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Wheat Loaf posted:I wonder if the movie version of The Silence of the Lambs played into that "It's awesome to be a bad guy!" trend you got amongst Tarantino copycats (the apotheosis of which was The Boondock Saints) which were discussed a bit here a little while ago. I think it definitely does. I mean I don't think Demme was particularly influenced by Tarantino, but when you look at the reactions to the Hannibal character its many imitators, I mean this was the time when as a kid I could walk into a comic book store and buy trading cards of serial killers. The serial killer was definitely the monster of the 90s.
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Jan 28, 2018 21:09
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Neo Rasa posted:I think it definitely does. I mean I don't think Demme was particularly influenced by Tarantino, but when you look at the reactions to the Hannibal character its many imitators, I mean this was the time when as a kid I could walk into a comic book store and buy trading cards of serial killers. The serial killer was definitely the monster of the 90s. Demme had been a director for years before Tarantino made his first movie; like Coppola and others, Demme got his start working on Roger Corman pictures. If anything, the influence probably went the other way around (in any event, The Silence of the Lambs came out before Reservoir Dogs). As an aside, because it's not an action movie at all (but it is a crime movie), I think it's a bit odd how Goodfellas gets all the acclaim while the other Martin Scorcese/Nicholas Pileggi/Robert De Niro/Joe Pesci collaboration from the 90s (Casino) is a lot better. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 21:11
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One of the reasons Silence works so well is because Hannibal is presented as more of an abstract concept or force of nature than a human being. He has superhuman abilities: he can smell Clarice's perfume, capable of seemingly insane feats of strength, and his penchant for pageantry defies any realistic limitations, such as how is he capable of flaying/crucifying a guard, stealing the face of another, and setting up the elevator distraction in such a short amount of time. What makes all that fascinating is when it's paired against a much more realistic threat like Jame Gumb: he has to use a lovely Ted Bundy ploy to trick women into his van, he lives in utter squalor (note the shot of how dirty his kitchen is, and the general haze throughout the upper floors of his house), and seems to adhere to no particular ethos beyond his base desire (his basement dwelling is covered in Nazi propaganda, despite the fact that Gumb himself adheres to a sexual identity that would have made him an enemy of the state in Nazi Germany). In Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal Lecter is presented as what the public expects serial killers to be like. Jame Gumb is what they're usually like in reality: selfish, angry, antisocial sociopaths who stumblefuck their way through a bodycount. Once you take away a comparative dynamic, Hannibal Lecter just kind of becomes this de facto Mary Sue of murderers.
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Jan 28, 2018 21:25
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Incidentally, any Silence/Lecter who hasn't seen the Hannibal TV series really ought to. It sounded like a disaster in the making - "Let's retell all the Hannibal novels for television, but without Clarice Starling because we couldn't get the rights!" - but turned out good-to-great. Overall, I'd rate Mads Mikkelson a better Hannibal than Hopkins; he's more insidious, charming on the surface but a merciless, calculating monster beneath. Seeing him work as a shrink who's superficially helping his patients but is actually gradually tearing them apart psychologically purely for his own sadistic amusement is an aspect barely touched on in the films. Bringing this back around to the subject of action movies, it was surprising that the TV series was if anything more gory and violent than Silence, which at the time was considered utterly shocking and horrific. Now we get graphic autopsies over dinner thanks to CSI and the like, while movies seem to have gone the other way so they can get that financially beneficial PG-13 rating. Granted I haven't seen many new films in the past few years due to having a kid, but the days of visceral violence in big action movies - the first two Die Hards and Lethal Weapons, Paul Verhoeven's Hollywood oeuvre, stuff like Commando and Cliffhanger and Under Siege 2 - seem to be long gone. Dredd was the last time I remember coming out of a cinema thinking "gently caress, that was pretty intense." (Things like the church scene in Kingsman, while fun, are more cartoony and piss-takey than anything.) Can anyone recommend something recent (and good) that would satisfy my itch for some 80s/90s-style squib-and-bloodbag action, preferably with a lone hero facing a small army of bad guys?
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Jan 28, 2018 23:24
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Payndz posted:Can anyone recommend something recent (and good) that would satisfy my itch for some 80s/90s-style squib-and-bloodbag action, preferably with a lone hero facing a small army of bad guys? If you haven’t seen Banshee the first season will absolutely scratch that itch. Seasons 2 and 3, not so much, but they’re great in a different way and still have moments. Season 4 kinda sucks but the finale’s pretty strong.
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Jan 28, 2018 23:57
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Wheat Loaf posted:Demme had been a director for years before Tarantino made his first movie; like Coppola and others, Demme got his start working on Roger Corman pictures. If anything, the influence probably went the other way around (in any event, The Silence of the Lambs came out before Reservoir Dogs). It's because Goodfellas is blisteringly paced and far more entertaining, while the slower, more operatic Casino is less so, though it probably is a better film. DivisionPost posted:If you haven’t seen Banshee the first season will absolutely scratch that itch. Seasons 2 and 3, not so much, but they’re great in a different way and still have moments. Season 4 kinda sucks but the finale’s pretty strong. Season 4 of Banshee was weird. They went from having a really good, ambitious fight scene (definitely by TV standards) every episode or so to having two fight scenes in the whole of season 4.
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Jan 29, 2018 00:32
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Fuckin watch Dredd again.
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Jan 29, 2018 01:44
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Tezcatlipoca posted:Fuckin watch Dredd again. I mean duh
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Jan 29, 2018 03:51
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Wheat Loaf posted:Is that one worth watching as a distraction for an hour and a half? I've only heard about it in the context of "Tarantino wannabe" movies. It's alright. McTeer's character is fun, Paz Vega looks nice, but it also has D.L. Hughley as a serious negative for me. I'd put it about on a level with Shoot Em Up, but it doesn't feature a lactating Monica Bellucci.
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Jan 29, 2018 04:04
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Fart City posted:One of the reasons Silence works so well is because Hannibal is presented as more of an abstract concept or force of nature than a human being. He has superhuman abilities: he can smell Clarice's perfume, capable of seemingly insane feats of strength, and his penchant for pageantry defies any realistic limitations, such as how is he capable of flaying/crucifying a guard, stealing the face of another, and setting up the elevator distraction in such a short amount of time.
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Jan 29, 2018 04:41
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Halloween Jack posted:I have a pet theory that Lecter is inspired by Doc Savage, down to the superhuman senses and the weird eyes. Also known for making strange noises with his mouth.
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Jan 29, 2018 05:03
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Is there an episode of the TV show where he rides a car by standing on the sideboard instead of sitting inside it in the passenger seat.
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Jan 29, 2018 05:30
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Payndz posted:Can anyone recommend something recent (and good) that would satisfy my itch for some 80s/90s-style squib-and-bloodbag action, preferably with a lone hero facing a small army of bad guys? It's three years old and I'm sure you've seen The Raid 2 but if not DEFINITELY see The Raid 2. Compared to the first one (which also completely owns) it has a few surprisingly gruesome moments.
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Jan 29, 2018 05:37
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Also Universal Soldier 3 and 4. Day of Reckoning has Scott Adkins too.
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Jan 29, 2018 05:47
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Halloween Jack posted:I have a pet theory that Lecter is inspired by Doc Savage, down to the superhuman senses and the weird eyes. Lecter is a very pulp character. He's like some sort of mashup between Savage and Fu Manchu. You mentioned his eyes, and that's something that doesn't really get talked about a lot, but it's worth reiterating: in the books he has maroon eyes. Like, he is explicitly not a normal human being in the source material. One of the things I liked about Hannibal, the series, is it took a lot of those arch elements and kind of played them down to something a little more grounded. Like yeah, Lecter his still this machiavellian mastermind who is capable of some fairly heightened feats (his fight scene with Jack Crawford being an example), but he never quite reaches into the realm of impossibility like he does in other interpretations.
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Jan 29, 2018 05:48
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Yeah, Hannibal in Silence is a 50 year old man who's been confined to a small cell for several years, yet he has catlike reflexes and incredible strength. It really reached its apogee in Hannibal Rising when it apparently became clear to Thomas Harris that Hannibal had become some kind of antihero purely on the strength of being a popular character in the movie adaptations. So he wrote a prequel where his abilities are explained as samurai training and his victims are Nazis.
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Jan 29, 2018 06:42
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The Hannibal TV series is one of my favorite shows of all time. It's incredibly beautiful, even when it is showing horrific, gory stuff. Every shot, every scene, every set piece looks like a museum installation. The production design, cinematography, costuming, everything -- some of the best we've ever seen on television, and probably in film too. It's on Amazon Prime, and I highly recommend it, whether you're familiar with the books and movies or not. It certainly gets gory, but as long as you can tolerate that, it's an incredibly rich and rewarding show.
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Jan 29, 2018 06:42
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Thanks to discussion of the thread I've started watching all the Mission: Impossible films as well. I really liked 1 but I didn't understand the opening scene very much, like what was the deal with the bloodied woman on the bed, the fake room, and stuff? Also that part where Ethan's teammate follows the guy with the disk who gets pulled through a fence and stabbed, and then she gets stabbed too, like couldn't you have just stepped back from the fence? But it was all good. I didn't like 3 very much (I guess I expected a lot more but it was just okay), skipped 4 because of that, watched 5 in theaters because I had nothing to do and was basically blown away. I guess I saw a bit of 2 in the bus so I have to see it in full.
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Jan 29, 2018 06:51
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:The Hannibal TV series is one of my favorite shows of all time. It's incredibly beautiful, even when it is showing horrific, gory stuff. Every shot, every scene, every set piece looks like a museum installation. The production design, cinematography, costuming, everything -- some of the best we've ever seen on television, and probably in film too. I'd say it looks more like food photography than a museum installation. They go out of the way to capture the texture of everything.
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Jan 29, 2018 06:51
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The brilliant thing about the foodporn scenes is that they use pig organs for all of them (pig guts are actually extremely similar to human guts visually). So depending on your diet and if you eat or cook meat regularly, every single scene thanks to how they're transitioned to and the music has this meta-moment where the food preparation makes you excited to see the completed meal and is genuinely delicious looking before the other part of your brain clicks to be like wait you're watching cannibalism.
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Jan 29, 2018 07:18
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Neo Rasa posted:The brilliant thing about the foodporn scenes is that they use pig organs for all of them (pig guts are actually extremely similar to human guts visually). So depending on your diet and if you eat or cook meat regularly, every single scene thanks to how they're transitioned to and the music has this meta-moment where the food preparation makes you excited to see the completed meal and is genuinely delicious looking before the other part of your brain clicks to be like wait you're watching cannibalism. I'll be honest, the roasted Eddie Izzard leg scene really made me want to do more roasts.
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Jan 29, 2018 07:25
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Snowman_McK posted:I'll be honest, the roasted Eddie Izzard leg scene really made me want to do more roasts. No shame in that, I mean the show is just really well made in that way.
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Jan 29, 2018 07:33
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brocked posted:It's alright. McTeer's character is fun, Paz Vega looks nice, but it also has D.L. Hughley as a serious negative for me. I'd put it about on a level with Shoot Em Up, but it doesn't feature a lactating Monica Bellucci. Sold. Fart City posted:Lecter is a very pulp character. He's like some sort of mashup between Savage and Fu Manchu. You mentioned his eyes, and that's something that doesn't really get talked about a lot, but it's worth reiterating: in the books he has maroon eyes. Like, he is explicitly not a normal human being in the source material. He has six fingers on one hand and I remember being very annoyed reading Hannibal Rising that it never once mentions this feature, which is the sort of thing one would've expected (given how much it's emphasised that it's enough of a distinguishing characteristic that he has it removed to disguise himself in Hannibal) to merit at least a passing mention.
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Jan 29, 2018 10:06
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Payndz posted:Can anyone recommend something recent (and good) that would satisfy my itch for some 80s/90s-style squib-and-bloodbag action, preferably with a lone hero facing a small army of bad guys? Have you checked out Brawl in Cell Block 99? It's a strong love letter to gritty, ultra-violent pulp.
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Jan 29, 2018 12:11
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Schneider Heim posted:Thanks to discussion of the thread I've started watching all the Mission: Impossible films as well. I really liked 1 but I didn't understand the opening scene very much, like what was the deal with the bloodied woman on the bed, the fake room, and stuff? Also that part where Ethan's teammate follows the guy with the disk who gets pulled through a fence and stabbed, and then she gets stabbed too, like couldn't you have just stepped back from the fence? But it was all good. 4 is more like 5 than 3 so you should probably go back to it.
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Jan 29, 2018 13:39
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Wheat Loaf posted:Sold. So I got some sleep and look at it what I said I want to make clear that the level of quality is about on par, not the level of action
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Jan 29, 2018 14:27
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Wheat Loaf posted:I wonder if the movie version of The Silence of the Lambs played into that "It's awesome to be a bad guy!" trend you got amongst Tarantino copycats (the apotheosis of which was The Boondock Saints) which were discussed a bit here a little while ago. I don’t think Silence of the Lambs played much into Tarantino knockoffs, mostly just serial killer/procedural films about criminal mastermind serial killers who are always 3 steps ahead of the cops, like Jigsaw. Anti-heroes in Tarantino-alikes (especially The Boondock Saints) are mostly based off Jules, and his quippy, quirky, Bible-quoting nature. Dollars to donuts Troy Duffy never finished Pulp Fiction and got to Jules’ revelation about Ezekiel 25:17’s true meaning, though. Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:I still really enjoyed Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, though. These both kick rear end.
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Jan 29, 2018 17:04
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Lecter's first appearance in 1981(Red Dragon), and then even seven years later in Silence of the Lambs, were really not meant by Harris to be pulpy. He'd spent a lot of time with the FBI BSU and he was honestly attempting to synthesize all that stuff into a fairly realistic serial killer story. It's just that serial killers at the time were still very mysterious and the general public really didn't know a lot about them yet, so most of the stuff that had come before was really ridiculous. This was before we'd had countless Dateline specials and low-rent cable channel shows about the most heinous killers and all that stuff. Hopkins Lecter wasn't received as if he was putting on a gloriously over the top scenery chewing performance. It's only as the years have gone on that we've started to realize how far from reality the character is. That's part of the genius of Harris and Demme though. Harris research was what allowed him to make everything in Silence of the Lambs feel believable and Demme's decision to shoot and light(almost)everything so dispassionately lends an almost documentary feel to Silence of the Lambs that makes it 10 times scarier than it would've been otherwise.
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Jan 29, 2018 17:21
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I mean, intentional or not, “mad doctor with six fingers and red eyes” is something that wouldn’t have been out of place in The Shadow. The foundation of the character may have been born from very real behavioral science research, but the character is inherently presented as a super villain by design alone. And having rewatched Silence about a month ago, it’s easy to forget how low key Hopkins’ portrayal of the character is in his first go-around (compared to what would come later, at least). Like the portrayal itself is grounded, but the more fantastical elements are hardwired into the material, so you still get stuff like his superhuman sense of smell, and the improbable logistics of setting up the display of the flayed guard during his escape.
Tart Kitty fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jan 29, 2018 |
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Jan 29, 2018 17:27
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The Hannibal books and movies and show are all about combining a "realistic" crime procedural with classy operatics and trashy pulp. It's Grand Guignol.
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Jan 29, 2018 17:39
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My point though is that serial killers as super-villains was considered to be pretty close to reality by most people at that time. So Harris was throwing a bunch of elements that he'd learned about into these few characters; Buffalo Bill, The Tooth Fairy, and Lecter probably have like 10 or 15 different killers mixed up in their stories combined between the three of them. So that's really where the pulp comes from, the combination of all of these qualities into the "ultimate" killers. But almost none of it is just made up out of whole cloth, and audiences/readers in the mid to late 80's really didn't know the difference. To them Hannibal Lecters probably did exist, Bundy was a household name and he'd been turned into the perfect Evil Genius by the media. Serial killers were the Boogeyman, that one could be MENSA-smart and be able to escape from jail using elaborate plans wasn't seen as too over the top. After all, that wasn't too far off from what Bundy himself had done.
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Jan 29, 2018 17:42
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I liked Harris's other novel, Black September, but I've never seen the movie version.
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Jan 29, 2018 17:43
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Basebf555 posted:My point though is that serial killers as super-villains was considered to be pretty close to reality by most people at that time. So Harris was throwing a bunch of elements that he'd learned about into these few characters; Buffalo Bill, The Tooth Fairy, and Lecter probably have like 10 or 15 different killers mixed up in their stories combined between the three of them. Specifically, The Tooth Fairy is heavily based on BTK, and Buffalo Bill, like other classic serial killer works like Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is based on Ed Gein. Wheat Loaf posted:I liked Harris's other novel, Black September, but I've never seen the movie version. It’s pretty good, the middle act meanders and loses the plot a bit, and they dedicate a full third of the movie to the Super Bowl itself, but that part’s a blast. Definitely track it down if you’re a fan of the book.
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Jan 29, 2018 18:01
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Wheat Loaf posted:I actually enjoyed both his Sherlock Holmes movies and his The Man From U.N.C.L.E. remake a lot, but I'm a) predisposed to like both detectives and spies; b) not terribly interested in Arthurian legend* stories; and c) what little I've seen of the film doesn't really appeal to me. There's almost zero Arthurian legend in Richie's King Arthur. It's one of his lad movies with a magic sword. I watched Warcraft and that's one of the most muddled films I've seen in a while. Reverses history in order to make the First Nation types the bad guys, has a terrible moral, is just a terrible film on every level. Retroactively made Duncan Jones' other two movies worse.
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Jan 29, 2018 18:08
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X-Ray Pecs posted:Specifically, The Tooth Fairy is heavily based on BTK, and Buffalo Bill, like other classic serial killer works like Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is based on Ed Gein. Buffalo Bill especially is an amalgam of a bunch of different people. The scene where he kidnaps the senators daughter is straight out of the Bundy case, and then there's also a lot of Heidnik in Bill's lair/dungeon. But definitely Gein as well with the whole skin fixation he has. A little bit of Green River Killer(at the time unidentified) too with Bill dumping the bodies in the river.
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Jan 29, 2018 18:08
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Wheat Loaf posted:I liked Harris's other novel, Black September, but I've never seen the movie version. I think you mean Black Sunday. Black September is the terrorist group.
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Jan 29, 2018 18:26
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Steen71 posted:I think you mean Black Sunday. Black September is the terrorist group. My mistake. Obviously the terrorists in the novel are based on the real life group who were involved in Munich; if I recall correctly, the book came out maybe three years after that happened, so it would've been very fresh in everyone's minds.
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Jan 29, 2018 19:54
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ynohtna posted:Have you checked out Brawl in Cell Block 99? It's a strong love letter to gritty, ultra-violent pulp. That's... not really what he's looking for. Maybe a fifth of the runtime is action-y or violent, and it only counts as a "small army" of bad guys if you're willing to go very small (I think there's a grand total of literally like five or six bad guys). e: this isn't to say Brawl in Cell Block 99 is bad, it's just more of a piece with stuff like Drive and Jeremy Saulnier's movies than with your average action movie.
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Jan 29, 2018 21:17
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Yeah, I suppose it fails if the small army requirement is primary. But for me, it's the long slow burn into series of acutely escalating sprees of intense violence, soundtrack, and joyful use of practical bone & splatter bag effects to show the consequence of the action that gave me an incredible deja-vu to the action films of my youth. Your nostalgia may vary. 
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Jan 29, 2018 23:55
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Brian Taylor has said recently that he's interested in doing a Crank 3 but it has to be "exponentially more hosed up" than 2 for him to be willing to do it.
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