General Movie Thread

So it was a summer afternoon in England?

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Late May in England is still winter.

The only scene that sticks out as “not good” is quick cut when the alien is walking across the room with his arms out like the Mummy or Frankenstein('s monster, yes), and it’s obvious it’s a tall skinny guy in a suit. Outside of that, perfect movie.

My mom saw The Exorcist while she was pregnant with me, and after some audience freakouts they kind of tried to not let her in thinking she would have problems. They did not know my mom. My brother still says “well, that explains a lot about you”

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They struggled with that scene. They even had the actor crab-walk across the floor and that was hilariously bad, so they went with what they had.

They cobbled together Lambert’s death scene; the tail slowly wrapping around her was actually from Brett’s death scene.

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Hopefully, the movie business will eventually return to using practical effects rather than CGI-ing everything, even blood and fire. Practical effects are the reason Alien still looks great 44 years later, while CGI movies age like old milk.

I’m not saying that CGI doesn’t have a place; it’s shocking how much it is used in everything nowadays, and it can be used to dramatically improve the movie. But so many movies are basically Space Jam, with humans acting to nothing with absolutely everything added in “post”, including clothing.

The lore of the chestburster scene is that the actors didn’t know what was going to happen. This isn’t true, but it’s not entirely false. The actors obviously knew that the alien was going to burst out of John Hurt’s chest, but they didn’t know that Scott was going to spray a metric shit ton of blood at them. The resulting shocked reactions are partly acting and partly real. You can’t do that with CGI.

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Across the Spider-Verse fully lives up to the first one, imo, and in many ways surpasses it. Great movie.

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In July we’re going to Redding, California, so we’ve been watching movies set in California, which is nigh on every movie. I have a list of about 50 movies, from American Graffiti to Terminator 2 to The Maltese Falcon. So far we’ve watched three, Vertigo, La La Land, and Clueless.

I may have to put off our trip. Movies set in California is a great undertaking.

I love it. You’re going to far northern California, so of course you’re forcing yourself to watch dozens of movies set in Los Angeles. What’s life without purpose? Everyone needs a noble quest.

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That’s not quite right. Of those movies, American Graffiti is set in Modesto near Sacramento, and Vertigo and the Maltese Falcon in San Francisco. Still, going to California and not watching LA movies seems hard to avoid. I haven’t found any movies set as far north as Redding though.

Mostly I was just surprised at how much time I could waste watching movies set in California. It’s almost like watching baseball.

There’s some very watchable LA movies. Off the top of my head:

LA Confidential
Chinatown
Point Break
Pretty Woman
Blade Runner
Fast Times
Karate Kid
Die Hard
Lethal Weapon
They Live
Roger Rabbit
The Graduate

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