Paul Verhoeven Show Girls,Starship Troopers,Basic Instinct

With the exception of Hollow Man, I hope that was just a momentary dip in quality.

I saw Showgirls at a friend's house....I had a hard on an hour before we even popped it in.....I watched Saved By The Bell religiously and the alumni factor had my pecker raging......the scene where Nomi gives the dude a lap dance and you can see her pooter line (in a non- porn? amazing!), I pulled out the covert techniques, baby.....forced my thang 'tween my legs and used my things to bust a nice one....took a bathroom break and buddies were none the wiser.....haha.

showgirls is the best exploration of femeale exploitation to hit/tit the big screen in yrs, thoruough itniguing analysis of gender relationships, the selling of flesh, the forced comeptition, masculinst meanderings etc

esterhastz's (sp?) book american dream (title? i dunno - i only reviewed it a few weeks ago) isf ucking birlliant - the guy is amagical writer

His Dutch films are assaultive, occasionally chaotic. His American films can be equally hard to take, but they are beautifully put together, absolutely controlled. It helps when he has a good script. Ed Neumeier's scripts for RoboCop and Starship Troopers are without flaw. The script for Showgirls is well-constructed overall, but there is, um, trouble in the details. I don't know if the trouble is mine or not though.

Also, Dick Jones = Donald Rumsfeld?

I also saw Total Recall again a couple of years ago. Man, does that production design set a new standard for ugliness. As for Hollow Man--I'd been really looking forward to it, and found it a real let-down. Drives me crazy that dude goes back to the lab.

I haven't seen Robocop since it first came out (and so, not since long before I would've known who Verhoeven was). Now I'm gonna have to rent it, since I remember so little of it.

Are you associated with the Seminar in some way, Tep?

Verhoeven has always been pretty frank with his childhood experiences about growing up during the German occupation and then subsequent American occupation of the Netherlands during WWII and he touches on fascist/ritualized violence quite a bit whether it's Spetters, Soldier Of Orange, Robocop, Starship Troopers - hell, even Flesh And Blood (which I think is due for a re-evaluation)

Verhoeven is ultra-Classic for being the first person ever to show up at the Razzie Awards to collect an award (for worst director - Showgirls).

I like the trash of basic instict too. haven't seen showgirls.

Uh, I just woke up and I realized I can't articulate myself properly. Will post again later.

Re-evalutation - Nah, it's still shite.

-- ethan (ethan...), July 24th, 2001.

Action movies are politics! I didn't sit through Judy Butler seminars fer nuthin'!

ed-209 is perfect the way it is and you take that back

well its animation looks really dated

I don't want ed209 animated like fantastic mr fox.

I love the dated animation. Remember, ED-209 was a failure! Serves them right for developing it in stop motion.

I disagree that it's dated, other than after a certain date they stopped using stop-motion for those kinds of things. robocop could have been made anywhere from 1960s-1990s

the stop motion makes the staircase moment all time imo, would suck with cgi

Who is our modern equivalent of Kurtwood Smith who can sell a line like "Bitches leave?"

stop motion makes the movements of ed-209 a lot more herky jerky and kind of uncanny valley creepy in a way

xp Shia

Who is our modern equivalent of Kurtwood Smith who can sell a line like "Bitches leave?"

They should cast Nicky Katt in this as any of the bad guys.

stop motion makes the movements of ed-209 a lot more herky jerky and kind of uncanny valley creepy in a way

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Thursday, June 6, 2013 2:31 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it takes me out of my suspension of disbelief

They need to redo starship troopers with Jim Henson muppets as bugs with Michael Shannon in the Denise Richards role if we're going this route.

Denise Richards should play RoboCop.

she has the same lips as Peter weller.

Comparing the new work to the 1987 film, Padilha said in 2011, "the environment nowadays is different than the environment in the 80’s and the way to explore the concept is different."[15]
― fit and working again, Thursday, June 6, 2013 2:11 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except RoboCop is amazingly prescient for a sci-fi film

directors say dumb things while promoting a movie, news at 11

This looks like some bullshit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdhUIC5EWl8

Years from now, we're going to think Padilha was prescient when, in 2001, he noted that "the environment nowadays is different than the environment in the 80’s and the way to explore the concept is different."

or 2011, even

Comedian Rory Scovel had a hilarious bit on his first standup album about Detroit, and the fact that Robocop accurately predicted what the city would be like in the future. He has the city council sitting around in 2012 saying, "I know this sounds crazy, but . . . should we go ahead and build a robot policeman?"

Be funny (sad) if the movie was him patrolling half-empty Detroit, trudging his way through overgrown flora and boarded-up neighborhoods.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/10/02/article-2211498-154CB4AD000005DC-978_964x744.jpg

it's not like detroit wasn't a poster child for urban decay and white flight in 1987, you know?

counterfactuals: what if robocop had been set in cleveland?

We'd have elected Robocop as mayor.

Or built him a football stadium. Probably that.

He'd be patrolling the burning banks of the Cuyahoga.

Speaking of prescient, irrc MIchigan is in fact currently under some degree of Martial Law.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/11-things-you-learn-after-spending-a-week-with-neil-patrick-harris-20140512

11. The rest of the cast of Paul Verhoeven's cult-classic 1997 sci-fi satire "Starship Troopers" didn't understand the "satire" part – and NPH won't quite admit to being in on the joke.
"We filmed that movie with no intention of it being funny," he says. "Casper [Van Dien] and Denise [Richards], they all thought that it was a big, franchise action movie they were doing. Which I think was necessary, because had they known that there was an element of ... not parody, but, stilted reality? I think they would have played into that. I was just excited to be on a big movie!"

NPH is such a dude.

A couple years ago there was some ridiculous recruiting advertisement for the National Guard that played in theaters before movies that featured some band playing a rock song about "citizen soldiers" and every time I just kept thinking out maybe Starship Troopers was too real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgV6VUinDEA&feature=kp

A couple years ago there was some ridiculous recruiting advertisement for the National Guard that played in theaters before movies that featured some band playing a rock song about "citizen soldiers" and every time I just kept thinking out maybe Starship Troopers was too real.

― a strange man (mh), Thursday, May 15, 2014 9:17 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's an excellent example of satire for that reason. by making what the film depicts just a little more ridiculous than what we actually have, it can help people to recognize the absurdity/horror show that we live in.

though as often is the case the thing the film is parodying is a little old--starship troopers relies a bit too much on parodying outdated tropes IMO. although the alibi for that is "we were parodying the cold-war context of the original novel," that seems like a reduced achievement.

i'd like to dedicate that last post to the word "parodying."

I don't think they went far enough

though as often is the case the thing the film is parodying is a little old--starship troopers relies a bit too much on parodying outdated tropes IMO. although the alibi for that is "we were parodying the cold-war context of the original novel," that seems like a reduced achievement.

i can see why one might have been inclined to say this in 1997, but half a decade later, the satire of rah-rah patriotism and demonic othering of the enemy seemed pretty prescient (or at least perennially fresh), imo.

fascist militarism is like the one thing that's always in style. why do you think they wear black.

Great (but very short) interview with Verhoeven in the Guardian today about Starship Troopers

I was looking for the prototype of blond, white and arrogant, and Casper Van Dien was so close to the images I remembered from Leni Riefenstahl’s films. I borrowed from Triumph of the Will in the parody propaganda reel that opens the film, too. I was using Riefenstahl to point out, or so I thought, that these heroes and heroines were straight out of Nazi propaganda. No one saw it at the time. I don’t know whether or not the actors realised – we never discussed it. I thought Neil Patrick Harris arriving on the set in an SS uniform might clear it up.

There was so much regime change at Columbia Pictures at the time that we slipped through the net. When the executives finally saw it, they said: “Their flag – it’s a Nazi flag!” I said, “No … it’s completely different colours.”

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/jan/22/how-we-made-starship-troopers-paul-verhoeven-nazis-leni-riefenstahl

love this film

i remember the Washington Post piece he's referencing, it was written by Stephen Hunter. it was amazing, it was like watching someone rip into Dr Strangelove bc it's pro-nuclear war. i think reactions to this film are a perfect litmus test to see how good you are at watching films; if you think this was a story of Nazi wish fulfillment, you're not good.

I found it. Wow.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/11/11/goosestepping-at-the-movies/83272787-18ae-4126-b8c4-3d46b1b31277/

How can you get it so completely and at the same time not get it at all? Reminds me of that review on pitchfork of I Get Wet.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starshiptroopers/images/9/99/Oathtothefederation.jpg

starship troopers gets more relevant every year - it’s a classic

i saw some chud tweeting the other day that dreamers under age 27 could be allowed to stay if they joined the military and i immediately thought of those SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP infomercials

It's kind of amazing that a film like this could get made at that scale and budget, and with such good special effects, such that the satire was bound to go over some people's heads. I definitely didn't get it when I saw it at age 13.

I got all the satirical intentions; it's just really silly.

Whoa, that WaPo review really is next level not-getting-it.

luv2join all but one of the dots and proceed to embarrass myself in the pages of the new york times

Rewatching Showgirls and I realize now in 2025 why I’ve always loved his version of satire so much: “because it seems AI generated”

Also Gus Van Sant should direct a shot-for-shot remake of this movie

And Von Trier should challenge Verhoeven in a “Five Obstructions” sequel