they live
― mark s, Wednesday, 15 May 2019 19:36 (five years ago) link
id never seen precinct 13
its bad
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Tuesday, 20 August 2019 20:41 (five years ago) link
no movie which features a kid getting shot dead in the first couple of minutes can be entirely bad iirc
― Andy Jones, Earth-Born Angel of Love (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 20 August 2019 20:42 (five years ago) link
Nah, it's good, just kind of formative.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 20 August 2019 20:43 (five years ago) link
i promise you ive just seen it, its bad
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Tuesday, 20 August 2019 20:48 (five years ago) link
Great score at least.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 20 August 2019 21:19 (five years ago) link
yep
and girl moment and slow setup are good
performances are shockin tho
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Tuesday, 20 August 2019 21:29 (five years ago) link
dun-diddle-dun-dun a-dun-diddle-dun-dun dun-diddle-dun-dun dun-DUN-diddle-dun-dun
― And according to some websites, there were “sexcapades.” (James Morrison), Friday, 23 August 2019 01:51 (five years ago) link
‘Assault.. ‘ is great! What a movie! I always loved the story of how it did nothing in the States but then became a big hit in Britain at festivals where everyone went crazy over it. I hated Dark Star which is about as funny as a pin through the eye, so it tickles me that his co-writer on that hated ‘Assault..’. Interesting to note it currently has 98% on Rotten tomatoes.
It was a cast of as-good-as-unknowns so that explains the unpolished acting I suppose.
― piscesx, Friday, 23 August 2019 04:08 (five years ago) link
feel i normally align with darragh on films but Assault on Precinct 13 is good and James Morrison makes an excellent point.
― Fizzles, Friday, 23 August 2019 05:24 (five years ago) link
oh deems is talking about the *performances* lol.
― Fizzles, Friday, 23 August 2019 05:25 (five years ago) link
ha, develop that
i love any other carpenter ive seen, and was really looking forward to this so am willing to be talked round a bit.
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Friday, 23 August 2019 08:18 (five years ago) link
well i’m ion a train but yes i don’t think the performances are v good but probably don’t need to be. saw this when i was 15 and that’s where it’s status for me comes from. but if i give it a bit of thought i’d say the escalation of violence, from initial incident to gradually coalescing threat is v well managed. that threat coalesces into the specific impacts of bullets etc on the claustrophobic precinct but they’re only ever loosely linked to that brooding presence just beyond the visible iirc. in that respect it’s much like the early parts of the fog.
― Fizzles, Friday, 23 August 2019 08:44 (five years ago) link
hmm this is all fair tbh
i hate to be that person doing that thing where youve seen a genuinely bold and influential effort after all the movies that have done it since (and tbf often better, which of course given budget and a template is easy done) and therefore seeing mainly the faults...but i think im that person this time
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Friday, 23 August 2019 09:13 (five years ago) link
As I'm sure has been mentioned somewhere on this thread already, Assault is basically Hawks' Rio Bravo transplanted to an urban modern-day setting - but I think knowledge of that actually makes the Carpenter seem more ingenious!
IIRC ex-ilxor Enrique tried to argue somewhere (again, maybe here) that the remake of Assault is better than the original, but he may have been provoking us complacent auteurist at the time.
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 23 August 2019 09:21 (five years ago) link
i’ve only seen the remake once, back when it was released, but i remember it being pretty good
― Andy Jones, Earth-Born Angel of Love (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 23 August 2019 10:43 (five years ago) link
Obviously Carpenter loved Hawks and siege movies, and he would go to that well a lot - even Halloween is ultimately kind of a one-person siege movie - but Assault is also kind of a riff on zombie movies (minus the zombies).
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 23 August 2019 11:49 (five years ago) link
right down to the weather/lubar radio reports at the start
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Friday, 23 August 2019 13:02 (five years ago) link
lunar
― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Friday, 23 August 2019 19:28 (five years ago) link
AOP13 is good but it's certainly this (relative to expectations) really understated and bleak and dim movie which i think works effectively as a mood flick more than a kinetic action movie, which is to its credit. i do remember the performances being blatant in terms of the lack of charisma happening onscreen, everything taken away from the performances but the words and the gestures. I mean practically Bressonian in a way tbh.
― omar little, Friday, 23 August 2019 19:47 (five years ago) link
There's a quote from Simon Pegg on the wiki that sums that up, sort of:
"You wouldn't really call it an action film," claims Pegg, "because it was pre- the evolution of that kind of film. And yet it is kind of an action film in a way."
Which is party why it works as a kind of link between Night of the Living Dead and, I dunno, Die Hard.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 23 August 2019 19:58 (five years ago) link
Wikipedia says "Assault ... was shot in only 20 days, including Thanksgiving, on a budget of $100,000."
and you can see every dollar on the screen
― Brad C., Saturday, 24 August 2019 18:51 (five years ago) link
Carpenter only ever makes siege movies, just sometimes the protagonists are under siege (they live, the fog, prince of darkness), and sometimes they're the ones conducting the siege (big trouble in little china, escape from new york, vampires). His is a world of fortresses.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Saturday, 24 August 2019 22:19 (five years ago) link
in dark star the protagonists are under siege by their own bomb
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 24 August 2019 23:07 (five years ago) link
Embarrassingly, I must confess that I only saw Escape From New York for the first time last night. Solid flick! Although not quite what I expected. I figured it would have the brash swagger of his mid-'80s action-oriented material, but falling as it does between The Fog and The Thing it makes sense in hindsight that it's actually a moodier and more meditative film than I'd imagined. Wanna see LA now even though I'm sure it isn't the sequel this thing deserved.
― McGrief the Crying Dog (Old Lunch), Sunday, 25 August 2019 00:47 (five years ago) link
LA is bad
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 25 August 2019 00:48 (five years ago) link
What's the word on Black Moon Rising? I was first alerted to its existence via a trailer compilation I own and thought 'THIS LOOKS AMAZING' even before I learned that there was a Carpenter connection.
Also need to get around to watching Somebody's Watching Me! so the title stops seeming like an indictment of my continued negligence.
― McGrief the Crying Dog (Old Lunch), Sunday, 25 August 2019 00:51 (five years ago) link
FTR, I seem to enjoy Carpenter even when he is bad (eg Vampires and Ghosts of Mars).
Oh right, the other one I haven't seen and always forget he did: Memoirs of a See-Through Chevy Chase. Is there any point?
― McGrief the Crying Dog (Old Lunch), Sunday, 25 August 2019 00:54 (five years ago) link
Nah, Carpenter didn't write it or do the soundtrack... it's pretty bad.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Sunday, 25 August 2019 02:43 (five years ago) link
I've never seen Memoirs. I always forget about Starman (which is not a siege film).Black Moon Rising he ... wrote? Like The Eyes of Laura Mars?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 August 2019 03:30 (five years ago) link
Yeah, he only wrote the screenplay (directed by the fella who helmed the feted Burt Reynolds vehicle Malone).But I mean just look at this thing and tell me it isn't simply drenched in unadulterated Carpenterismhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MFD9P-QupFs
― McGrief the Crying Dog (Old Lunch), Sunday, 25 August 2019 03:43 (five years ago) link
They Live IS pretty good!
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 17:44 (four years ago) link
Kinda surprised you liked it!
Read the Lethem monograph on the film from several years back if you the chance.
― Maria Edgelord (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 17:50 (four years ago) link
*get the chance
well it's Carpenter at the limits of his talent, and he knew to give Roddy Piper fewer lines than he would Kurt Russell.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 18:34 (four years ago) link
I'm here to chew bubble gum and listen to Morbs' insights into the horror genre, and Morbs is all outta insights into the horror genre.
― Pauline Male (Eric H.), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 18:57 (four years ago) link
yeah that famous one-liner is the kind that impresses lotsa 14-year-old boys
more scifi than horror, honeybunch
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:02 (four years ago) link
i did like that there isn't even a liplock with Meg Foster
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:03 (four years ago) link
Also that one-liner is the only memorable line in the whole movie, as far as I remember.
― Pauline Male (Eric H.), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:07 (four years ago) link
the line is great because Piper’s character is an idiot who would come up with something like that
― now let's play big lunch take little lunch (sic), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:08 (four years ago) link
I always felt like it stops the movie dead a bit, much like the endless fight scene. As much as I really like the film, I wish it didn’t wink so much.
― Maria Edgelord (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:11 (four years ago) link
the winking kinda elevates it for me
"Brother, life's a bitch, and she's back in heat."
the protractedness of the fight scene is what makes it work! put the goddman glasses on, you might say to your Trumpist relations as you pummel them.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:27 (four years ago) link
Letham has a similar take on the fight scene, without the Trumpist angle (which didn’t exist yet). I get it; I just think the film is already goofy enough (the cheapo FX, the casting of a wrestler in the lead) that it didn’t need to run a highlighter over its sillier aspects.
― Maria Edgelord (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:40 (four years ago) link
/They Live/ IS pretty good!
― expedited frictionless convergences (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:44 (four years ago) link
morbs otm re: the fight scene
― american bradass (BradNelson), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 19:46 (four years ago) link
well, replace Reaganite for Trumpist at the time
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 20:03 (four years ago) link
the fight scene isn’t just protracted, it’s extremely awkward and graceless. It rules!
― brimstead, Tuesday, 22 October 2019 20:42 (four years ago) link
yeah, it's two stubborn tough dudes without anyone around to go "break it up guys"
― now let's play big lunch take little lunch (sic), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 21:33 (four years ago) link
also it goes on so long that it gets boring, then it goes on so much longer that it gets funny, then it keeps going and gets boring, and still keeps going so long that it gets funny again
― now let's play big lunch take little lunch (sic), Tuesday, 22 October 2019 21:35 (four years ago) link