Me too: Happiness is one of my favourite films.

Yeah me too. Thought Life During Wartime was a pretty disappointing follow up though . . .

I watched Stephen King's Sleepwalkers yesterday.

Not seen it in years and was pleasantly surprised at how well it still stands up. Some decent gory effects and a tight storyline that doesn't outstay its welcome.
Far superior to the majority of monster flicks coming out at the moment.

All I know about that film is the poster, which sat on the wall of my barber's for what must've been at leat 5 years, next to one for a Bill Murray film called Quick Change :confused: Memories of sitting opposite it countless times waiting to get my hair cut :lol: . . .

...and you never thought "hmm wonder what that's like?"

I could buy, rent that etc.

Only seen it once many years ago but i think Quick Change was ok too.

Nope. Probably thought 'hmmm, a horror film about cats? Nah, probably rubbish...' Plus I was far more interested in computer games back then, never did the whole renting horrors from the video shop thing . . .

I watched Black Sabbath and really enjoyed it. I also watched Prometheus recently which I liked. Online I've watched Bubba Ho Tep which is a good one. I also watched Night Of The Comets which was very odd and super 80s, but entertaining.

The cats are the heroes. :nod:

Wha... but, they feast on your fears... and it's dinner time :eek: . . . !!!

SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS - Directed by Enzo Castellari for Cannon films, this is a truly abysmal effort. The score is terrible, the acting and dialogue are appalling bad and, as with the HERCULES films he made for Luigi Cozzi (who came up with the story for this one and directed a few sequences - more on that in a sec!), Lou Ferrigno is dubbed by someone else and it's painfully obvious. Now I know bad acting and dialogue is a typical trait of Italian exploitation but it's even worse than usual here. John Steiner however, gives a delightfully over the top performance as the evil Jaffar and it's worth getting the film just for his scenes....and possibly the scene in which Sinbad makes a rope by tying a load of Snakes together (not real, thankfully!)

To be fair to Castellari some of stuff he directed is techincally very good and there is a nice sequence featuring dead Knights rising from the ground, including one on horseback which looks like they actually buried the horse and then made them climb out! The action scenes are well done and feature Castellari's trademark slow-mo. However, Castellari either walked or was fired (I'm not sure which) and Luigi Cozzi took over and made a few changes and added new scenes (plus a few shots from HERCULES) and, if I was to make a guess, I'd say he was responsible for the opening sequence featuring Daria Nicholodi reading the tale to her daughter (which I think is Cozzi's real life kid) and the subsequent narration which is completely unnecessary and totally ruins every scene it features in.

Nice review Pete.

I'm really in 2 minds about whether or not to go see this. I don't mind the idea of them rebooting it so soon after the Raimi films but I kinda object to it on the basis that it was done since the studio ran the original franchise into the ground with their interference. I might give it a go at some point as I don love these sort of films.

Just watched The Running Man on TV. It's years since I've seen it. Brought back some memorys but it's a terrible film. The actual Stephen King story is vastly different and well worth reading.

Attachment 71540

Just gave this a revisit today to get me more excited for the Blu Ray. Cant wait to see how it looks some parts were very dark on the DVD i have.

Peronally I don't think the new Spiderman is as bad as some have made it out to be, nor is it a masterpiece, and considering it came out the same year as the greatest superhero film ever made THE AVANGERS, it looks poor in comparison. I still wish sony had simply dropped the licence and let marvel studios tackle it.

I simply cannot get my head around this. Nor do I think I will ever understand what people rated so highly about it.

It makes me feel old and out of touch.

Well, I watched The Avengers. Laughed a lot. Mainly at Scarlett's wooden performance:pound: ahem. As an old fans of the comics, I simply felt it was ok, though there wasn't enough infighting haha. The Hulk and the Jitari ships were the best things in it i felt.
Also watched Mesrine: Killer Instinct on BBC4. Great, and they better show the 2nd film next saturday!!!

The Millionaire Chase (1969)

Fun Shaw musical comedy,the story is not very complicated so perfect for a relaxed viewing. ;)

Lots of eye candy as well and some groovy 60's fashions.

Why did many songs in this film remind me of the Andrews Sisters though?

THE MILLIONAIRE CHASE (1969) Trailer - YouTube

It looks amazing! I'd love to see this.

Is it a reworking of How To Marry A Millionaire?

Looks fun :)

Simply put, it dosesnt feel like it was put together by a comittee. It was written and directed by Joss whedon, who has also contributed a lot to marvel comics and is very familiar with the characters, and he was given plenty of creative freedom to deliver something none of the spider-man, daredevil, ultraman, or even Nolans's batmans could deliver, a true comic book feel and a film unashamed of its roots. The last film I can remember doing that was Flash Gordon and before it Barbarella. It's a film featuring a large cast of characters and manages to balance everything perfectly. Every character gets their arc, every character gets their moments and it dosent feel compomised in the slighest.

Well structured, humourous, well-paced and with plenty of pay off for the fans, Avengers is the most successful comic book adaptation ever and it deserves every bit of it.

It's somewhat similar. ;)

The IVL/Celestial dvd is English friendly and should be easy to find.

Several "millionaire films" were made by the Shaws but not all are on dvd,these are the ones I know of:

How to Marry a Millionaire / 狂戀 (1960)
The Millionaire Chase / 釣金龜 (1969) *
We Love Millionaires / 我愛金龜婿 (1971) *

*IVL/Celestial dvd

I own both dvd's btw. :)

WE LOVE MILLIONAIRES (1971) Trailer - YouTube

I didn't get any of that from it. I saw an adequately made film rife with cliché and repetition. Poor dialogue, dull script, acting either OK or awful. It felt very much like a "committee" film to me. All it did was "tick boxes". I don't understand what magic it contains that makes so many people revere it as if it's a cinematic masterpiece. The film snob in me is very disturbed by the whole affair.

Each to there own I guess, similar to the way I though attack the block was poorly mad garbage, one man's (or woman's) cinematic gem is another's turkey. That's the problem with film, its very subjective. I think it also depends if you like Joss whedon as a filmmaker/writer. I loved Cabin in the woods and serenity and I enjoyed the first three seasons of buffy, Firefly and I even Rated Dollhouse so I've always enjoyed his work. After films like spiderman, daredevil and the nolan Batman movies all trying for grim, gritty realism it was simply refreshing for a film to simply be silly and fun and unashamedly so.

i wasn't hugely impressed by The Avengers, it was the first 3D film i saw in the cinema and i think it ruined the experience for me, i'll rewatch it when it comes out on blu-ray and i'll probably enjoy it a hell of a lot more than i did. I'm very very pro Captain America because i thought that was the best film Marvel had done.

Anyway recent viewings....

Maximum Overdrive:
Silly but entertaining Machines on the Warpath film from Stephen King, came across like Assault On Precinct 13 with Trucks.

Dragonslayer:
Top notch 80s dragon film from Disney when they took risks. Brilliant creature design and very very dark. It's kind of like Game Of Throwns minus the boobs.

Reign Of Fire:
Never realised how good this film was until i re-watched it. It's a good dragon film and great post Apocalypse film.

Project X (2012):
utter juvenile rubbish.

Pig Hunt:
Totally mental action horror from the late Jim Isaacs, very fun with a good practical creature..

Fear Island:
Pretty good low-budget island terror about of group of students getting killed off one by one but this had a twist in it, if you've seen Usual Suspects then you get what i mean. Worth a watch.

Marooned:
Good sci-fi with Hackman, Crenna, Franciscus and Peck about a 3 astronautics stranded in space and the rescue mission. A bit over long but well worth a watch.

Devil In A Blue Dress:
brilliant noir with a twisty turny plot with a stunning central performance from Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlings. Cannot recommend this more....

21 Jump Street (2012):
Laughed my ass off while watching this, some of the ways they avoid cliches are very funny and Channing Tatum is surprisingly good at comedy.

Sexy and Dangerous (1996)

"A group of tough gang girls battle rival gangs, jealous girlfriends, and broken hearts."

An odd but still enjoyable mix of producer Wong Jing's and director Billy Tang's ideas.
There's lots of comedy but the film also contains some really violent scenes.

Karen Mok looks really good as the gang's newcomer with her (fake I suppose) snake tattoo btw. :)

Curious about Billy Tang's Street Angels...


Nightclub action - YouTube

Too many different stuff ,from Damiano to Ozu and from Brass to Lang :phttp://i50.tinypic.com/10h0qyg.jpg

FATHER'S DAY - bought this from HMV
a Troma produced horror comedy, wasn't bad though not one of their best
disliked the 'grindhouse effect' but didn't really ruin film
hope Troma don't carry on making films with this stupid look

My landlady's son is currently staying with her. He is 16 years old

At time of writing, we have 'Epic Movie' on the DVD player. Oh joy! To make it even more enjoyable (?), he has chosen the audio track where the characters regularly break wind - yes, there is a 'guff commentary' on the film

Please kill me now!

Christ and I taught i was having a shit day.:eek:

For whatever reason I was in the mood to watch horror sequels that few people particularly
care about:

Psycho 2 - Surprisingly engaging, blackly comic follow up to Hitchcock's classic.

Alien 3 (Director's Cut) - Defended this as a young fan of the franchise in my early teens, now apart from the ending and some decent visual cues it's a resounding 'meh'.

Alien: Resurrection (Director's Cut) - Still utterly terrible after all these years, those who thought Prometheus ruined the Alien series would be wise to relive this wreck to set the record straight.

I prefer the ballsy opening to the ending, swiftly killing off the annoying kid and Action Man hero :clap: It's the repetitive 'run n' scream' climax that really lets it down for me . . .

I will give you that too, the one thing I personally thought was interesting were the POV shots from the Alien during the last chase; good offset to the quite jarringly bad matte effects used for the titular monster most of the time.

I don't know, I don't mind the monster effects - matting in a puppeteered creature seemed quite a novel approach to me - but then, I haven't seen it for a good while. Another big plus is the score by Elliot Goldenthal - really haunting stuff, second only to Goldsmith's for Alien. But then, the scores to all four alien films (not counting Prometheus) have been uniformly excellent :nod: . . .

The music is definetly a highlight, I usually love a good wonky matte effect but on Blu where the Alien's luminous green visage is projected against the prison's arid reds and oranges in quite eye-popping detail it's very strange to see. I suppose at the time they may have wanted to make the creature's dog/ox hybrid features seem more unnatural through this method.

:cool:

Five Element Ninjas aka Super Ninjas (1982)

"Two schools' rivalry comes to a bloody end when the master of the "evil" school hires a group of deadly ninjas to kill the members of the other."

What can I say about this Shaw classic...it's great fun if you like ninjas. ;)

Surprisingly bloody and gory as well and there's even some nudity.

5 Element Ninjas Celestial Trailer - YouTube

Laid to Rest

Not a bad film at all i went in expecting nothing and was surprised at what i got. The gore is done really well. I have Laid to Rest 2 on right now and it picks up right at the end of the first and like the first one starts off with some great gore.

I was really impressed by this reboot, with different characters, narrative arcs, tone and aesthetic. It'll be interesting to see what they do with the sequel and whether Mark Webb (great name for someone to direct a Spider-Man film) and Andrew Garfield will be for however many films this series runs for in the same way as Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire did for their trilogy.

I saw it in 2D and can't imagine 3D adding anything to the viewing experience except making it darker!

Watched zombie 3 over the weekend.
Jesus Christ.
Enough said.