I don't know, I wouldn't call Alice in Wonderland or Sweeny Todd, "less than good." I was entertained by both. Before that, though I would totally agree. I never saw Corpse Bride though, I guess that might be ok.Luke wrote:It looks like every Burton film from the past ten years (which all have been less than good), and besides Barnabas it looks like a Addam's Family rehash, but who knows? Could be a lot of fun.Stark wrote:I don't know what to think about that.Luke wrote:DARK SHADOWS Trailer
EDIT: Eva Green is gorgeous though, I'll give the movie that.
It would be nice to see Burton out of his comfort zone for once though (yes even Nic Cage as Superman).
What was the last movie you've seen?
Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended...so the world might be mended.
Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
Maybe I should have said "forgettable". That said I can't help but think of this every time I see a new Burton trailer.
But yeah, I'll retract that. His movies in the past decade have been less than good and also forgettable.
But yeah, I'll retract that. His movies in the past decade have been less than good and also forgettable.
Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
That's pretty darn funny.Luke wrote:Maybe I should have said "forgettable". That said I can't help but think of this every time I see a new Burton trailer.
But yeah, I'll retract that. His movies in the past decade have been less than good and also forgettable.
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended...so the world might be mended.
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AppleQueso
Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
Corpse Bride was beautiful and technically impressive but very flawed. The movie just kinda... pittered out all the sudden. It's a film I really wanted to love but found myself ultimately walking away from it with a sigh.
"Forgettable" I think defines Corpse Bride pretty well.
I haven't watched any movie he's made since that one though. I saw no point in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland just had this extremely off-putting visual design that kept me pretty far away.
"Forgettable" I think defines Corpse Bride pretty well.
I haven't watched any movie he's made since that one though. I saw no point in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland just had this extremely off-putting visual design that kept me pretty far away.
Last edited by AppleQueso on Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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dunpeal2064
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Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
But Tim Burton made The Planet of the Apes!
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AppleQueso
Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
Wow he made Planet of the Apes when he was ten? How'd he convince Charlton Heston to be in it?dunpeal2064 wrote:But Tim Burton made The Planet of the Apes!
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dunpeal2064
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- Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2011 12:55 pm
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Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
More like, how'd he convince his gf to get in that horrible costume?AppleQueso wrote:Wow he made Planet of the Apes when he was ten? How'd he convince Charlton Heston to be in it?dunpeal2064 wrote:But Tim Burton made The Planet of the Apes!
Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
Now see, I've always liked Corpse Bride. But then, I've always been fond of stop-motion.
Anyway, moving on...
The Legend of Hell House
Last week TCM showed something more along the lines of a cult classic and less along the lines of "Where the hell does Michi find this stuff?" I hadn't seen Hell House before, so I was quite psyched.
Four paranormal investigators are contacted by an eccentric millionaire (of course) to find evidence of the existence of life after death in the famed Belasco mansion, the “Mount Everest of haunted houses”, nicknamed Hell House.
It's hard to tell how many people a house has knocked off just by looking at it.
The group consists of physicist Lionel Barrett, his wife Ann (who has no real reason to be there), mental medium Florence Tanner, and physical medium Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall), Fischer being the only member having previously survived a trip to the house twenty years earlier. What happened to the other members of his group? They were either horribly injured or driven insane. So the group starts off on a really chipper note.
Nothing ominous here.
Barrett quickly establishes himself as the groups rational pain in the ass, questioning Tanner's beliefs and opinions and the groups abilities.
I've barely spoken to you, yet I despise you already.
After a fight with Tanner about the identity of their host specter, an unseen force attacks Barrett...
And ruins dinner, the ectoplasmic bastard.
...and he all but accuses her of trying to kill him.
But Barrett has more to worry about than almost being killed and trying to convince the rest of the group that the house just has a lot of electromagnetic energy lying around and no ghost. His wife is having erotic visions and, in a seeming trance,
But I'm guessing it was more due to her choice of reading material. From left to right; Obsessive Acts And Religious Practices by Sigmund Freud; The Worship of Priapus by Richard Payne Knight; The Psychology of Sex by Havelock Ellis;, Sin And Sex; Conation Volition; Sex And Celibacy by T. Long; The Anatomy of Abuses by Philip Stubbs; Phallic Worship; and Autoerotic Phenomena In Adolescence by K. Menzies. Yes, I think it's important you know the titles in case, you know, you want to look them up later.
goes downstairs and tries to seduce Fischer, who up to this point has done a commendable job of trying to avoid everyone like the plague.
He snaps her out of it, but the weirdness only gets worse the next day, when, despite Barrett's skepticism, Tanner finally finds what she believes is the cause of all the haunting.
Ewww....I hate it when they're gooey like that.
They try to put the body to rest, but after that things just get worse and what once began as a scientific investigation, descends into a need to discover the mysteries of the house and a fight for sanity and survival.
The Legend of Hell House is not a fun haunted house film in the vein of Hausu. Hell House is a dead serious film. In fact, it's very reminiscent of The Haunting, which also centers around a group of paranormal investigators wandering around a haunted house for several days.
Both films rely on psychological horror, going with the belief that the unseen or barely glimpsed is far more frightening than just throwing a demon in the viewers face in the first scene. This is not a "Boo!", jump out of your seat scary movie, so if that's what you're looking for you're going to be disappointed. Candles flicker for no reason, doors open and close by themselves, and when it's really pissed off the house throws pieces of decor at your face. Most of it is subtle, elaborately constructed, to slowly give you a growing feeling of unease and dread. This is good, and works well with the mood of the film, adding more mystery to the characters already long list of questions.
The first one being: Is it the cat? It's the cat's fault, isn't it?
But Hell House also differs from The Haunting. It may be firmly based on the old-fashioned tales of a maniacal haunted house, but there's a real sexual intensity in this film. The head of the house, Emeric Belasco , was so perverse and filled with sadistic egotism that he turned his house into a fortress of debauchery and murder. That same energy still resides in the house leading to scenes that are at once kinky, intense and disturbing.
If you're going to fondle it at least dust it first. And yes, only the women get possessed. Go figure.
The cast does a wonderful job of giving credible performances. Despite the material and how easy it would be to do so, their performances never slip into over acting or camp. Barrett is serious and so focused on his reliance to technology that his insistence of being the only voice of reason causes the most friction in the group. Both women start off as bold and confident but slowly descend into scared and skeptical as the house takes it toll, and Fischer, timid and fearful, must overcome his terror to save himself and solve the mystery of the house.
Being a psychological film, and made in 1973, the film focuses on practical effects, sound design, and character performance. So there is very little in the way of special effects, save for one scene that doesn't really hold up very well to today's CGI standards.
It's not bad, but it does feel dated compared to the rest of the film, which has held up amazingly well. Part of the reason for that is thanks to the fabulous cinematography and set design. The use of light and shadow,
I. See. You.
the dark wood moldings, the luscious furniture, the intricately designed statues....
Even the boring scientific experiments look awesome.
Even without the story, the movie is a gorgeous visual feast. Makes me want to go out, buy old furniture and redecorate. I could have put the movie on mute and been pleased.
The Legend of Hell House was based on the novel Hell House by Richard Matheson. Matheson also wrote the screenplay for the film, so if you've read the book and avoided the movie up until now, take heart, since I'm pretty sure the man knows his own source material, though the screenplay did reduce some of the book's more extreme elements, namely the sexuality. The cast also got a change up as the book was originally set in Main with a group of Americans.
Oh, and here's a picture of the actual house used in filming: Wykehurst Park, near the village of Bolney, East Sussex, in England.
Doesn't look nearly as scary without all that damned fog.
Unlike some of the previous movies in my other write ups, this movie's DVD be cheap.
Which is excellent, because it's a very good film that I plan on picking up eventually. What isn't excellent is that for some inexplicable reason they decided to exchange the cover art of the original poster with one that doesn't make a damn lick of sense. I suppose it had to do with some copyright issue, but it's still disappointing since the original cover is pretty classic.
Overall, The Legend of Hell House is an excellent ghost story that I found both fascinating and unnerving. It's very similar to Haunted Hill, so if you liked that and are looking for something more intense than then you'll probably enjoy Hell House. But if you didn't like that and you like your specters to focus more on the physical rather than the psychological, than you may not enjoy it as much.
Anyway, moving on...
The Legend of Hell House
Last week TCM showed something more along the lines of a cult classic and less along the lines of "Where the hell does Michi find this stuff?" I hadn't seen Hell House before, so I was quite psyched.
Four paranormal investigators are contacted by an eccentric millionaire (of course) to find evidence of the existence of life after death in the famed Belasco mansion, the “Mount Everest of haunted houses”, nicknamed Hell House.
It's hard to tell how many people a house has knocked off just by looking at it.
The group consists of physicist Lionel Barrett, his wife Ann (who has no real reason to be there), mental medium Florence Tanner, and physical medium Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall), Fischer being the only member having previously survived a trip to the house twenty years earlier. What happened to the other members of his group? They were either horribly injured or driven insane. So the group starts off on a really chipper note.
Nothing ominous here.
Barrett quickly establishes himself as the groups rational pain in the ass, questioning Tanner's beliefs and opinions and the groups abilities.
I've barely spoken to you, yet I despise you already.
After a fight with Tanner about the identity of their host specter, an unseen force attacks Barrett...
And ruins dinner, the ectoplasmic bastard.
...and he all but accuses her of trying to kill him.
But Barrett has more to worry about than almost being killed and trying to convince the rest of the group that the house just has a lot of electromagnetic energy lying around and no ghost. His wife is having erotic visions and, in a seeming trance,
But I'm guessing it was more due to her choice of reading material. From left to right; Obsessive Acts And Religious Practices by Sigmund Freud; The Worship of Priapus by Richard Payne Knight; The Psychology of Sex by Havelock Ellis;, Sin And Sex; Conation Volition; Sex And Celibacy by T. Long; The Anatomy of Abuses by Philip Stubbs; Phallic Worship; and Autoerotic Phenomena In Adolescence by K. Menzies. Yes, I think it's important you know the titles in case, you know, you want to look them up later.
goes downstairs and tries to seduce Fischer, who up to this point has done a commendable job of trying to avoid everyone like the plague.
He snaps her out of it, but the weirdness only gets worse the next day, when, despite Barrett's skepticism, Tanner finally finds what she believes is the cause of all the haunting.
Ewww....I hate it when they're gooey like that.
They try to put the body to rest, but after that things just get worse and what once began as a scientific investigation, descends into a need to discover the mysteries of the house and a fight for sanity and survival.
The Legend of Hell House is not a fun haunted house film in the vein of Hausu. Hell House is a dead serious film. In fact, it's very reminiscent of The Haunting, which also centers around a group of paranormal investigators wandering around a haunted house for several days.
Both films rely on psychological horror, going with the belief that the unseen or barely glimpsed is far more frightening than just throwing a demon in the viewers face in the first scene. This is not a "Boo!", jump out of your seat scary movie, so if that's what you're looking for you're going to be disappointed. Candles flicker for no reason, doors open and close by themselves, and when it's really pissed off the house throws pieces of decor at your face. Most of it is subtle, elaborately constructed, to slowly give you a growing feeling of unease and dread. This is good, and works well with the mood of the film, adding more mystery to the characters already long list of questions.
The first one being: Is it the cat? It's the cat's fault, isn't it?
But Hell House also differs from The Haunting. It may be firmly based on the old-fashioned tales of a maniacal haunted house, but there's a real sexual intensity in this film. The head of the house, Emeric Belasco , was so perverse and filled with sadistic egotism that he turned his house into a fortress of debauchery and murder. That same energy still resides in the house leading to scenes that are at once kinky, intense and disturbing.
If you're going to fondle it at least dust it first. And yes, only the women get possessed. Go figure.
The cast does a wonderful job of giving credible performances. Despite the material and how easy it would be to do so, their performances never slip into over acting or camp. Barrett is serious and so focused on his reliance to technology that his insistence of being the only voice of reason causes the most friction in the group. Both women start off as bold and confident but slowly descend into scared and skeptical as the house takes it toll, and Fischer, timid and fearful, must overcome his terror to save himself and solve the mystery of the house.
Being a psychological film, and made in 1973, the film focuses on practical effects, sound design, and character performance. So there is very little in the way of special effects, save for one scene that doesn't really hold up very well to today's CGI standards.
It's not bad, but it does feel dated compared to the rest of the film, which has held up amazingly well. Part of the reason for that is thanks to the fabulous cinematography and set design. The use of light and shadow,
I. See. You.
the dark wood moldings, the luscious furniture, the intricately designed statues....
Even the boring scientific experiments look awesome.
Even without the story, the movie is a gorgeous visual feast. Makes me want to go out, buy old furniture and redecorate. I could have put the movie on mute and been pleased.
The Legend of Hell House was based on the novel Hell House by Richard Matheson. Matheson also wrote the screenplay for the film, so if you've read the book and avoided the movie up until now, take heart, since I'm pretty sure the man knows his own source material, though the screenplay did reduce some of the book's more extreme elements, namely the sexuality. The cast also got a change up as the book was originally set in Main with a group of Americans.
Oh, and here's a picture of the actual house used in filming: Wykehurst Park, near the village of Bolney, East Sussex, in England.
Doesn't look nearly as scary without all that damned fog.
Unlike some of the previous movies in my other write ups, this movie's DVD be cheap.
Overall, The Legend of Hell House is an excellent ghost story that I found both fascinating and unnerving. It's very similar to Haunted Hill, so if you liked that and are looking for something more intense than then you'll probably enjoy Hell House. But if you didn't like that and you like your specters to focus more on the physical rather than the psychological, than you may not enjoy it as much.
Last edited by Michi on Sat Mar 17, 2012 6:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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BoringSupreez
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Re: What was the last movie you've seen?
Funny that it was in the news today that George Clooney was arrested, because I just watched Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? last night. Very funny movie.
prfsnl_gmr wrote:There is nothing feigned about it. What I wrote is a display of actual moral superiority.
