is terry gilliam's "time bandits" the best film ever made?

David Rappaport
Is very, very short.

(Ahem)

David Rappaport est mort.

not the best film ever made but mighty fine, with minor trippy episodes still intact and functioning.

good bit not mentioned so far: the boat they are on in the time of legends turns out to be a giant's hat.

"10 years pass..."

bloody hell, looks like we all lost the map.

Loved this when I was 11, bought the screenplay and read it many times when I was 13.

A:eye

All time. The dread I felt at the ending (I was just about Kevin's age when I saw it upon release in the theater) was formative. That feeling would later be replicated regularly as I struggled with depression growing up and even now! Yeah! Seriously, though, love it. Saw it again recently for first time in many years and it's still perfect.

yeah. i saw it at age 14, and i remember thinking at the end "that's exactly how i feel" and being sort of freaked out by the idea that i'd be similarly lost for the rest of my life. gilliam otm.

top 3 Gilliam films ever made, easy

for some reason i saw this movie several times at a pretty young age, probably 10 or younger, before seeing any other Gilliam or even any Python, and it's just tattooed on my brain. "don't touch it, it's evil" and the film ending with the kids parents dead was the first really fucked up downer ending i probably ever saw.

ya this was one of my childhood favorites, so good

This was the first 'adult' film I saw, the floating head freaked me the fuck out, age 5

"that's god? that's what god looks like?!" etc.

I can never get over just how fucked up the ending is - imagine someone trying to get away w/ that now (except as some sort of misleading sequel tease).

good bit not mentioned so far: the boat they are on in the time of legends turns out to be a giant's hat.

good bit not mentioned so far: the Castle Of Ultimate Darkness is built out of gigantic pieces of Lego.

My neighbor's son just turned 10, so she asked me if I had a few movies to lend for the birthday party. I was looking on the shelf and found all sorts of stuff he could see, like "Airplane," but being on the safe side, I kind of figured it was a little weird for a mom to set them up for a room full of boys. That's the sort of movie they should discover on their own. But then I saw "Time Bandits" and I thought, yeah, this is perfect. And they loved it. Best of all, most likely none of them had ever heard of it.

Movie is so good, so inventive, and the set-design is all time. Plus, catchy George Harrison ditty!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2wrte1ijlY

OTM youtube comment:

I LOVE this movie! Every time it ends I feel like I'm saying goodbye to old friends as I sit through the credits just hear this song.

I can never get over just how fucked up the ending is - imagine someone trying to get away w/ that now (except as some sort of misleading sequel tease).

otm. son and daughter watched it for first time with me yesterday. his laugh at the killings at the end turning instantly to "wait, they don't just end the film like that..?" different generation these teenagers...

actually never saw the whle thing until recently. great movie.

I was looking on the shelf and found all sorts of stuff he could see, like "Airplane,"

Daddy, why is that blow-up pilot jumping up and down?

great bad guy. "I'd start with lasers, 8 o'clock, day one"

excerpt from a new book... editing wars! before Brazil!

The first ripples of discontent surfaced when O’Brien insisted that Gilliam change the film’s ending where Kevin’s mother and father are killed. ‘You can’t blow up parents at the end of a children’s film!’ exploded O’Brien. Gilliam stood his ground. ‘That’s the whole point. No one’s done it before.’ But O’Brien was insistent. ‘It’ll alienate the audience.’ Gilliam was ready for that one. ‘The audience is kids and every kid has this fantasy about getting rid of his parents.’ To solve the argument, a special screening for a bunch of youngsters was arranged and the first one out, a particularly precocious five-year-old boy, was asked what his favourite moment of the film was. ‘The parents being blown up!’ He whooped with delight....

It’s striking how Gilliam refused to budge on anything with O’Brien over Time Bandits, even eliciting mild exasperation from one of his most ardent admirers, George Harrison, who told the director, ‘You remind me of John Lennon, you’re so difficult, so bolshie. Can’t you just compromise?’ It was the thing that Gilliam was most proud of that Harrison ever said to him. Harrison’s other major critique over that incident took the form of his one and only song for Time Bandits, which plays over the end titles. Gilliam remembers, ‘What I discovered after the event was that that song is George’s notes to me about my attitude on the film. On the lyric, there’s something about apologies. He felt I owed Denis and him some apologies because I was so unbending in the way I approached things. It’s really funny because I enjoyed listening to the song but at the time I had no idea it was George writing his notes to me.’ Some of the lyrics read ‘Greedy feeling, wheeling dealing. Losing what you won. See the dream come undone,’ and most revealingly, ‘...all you owe is apologies.’

Eric Idle actually believes that some of the gloss came off the HandMade wagon for Harrison as a direct result of Time Bandits’ turbulent post-production. ‘I think George fell out of love with it when he made Time Bandits because he just realised what Gilliam was really like. You try to discuss a budget with Terry Gilliam, it’s kind of ridiculous. Terry is completely mono, he’s taken several businesses out of existence. Several companies have fallen victim to the Gilliam piracy.’

http://io9.com/its-a-miracle-that-terry-gilliams-time-bandits-even-g-1332560707

I used to get kind of sad when the parents blew up. I guess I relatively liked my parents at the time.

Still like 'Brazil' better but Cleese's "What awful people!", in Time Bandits never fails to make me smile.

liking my parents ruined roald dahl for me. fuck u mom and dad

that piece v funny for how they almost gave Sean Connery all the profits

the piece doesn't say that at all, and as if denis o'brien of all people would make that fuckup

(it says o'brien had structured connery's share so that it came out of / preceded gilliam's share. which is far more pvmic)

i didn't think was all that great, and i've never been able to watch brazil, and it makes me sad cos everyone else has so much enthusiasm for them

Love "Time Bandits" so much, esp. how phenomenally iconic it is without being iconic canon. That is, it's a massively memorable and cool looking and fun adventure, yet I encounter kids all the time who have never heard of it/seen it. It's a real pleasure to introduce this movie (along with the likes of ET) to families/friends whose kids have been numbed by rapid paces, CGI and the notion that big-budget action movies are all acted with American accents.

yer right sic, I shoulda said Gilliam's profits

(even American cinephiles have no idea who Denis O'Brien is)

Beatles fans might know him as the manager that ripped off Geo Harrison so bad that Harrison agreed to the Anthology TV series and albums though

Ahead of its time!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlJaIREGnaM

I remember seeing it as a kid and just being ecstatic at the end... his shitty parents were dead, and the other adults just left him alone! I remember being super-jealous of him because I was like "that kid can do anything he wants, and nobody will bother him."

this is the best movie

I haven't watched it since I saw it in the theater. Fuck that evil rock!

The morons are among us

http://observationdeck.io9.com/1-star-movie-reviews-time-bandits-1470210020/1471229966/

first view in a long while today; Napoleon episode still not at all funny. David Warner microchip dialogue above is indeed prsecient! and clearly all that shit is Satan's work.

and Jim Broadbent as the game show host!

Warner, so good.

The scene in Tron when he talks to the mcp and signs off with a simple "Cute".

Gilliam says on his CC commentary that Connery, about 50yo, wouldn't let him shooting him mounting his horse bcz "it wouldn't look good." Time, the bandit.

He also says that Ralph Richardson plied him with gin & tonics to test him at a Sunday meeting, and that it was RR's idea to put Evil in a postal box.

haven't seen this since I was a kid, need to rewatch

did rewatch lost in la mancha recently and man am I glad he didn't make his horrible quixote film (he comes across like an awful manchild in that film too)

He always has

yeah I guess I haven't seen him talk much but I do remember him seeming slightly more sympathetic the first time I watched (when it was first released)

I watched this w my daughter recently and it holds up v well, altho Morbz is right that the Napoleon thing isn't especially funny (I do like the Bandits' rendition of "Me and My Shadow" though). Otherwise the cast is uniformly incredible, Richardson is hilarious, Broadbent is creepy as fuck, Warner is wonderful.

also great George Harrison song over the closing credits

Seeing Broadbent crop up in Gilliam's stuff then was always a treat.

visited Sir Ralph's grave in November, forgot to tell him "Being dead no excuse to slough off work"

lol

uhhh, re Quixote:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1318517/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_1

rats

"also great George Harrison song over the closing credits

― Οὖτις, "

oh yeah, weirdly I've had that song in my head a lot for the last month!

Didn't George Harrison essentially underwrite it too? Anyway, great film.

this movie is pretty dope. i would bring it to a desert island.

One of my friends just saw it last week for the first time ever and he loved it.

i saw this for the first time with a characteristically vocal Times Square crowd on opening weekend in '81. When the bandits appeared in tuxes on the Titanic: "DAMN, talk about Kool & The Gang!"

Didn't George Harrison essentially underwrite it too?

Via Handmade Films, yup.

Thought we were referring to the song tbh

I few years ago, I was chilling and grilling with some friends. Someone pointed to a chunk of carbonized mesquite and said "it's EEEEVIL," and everyone present got the reference immediately. This movie makes me happy every time I think of it, which is often.

But slightly apart from the topic, the mention of Jim Broadbent reminds me that there was a period where he was basically inescapable in movie theaters. If you were making an Anglo-American movie with an ensemble cast, it appeared that you literally COULD NOT MAKE A MOVIE if you didn't have Broadbent. Check this motherfucker out, especially 1991-2001.

1991: Enchanted April
1992: The Crying Game
1994: Bullets Over Broadway
1994: Princess Caraboo
1997: The Borrowers
1998: Little Voice
1999: Topsy-Turvy
2001: Bridget Jones
2001: Iris
2001: Moulin Rouge
2002: Gangs of New York
2005: Chronicles of Narnia
2007: Hot Fuzz
2008: Indiana Jones
2009: Young Victoria
2012: Cloud Atlas

If you went to an Anglo-American movie with an ensemble cast in those days, you were pretty much going to get broadBent.

1994's "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and 2003's "Love Actually" were notable for NOT having Jim Broadbent in them.

During the opening credits of "Love Actually," I actually leaned over to my wife and said "Jim Broadbent must have been too busy."

1990: Life Is Sweet
1989: Erik the Viking

Possibly the least known living Oscar-winning actor?

He's not a leading man or a sex symbol but it certainly seemed like he was in almost every movie for a long time.

Kinda think there should be a POLL on those, btw.

Doesn't matter.

His only fools and horses appearances are it

National Theatre of Brent ftw.