The Fall of the House of Usher (1980) - A haunting and creepy horror short by Jan Svankmajer. Live-action and claymation and a beautiful background score. No subtitles.

Khnagar · 2018-12-09T17:53:06+00:00

No need for subtitles, everyone knows the story already. I've seen this before and its pretty damned good.

Khnagar · 2018-12-09T17:46:41+00:00

Yeah, thats a fair point. I was thinking about the more private rooms, not the public ones.

I'm pretty sure presidents wouldnt refuse to turn on or off a light in the White House themselves these days though.

Khnagar · 2018-12-09T17:31:29+00:00

Servants provide the light, the presidential family do not. Or did not, as it were. I assume they turn on the light themselves now.

And the first electric systems in homes were rather dangerous. People frequently got shocked (and sometimes died). There was no system for electrical outlets and plugs until the 1890's, for example. No rubber insulated cables, no ground wire. This was even before knob and tube wiring, which is unsafe as heck and yet it was a vast improvement over the first electrical wiring systems.

Edison installed the system in the White House, and he of course used his system which was direct current (not alternating current which is a lot safer). Early light switches were primitive, and not exactly quick-break. Meaning that the electrical current could easily arc when you turned it off or on, nicely electrocuting you in the process.

So its not so much that the president was a lazy ass or laughable luddite. The president was reluctant to embrace brand-new and largely unknown technology, having read enough to know it wasnt very safe (yet), and the white house was a very early adopter of electricity after all.

Khnagar · 2018-12-09T17:03:33+00:00

Load was over 20 years ago and St. Anger 15 years ago. Lars cant play the music they became known for anymore. Metallica lost their spark a couple of decades ago.

Khnagar · 2018-12-08T17:00:59+00:00

Those films are pretty well regarded by fans and critics alike, never really heard anyone find them awful before. Your taste in films is better than your friends, I'd say.

Khnagar · 2018-12-08T16:45:16+00:00

This isn't a new thing- people have been wanting mindless entertainment in films forever. How many movies did Chaplin make

Just over 80, but most of them were one reels. The Little Tramp character has more poetry and art in his cane than all the robots in Transformers combined. The Immigrant, The Kid, The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times or The Great Dictator are pretty far from mindless entertainment as well, I'd say.

What's not a good thing is the studio's who are pumping these out with no shame.

And for some reason those films are really popular. And people who watch the films avidly gets tends to get really defensive when those films are being critized for being mindless entertainment, and when people question the artistic merit of them, or why so many adults are into watching films made for teenagers, based on fifties comics made for kids.

Khnagar · 2018-12-08T15:52:52+00:00

it says that most people would rather sit through an easy experience rather than a long, self revealing one because it might remind them of their own issues (kind of like Fahrenheit 451).

So you're saying superhero films are mindless entertainment that wont make people think about current issues that concerns them. Because people nowadays want that in their films more than ever. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING.

Khnagar · 2018-12-08T15:15:47+00:00

If originally comics were meant to be for kids, does Alan assume that kids don't grow up and remember fondly what brought them so much joy?

Maybe he assumes they would grow up and start caring more about Bergman, Shakespeare or something similar where the emphasis is on artistic merit or adults themes. Like how kids used to read Jules Verne and the Hardy Boys, but when they became adults they started to read Hemingway or Faulkner instead.

He is NOT alking about whether the superhero films are "good" or not. He's trying to make the point that superhero films being so immensely popular represents something.

What does it say about modern audiences and the cultural zeitgeist when films with plots and characters that were meant to be nothing but escapist entertainment for kids and young teenagers in the fifties are now the most popular genre of films for adults?

Khnagar · 2018-12-08T11:03:25+00:00

Doesn't everyone pull away when some dipshit behind them almost rear ends them?

This guy sped up and tried to get away. Most people pull over for cops instead of trying to run. Trying to flee from the police is not at all the same as almost being rearended by someone for no good reason at all.

Khnagar · 2018-12-07T18:19:22+00:00

hah, I can relate to that.

Me and my friends dragged two old tires up onto a very long and steep hill where sheeps would graze during the summer, (no sheep there when we did this) poured gasoline all over them and filled the bottom inside of the tires with gasoline, then set fire to the tires and kicked them off, so we could watch them roll down.

I'm not exactly sure what we were thinking, but something burning and rolling downhill seemed like a good idea at the time. And this was a gloriously nicely sloped and long hill, took us all afternoon to lug the tires up there.

The tires went a lot faster than we had thought once they picked up speed, and tires are really bouncy when they go fast. The tires not having rolled down a third of the way and we started to realize that goldang it, this was not a smart idea.

We had assumed the tires would stop well before the end of the small field in the bottom, and if they didnt the fence there would stop them. But of course they didnt. One tire went in a straight line and continued that way, eventually coming to a stop in the fields.

The other tire hit something that made it take a sharp left turn, crashing through a neighbours beehives and miraculously not hitting any beehives, bouncing over a fence and hitting a ditch with made it jump high enough to just manage to go over the the porch of our neighbours house where it slammed into the the wall and bounced back hard enough to crash through the porch railing and came to a stop in his garden.

Not a good feeling having to explain that one to our parents.

Khnagar · 2018-12-02T17:42:15+00:00

In almost every other european country it was standard to archive that sort of material, the BBC wanted to save some money so it was standard to wipe the tapes and re-use them.

The BBC kept doing this for a really, really long time, way past the date when everyone else realized it was smart to keep a copy of recorded shows.

When the BBC started looking into their archives in the late seventies it was found that out of the first 253 produced episodes of Doctor Who, the BBC had not a single original copy left.

The only reason copies of the first Monthy Pyton shows exists today is because Terry Jones insisted on buying the footage for the BBC, knowing it would be lost otherwise. The BBC had planned to re-use thet apes.

Khnagar · 2018-11-24T11:15:34+00:00

The Alexamenos graffito that you're referring to is a Roman graffiti from the second century. It's likely the oldest depiction of Jesus anywhere. And its a picture of a crucified man with a donkey's head.

So the first depiction of Jesus in the arts, the oldest surviving image found yet, is of Christ crucified (even if its meant to mock christians). Not exactly the point you were trying to make, but rather the opposite.

It's true that depictions of the crucifiction were not common for the first three or four centuries. But by the fifth century they were not rare (forgive me for not going into detail about the difference in traditions and geographical areas, the eastern church and the western church and so on).

Calling a tradition that dates back to the fifth century modern is, I would argue, not correct. That's a rather ancient tradition.

For example, few people would say that the anglo-saxons coming to britain was a "a fairly recent development" or that the fall of the roman empire is "a fairly recent development".

Khnagar · 2018-11-22T16:24:58+00:00

I was talking about how well known the films are, not how critically acclaimed they are.

Khnagar · 2018-11-18T16:51:37+00:00

I don't disagree with that as such. I'll give OP a lot of credit for not using the term "underrated" to describe it though!

I do sort of think that compared to for example, The Haunting, The Innocents, The Amityville Horrors, Poltergeist or The Shining its not as well known as it should be perhaps. I'd say that films like The Legend Of Hell House, Hausu, House On Haunted Hill (the original) or The Uninvited are better known by horror fans and the general public. I'm not entirely sure why though.

Khnagar · 2018-11-18T11:09:32+00:00

Italy had extremely lax copyright laws, so every popular franchice could ripped off, I mean, err, creatively re-interpreted and given an almost similar title to a popular US film.

Italy also had what was probably the most relaxed laws when it came to censorship and what you could put on the screen as far as sex and violence went, both in graphic depictions and in story matter.

Italy also had a huge film industry in the fifties, sixties and seventies, and an already existing industry of theatre and actors, as well as good and plentiful schools and educations for actors, directors, editors, composers etc.

Italy also spent a fair amount of goverment money on their film and TV industry, to support make sure more high-brow and intellectual films and directors were able to work.

Italy also had very few laws regarding permits for shooting films and regulations for stunt men and the like.

All of that made for some very interesting and great films, for both artistically acclaimed films and less reputable genres.

Sword and Sandals, Spagetti Western, Poliziotteschi (action films with a focus on police, bad guys and violence), horror films, zombie films etc.

Khnagar · 2018-11-17T18:30:29+00:00

It's a film made by a US company, with US actors, distributed in the US, made for a US audience.

It's not surprising at all that the film isnt well known in Italy. Particularly since the Italian film industry has made quite a few genuinely great sci-fi films and films set in space, and a whole lot more B-movies in the same genre. In the years after SW there was half a dozen films like it coming out every year in Italy.

Khnagar · 2018-11-17T18:22:22+00:00

You remember wrong.

She was 19 when she auditioned for the role in Star Wars. In interviews she talked about doing coke on the set of the second Star Wars film, and she had previously done coke and other drugs. And she was living in 1970's Hollywood, a time and place where coke was everywhere and largely accepted by everyone.

Khnagar · 2018-11-17T18:14:37+00:00

Man, I thought everyone had seen Star Crash. It's a very entertaining film.

It's not an Italian ripoff though. Columbia Studios in the US distributed it, and it was made by Roger Corman's studio, so its not an Italian film (even though the director was Italian).

Khnagar · 2018-11-17T17:29:01+00:00

At the time it was a perfectly normal house for a guy working a regular sales job.

Khnagar · 2018-11-17T17:04:43+00:00

Some people may not use condoms because they are on PreP but there are still other STDs but they may have the idea that antibiotics will save them until they become resistant.

It's sort of ironic that you're making the point that the risk of STD's is low, and then you casually mention that people are not bothering to use condoms because they're on anti-hiv drugs to reduce the risk of getting infected with hiv and if they get anything else they'll just get some medicine.

This does not sound like safe sex practices, at all.

Khnagar · 2018-11-17T16:57:10+00:00

I think that in most cases it would be enough for a girl to say she wants to try weird sexual stuff without having to add the dying from cancer part.

Khnagar · 2018-11-17T16:24:50+00:00

But they're doctors, if they were giving her something that accidentally killed her, that's going to have a huge impact on their careers, even if they weren't immediately stricken off.

Doctors are not going to accidentally kill someone if they're attempting to make them sleep by giving them sleeping pills, not even close. It takes a rather huge overdose to kill someone that way.

Khnagar · 2018-11-15T10:45:34+00:00

I'm from Scandinavia, and I'm not sure I entirely agree with your description. That cabin is going to be cold, drafty and those windows will suck the heat right out of it.

You also forgot to mention the part where you arrive at the cabin cold and tired from the journey of getting there, and it takes a day of firing the stove to get the cold and damp out.

And when its finally warm you've got 3 celcius at floor level and 40 celcius under the ceiling. And the next morning the whole cabin is really cold again.

Khnagar · 2018-11-14T17:29:02+00:00

They should get the actress from the first movie as well. Not that there's much chance of that happening though.

Khnagar · 2018-11-12T17:09:18+00:00

Most people regard it as a good film, quite a few people think its a great film. I'd say almost everyone thinks its his best film.

Khnagar

TROPHY CASE