A great list. I've seen over half thanks to an older Geek brother.
Dont forget Stalker (1979) for next week.
Dont forget Stalker (1979) for next week.
The Movie Nerd Bible: Part I
- Thread starter MovieBob
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The nerd sub-cultures, they have multiplied. ; )Susan Arendt said:This isn't a list of what every movie nerd should see, it's a list of what every nerd should see. Movie nerds and the more general nerd are not the same creature.Guest_Star said:
I have had the displeasure of seeing a group of nerds, war game players and role players, break apart from one club and form their own. Then argue over space at a venue, slander each-other, take a competitive nerf game far too seriously...
Oh dear. Nosferatu. The original vampire movie. The original horror movie. One of the worst things I have ever endured. It is one of the slowest things I have ever watched and it's only 80 minutes long! Half of the movie is nothing happening, there is literally like a 4 minute scene of a ship crossing a channel. I get it, it's a ship crossing a channel. A scene where the vampire walks through the city with a coffin under his arm is just plain hilarious, and again, way too long. Worst of all, the plot is actually bad, most of it being explained by a ridiculously convenient book randomly found in an inn. And I didn't even mention the hilarious special effects. Ugh, please don't take Bob's advice, don't watch this thing.
Seriously? No Clockwork Orange. Most of this list is pretty much a generic movie geek list, but I'm am still disappointed with Clockwork Orange not being on it.
Just on a side note. 2001 is still one of the most over hyped movies of all time. Sure it was "pretty" for the time, but really it's about the only thing on earth that will probably put me to sleep faster then downing a bottle of NyQuil... well that is unless Al Gore finally decides to team up with Michael Moore to make a new "documentary" called Bowling for a Convenient Pay Check. You know? The documentary where they fudge numbers and interview people they don't like. Then edit out anything meaningful those people have to say just to make them look like idiots..... ohh wait....... ZZzzzZzZZZzZZZZZZZZZz
Just on a side note. 2001 is still one of the most over hyped movies of all time. Sure it was "pretty" for the time, but really it's about the only thing on earth that will probably put me to sleep faster then downing a bottle of NyQuil... well that is unless Al Gore finally decides to team up with Michael Moore to make a new "documentary" called Bowling for a Convenient Pay Check. You know? The documentary where they fudge numbers and interview people they don't like. Then edit out anything meaningful those people have to say just to make them look like idiots..... ohh wait....... ZZzzzZzZZZzZZZZZZZZZz
Hitchcock was using music to generate tension and suspense in Psycho and the Birds 10 years before, I just don't think there is anything particularly different in Jaws. The setting for Psycho and the birds was hardly complicated. The Bernard Herrmann score for both films is perhaps better than John Williams score for Jaws. The screeches from Psycho still remain a short hand for crazy long after the pop culture references to the Jaws theme vanished.Brotherofwill said:
2001: A Space Odyssey is a pile of violent shit. Surely a technical masterpiece of it's time, and HAL 9000 was a cool new idea. Through nostalgic eyes, that's probably what people remember about it. That dude jogging in a ring, and HAL. Too bad those things cover about 40 minutes of a two hour movie.
2001: A Space Odyssey is like watching me at the toilet for an hour, then seeing me break the high jump world record, and then watching me at the toilet again for ten minutes. You need to have some questionable relations with high jumping, if you consider that a good idea for a movie.
Not to be all whinge, I'll otherwise agree on the stuff you listed, although I haven't seen all of those movies. Soylent Green is a massively good movie, if only for the "twist". I didn't know what was coming when I first saw it, and I experienced what was probably the biggest WTF moment I've ever had with films.
2001: A Space Odyssey is like watching me at the toilet for an hour, then seeing me break the high jump world record, and then watching me at the toilet again for ten minutes. You need to have some questionable relations with high jumping, if you consider that a good idea for a movie.
Not to be all whinge, I'll otherwise agree on the stuff you listed, although I haven't seen all of those movies. Soylent Green is a massively good movie, if only for the "twist". I didn't know what was coming when I first saw it, and I experienced what was probably the biggest WTF moment I've ever had with films.
a) I never said I didn't watch anything old. In fact I even reference a 1956 movie in my comment. Although I appreciate that two lines of text might be a lot for you to wade through.lumpenprole said:
b) It's derivative in that it's a cookie cutter list of "seminal sci-fi films".
But hey, don't let what's written down in front of you get in the way of your ad hominem attack eh?
You are not alone in finding 2001 to be a dull. It is a dull movie. I usually describe it with three B's: Big, Beautiful and Boring.Klepa said:
The reason why it's so boring is that it's less about what's going on and more about the subtext. This charming flash video [http://www.kubrick2001.com/] (available in 11 languages!) explains the subtext.
I feel like something of a failure as a movie buff that I didn't "get" much or any of that on my own. But the movie is not about two astronauts dealing with their ship's computer that may have gone crazy. It's about humanity from when it evolved from apes to the next evolutionary milestone. That's a huge thing to relate and it does so the way an abstract painter would give the impression of a bowl of fruit without actually painting a bowl of fruit.
I still don't like watching 2001 because it is so dull to watch. Even with knowing the subtext. But I still wouldn't touch a frame. If nothing else, it provides a keen example of a film with loads of subtext but very little actual text, the better to understand subtext. I'm not so sure if working in nearly pure subtext is such a good idea from an artistic standpoint. Certainly not a financial one. 2001 would have bombed and been forgotten if it was made today because no one drops as much LSD as they did in 1968 anymore. That's why even people who didn't get it went and saw it anyway. Crazy hippies.
Heretic! Burn him, burn him! j/kBruden said:
While you're entitled to think "Blade Runner" in its copious versions suck, the reason the younguns don't get the reference is cuz they haven't seen any of the versions.
The Roy Batty monologue is in every single version that's been made public so far. And it's by far the single most recognizable element of the movie.
And since we're at it; several versions that change a movie completely aint that uncommon. The movie "Seven" has several versions, different cuts conforming to different censorship regimes, and at least 2 different endings that were filmed (Mills kills John Doe, Mills does not kill Doe), plus additional endings that only exist as storyboards (Somerset kills John Doe).
Still a good movie tho.
And "Blade Runner" is an adaption of a Philip K Dick novel; "Does Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". And there's even different versions of the original text.
The only thing I got about the whole subtext, was the idea of a man inventing the tool, and millions of years later, the tool bites man in the ass.the antithesis said:
One of the things that put me off was the monolith. I thought it somehow implied that the idea of the tool was "not of man", but came from the monolith. This (to me) was reinforced, when they later on find a monolith in the moon(?), and along comes HAL. I thought HAL was somehow brought into existence through the monolith, as man's new tool.
Comparing my own ideas to the website's, I paid a lot more attention on the monolith, which the website pretty much handwaves into something that doesn't have anything to do with the evolution of man.
I couldn't really get anything out of the ending, so the whole idea of man having to be born again as "starchild" in order to continue evolving, didn't occur to me at all.
I guess the only thing that's obvious about the movie, is that man comes close to being overwhelmed by his tools. I guess it's relevant, it's probably more relevant now than it was in 1967, but that message's been shoved down my throat as long as I can remember. I guess to me the it's like the Cake Is A Lie joke. I got tired of it before I even saw the original.
Rambling a bit, I hope it's coherent. I left out a part because I just couldn't write it into understandable english sentences.
I've only been able to watch the George Clooney version of Solaris. Does anyone know if it's worth tracking down the older version?
Metropolis up til a few years back was a tricky film to see. There was a lot of the original film lost shortly after it was released in 1927 but over the years they managed to piece most of it back together and I believe there is now a pretty complete version available on Netflix. Although, I'm not sure if it included the 30 extra minutes they uncovered in 2008 or not.
The list stopped at 1976.Ghostbusters wasn't released until 1984 so it will possibly be in part 2.ninjajoeman said:
I've actually seen the majority of those films listed.Does that make me a movie nerd now?I've always considered myself to be more of a general nerd
Fantastic Voyage is not great (not even particularly good, in my opinion - there's been far better "group of people trapped in an enclosed space with a traitor among them" movies) and "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" is inferior to the 70s Phillip Kaufman remake (which isn't a remake at all, really). But great list nonetheless.