more-graphic deaths that occur in the film. Starting with the guy in the rowboat(who we see in the shark's jaws and whose severed leg floats to the sea bottom) and ending with the REALLY gory and graphic eating of Quint...that's horror (plus the guys head popping out of the boat hole, one eyeball dangling out of the eye socket by a nerve strand...and WAIT..much EARLIER...the discovery and examination of Chrissie's severed and chomped arm and hand...
CONT
Ha. It took me many years to first read that. Then I checked my VHS..and there it is.
Those three notes of madness are also at the tip end of "Taxi Driver," the final score composed by Bernard Herrmann before his untimely heart attack death in 1975. Though Brian DePalma's Obsession was scored before Taxi Driver(for Scorsese) , it was released AFTER Taxi Driver.
Evidently, Scorsese requested that Herrmann put the three notes of madness on at the end of Taxi Driver to make a direct link between "lonely disturbed killers" Norman Bates and Travis Bickle.
Reading all these movie books planted these stories in my brain...
RIP (and thank you for your huge part in one of the greatest openings of one of the greatest films of all time).
--
That is very correct. They say that while some people get into the movies for the money, others get in the movies "to be in something that will last forever." Sometimes, they get the money, too.
Ms. Backlinie got something that will last forever. And evidently SOME money, too. I didn't realize she stayed in California and found work as a stuntwoman AND ...like so many people in famous movies...conventions. Good for her.
She DOES spoof her opening Jaws death in a non-lethal manner in Spielberg's 'less beloved" 1941. And offers up a more graphic bit of nudity -- played for laughs -- as she clings in the nude to a Japanese submarine periscope which has lifted her out of the water. (There is a low angle shot straight up at her naked buttocks -- as Forrest Gump might call them.)
It was a nice "sequel" to Jaws...and 1941 has gotten a better reputation over the years..
RIP, Chrissie...and welcome to movie immortality...
Funny you should say that, I started a thread on the Jaws board about 30 minutes ago. Very sad.
---
Yes. Good for you, DoctorThirteen. You're ON it! It is very sad. It was an iconic scene: a beautiful young , naked female swimmer. And she has died at...77. Yikes.
---
I never thought of that Death Star analogy!
--
I rather thought of it the first time I saw Star Wars -- two summers after Jaws.
John Williams music in both sequences.
A desperate "last minute attempt" by the hero to destroy the shark/death star before it can kill him(or thousands, with the death star.)
A sudden save.
A big explosion.
John Williams music underscores the dissolution of the villain into sinking death(the shark) and starry pieces(the Death Star.)
I suppose you could say that George Lucas "homaged" the Jaws climax with the Death Star climax of Star Wars. A little in-joke. NO... a BIG in-joke.
Which reminds me: at George Lucas's request, John Williams put an homage to " Psycho" in the middle of Star Wars. As the three heroes hide under a steel grate while Storm Troopers run over it, Williams cues the "final three notes of madness" that end Psycho. Williams had used this music as a "placeholder" track in the rough cut of Star Wars, Lucas said: "Leave it in for the release print."
'And here's the "big thing": Psycho rather arrived "all by its lonesome" in 1960 to break a bunch of rules'
Peeping Tom is the only other one I can think of that same year, although to a very different reception and pretty much ending its director's career rather than enhancing it.
--
You know, I ALMOST mentioned Peeping Tom, too. And I know that "Eyes Without a Face" and Black Sunday(NOT the one about the blimp at the Super Bowl) get mentioned too.
But the way I see ALL of those films were "foreign films" and NONE of those films got the "mainstream theater or drive-in release from a Hollywood studio" that Psycho did. I doubt that any of them made 1/10th of Psycho's gross.
Not that that makes them "lesser movies." But it DOES make them lesser events.
As for Peeping Tom, it is in Technicolor and while it is creepy and kinky and has a disturbing "sub theme" (how a mad scientist subjected his male child to shocks and tortures for a fear experiment and MADE the monster)..none of it plays for the jump scare screamable FUN of Psycho.
Peeping Tom famously shares with Hitchoccks Frenzy (12 years later) a lead actress(red-haired Anna Massey) and an emphasis on creepiness over screamable shocks. Also both Psycho and Frenzy center on the sex murders of females; Psycho at least has a male victim to keep all the males in the audience in fear, too.
View all replies >