Sorry– inside joke. I bet Teleport Keith gets it, though. So anyway, this is how I’ve been torturing myself since frigging November:
Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), in which no one ever said the Antichrist had to be human…
Sherlock Holmes (1916), which has recently wriggled its way off of the Lost List to give us a taste of the original Definitive Holmes Player…
Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), which is so much worse even than you remember…
Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), in which George Lucas belatedly remembers that these movies are supposed to lead into the ones he already made…
Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), in which he double-belatedly remembers that they’re specifically supposed to be showing us the origin of Darth Vader…
Virgin Witch (1972), which astonishingly is probably the best thing I reviewed this go-round…
and…
Wild Country (2005), which would have been the best if only writer/director Craig Strachan had realized that we’d know it was werewolves all along.
#1 by The Rev. on March 2, 2016 - 10:11 pm
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HOLY SHIT IT’S EL SANTO
Damn, man, glad to see you pop back ’round these parts again! Now I’ve got all this to go with Will’s piece and the surprise Lyz review. If only we could’ve gotten something from Ken. Ah well.
Phantom Menace can’t be worse than I remember; I have only seen the last 10-15 minutes of it, which convinced me I had better things to do than watch the rest of it, or the rest of that particular trilogy. I don’t see how it could be worse than that (although you’ll probably figure out a way). Of course, I feel like I’ve seen all of them thanks to RLM’s reviews; and I know there’s no way those movies are more entertaining than Mr. Plinkett bitching about them.
#2 by lyzard on March 2, 2016 - 10:19 pm
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Don’t give up hope just yet, punk… 🙂
#3 by El Santo on March 3, 2016 - 1:56 pm
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“Phantom Menace can’t be worse than I remember; I have only seen the last 10-15 minutes of it, which convinced me I had better things to do than watch the rest of it, or the rest of that particular trilogy. I don’t see how it could be worse than that (although you’ll probably figure out a way).”
Hmm… Challenge accepted. How about this? If what you saw included any of the Qui Gon & Obi Wan vs. Darth Maul fight, then what you saw was the best part of the picture.
#4 by The Rev. on March 3, 2016 - 10:47 pm
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El Santo: I don’t think I actually saw any of that in my truncated viewing, except maaaaaaaaybe Maul getting mauled. I only recall a bunch of Jar-Jars fighting goofy-looking robots and an annoying kid defeating an army by what appeared to be accident and happenstance. I don’t know if any of that fight happened around the time the kid won the day; if so, I may have overstated how much of it I actually saw.
Lyz: “Punk”? 🙁
Well, maybe you know something I don’t; on the other hand, I still haven’t been able to read his Fantomas pieces because I keep hoping he’ll finally get around to posting the final one.
#5 by El Santo on March 2, 2016 - 11:05 pm
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“Damn, man, glad to see you pop back ’round these parts again!”
It turns out that committing to review three long, overstuffed, culturally significant movies that make great demands on your critical faculties, yet which you don’t actually even want to watch, is a terrible, ridiculous plan.
#6 by lyzard on March 2, 2016 - 11:16 pm
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From a reader’s perspective, absolutely worth it, though.
#7 by The Rev. on March 3, 2016 - 10:57 pm
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Hmmm. Although they’re not nearly as culturally significant, I now feel less bad about never getting much traction on my long-planned review of the Mothra trilogy. That, too, would be a terrible, ridiculous plan; even more so since I’ve already seen them once. (Worse, I saw the excruciating third one a second time thanks to those bastards Ken and Sandy; although, to be fair, that was probably a Sandy pick.)
I’m sure, as Lyz said, the real winners are the readers. Hopefully I’ll have time this weekend to get all caught up on the reviews here.
#8 by supersonic man on March 3, 2016 - 12:16 am
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“To have invented a new way to be racist in 1999 was no mean trick.”
That is the truest sentence ever said about this dismal movie.
#9 by RogerBW on March 3, 2016 - 6:58 am
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I particularly appreciated the long view of the Star Wars prequels. I was fortunate in that I hadn’t tied up large parts of my emotional capital in the series, so I wasn’t worked up over the new ones and I didn’t care when they turned out to be lousy. But it seemed everyone was saying either “this is entirely without redeeming features” or “it’s not so bad because STAR WARS”.
#10 by Chentzilla on March 3, 2016 - 7:42 am
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Always pleased to read your reviews, your research and analysis on older Star Wars was very interesting.
I haven’t finished with your reviews of the newer ones, but here’s a nitpick: Chancellor Valorum has a single “l” in his name.
#11 by Richard on March 3, 2016 - 10:16 am
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If you don’t have the time (or the stomach) for all three Prequels, I suggest “Star Wars I-III: A Phantom Edit”, in which a fan edited together the three prequels, cutting out all the boring and stupid bits, leaving what is essentially the story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader.
#12 by El Santo on March 3, 2016 - 11:42 am
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And dialogue in English-subtitled Japanese!
#13 by Alaric on March 3, 2016 - 11:58 am
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The Barghest was a dog monster from English folklore, so it was, effectively, a demonic dog, itself.
#14 by El Santo on March 3, 2016 - 12:05 pm
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Right, but that’s not how they play it in Devil Dog. Here, “Barghest” is explicitly a proper name rather than a category of monster, and he’s a sort of goaty humanoid with three eyes. Your guess as how the filmmakers arrived at such a portrayal is as good as mine.
#15 by PCachu on March 3, 2016 - 3:33 pm
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I will note that Genndy Tartakovsky did more to rescue the buddy-cop aspect of the Anakin/Obi Wan partnership from the void than Lucas could be bothered to muster. (He even managed to bring back “What an incredible smell you’ve discovered.”) Which, of course, is why his efforts had to be de-canonized.
#16 by Jared on March 3, 2016 - 6:27 pm
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For what it’s worth, though, despite a shaky first season, I found “The Clone Wars” series that replaced it to be better overall, and it, at least, remains canon. One of the best things about it was its ability to elevate Lucas’ better ideas, while running damage control for his bad/less developed ones.
#17 by Ken on March 3, 2016 - 10:42 pm
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Though, as many observed when this first came out, it’s correct. Pre-Anakin: 1000 Jedi and 2 Sith. Post-Anakin: 2 Jedi and 2 Sith – balance restored. Also see the Dephic oracle and Croesus.
#18 by goddessoftransitory on March 7, 2016 - 1:29 am
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Uggggghhhhh THOSE PREQUELS. I can’t even begin to get into how flat, lifeless, confusing and boring they are, only to say that if he had made it his life goal, Lucas could not have made a more perfect example of why most people hate history as a subject. And this is A MADE UP HISTORY.
Oh, and also:
Padme Amidala (just Natalie Portman this time) has completed her constitutionally permitted two terms as queen,
This crap made me furious from the first previews. Royalty is NOT an elected position! You can be elected to a presidency or a premiership or a chancellorship or a senate seat or a prime ministership or any other kind of ship you care to name, but ROYALTY IS NOT.
Royalty can most certainly be overthrown or opposed, or on the other hand won or awarded, a la Conan, but you are not Queen for two terms and then go off to be a senator! Lucas clearly wanted the romance we still associate with titles like Queen and Princess, but didn’t want to deal with all that “inbred lunacy/divine right to rule” ickiness. So of course he tries to have it both ways, rendering a perfectly simple concept boring, confusing, unwieldy and ridiculous.
#19 by El Santo on March 7, 2016 - 9:11 am
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There’ve been a few societies in which monarchs were, in some sense, elected. The best known is the Holy Roman Empire, in which the emperors were chosen by vote among the rulers of the individual German principalities. Before that, there was the Kingdom of Jerusalem, one of the Frankish Crusader States. For whatever reason, the royal house there couldn’t seem to keep male children alive, but the Franks were too set in their ways to allow women to rule in their own right– certainly not in a territory as embattled as Palestine. So they gradually evolved an oddball system in which hereditary legitimacy passed matrilineally from queen to queen, but actual rulership was exercised by the women’s husbands, whom the high nobility of Jerusalem selected for them by consensus from among the younger sons of their counterparts back in Western Europe. The kings of Jerusalem and the Holy Roman emperors all held the throne for life, though. I can’t think of any examples of constitutionally term-limited monarchy in the real world.
#20 by Alaric on March 7, 2016 - 9:50 am
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You’re conflating “monarch” with “hereditary monarch”, which is a specific kind of monarch. See, for example, the wikipedia article on elective monarchy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy). (I can’t remember how to do links.)
#21 by Camassia on March 7, 2016 - 4:59 pm
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It’s always nice when I learn something from these reviews, and now i know what the Mohorovicic Discontinuity is. I have to sneak that into a metaphor myself sometime.
#22 by KeithA on March 9, 2016 - 12:30 pm
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You know who could have tamed the Republic? Elvis. He handled that chopper full of unruly poodles. We elected him king of rock ‘n’ roll
#23 by The Rev. on March 10, 2016 - 10:44 pm
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Virgin Witch sounds pretty interesting with its rather unique take on things; it’s going on the list, as is Wild Country, although even if it’d been terrible you would have had me at “Andrewsarchus.”
Really enjoyed the Star Wars pieces, both originals and prequels. The former reminded me that, unlike many things, those movies hold up past nostalgic memories because they’re good (damn good in the case of Empire, and with the three-way dance on the Death Star and the climactic space battle in Return); the latter once again made me glad that I’ve never watched them aside from that snippet of Phantom, and that I can perceive of no reason to ever do so.
#24 by supersonic man on March 14, 2016 - 11:06 pm
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“That’s where Virgin Witch starts verging on genuine Satanism.”
Or at least Objectivism — that’s what it was sounding like up to that point.
#25 by El Santo on March 28, 2016 - 8:58 am
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There’s rather a lot of overlap, actually. I’d estimate that at least two thirds of the Satanists I’ve met were also Randroids.
#26 by Richard on March 15, 2016 - 2:20 pm
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Re-reading the prequel reviews revives my curiosity…. I cannot help thinking of another case where a Republic collapsed when it had ossified to the point where it couldn’t cope with a crisis born out of its own neglect, and was then replaced by an Empire that quickly became corrupt and decadent.
But I can’t figure out who’s the Star Wars equivalent of Julius Caesar…..
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