The Last Movie You Watched

[Fake Messiah]

Breathless (1983) - I forgot that there are scenes of Richard Gere's dick and balls

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Breathless (1983) - I forgot that there are scenes of Richard Gere's dick and balls

Last Night, "Resurrection" with Ellen Burstyn. It's a bit confusing because there are three films with that name; 1980, 1999 and 2021 and they're all different. Ellen Burstyn plays a genuine faith healer who gained her power after a NDE. I think that about says it all. The 1999 version is about a serial a killer and I think the last one is about the putative resurrection of Jesus. From memory I think Tom Felton plays a centurian sent to investigate claims of the resurrected Jesus. Don't think I'll bother with that one. I usually find pious movies cringe making.

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project, Disney's Mr. Magoo. While I could go into a history of the UPA Studio, and how they helped get a fledgling studio started in creating some memorable cartoons with extremely limited animation, and how it also led the same studio to stagnation as they tried and failed multiple times to create characters as memorable as Magoo, or even talk about how I have no fucking idea how Disney, of all studios, managed to get this movie made and not Columbia (who released the original shorts), Universal (who owns them now), or even Toho (which made UPA into their US distributor), but I think I'll just say this: Mr. Magoo is not blind. He is nearsighted. And, more to the point, he's too fucking stubborn to put on his fucking glasses. Originally, this was commentary on people who stumbled blindly into the progress of the (then-)modern age, but it at least worked as slapstick comedy. And, frankly, as someone who's also so nearsighted that, if I reach my hand out as far as it can go and I don't have my glasses on, I can't tell my fingernails from my fingers, I can appreciate the joke. But you have to make sure that the audience gets that the joke's not on blind people, but those who have the option of seeing, and refuse to do so out of some stubborn pride. And one of the main flaws of the movie: they don't.  If something like this is out of character for your Magoo, You. Are Fucked. 




So, let's see how Leslie Nielsen fares, and given that it recently made TVTRopes' "So Bad It's Horrible" film lists, I can't imagine it's going to go well:

• Looking at the opening credits, done as a Mr. Magoo cartoon, complete with limited animation, this make it all the more obvious that Disney was a shit fit for this movie. 
  
• And Leslie Nielsen isn't playing up the stubbornness. Once we see him in live-action, all we see is a doddering old man, and when Waldo brings up the glasses issue, we can immediately tell that Nielsen would fail that test. All he'd say is that his optometrist says he's fine. Nevermind that he's even older than Magoo and that all his other patients are dead. He wouldn't cause a scene like at the oculist's office. That only happens when he cuts a lighting cable by mistake.
  
• If Jennifer Garner's an Asian, I'm Wong Kar-Wai. At least they limit the damage to putting her in a foreign hat and some variety of hanfu, and making her enunciate her words like English isn't her first language.
  
• Well, someone's clearly ruining his Balaclava.
  
• And he's staying in the museum long after it's closed. He either really  loves that museum or it's another sign that he's slipping into dementia. Is this Stage 4 or Stage 5?
  
• That bulldog's potty-trained? And he pees standing up?
  
• "I Can See Clearly Now." What a depressingly apropos choice.
  
• Just power through this, Ernie Hudson. Before the year's over, you'll have a job on one of the greatest prison dramas of all time and nobody but conisseurs of shit cinema will remember you even did this.
  
• Well, it looks like Magoo's being overshadowed in the clumsiness department. Not good when you're building your entire fucking movie around a man's clumsiness.
  
• Did Magoo mistake toothpaste for sunscreen? This gag shouldn't be this hard to make out. I mean,  I love me some long takes, but this is where an insert close-up of the toothpaste would really help the joke land. 
  
• We get millions and each other? Why is those two crooks getting together contingent on them selling the ruby? 
  
• Was Malcolm McDowell's career going this badly in 1997 that he had to take this shit?
  
• Why the fuck is he an opera singer now? I know it is closer to his metier than eggplant tycoon, but it still seems so random.
  
• Why are they singing the drinking song from La Traviata in an opera about Vikings? And why am I detecting some English words in there? And why does the number he's rehearsing have zero stylistic unity with Verdi? And why are the horns on his helmet so fucking big? And are they supposed to be doing Norse mythology or Norse sagas, because there's a fucking difference.
  
• These cliche sound effects aren't making this movie any better.
  
• Don't you mean Lucille Leseur?
  
• And this is why you get someone more lithe and small enough to easily fit through the doggy door if you want to use it to break into homes.
  
• Putting a microphone on something that's supposed to be in extended contact with boiling water. This can only end so well.
  
• Yup. I can tell where this is going. I remember the trailers from when this was made. And I still knew that Mr. Bean did this much better.
  
  
  And, yes, I used the movie version because it was released the same year. And, yes, I actually saw it in theaters.
• Well, that's totally not a knockoff of the Weinermobile. And Good Buttery God, does it look like its emissions ratings must be through the roof. It's like they used a fucking Trabant as the basis for the actual vehicle.
  
• The Government thinks you stole it, but they also believe that another person stole it and is going to Brazil to sell it. 
  
• Wow. A mysterious drug lord who's mostly distinguished from his mild-mannered alter ego by a fedora, shades, and moustache. I wonder if that image is going to show up in much, MUCH, better shows. Or, since this is 1997, maybe they're going for Scatman John?
  
• You want a close look at Malcolm McDowell's dingus? Just rent Caligula. 
  
• I kissed a carp and I liked it, hope my ex-wife won't mind it. 
  
• And insert transphobic joke about men in women's sports here. Then again, I don't think any transwoman is dumb enough to use an ironing board in a snowboarding competition. Some extremely drunk cis woman, perhaps, but not a transwoman.
  
• And somehow, they found the time to plug EuroDisney.
  
• I'm not too familiar with Brazil, but are the rainforests really that close to Rio?
  
• Is it just me or do that mandrill's movements look really off?
  
• I may or may not be the only one disappointed that Kelly Lynch is actually wearing panties when she does those kick flips.
  
• Wait, they're in Rio, then all of a sudden, they're at the Iguazu Falls? That's literally the distance between Chicago and Bismarck, North Dakota.
  
• Well, those scenes of Magoo falling off the waterfall are obvious composites, only to be outdone when Magoo's on the raft with the old ladies.
  
• Well, that disclaimer about how the blind and nearsighted are perfectly valid and this isn't supposed to be representative of blindness was unnecessary and probably hard to read.
  

So, the best I can say about this movie is that I've had a worse 87 minutes and 25 seconds of my life. Christ, all the time spent cleaning my room today was worse and even longer. For what it's worth, it was pulled from theaters after two weeks due to protests from blindness awareness groups, which, depressingly, is still a week longer than T2: Trainspotting, the Certified Fresh sequel to one of the most iconic films of the 1990s, spent in theaters in Chicago, and no, I will never get over that until someone changes up the timeline and retroactively gave me a chance to see it in theaters. It reappeared only to be quietly released on home video, and eventually to Disney Plus. And why do I get the feeling that Song of the South is probably less offensive than this?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Just finished watching "Outlaw King" on Netflix. I love historical films if they are accurate to period. This one isn't too bad. Demanding historical accuracy is seldom a good idea. I try to watch such films just as good stories.

[Angrboda]

Auntie Mame.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Auntie Mame.

 Have seen the film and quite liked it. Its theatrical roots are clearly visible. Would l have really liked to have seen it on stage with the same actors.

Wasn't there a musical with Lucile Ball?  All I remember is that it was ghastly.

There's a relatively unknown film "Travels With My Aunt" with Maggie Smith. To put it politely,  Maggie plays an aging courtesan.


"Travels with My Aunt is a 1972 American comedy film directed by George Cukor, written by Jay Presson Allen and Hugh Wheeler, and starring Maggie Smith. The film is loosely based on the 1969 novel of the same name by . The film's plot retains the book's central theme of the adventurous, amoral aunt and her respectable middle class nephew drawn in to share her life, and also features her various past and present lovers who were introduced in the book, while providing this cast of characters with different adventures to the ones thought up by Greene, in different locales (North Africa rather than the book's South America). It was released on December 17, 1972."


Travels with My Aunt (film) - Wikipedia

[Foxaèr]

Tick, tick...BOOM! (Netflix)
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8721424/

[Foxaèr]

Occupation: Rainfall (Netflix)
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8615822/

[Gwaithmir]

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Occupation: Rainfall (Netflix)
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8615822/

That looks interesting.

Gotta say, that with CGI Aussie flicks have improved out of sight.


However there's a dystopian film that doesn't rely heavily on CGI ; "Tomorrow When The War Began". It was made into a so-so TV series. The series is available on Netflix.

Occupation:Rainfall doesn't seem to be available in Australia yet.


Hey, did anyone else watch 'Oats studio' a collection of short 'experimental films?'  Is it just me, or are they drek?