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Anyone seen Under the Silver Lake? Recipient of a Kermodian Rant, but I thought it was really captivating, and nowhere near as flattering to its main character as he did. If anything, the film was ripping the piss out of the Andrew Garfield character at every turn, and believed he deserved it, too.

It's sort of an indictment of lazy internet conspiracy theorising through accumulation of trivia and subjects you don't know enough about. If that sounds dry, it's not, it uses the weirdness to its advantage. Pity it's been so badly distributed, really, but a definite cult movie in the making. From the same director as It Follows - I preferred this one, not by much, but I do prefer it, it weaves a spell.
 
Anyone seen Under the Silver Lake? Recipient of a Kermodian Rant, but I thought it was really captivating, and nowhere near as flattering to its main character as he did. If anything, the film was ripping the piss out of the Andrew Garfield character at every turn, and believed he deserved it, too.

It's sort of an indictment of lazy internet conspiracy theorising through accumulation of trivia and subjects you don't know enough about. If that sounds dry, it's not, it uses the weirdness to its advantage. Pity it's been so badly distributed, really, but a definite cult movie in the making. From the same director as It Follows - I preferred this one, not by much, but I do prefer it, it weaves a spell.

I missed it, only got a limited release here and some bad reviews. I'll catch it online.
 
I missed it, only got a limited release here and some bad reviews. I'll catch it online.

If you liked Room 237 (The Shining doc) but wished someone would boot the conspiracy theorists in the bollocks or have a skunk spray them, then this is the film for you!
 
Anyone seen Beyond the Sky? I was attracted by the prospect of watching Travis Walton "as himself" in it, hoping for a Fire in the Sky sequel, but he's in the mid-credits sequence for about ten seconds! False advertising! The rest of it was very 1990s-style ufology stuff, not essential but OK for UFO addicts.
 
Did anyone see this 2016 film on BBC2 last night?

I've never heard of it, but it's on iPlayer for a month..

Operation Avalanche
Two young CIA agents are sent to NASA, under the false pretence of making a documentary, to investigate reports of a mole. But once there, they become entangled in a much bigger conspiracy involving the Apollo 11 mission and the filming techniques of director Stanley Kubrick.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0004pcc/operation-avalanche

 
Anyone seen Under Silver Lake? Not certain, but I think I love it. Will watch again tonight to be sure. Very different.
 
Anyone seen Under Silver Lake? Not certain, but I think I love it. Will watch again tonight to be sure. Very different.

Yes! Definite future cult classic, I really enjoyed how it lampooned the conspiracy theorist Andrew Garfield character at every turn, making things ever weirder and more difficult for him. Surprised me when a lot of critiques seemed to take the whole thing at face value and see the film as an endorsement of him (Mark Kermode was surprisingly clueless in his review). But as a blasting of the modern obsession with trivia to the exclusion of all sense, it was terrific. Loved the woozy, tense atmosphere, too. Reminded me of Inherent Vice, another weirdo gem of recent years.
 
Birds of Passage: Co-directed By Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, this a tale of love, war and vengeance set in an isolated society which encounters unmediated modernity. Guerra's previous film, Embrace of the Serpent told the tale of journeys up the Amazon in search of a sacred plant, on this occasion the holy herb is marijuana. A story of the tight bonds between families linked into clans set in Colombia, showing the traditional dances performed when a young woman comes of age, dressed like a colourful bird in robes of red as she swoops on her male partner. How the male must raise a dowry, moving from smuggling whiskey and trading in coffee to supplying americans with marijuana.

Entering the drug trade leads to changes, instead of living in huts, an Art Deco house is built in the desert scrub and a hillside hacienda becomes an LA mansion complete with swimming pool. The Matriarch of the family s a seer, keeper of the Talisman which protects the household from harm. She divines dreams and from an early stage sees doom approach. Though Matriarch she may be, it is the men who have the final say when it comes to trade and violence which puts everything at risk. Beautifully filmed and based on a true story story Birds of Passage tells of the downfall of a way of life as a region is torn by internecine strife between 1960 and 1980. 9/10.
 
Birds of Passage: Co-directed By Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, this a tale of love, war and vengeance set in an isolated society which encounters unmediated modernity. Guerra's previous film, Embrace of the Serpent told the tale of journeys up the Amazon in search of a sacred plant, on this occasion the holy herb is marijuana. A story of the tight bonds between families linked into clans set in Colombia, showing the traditional dances performed when a young woman comes of age, dressed like a colourful bird in robes of red as she swoops on her male partner. How the male must raise a dowry, moving from smuggling whiskey and trading in coffee to supplying americans with marijuana.

Entering the drug trade leads to changes, instead of living in huts, an Art Deco house is built in the desert scrub and a hillside hacienda becomes an LA mansion complete with swimming pool. The Matriarch of the family s a seer, keeper of the Talisman which protects the household from harm. She divines dreams and from an early stage sees doom approach. Though Matriarch she may be, it is the men who have the final say when it comes to trade and violence which puts everything at risk. Beautifully filmed and based on a true story story Birds of Passage tells of the downfall of a way of life as a region is torn by internecine strife between 1960 and 1980. 9/10.

Great film. Embrace of the Serpent was terrific too. Both involve indigenous beliefs, customs etc in isolated communities clashing with encroaching/invasive modernity.

I think most of the cast are not actually 'actors' but indigenous people - Embrace of the Serpent certainly - which gives the films a strong basis. Cinematography in both is excellent.
 
Great film. Embrace of the Serpent was terrific too. Both involve indigenous beliefs, customs etc in isolated communities clashing with encroaching/invasive modernity.

I think most of the cast are not actually 'actors' but indigenous people - Embrace of the Serpent certainly - which gives the films a strong basis. Cinematography in both is excellent.

Also loved the way you could see the African and East-Indian influences in the clothes, houses, jewellery, names and features of some of the actors.
 
The Zombles? The Mad-Sick Roundabout? The Hellishtubbies? Bob the Kill-der?

I was hoping the amount of cocaine going round Hollywood would never reach 80s levels again, but here we are. Everyone knew the Sour Grapes Bunch were the real psychopaths.
 
Not sure if this counts...

Had a reminiscence about favourite films ever and this is still up there:

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Yesterday: A struggling singer/songwriter Jack (Himesh Patel) is transported into a parallel universe where The Beatles don't exist. The transport McGuffin is well handled: a global power outage during which the cycling Jack is struck by a bus. Waking up in hospital he is comforted by his roadie/manager/agent Ellie (Lily James), there is unrequited love between them which is central to the film's narrative. Jack first realises something is odd when he discovers that none of his friends recognise the song Yesterday. This scene is beautifully shot at a riverside location with a setting sun capturing the mood of the song. Going online he finds no mention of The Beatles, this universe has a good side as well though: there is also no Oasis (it also lacks a few other things).

So jack sets out to rewrite the songs of The Beatles, not always getting the order of words just right. Indeed Ed Sheeran (himself) persuades Jack to rename Hey Jude as Hey Dude. Jack gets to open for Sheeran on a World Tour and his road to success seems assured when Sheeran's manager Debra (Kate McKinnon) agrees to represent him. McKinnon is crazed and quirky in the role but very convincing. The move from busking and playing in bars to incipient Superstar isn't easy for Jack, director Danny Boyle effectively uses devices such as having an awestruck Jack surrounded by multimedia images of his growing fame and shows him dancing through the Mersey Tunnel as he researches songs. The capstone is perhaps when Sheeran describes himself as Salieri to Jack's Mozart.

A witty, touching, enjoyable film of potential greatness thrust upon an ordinary person who is riven by self-doubt. Great cameo by Robert Carlyle as an elderly John Lennon. Wonderfully delivered by director Danny boyle from a screenplay by Richard Curtis. 8.5/10.
 
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LOL sorry about my earlier pre-empt. I must have dreamed it. Nice review - a multiverse thing by the sounds.

Don't waste your time on Starfish. Convoluted, dense, but despite those qualities it is very boring. I confess at the halfway point or very shortly before, I started jump skipping the file to see if there was anything going to occur. Not that I could see or hear. I don't do that more than in 1 of 10 films I view. It was disappointing. 2/5

The reason I looked at it was because the RT rating was critics 97%. Should have applied a bit of evaluation at that point, because the audience score was less than 50% and many of the red tomato critic reviews were all "despite some acting bravery and visual excitement, it was adequate". How so many said basically exactly the same thing is striking. And that's what boosted the tomatometer I spose. Seems the raters are not able to figure this one out and preferred to err on the side of safety. Emperor's new clothes.
 
LOL sorry about my earlier pre-empt. I must have dreamed it. Nice review - a multiverse thing by the sounds.

Don't waste your time on Starfish. Convoluted, dense, but despite those qualities it is very boring. I confess at the halfway point or very shortly before, I started jump skipping the file to see if there was anything going to occur. Not that I could see or hear. I don't do that more than in 1 of 10 films I view. It was disappointing. 2/5

The reason I looked at it was because the RT rating was critics 97%. Should have applied a bit of evaluation at that point, because the audience score was less than 50% and many of the red tomato critic reviews were all "despite some acting bravery and visual excitement, it was adequate". How so many said basically exactly the same thing is striking. And that's what boosted the tomatometer I spose. Seems the raters are not able to figure this one out and preferred to err on the side of safety. Emperor's new clothes.

Have to admit that Starfish sounds interesting, so I'll probably give it a look.
 
i was reading about Taxandria today on messy nessy chic.

A young prince is taken for tuition at a seaside hotel but there quickly bores and wanders off to visit a nearby lighthouse. Befriended by the keeper, he learns of a secret world he can see inside the light of the lamp - the world of Taxandria ruled by the dictatorship of the 'eternal present' where all machines, progress and time have been banned. However, a naive but creative printing clerk unwittingly causes a revolution when he upsets a printing press and tries to replace the spilled letters only to have his new words taken for a subversive code. On the run he falls in love with a palace princess, discovers the forbidden art of photography and sets out to fulfill his dream of building a flying machine.

Glance at a still of Taxandria, and you’re likely to think you’ve found a vault of long lost Surrealist paintings – which wouldn’t be completely inaccurate. Servais was heavily inspired by the Belgian surrealists, including Magritte, Ensor and Paul Delvaux and brought their paintings to life in Taxandria. The film perfected his technique of “Servaisgraphy”, a mixing of his own animation, as well as live images and actors.
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“I created [the Servaisgraphy] system [for the whole film],” Servais said in an interview, “though, for various reasons, it was only used for the sets. The compositing itself was done using computers. Unless I am mistaken, until Toy Story, Taxandria used more digital images than any other feature film.” The movie was filmed in Budapest in 1989, but took five years in post-production until it was ready for release.
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Raoul Servais, animator of Taxandria
The plot of the film is rather dizzying: an eccentric lighthouse keeper shows a curious young prince the way to the kingdom of “Taxandria”, where everyone lives in a state of the “eternal present”, wherein no technological progress can be made as per the local dictator’s decree. They have no past or present, women are kept away from men and everything is stifled by a bloated absurd, Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The Prince meets an inventor named Aimé who dreams of flying away, making new inventions and yearns to learn about his country’s past. Love, time, the black humour of endless bureaucracy – they’re all fodder to be picked apart through Servais’ gaze…
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The whole thing is a mood board of dystopian Art Nouveau, bendy buildings reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s 2010 Inception, and steampunk fantasy. You may also notice a similarity to the work of fellow Belgian artist François Schuiten’s Obscure Cities (Les Cités Obscures). As it turns out, François was the film’s production manager. In fact, throughout Schuiten’s cult graphic-novel series, characters refer to the vanished city-state of “Taxandria” which was accidentally removed from the planet during a failed scientific experiment.

more pictures at https://www.messynessychic.com/2019...rland-of-taxandria-been-hiding-all-our-lives/

the link has a 1 of 8 parts you tube link of the film but it seems only the first part is there. there are various crappy 'full length' version on da tube and assorted clips.

part 1 has a real late 80's kids tv vibe to it.

and this part has more of the fantasy element

has anyone seen this? or even heard of it?
 
That newest Tomb Raider movie, did it have any fortean elements?
 
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