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Old 11-03-2014, 04:18 PM   #281 (permalink)
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You should do something on the 1954 BBC version with Peter Cushing in it.
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Old 11-03-2014, 05:05 PM   #282 (permalink)
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They executed Smith in the movie? In the book, he lived. I'm not sure which ending is more satisfying. Execution is obviously more glorious, but it doesn't seem to serve the author's point as well. Either way, doubleplusgood review!

Oh, and you mentioned that you'd be covering 1984 in The Scrap Heap. I'm not psychic.
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Old 11-03-2014, 06:05 PM   #283 (permalink)
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They executed Smith in the movie? In the book, he lived. I'm not sure which ending is more satisfying. Execution is obviously more glorious, but it doesn't seem to serve the author's point as well. Either way, doubleplusgood review!

Oh, and you mentioned that you'd be covering 1984 in The Scrap Heap. I'm not psychic.
Yeah, wasn't the whole point that his fate was worse than death?
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Old 11-03-2014, 06:33 PM   #284 (permalink)
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THE STARS OF THE SHOW
There are really only two. Suzanna Hamilton in the role of Julia is good but although she's the instrument of Winston Smith's downfall she's kind of almost peripheral to the movie. She has no outstanding scenes. No, this movie is straddled by two titans of the screen, and it's hard to say who does the better job, though John Hurt has of course the larger role and is in the movie more. Still, for the relatively smaller part he plays, Richard Burton steals every scene in the final twenty minutes or so of the film.

JOHN HURT as Winston Smith: Hurt is the perfect actor to play Smith, the lowly, downtrodden, ordinary man who dreams of a better life but has not the wit nor the means to make those dreams come true. He snatches at his happiness when it presents itself and pays the awful price soon afterwards, when he realises he has been set up. Hurt presents a tragic, almost pathetic figure, his expression never transcending any more than a slight winsome grin. This is not a man used to laughing, or smiling: the Party frowns on such frivolous and unproductive behaviour. Besides, a man who is happy may start to think, and the Party does not want that! Smith, like everyone else in the story who labours under the brutal oppression of the State, exists in a state of near-perpetual fear and anxiety, worried that at any moment he might be shopped to the authorities as a subversive, a traitor or a thoughtcriminal. It matters not whether these accusations are true; in this world, a man is presumed guilty. There is no defence. Once you fall under suspicion your life is at an end and there is nothing you can say or do about it.

Hurt is slim too, sometimes to the point of near-emaciation when we see him naked in his love scenes, and certainly at the end of his torture at the hands of O'Brien, when he is little more than a rag of a man, a skeleton loosely wrapped in ill-fitting skin. He represents, as O'Brien remarks, the very worst of mankind. He is soft, scared, easily led, malleable. He fears the Party and wants to obey it, not out of love or loyalty but simply out of self-preservation. Yet he hates and loathes it for what it has made him, and his fellow human beings, become, and he rebels at first in the only way he knows how, a pathetically small show of personal defiance as he keeps his diary, an activity forbidden by the Party. Later, as he spirals down into subversism and rebellion, he meets Julia and falls in love with her. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he just wants to have sex, to do it under the nose of the Party to show he is not afraid of them, even though he is. Perhaps Julia is just a means to an end, and he is only using her.

His shock when he realises he has been betrayed, on two fronts, is palpable. He stands in the upper floor flat above the shop, naked literally and metaphorically, his protection stripped from him as easily as his clothes, his whole world crashing down upon his head, and he knows with certainty that there is only one way this can end. Even when the soldiers callously punch Julia in the stomach and she collapses gasping to the ground, he makes no move to help her. At this point, he has forgotten her to a great extent and is more intent on his own survival. Perhaps he even blames her for his predicament, feels like he has been led astray, as if she tempted him, not that he wasn't a willing subject. Some small part of him may think that Julia is a Party agent and that he has been doubly set up, though I don't think this is ever remarked upon or postulated. But definitely, from being two people against the world Winston Smith is suddenly reduced to a single man standing against the massive and powerful machinery of the almighty Party, and must feel very small indeed.

Hurt's voice, too, is low most of the time. Even when he rebels, when he meets Julia in the fields outside London and has sex with her, declaring his desire to corrupt and be corrupt, it is said in a low, quiet voice with little real inflection, as if maybe he can't quite believe what he's saying, or what's happening. The only time he gets really animated, understandably, is when he's being tortured by O'Brien and gives vent to his frustration, rage and fear, and his depthless, boundless despair. There is no escape, he knows that, and he just wishes O'Brien would finish with him and have him executed. But he knows that it will be a long time before that happens. He must be broken first, and broken totally.

He's the everyman of the story, the guy who goes to work to do a job he may not hate but certainly has no interest in, returns to a dingy flat not much better than the cubicle in which he works at the Ministry of Truth, and takes his only solace in the writings in his diary. During his torture Smith clings to his belief that somehow, someway, the Party and Big Brother will be defeated. When he tells O'Brien that the power that will eventually destroy him and his system of totalitarianism government is the spirit of Man, O'Brien laughs and says that if he is indeed a man, Smith is the last man, and that the Party member and his cohorts are the successors to mankind, and will never be defeated. They have successfully subjugated the entire populace, who are so completely conditioned that they don't even realise they are slaves in all but name, and there is no resistance, no-one to stand against them, nobody to fight much less defeat them. His despair is almost tangible as he realises that O'Brien is right: nobody cares, and if nobody cares, nothing will be done.

RICHARD BURTON as O'Brien: Never once raising his voice, Burton nevertheless manages to convey the most insidious evil through his conversations with Smith, both before, during and after his torture and rehabilitation. Proving that a whisper can be as menacing as a growl, sometimes moreso, Burton commands in his role and completely takes over the torture sequence. In a way this is not surprising as he has the lion's share of the dialogue, with Smith's responses mostly restricted to screams of pain and pleas for the torture to stop, but in his final ever performance Burton shines with a dark light that you feel few others could have managed.

And many were considered for the role before him. Originally intended for Paul Scofield, who had to cry off after sustaining an injury weeks before filming began, people like Brando, Hopkins, Steiger and Connery were all viable candidates, and I could see Hopkins, in perhaps his Hannibal Lecter persona, giving this a good shot, but Connery? Please! Burton has the world-weary face of a man who has seen and heard it all, and whose declining health possibly told him he was not too long for this world. Although only fifty-nine at the time of the filmng of this movie he looks much older, and health disorders like cirrhosis of the liver and kidney disease were obviously taking their toll. He would die of a brain haemorrhage two months before the movie opened in theatres.

In essence the part did not require him to do an awful lot other than talk. He was either seated at his desk or standing by Winston's side in all scenes; there was no action required, but then, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is hardly what you would call an action movie. Through nothing more than a pained expression and a voice that was reasonable and gentle but determined as he nodded to the operative on the electric-shock machine and muttered “Again” almost resignedly, Burton conveyed more real empathy and feeling than a hundred other actors could do. You hate him, but you somehow convince yourself that he's trying to help Smith, help him see the error of his ways. Of course he isn't; all he wants to do is break Smith so that he can plead his guilt to the nation and later be executed, another example to anyone who might be considering thoughtcrime, sexcrime or any other sort of sedition or activity contrary to the Party that it simply is not worth it: Big Brother is watching you. He never sleeps, and your treachery will be discovered.

O'Brien gives the Party a face, but it is, if this is not a contradiction in terms, a faceless face. It's like when he reveals to Smith that he wrote Goldstein's book: he tells him that he helped author it, as no book is written by a single individual nowadays. The Party frowns on independent thought, and a writer's thoughts must by his nature be independent and free. So although O'Brien is the face of the Party that we see, we can expect that there are hundreds more just like him, with kindly, stern, almost disappointed faces who will happily torture the enemies of the State and then go back to their offices and write up a report, and move on to the next traitor in line. O'Brien is not unique: he is probably not even considered that within the Party. He is simply a rather larger cog in a massive machine. He knows his place and he has learned long ago not to challenge or question that. O'Brien is his name, and if the Party should decide that his name is Thompson, then no doubt he will become Thompson. Nobody knows better than he that the Party gets what the Party wants, and you do not stand in its way, no matter your ranking.

WHY DO I LOVE THIS MOVIE?
Well, why indeed. I loved the book and thought it would be difficult to translate to a movie, but I'm glad to see that Orwell's widow stipulated in her will that no special effects be used, because if Hollywood had got their hands on this god knows where we would be. Luckily it was a fine English studio (Elstree) that took it on and they afforded it the respect it deserves, keeping the entire story line and altering nothing really. Of course, any film of a book is going to be shorter by definition, but I think they did really well with this adaptation. Originally supposed to have been filmed in black and white (which would have suited the story down to the ground) this idea was nixed by Virgin and so instead some long-winded procedure by which the colour is “washed out” of the prints was used, resulting in a strange, sort of bleached effect to the finished article, which worked well, but monochrome would have been so much better.

As I'm sure everyone knows, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is not a happy film. It is not a movie you watch to be uplifted or to have your faith in the perseverance of Man restored or confirmed. The hero, such as he is, is beaten down and defeated by the machinery of the State, and the only result of his small rebellion is that he is excised from history. His actions are meaningless now, as nobody will ever hear of them. He has been told by O'Brien, without the slightest trace of rancour or boast, that the Party is immortal, that Big Brother and his cronies have inherited the Earth, that they control everything and there is nobody to stand against them. And it's hard to doubt this, when you look at the absolute power they wield, the way the people are battered down, forced into an almost slavish existence and deprived of their basic human rights.

But there's something wonderful about the movie, and the story. In essence it shows Man for what he really is, or could become. Without question Orwell's vision has been sadly repeated many times since he wrote the novel in 1949, and surely one of his inspirations for the totalitarian state of Oceania must have been Nazi Germany, given the time it was written. But since then we have had so many tin-pot dictators spring up in countries large and small, and enforce their will upon their people, with no other aim in mind than total domination and subjugation of the populace. Pol Pot. Saddam Hussein. Gadaffi. And more recently, and perhaps the greatest example of this sort of state-run machinery, the rulers of North Korea. Though it could also be argued that the USA is heading in the same direction, if somewhat more subtly. Remember PNAC?

The fact that, like the last movie I reviewed, this is basically a two-man show is another of its strengths. There are supporting characters of course but they do little to move the story along, other than Julia of course. The film basically revolves around the twin fulcrums of Hurt as Smith and Burton as O'Brien, as the one brutally asserts his dominance over the other, and strips everything away from him until he is left with only one thing to cling onto: his love for Julia. And then, in a final act of psychological rape, O'Brien tears that from him too, taking his only anchor and setting him adrift on unfamiliar seas, where he soon crashes and drowns, saved by the Party but only to be used for their ends, and only until it suits them to dispose of him.

Winston Smith is a man who cannot win, cannot be expected to win. From the very first he is under observation: when he makes the bold step to rent a room for he and Julia he is blissfully unaware that the Thought Police are watching him, recording his crimes and preparing to deliver him into the hands of the Party. His happiness, short-lived as it is, cannot last, cannot hope to last. There is no hope in the world of Orwell's Oceania, only endless, pointless toil, interminable announcements and eternal wars, and the constant revising and changing of history. We know Smith cannot win, and yet we're drawn to his failure like an errant moth, burned by the flame of the knowledge that his quest is useless and doomed to collapse, end in horror, torture and eventual death. It's one of the bleakest, most unremittingly nihilistic movies I have ever seen, and yet in ways it serves as a warning too: let your leaders go too far and this could be you.

With the usage of the term “Party”, it's reasonable to assume Orwell is using the Soviets, as were, as his model, or perhaps the Nazi party as already mentioned. Both have an absolute ruler, a dictator at their head, a man whose very utterance is law and who rewards challenges to his authority with imprisonment, torture and death. This would seem to illustrate why at least a two-party political system is required, as the one will act as a watchman on the other: checks and balances. If you only have one party, it can do what it likes and face no opposition, and a dictatorship inevitably results.

MESSAGE IN THE MOVIE
On the face of it a very bleak one: when absolute, unquestioning and unfettered power is handed to any one organisation they are likely, in fact almost bound to run roughshod over the people's rights and do exactly whatever the hell they want. Goldstein's book --- we're told by O'Brien that this is nothing more than a construct of the Party, and that he helped author it, but can we be sure of this? Could this not be just another device by which to batter down Smith's last walls of defence, take away the supports that are holding him precariously up and send him tumbling into the abyss of despair? --- probably says it best: that the aim of the war is not victory, but continuance, and the net result of any prolonged war is that the populace remain in almost complete deprivation and subjugation.

You could also say that the message is that the power of one man is laughable when put up against the power of the State --- David vs Goliath, but without the heroic triumph of the underdog related in the Bible --- that one man cannot make a difference and that even if he manages to, the Party machinery will work to erase that influence from history, so that it will be as if the effort was never made, the victory --- small as it may be --- never won and the ideas espoused by the one-man rebellion crushed and ground into the dust. The Party, we are told, is immortal. Man is not.

But dark and callous as this message may seem to be, it could also serve as a warning, a cautionary tale, an admonition not to allow such a thing to develop. Surely, as I have already mentioned, it is an attempt to ensure that an evil entity like the Nazi Party never again comes to power, that men stand up and hold their lawmakers and politicians and generals and leaders to account, and do not bow down out of fear, ignorance or apathy. It could be seen as a clarion call to make men and women work more diligently together towards a common goal, but never to forget that they are men and women, and never to allow themselves to be sucked or subsumed into a huge oligarchical machine, giving it power and licence to roll over the world.
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Old 11-03-2014, 06:45 PM   #285 (permalink)
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BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING! (Yeah, you knew it was coming....)
Interestingly, the phrase is never used in the movie (I can't recall whether or not it crops up in the book, it's so long since I read it), and rather like other well-known utterances linked with films or series --- “Beam me up Scotty”, “Play it again Sam” etc --- these four words, though not used, became synonymous with what is often nowadays seen as draconian oversight by a government on its people. When CCTV cameras were installed in the UK at every major traffic light and other points, the phrase was used. But it's not just that. Other concepts of the movie have also passed into popular parlance, like the infamous Room 101.

In the movie though, Big Brother is watching. Always. He looks out from every viewscreen, benevolent but tyrannical, like a stern father warning his children not to step out of line. I feel that the chances are he does not exist, that his countenance is either an amalgam of personalities and faces, or just simply something made up. Perhaps he does exist as a real person, or did, once. It really doesn't matter: the people think he is real, and their leader, and in the world of the Party that is all that they need. The mere appearance of reality becomes reality itself. As O'Brien explains to Smith, if the Party say he is holding up five fingers when he is holding up four, then he is holding up five. Later, when Smith is rehabilitated, he tells him “The law of gravity is nonsense. No such law exists. If I think I float, and you think I float, it happens.”

The Anti-Sex League is a big part of the effort to destroy the orgasm. Whether or not this is possible is debatable; humans will surely always have the sexual urges they were born with and that have sustained and propogated the race for thousands of years now, but the strongest possible loyalty is to the family and the partner. Many people have written that nothing is stronger than love, but this is in its way not quite true: the reality is that nothing is stronger than sex, which can be amply demonstrated and proved by the amount of men who engage in homosexual sex while incarcerated; men who would never dream of being with another man on the outside, but who cannot resist the primal urges and must satisfy their sexual imperatives any way they can.

So if there is one major obstacle to total loyalty to the Party, it is love, or sex, and the Party intend to do their best to eliminate that obstacle by removing the possibility of orgasm, thus breaking the sexual ties. And yet, would this work? If you could not orgasm, would you still want sex? Surely you would. Orgasm is the height, the achievement, the (excuse the bad pun) climax of sex, but it is not the only reason we have it. If the Party removed the sexual urge completely, then maybe, with everyone sort of androgyns it might work. But men will always be attracted to women (or other men) and vice versa, and it seems that it would be impossible to break that chain.

The Anti-Sex League confuses me though. The Announcer joyously (in her dry, clipped tones which never evince joy but she sounds proud at least) tells us that birth rates are down, but can this be good for the Party? If they want power then surely that should be power over as many people as possible? And if births decline completely, how will they maintain the population? When the current citizens die, who will replace them? Who will worship and obey Big Brother and the Party if there are no descendants of their current slaves? Is the Party not cutting its own throat here?

The effort of androgynising the population have begun already. Everyone wears nondescript grey overalls that are baggy and show no curves or any skin. Everyone is “brother” or “sister”, and expressions are generally dour, listless, uninterested. Defeated. Evidence of this can be seen when Smith first sees Julia and she falls, her arm in a sling. It is completely outside his experience, or else he is too terrified, to go to her assistance, and he only does so very reluctantly and only when she asks. Even then, she quickly shakes him off with gruff thanks and goes on her way. The citizens of Oceania have been indoctrinated to care about nobody and nothing --- not themselves, not their work colleagues, not their friends or their families --- nothing and no-one but the Party should occupy their thoughts. For all the emotion Smith (and Julia) show in that scene he might just as easily be picking up a fallen suitcase or box.

“The Truth is...”
The Truth is what the Party says it is, as we have seen in so many examples now, but none moreso than near the “turning point” of the war against Eurasia (or is it Eastasia? I forget which version we're on), when a suitably horrified commander of the Oceanic forces lists off a catalogue of so-called atrocities that the enemy have perpetrated. There is no evidence of this, no proof, but it serves to give him licence to unleash his troops from the conventional niceties and restrictions of war, the “honour among men”, and allows him to condone, justify and indeed perpetrate every possible atrocity in return, using the age-old cry of “They did it first.”

The chances are that there have been no war crimes committed, but Oceania needs an excuse to up the game, to cut the ties binding them to the normal practice of war, and one would assume, behave in the most animalistic and savage way possible. Nobody back home will blame them, believing the enemy brought it on themselves, and nobody would dare, or even think, to wonder whether what they are being told is the truth. The army hierarchy, direct puppets and representatives of the Party, say it is, so it must be so.

Final Notes:
I find the idea of “Unpeople” both a stroke of genius and unsettling in the extreme. How terrifying, to think that all one's deeds, everything one has written, everything they have achieved can be deleted from the human consciousness so easily. That everyone who ever knew them will profess (for fear of suffering the same fate) that they never met them, never heard of them, and others (mostly dead) will take over their various footnotes in history. As Smith remarks to Julia, we are the dead, indeed.

It also must strike Smith as ironic --- through all the pain and humiliation and fear and desperation as he is tortured and as he faces the horrors of Room 101 --- that someone somewhere is now doing the same job on him as he so casually and thoughtlessly carried out only a short time ago. Faces covered on photographs with other faces, names excised and changed, memories obliterated. There's also no guarantee that the person now fulfilling this task in a tiny cubicle in the Ministry of Truth (perhaps even the one Smith used to occupy) with a bored expression will not him or herself be on the receiving end of this treatment down the line: just another Unperson to be eliminated from the pages of revised history.

Interesting, too, that when Smith orders a bottle of Victory Gin, he almost absently scratches out the face of the “traitor” Party member which, due to some oversight, remains on the label. Despite his own feelings, the duties of his job are so deeply ingrained into his psyche that he automatically becomes anxious that even this remaining trace of an Unperson be destroyed.

I would like to voice a final note on the music in this film. Although a full orchestral score was composed by Dominick Muldowney Virgin opted to use material from one of their own recording artistes, Eurythmics, who had composed their own songs for the movie. As a result, when I saw the original in the cinema, it was prefaced rather jarringly with “Sexcrime (1984)”, a big hit for Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart at the time, but the song does not really suit the overall sombre, dark mood of the movie, with its pop/electronica beats and its synthesised vocoder chorus. It's also placed incongruously before the opening titles, which really makes it look tacked on. Thankfully, the version I used to write this review did not have the song on it, but I remember originally it ruined the setup of the movie for me.

In fact, director Michael Radford was so incensed over the treatment of his score that he withdrew the movie from consideration for the BAFTAs in protest. You can't really blame him: Muldowney's score is far better and really suits the overall tone of the film. But Virgin financed it and as ever, money talks.

AND ISN'T THAT...?
With a very minor role in the movie, almost a non-speaking part, the waiter at the Chestnut Tree Cafe is played by Roger Lloyd Pack, whom we all know better as Trigger from “Only fools and horses”.
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Old 11-03-2014, 06:51 PM   #286 (permalink)
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They executed Smith in the movie? In the book, he lived. I'm not sure which ending is more satisfying. Execution is obviously more glorious, but it doesn't seem to serve the author's point as well. Either way, doubleplusgood review!
Thanks man! Yeah, they didn't show it, but in his confession he says "I ask only now to be shot while my mind is clear" and after his interrogation/torture he asks O'Brien when they will shoot him, and he says not yet, but one day they will.
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Oh, and you mentioned that you'd be covering 1984 in The Scrap Heap. I'm not psychic.
Yeah, after you had guessed it! (Twilight Zone music) I just confirmed it.
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Yeah, wasn't the whole point that his fate was worse than death?
In the book, maybe. As I say, it's been a while. Maybe for movie audiences they thought having him shot was better. I agree, letting him live, with the knowledge he had been broken, and serving as an example of what happens when you go up against the Party, would have been better.
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You should do something on the 1954 BBC version with Peter Cushing in it.
I haven't seen that. Got a link mate?
Mind you, that review took a lot out of me when I did it, so I wouldn't hold your breath. Plus really, I'm not sure it's a good idea doing the same movie/subject twice. I think I've covered it in enough detail here. Would be interested seeing it though.
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Old 11-03-2014, 09:00 PM   #287 (permalink)
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The phrase, "Big Brother is watching" was never spoken in the book, but it was plastered on posters everywhere.

On a side note, my searches reveal you have yet to cover a Bond flick. No doubt, you have this planned out to some extent (well, knowing you, months in advance ), but might I recommend Skyfall, released in 2012? It was my first Bond, and is still my favourite, and really has a good plot. I think it was made for you to critique.
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Old 11-04-2014, 06:28 AM   #288 (permalink)
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The phrase, "Big Brother is watching" was never spoken in the book, but it was plastered on posters everywhere.

On a side note, my searches reveal you have yet to cover a Bond flick. No doubt, you have this planned out to some extent (well, knowing you, months in advance ), but might I recommend Skyfall, released in 2012? It was my first Bond, and is still my favourite, and really has a good plot. I think it was made for you to critique.
Yeah, sorry to disappoint you but I'm no fan of Bond. I won't be covering any of his films. Unless in my "Cinema Craptastique", and I don't think they're bad enough for that. I've just never been into Bond at all.
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Old 11-04-2014, 07:53 AM   #289 (permalink)
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Yeah, sorry to disappoint you but I'm no fan of Bond. I won't be covering any of his films. Unless in my "Cinema Craptastique", and I don't think they're bad enough for that. I've just never been into Bond at all.
I suppose I should just be content with the fact that I've convinced you to listen to the Beach Boys.
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Old 11-04-2014, 04:25 PM   #290 (permalink)
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When I began this journal I made it clear that it would be mostly about TV shows, with the odd movie thrown in. I also made a point of saying that although my genre of choice, moviewise, is science-fiction and fantasy, I would generally be trying to avoid such films, or at least not just review all my favourite films in that genre. And mostly I’ve stuck to that. The odd one has crept through, certainly, but with the likes of “The Odd Couple”, “The Seventh Seal” and "Downfall” among others, I’ve tried to remain true to my promise.

But at heart I am a geek, and a sci-fi nut, as if you couldn’t tell from the sort of series I feature here, so I wanted to have a chance to look at some of my favourite sf/fantasy movies, and this is where I’m going to do it.

To tie in with the new journal on Star Trek Voyager being run jointly by Batty and I, and also my soon-to-begin coverage of both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space 9 here, the first outing for the USS Nerdtopia will be a full review of ALL the Star Trek movies, up to the most current. After that, I’ll be doing all the Star Wars movies and then it will get a little more freeform. Below is a general outline of the movies I intend to feature here, in no particular order after the first two batches. If you have a movie you’d like me to review that is not here, get in touch with me and if I’ve seen it I may include it, or if you make a good enough case for me watching it then it may get added to the list. Obviously I can’t promise anything here, neither that it will be chosen nor when, if it is chosen, it will be reviewed.

The criteria for inclusion here are science-fiction (obviously!), fantasy (to include the likes of sword-and-sorcery, mythological or fairytales --- your basic Lord of the Rings, Legend, Avatar, Conan sort of thing) or horror, but with a fantasy or sci-fi element. The likes of “Alien”, “Event Horizon”, vampire movies and so forth --- I don’t generally watch or have any interest in psychological horror, gory or slasher movies or the like. Anyway, my decision will be final: if I think it merits inclusion it will go in, if not it won’t.

Note: I’m going more for the serious, or at least taking seriously, movie here, so there won’t be much, if any, room for parodies, rip-offs or just stupid or supposedly funny movies like for instance “Mars attacks!” or “Vampires Suck!” Yeah. Don’t suggest movies like that, they’ll just be rejected.

So clear the docking moorings, lay in a course and prepare for warp speed, as we head out, very soon, into the Trekverse and tackle the very first Star Trek motion picture. Which is called, coincidentally, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”!

MOVIE LIST

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Star Trek VI: The Unknown Country
Star Trek VII: Generations
Star Trek VIII: Insurrection
Star Trek IX: First Contact
Star Trek X: Nemesis
Star Trek XI: Star Trek (2009 reboot)
Star Trek XII: Star Trek: Into Darkness

(Note: I know the two “new” Star Trek movies are not considered part of the original canon, and so are not really eleven and twelve but in fact one and two, but that’s confusing so I, with typical Trollheart stubbornness and refusal to face facts, am labelling them so.

Star Wars Episode VI: A New Hope (Originally just titled Star Wars)
Star Wars Episode VII: The Empires Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode VIII: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Silent Running
Blade Runner
Legend
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
White Dwarf
Metropolis
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Day of the Triffids
Forbidden Planet
Avatar
Event Horizon
Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Destroyer
Alien
Aliens
Alien 3
Alien Resurrection
Alien vs Predator
Jurassic Park (Only the original one)
Batman
Batman Returns
Batman Forever
Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
Inception
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
2001: A Space Odyssey
2010: Odyssey II
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The Cold Equations
John Carpenter’s Vampires
From Dusk till Dawn
Vampires II: Los Muertos
Interview with the Vampire
Queen of the Damned
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Sleepy Hollow
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
The Time Machine
Planet of the Apes (Original)
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes (Remake)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Fahrenheit 451
Fantastic Voyage
The Quatermass Xperiment
Quatermass II
Quatermass and the Pit
Soylent Green
Westworld
Logan’s Run
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The War of the Worlds (Original)
Dark City
The Last Starfighter
Flight of the Navigator
Starman
Terminator
Terminator II: Judgement Day
Terminator III: Rise of the Machines
Terminator Salvation
Enemy Mine
Brazil
Back to the Future
Back to the Future II
Back to the Future III
Alien Nation
Robocop (Original)
Predator
Total Recall
Lawnmower Man
Judge Dredd (Original)
Judge Dredd (2012 remake)
The Fifth Element
Devil’s Advocate
Angel Heart
Children of Men
V for Vendetta
Jumper
This island Earth
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Original)
Frequently Asked Questions About Time-Travel
Watchmen
Jason and the Argonauts
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
Excalibur
Clash of the Titans (Original)
Dragonslayer
Time Bandits
Ladyhawke
Highlander
Highlander II
Highlander III
Highlander IV
Highlander V
Snow White: A Tale of Terror
Labyrinth
The Princess Bride
Edward Scissorhands
The Nightmare before Christmas
Monsters Inc.
The Monster Club
Fright Night (Original)
The Lost Boys
The Forsaken
30 Days of night
Let the right one in (Original)
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