N-E Culture Club - Lost In Translation 11th Jan

[Charlie]

If you want to change The Pillars of the Earth go for To Kill A Mockingbird instead which is also a fantastic novel.

[jayseven]

Skip if you've seen it already and didn't like it, I guess. Can't force you to do anything.

 

Alright Daniel, added to the pile

 

Done that too, chazzer!

[Molly]

To Kill A Mockingbird instead which is also a fantastic novel.

Even if we did analyse it to death at school, it is a work of absolute genius.

 

I can't decide on my books, don't know whether to go for classics or more recent gooduns.

[Ganepark32]

^ do one of each. That way you can balance a classic piece of literature with a modern great. 'Tis what I'd do if I'd read anything modern that was great. Last modern book I read that was great was Junk by Melvin Burgess and that was a fantastic book. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it.

[Molly]

^^ I did indeed do so! Went for Nineteen Eighty-Four and Life of Pi.

 

Right so I need to acquire Slither and Do androids dream of electric sleep, I'm on it.

[dan-likes-trees]

Hangabout, is the film one weekly?? I barely watch a film a week as it stands :S That said, I've already watch and own the majority of the films listed so all should be ok...

 

Supergrunch's Choice - After Dark - Haruki Murakami

 

I was so close to picking this, I went for Norwegian Wood in the end, equally fantastic yet very different.

 

Molly's Choice - Amores Perros

 

I adore that film. Glad someone stuck that in. I nearly put that as my choice but remembered lending it to a friend and him moaning about it being too long the fool.

[Rummy]

When or where do we commence upon the discussions of this week's Film? A new thread in here, in the playground, or just in this thread? I realise I have yet to submit film/book choices, I haven't had much time to give them good though, but I've done watched me some Slither for this week, and am planning to start Do Androids... quite shortly!

[jayseven]

Slither

 

Well I have no idea how we'll go about this. So what did y'all think?

 

Personally, I appreciate the b-movie style, and raised a smile at the John Carpenter references, but I think the direction was too comical, and the epidemic took way too long to kick off. I didn't like the save-the-world, get-the-girl ending either (although the cat bit after the credits was a nice touch). Why did they decide to walk miles down the road to the next town when they could've popped a truck or something?

 

The whole "group consciousness" thing that the slugs had going was pretty neat, but for a creature (or.. swarm.. I dunno) that's survived from planet to planet for "a billion years", it sure got outwitted easily.

 

Not a movie you should watch by yourself -- not because it's scary, but just because I'm sure it'd be more fun with a group of you and some beers. Yah. Not a movie I'll be in any hurry to watch again, to be honest. The movie was too clichéd, too formulaic. The horror angle was weak, and the humour wasn't much better. After playing Left 4 Dead I kinda wonder how much more awesome the mass-'zombie' scenes could've been, but instead I never felt like the main characters were ever under threat.

 

... Meh! It's too easy to bitch about this movie. It was ok, but nothing special to me.

 

[RossK]

going on the topic of over analysing books at school , i found that this has ruined some good novels for me .

Im an extremeley fast reader and I do alot of it so taking like 3 months to get through one book i found very frustrating .

Secondly the whole analysing thing...its looking for things that really arent there half the time and making up conclusions and themes that you just know the writer wasnt really thinking about !

 

Ive gone back and read a few books we did at school but in my mind im still analysing characters and themes and so the story gets ruined .

stupid secondary school!

[Daniel]

I thought the film was good Not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but a good watch!

 

The scene with the people getting infected or taken over or whatever freaked me out though, gives the the shivers thinking about them worm things going down my throat! Plus the way he impregnated was a bit sick too, reminded me of filling up at a petrol station haha

 

In the end he was defeated pretty easily but i suppose its down to the ingenuity of the human race or something like that.

 

I was trying to think of a film it reminded me of al the way through it but i couldnt put my finger on it, i don't tend to watch many films like this, i stick to humerous or action films generally. But it was a nice change from the normal

 

 

You can probably tell i havent reviewed or analysed films, or books for that matter, since high school which was like 5 years ago :S

[Paj!]

going on the topic of over analysing books at school , i found that this has ruined some good novels for me .

Im an extremeley fast reader and I do alot of it so taking like 3 months to get through one book i found very frustrating .

Secondly the whole analysing thing...its looking for things that really arent there half the time and making up conclusions and themes that you just know the writer wasnt really thinking about !

 

Ive gone back and read a few books we did at school but in my mind im still analysing characters and themes and so the story gets ruined .

stupid secondary school!

 

While analysing books loses that fun and free experience of simply reading it front to back then putting it away, by not analysing books, one often loses out on a great amount. (Depends what books of course)

 

I struggle to believe that what themes and ideas I discovered within the novels I 've analysed weren't intentional. These books being, Heart Of Darkness, Franklin's Tale, Hamlet, The Tempest etc.

 

That said, I have one of the best English teachers I've ever encountered.

[Mundi]

I was wondering, are the spoiler tags needed? Because most people that are gonna pop in are a part of this fancy pants club and have read/seen what we are talking about

 

I thought it was a all around good movie far from perfect but enjoyable and it had a great B-Movie feel over it. Nice gory scenes in my opinion and I love gory movies.

 

One thing that bothered me about Nathan Fillion (Bill Pardy) is that it seems that he always playing the same role in every movie/tv-show I´ve seen him in.

A wisecracking badass who always seems to be annoyed

 

 

On the whole analyzing thing I think it´s a matter of preference, I like diagnosing what I read and watch, just taking a moment where I´m done with it and reflect upon what I just saw/read.

[Ganepark32]

@ Paj - completely off topic but it's nice to see that EA haven't changed and are still being unoriginal and making the students read the same books every year. I did all of those before I left with the greatest english teacher ever.

 

Anyways, forgot about this until late last night so I'll get a watch of it later on and post what I think of it.

[jayseven]

I.

 

One thing that bothered me about Nathan Fillion (Bill Pardy) is that it seems that he always playing the same role in every movie/tv-show I´ve seen him in.

A wisecracking badass who always seems to be annoyed

 

On the whole analyzing thing I think it´s a matter of preference, I like diagnosing what I read and watch, just taking a moment where I´m done with it and reflect upon what I just saw/read.

I read recently that he was signed onto the movie like a week before filming started so I guess he didn't do much but apply himself to the role.

 

Again, on the whole analyzing thing [sic] - sometimes a trip to the cinema with buddies has me constructing a mental list of the things i want to talk about after the movie's done.

 

With books, the general idea is that the author did intend some sort of meaning, but with various types of critical theory you can try to look for some unconscious purpose, or argue for a contemporary thought or ideology that in unavoidably containted within the text. Currently the "new criticism" completely ignores the role of the author, instead focusing on the text as a complete and contained work of art from which we draw our interpretations, based upon our conscious and unconscious make-up that may be shaped by contemporary society.

 

Studying English hasn't make reading in itself worse, it just takes a lot longer because I cannot skim-read like I used to -- I'd feel as if I'm not getting the full book if I do that now, so instead I have to carefully read each word or line. It seriously used to take me a minute per page, but now it ranges from two to four a page. It's ridiculous. But I definitely get more out of books now; being able to apply certain existing theories and constructs, or just using my knowledge of the novel's timeline gives novels depth and detail that you wouldn't have thought were there.

 

A good novel can be analysed on several points - language, structure, narrative form, content, style, and so on. I love it when you watch a movie where you find that for a few seconds you're really appreciating the cutting, or the sound or the visual direction. I love it when you realise that what you are witnessing was intentional, thus it becomes a puzzle to try and figure out what it means, or why it means. You have to ask yourself what it made you feel, or how it made you feel. It's awesomefunz.

 

However,

did not make me feel or think like this. No lingering shots where the audience has to decide which emotion to feel. No subtlety with the character's own thoughts. I would argue that Starla was the main character, but she was two-dimensional as fuck. The only 'conflict' we got with her character was other characters gossiping about why she married Grant in the first place.

 

Not a thinky movie :P the ham-handed suspension-soured first third just dragged on for me. One dude with glasses being the baddie? Pft. They shoulda shot him when he was surrounded.

 

But maybe the one thing we can don our berets and smoke our pipes for is the impregnation stuff - the 'hive' mentality. It doesn't get very far, nor to the standards that Alien set with its chestbursters and penis-tongued aliens -- is the film about age-old masculinity? Most of the women in the film are shite. The one at the police station with the headset is as dumb as fuck. The mother on the farm is your stereotypical brings-husband-the-dinner lady. The two surviving women have their sexuality used for bathroom entertainment, and both are helpless without the surviving dude somehow stumbling his way into saving everyone. Grant's assault on his wife and that other ladie were rape-tastic... Starla uses her hairbrush as a weapon...

 

The cupboard-under-the-stairs/Locked Door/Crimson Room idea could've been more gothic. The first half maybe could've kept the audience wondering what was in there too. I would've preferred if the audience had followed the rest of the townsfolk and built up their profiles while Grant got up to no good in the background.

 

And what ever happened to the slug from the start of the movie?

 

As I said before, it's way too easy to pick at this movie. It was just too formulaic and predictable. Not silly enough - no one-liners, no killing-monsters-with-random-objects, no gratuitous nudity. not enough explosions. No clever camera angles, and a pop-culture soundtrack. Ok I need to stop now.

 

[Slaggis]

Probably a stupid question, but say I come into the thread and the movie this week sounds really interesting, then can I go and watch it and put my thoughts on here even though I didn't actually sign up for the whole "club" thing?

[jayseven]

Yeah sure, why not :P Originally I said you had to sign up for it, but if you want to just join in, then fine. I guess the movie club will get more attention.

 

I'll split it into two threads when teh reading dealine is up, by the way.

 

EDIT: The reason I wanted people to 'sign up' was to encourage people to give everything a go. If people just actively select which movies they want to watch then they're not really going to expand their horizons. My two movies suggested will not be like any you've watched before, y'know.

[Cube]

I chose it because I felt that it was a great mix of horror styles in a B-movie-like fashion.

 

Plus I love Nathan Fillion.

 

I'm not usually fond of horror films, but I really enjoyed Slither.

[Ganepark32]

Ok so I've now finished watching Slither. Personally, it's not something I'd have gone to see at the cinema, and I'm glad I didn't because I'd have been pissed coming out from seeing it having spent money on a ticket. The premise/story of the movie was pretty riciculous but they didn't really do much with it. They could have given us more laughs for what they were plugging, for instance with the ways they could have killed the zombie, but they didn't.

 

It was just very predictable, especially at the end with the grenade going off in the pool. Knew that wasn't going to kill him. But then it didn't need to because there just happened to be a propane tank lying about poolside. So not only was it predictable, it was very ridiculous. Ok I know it's not meant to be real but the placement of that propane tank was just stupid. The fact that he wasn't dead at the end was the worst part as you could see that coming a mile away along with the fact he now has a new host body.

 

The effects weren't too great either, talking specifically about the CG they used. Some of the props (ie Grant's costume after he starts getting mutated) were quite good but it just didn't work to its fullest potential because the CG it was coupled with was pretty bad, like 1980's bad.

 

The acting wasn't great either. All very wooden, no real depth to the characters. They tried to liven things up by letting that girl understand what everything was and why it was happening but it didn't really work. It just felt weird. I know it was a B-movie but they cast could of done a bit better. But then perhaps it was the script that was restraining so they can't really receive all of the blame.

 

One last thing, the music didn't seem to sit well with the movie either. It's described as a horror/comedy film but the score was a little too upbeat for the story, the music playing in the house when Grant is trying to seduce Starla back to be with him is an excellent example of this because, while the situation itself was indeed cheesy, the music just felt wrong. Yes the music was cheesy but in that situation it didn't work.

 

 

There were other things I disliker about it. Some of which Jayseven touched upon but I think I'll leave it at that because it's just constant complaining, even though it justly deserves it.

[MoogleViper]

That was pretty shit in my opinion. I'm sick of these films coming out where the writer obviously has no imagination or sense of originality and decides to make as movie by just ripping off the hundreds off practically identical movies before it and just changing the monster/villain.

[Chris the great]

well, it was average. not exactly alot of subtext to discuss, nor much characterisation, so i'll just analyse it in terms of what i thought they were trying to do.

 

the whole thing was daft, i guess thats what they wanted from it, a stupid b movie, sticking to the clichés of the genera. for me, it wasn't much of a horror, no real suspense, containing only three raw ingredients of horror, the moster, the seeming immortality/hopelessness and the shock moment(lowest form of frightening) as for comedy, didn't make me laugh, didnt try much either.

 

all in all, it was a totaly average film, never tried to be anything special, and lacked the sense of being anything more then a money maker. that said, i may have enjoyed it had i been with mates, or maybe a little younger.

[S.C.G]

Slither... not an amazing film, not a bad one, just pure, relatively mindless entertainment. simple as.

[Ellmeister]

Ok finally got around to watching the movie in my spare time

 

I thought it was ok, as others have pointed out it was more of a b-movie. I kept realising bits seemed to be being copied out of other movies. Overall I thought some of the parts were decent to watch, perhaps more suspense and darkness needed to be brought into the film to make it scarier. Don't plan on watching this anytime soon though.

 

I also realised the plot idea was then ripped off on an episode of Dexter's Laboratory which made me laugh :p

[Dan_Dare]

OK slight diversion from the Slither topic but I'll watch that this week once I get a copy off jayseven.

I've finally decided on my entries! Oh Em Gee!

 

What I'm going for is a theme of entrapment, escape and fantasy. check out my cohesive awesomeness.

 

for my book, I'm going with The Collector by John Fowles.

A dark, politically charged text in which a disturbed young working class man wins the lottery and spends his winnings to realise a grim, self deluding Romeo and Juliet fantasy by kidnapping a young, middle class girl he has been stalking.

 

for my film I'm going for Brazil directed by Terry Guilliam.

A surrealist take on 1984 in which the police state is an inescapable bureaucracy, suffocating the escapist dreams of Sam (Jonathan Pryce) untill a random error sends him in to a bizzare underworld of maverick plumber heroes, terrorists and prophetic dreams of freedom.

[jayseven]

Nice choices dude, I've added them in

 

Next film to watch is American Beauty - a film most of us should've already seen. The week after is Waking Life - The first test of the club, I think.

 

I've still not got a copy of the book yet, bit annoyed. Hopefully I'll join the xmas rush tomorrow and treat myself

[Molly]

I've finally just watched it and now it's really late, oh well, here are my thoughts...

 

Well I didn't enjoy that at all. Picking up on what others have said; this was meant to be a comedy horror? At no point was I scared/tense and I didn't laugh at all. Actually that's a lie, I laughed once when the old man said: 'It looks like something that fell off my dick during the war', that tickled me a bit. The acting was shoddy, I felt nothing for any of the characters. There wasn't anything special about the camerawork or music, and no clever or thought provoking dialogue.

 

Thinking about the 'alien taking over a small town' plot, it reminded me of The Faculty and in turn Invasion of the bodysnathers. The former is no masterpiece but at least it's suspenseful and the latter is genuinely scary. I know Slither is not really comparable to those as it's a B-movie trying to be funny, but it just showed me how bad the film really is. Also if you look at how well zombies are depicted in Shaun of the Dead, Slither could have done so much more with the 'slug driven-alive-but dead-people'.

 

Anywho I won't be watching again.