― mark s, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
― jel --, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
i) how many Antartic research bases have flamethrowers and automatic weapons lying around?
ii) how come their base seems to have normal 24 hour days, despite being below the Antartic circle?
― DV, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
The blood test scene is one of the greatest movie moments ever; terrific Morricone score (mostly electronic, IIRC, something of a rarity and an obv. trib to Carpenter); even Kurt Russell doing his Clint schtick was OK (I love the moment when he pours whiskey into his computer!) Plus a really sharp script by Burt Lancaster's son!
I used to really like Anne Bilson's film reviews in Time Out, although sadly her vampire nov was a bit rub. Still I think I'd like to read this too. What a great, great flick.
― Andrew L, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
they need pistols and flamethrowers in case the norwegians invade (when amundsen landed in "scott"s sphere of operations" in 1911, there was serious if brief discussion of the possibility of invading the norwegian camp and disabling the amundsen exhibition = they had guns available, for stray polar bears?) (haha very stray: polar bears = arctic not anarctic) (and yeah, no flamethrowers) (but anyway don't the Carpenter lot soup up the flamethrower from some more ordinary oxy-acetylene torch gizmo?)
The Thing is a masterful horror movie, which improves upon Hawks original by having a better monster (after all that giant carrot...) This body horror has never been bettered - the actual melting of people.....
Want to read this book. I want to read Quirke's Jaws book. I want to see more of these films with themed canapes and bouze afterwards.
― Pete, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
ho ho, I didn't realise I was making a joke... I just can't stop being funny.
I agree with the points about mechanical rather than cgi effects. and there is a lot to like about the film.
it was slightly ruined for me by seeing it in a room with a load of sweaty horror fans, preceded by a documentary on Carpenter that had all the best bits in it. Which was annoying... I'd already heard about the "you gotta be fucking kidding" bit but had been at great pains not to spoil it for special friend Irene, and then the cockfarming documentary did it for me.
The Thing is still not as good as Assault On Precinct 13.
(the secret nagging question is: SO WHAT IF THE THING IMITATES US EXACTLY? If we are all turned into exact copies of ourselves, what has changed? "Go with the flow maan, resistance is futile... gooey tentacloid palps? bring em on!!")
― mark s, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
Arctic circle is a grebt place to set a vampire film btw.
― Pete, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
i read the story when i was like 12 and it *really really* spooked me (the monster is described, apparently dead, in the first para, oh no!! it has THREE EYES!! OH NO!!): in the bit where they do the blood test, mcready is testing 35 ppl!! carpenter cuts it down to a slightly less pedantic four, i think
― Alan Trewartha, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Ray M, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
the gender thing she says was probably the last possible moment they could cast the way they did: actually not strictly speaking "realistic" (antarctic stations had been mixed sex since the 50s), it was for emotional-narrative focus as much as anything
the question of blair's infection is interesting, because so deliberately left ambiguous i. on hand he jumps to the "it's a shapeshifting alien much too quickly", ii. on the other, he destroys the helicopters/radio etc, iii. on the third hand he misdirects mac towards clark (who ends up being shot and then turning out NOT to have been thinged) => billson points out that the unspoken question is, if you become a thing and it becomes you, how much of YOUR behaviour wd be a mask and how much wd be real...
i suspect childs's thing-dom is kept exactly as ambiguous (and remember someone finds a bit of mac's torn clothing: so he's not out of the picture, just cz he's the hero => yes he's behaving mac-like, but then the thing-that-became-mac WOULD, to fool the others or fool us!!)
― Sean, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
― g-kit, Monday, 19 August 2002 08:45 (10 years ago) Permalink
― toby (tsg20), Monday, 19 August 2002 09:16 (10 years ago) Permalink
Any other films with absolutely no women in at all. Actually - nu thread...
― Pete, Monday, 19 August 2002 09:20 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Ray M (rdmanston), Thursday, 22 August 2002 17:22 (10 years ago) Permalink
― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 22 August 2002 22:29 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 23 August 2002 10:53 (10 years ago) Permalink
(also it stars frodo)
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:11 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Graham (graham), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:22 (10 years ago) Permalink
― vic (vicc13), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:23 (10 years ago) Permalink
(the caffeine (= coke obv) scene = brilliant loving parody of the scalpel/test-tubes scene)
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:25 (10 years ago) Permalink
― vic (vicc13), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:32 (10 years ago) Permalink
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:35 (10 years ago) Permalink
― vic (vicc13), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:41 (10 years ago) Permalink
jordana = cookiecutter brunette "looker" zzzzz
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:46 (10 years ago) Permalink
Hott brasilian-american with wonderful hair
and goth poseur(real goths have black hair)
― Chupa-Cabras (vicc13), Sunday, 8 September 2002 22:02 (10 years ago) Permalink
― boxcubed (boxcubed), Sunday, 8 September 2002 22:03 (10 years ago) Permalink
(Actually I only like her cos she reminds me of dreamy skate-punk princess Lois, who has way better hair)
― Graham (graham), Sunday, 8 September 2002 22:49 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Chris Barrus (xibalba), Monday, 24 February 2003 23:53 (10 years ago) Permalink
coz ok i just watched the movie and then "remembered" this whole mark s bit where he's totally sympathizing with the "thing" and spins this great hypothesis about how mcready is clearly "thing" but has decided by the strength of his will to be human that it doesn't matter. and also about how the "thing" is always in us, and in fact is our mutual fear and at the end, reduced to panic, everyone is reduced to "fire cleans all" which is as unscientific as you can get (and clearly the surface-opposition is science v. grotesque).
also about how blair ceases to panic and becomes "okay" when he reaches the same conclusion w/r/t the "thing" -- i.e. that it doesn't matter.
all of which i guess is part of the "so what if the thing imitates us exactly" except it's also all the BAD things the thing does are entirely human. except the thing gets to make k-cool spaceships too!
i may also have read all this elsewhere.
okay I need to read the book and see "the faculty" now.
also the initial scene with the thing and the dogs is totally horrifying as is the arms-getting-chomped scene, and the way the narrative closure with the two burned stations kicks this whole "statement of human nature" thing into high-gear.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 06:21 (9 years ago) Permalink
(if true, this is the coolest thing evah btw) (best aspect: it can be totally real and totally unproveable simultaneously)
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 14:51 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 16:34 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 17:44 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 17:45 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 17:46 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 17:53 (9 years ago) Permalink
I thought that Blair WAS a "thing" by that point, that it had assimilated him just before he could hang himself (a noose in the background, isn't there?). But according to this, realising a lack of difference between the thing and the not-thing = becoming the thing-in-itself?
― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 20:13 (9 years ago) Permalink
so maybe I do like this film after all.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 23:21 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Dan I., Wednesday, 14 January 2004 00:19 (9 years ago) Permalink
Dan I think the point is that it's just the two of them, so the "thing" could obviously just eat the other since there's no other people around to get in its way, or it could just wait until they both froze and only it would wake up, or etc. i.e. there's nothing to be done.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 14 January 2004 00:43 (9 years ago) Permalink
i like the dig at humanity: the ultra-perceptive dogs realize that the new dog is the thing within 20 seconds, we have to watch a 90 minute movie and still don't know!*
*i think we do know though... in the last scene when Childs takes a pull of whiskey, MacReady shoots him a kinda "knowing" glance, which i interpreted as "why the hell would the thing be drinking alcohol?"... the thing wants to proliferate, not impede it's spread by killing it's own cells with alcohol!
also, there's this i ran across while trying researching spelling.
RayM:Also, do you think there's a clue as to where Blair gets infected>short scene: the dog walks down the hall into blair's(?) room and the shadow of blair's head(?) turns his head real quick followed by a quick fade to black edit.
other thoughts:i was impressed on how well the thing always cleaned up after itself off-camera because on-camera it was always making a bloody gooey mess.
― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 18:06 (9 years ago) Permalink
― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 18:07 (9 years ago) Permalink
A long time ago I did a report at school comparing The Thing to this book. (Probably terrible writing and I don't have it any more, but anyways.) I don't know if anyone ever explicitly acknowledged a debt, but there are big similarities. Maybe it's a case of second-hand influence or something. Regardless I think this movie in fact does more justice than any other movie to the style of HP Lovecraft writing. Which is really cool, seeing that aside from his cult followers- his stuff gets a lot less use than it should, after doing more than anyone else to influence the best and most popular of the horror genre like Stephen King. I've seen it written that many horror movie fans are waiting for the day when someone does a really good Lovecraft movie (with arguable exceptions like the comedic Reanimator or Dagon) but until then The Thing comes closest.
― sucka (sucka), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 23:39 (9 years ago) Permalink
― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 23:44 (9 years ago) Permalink
― sucka (sucka), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 00:35 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 00:51 (9 years ago) Permalink
Occasional poster Matt Maxwell mentioned this in conversation to me a few years back; it's an understandable comparison to draw.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 01:39 (9 years ago) Permalink
― sucka (sucka), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 03:50 (9 years ago) Permalink
― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 16:41 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 16:47 (9 years ago) Permalink
crucially, there are no mountains in The Thing, or giant penguins, or shoggoths.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 17:01 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 17:17 (9 years ago) Permalink
― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 17:25 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 17:28 (9 years ago) Permalink
-In Mountains of Madness, before discovering the mountains, the Antarctic expedition from Miskatonic U. used special drills and dug up what they thought were petrified remains of an unknown life form. The remains are left on a dissection table in a tent. They turn out not to be petrified at all, the heat allows them to revive, and they eat everybody in the camp. The 2 main characters have been away on a scouting trip in a plane, and they return and find nothing but tracks in the snow. For the rest of the book they are haunted by what might, or might not be the Old Ones hunting them outside in the snow (they can't tell if it's howling or just the wind.)
In the movie the frozen alien was left to thaw on a dissection table, and ate an entire Norwegian outpost leaving nothing but tracks. The two main character Americans figure this out after a helicopter trip. When they return to their base they are haunted for the rest of the movie by what might, or might not be the alien hunting them in the shape of their friends.
-If I remember right, Carpenter's vs. of The Thing has some kinds of hints that the shapeshifter was able to reach populated areas, but the two remaining characters are already going to die and can't warn anybody. A paranoid, doomy ending instead of a victory (like in the original movie) is a pretty Lovecraftian touch.
― sucka (sucka), Thursday, 22 January 2004 05:55 (9 years ago) Permalink
the ancient things in the Lovecraft story are not like the Thing (although arguably the shoggoths kind of are).
anyway, tekeli-li.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 22 January 2004 10:23 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 1 March 2004 20:04 (9 years ago) Permalink
Really cool story, the movie retold from the Thing's perspective: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
The last line is pretty cringey though
― Dan I., Monday, 11 January 2010 08:53 (3 years ago) Permalink
re: Carpenter and Lovecraft: anybody seen In The Mouth of Madness? I watched it with some friends and the general consensus was that it did a great job of capturing the feel of Lovecraft, but we were all v. high and I am having trouble remembering specifics.
― I got gin but I'm not a ginger (bernard snowy), Monday, 11 January 2010 12:42 (3 years ago) Permalink
I knew about the reboot or whatever but wait a goddamn minute:
So what makes "The Thing" different? First off, the film isn't so much a remake as a prequel, or what the producers are calling a companion piece to the original. As "Thing" fans may recall, early in the film, trying to understand why a Norwegian helicopter had been chasing a runaway husky before it crashed, Kurt Russell returns to the Norwegian base camp where he finds evidence that its research team -- now all dead -- had dug something out of the ice, apparently awakening an extraterrestrial creature that had been buried for thousands of years."That's the story we tell in this film," says Marc Abraham, who is producing the movie with his Strike Entertainment partner Eric Newman. "We go back to that original Norwegian camp and try to figure out what happened. It's like a crime scene, with an ax in the door, and the audience gets to be the detective, trying to piece together what horrible things have occurred."
"That's the story we tell in this film," says Marc Abraham, who is producing the movie with his Strike Entertainment partner Eric Newman. "We go back to that original Norwegian camp and try to figure out what happened. It's like a crime scene, with an ax in the door, and the audience gets to be the detective, trying to piece together what horrible things have occurred."
In the fine tradition of the prequel to The Exorcist.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 16 March 2010 19:23 (3 years ago) Permalink
except... that there was a fairly recent video game that covered all this ground already!
― ✌.✰|ʘ‿ʘ|✰.✌ (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, 16 March 2010 20:11 (3 years ago) Permalink
Kinda thinking about playing that at some point, just out of curiosity. I heard that it was kind of a buggy mess, but still interesting? It might already be too dated to go back to, though...
― Nhex, Tuesday, 16 March 2010 20:19 (3 years ago) Permalink
really great game imo. i bet it would still play great. has a nice squad system and manages to work in some nice scares. quite tough tho.
― aarrissi-a-roni, Tuesday, 16 March 2010 20:28 (3 years ago) Permalink
haha the biologist who goes crazy and builds a spaceship in a cave in the ice = called BLAIR do you SEE?
wait, um no I don't see!
what was Mark on about here...?
― Get the Flaps Out (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 16 March 2010 21:16 (3 years ago) Permalink
probably a Tony Blair reference...?
― smoking cigarette shades? it doesn't even make any sense. (HI DERE), Tuesday, 16 March 2010 21:22 (3 years ago) Permalink
or the facts of life
― kingkongvsgodzilla, Tuesday, 16 March 2010 21:26 (3 years ago) Permalink
I thought the game was a sequel rather than a prequel
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 16 March 2010 21:56 (3 years ago) Permalink
if it wasn't though it should have been
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 16 March 2010 21:57 (3 years ago) Permalink
game was a sequel
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Tuesday, 16 March 2010 22:10 (3 years ago) Permalink
it's a good sign that the new movie is going to have a cast of complete unknowns. that at least gives one hope. isn't it weird that NONE of the original '82 cast have ever done much since?
― piscesx, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 01:48 (3 years ago) Permalink
Well I'm sure Kurt Russell would like us all to forget Cap'n Ron and all but he has done other things.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 01:50 (3 years ago) Permalink
ah yeah i meant aside from the big guy.
― piscesx, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 02:06 (3 years ago) Permalink
keith david & wilford brimley kept p busy
― :3 (cankles), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 02:18 (3 years ago) Permalink
Love this movie and enjoyed the game a lot too tbh.
― t(o_o)t (ENBB), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 02:19 (3 years ago) Permalink
called BLAIR do you SEE?
ref to exorcist yes?
― bracken free ditch (Ste), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 09:16 (3 years ago) Permalink
and try to figure out what happened. It's like a crime scene, with an ax in the door, and the audience gets to be the detective, trying to piece together what horrible things have occurred."
erm but we kinda know already
― bracken free ditch (Ste), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 09:18 (3 years ago) Permalink
Yeah, David Clennon, Richard Masur, Richard Dysart and Charles Hallahan did, too. Solid, well-known TV work if nothing else. (I mean, leading roles on "thirtysomething" and "LA Law" for several seasons are hardly "nothing.")
This prequel strikes me as a perfect example of audience-insulting misguidedness. Does anyone really need a road map as to what happened at the Norwegian camp? Not really hard to piece together.
― Like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft (Pancakes Hackman), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 10:24 (3 years ago) Permalink
http://io9.com/5659890/first-thing-prequel-footage-cracks-open-the-alien-ice-block
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/46868
http://io9.com/5659148/the-thing-prequel-same-name-new-tagline
god, this is gonna be terrible
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:14 (2 years ago) Permalink
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:16 (2 years ago) Permalink
i can just smell it: another joyless, poorly edited shitfest that adds nothing to the previous movie apart from needless backstory that could have been guessed by anyone who saw the original.
and it probably won't even make that much money! there is literally NO REASON to make this movie!
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:26 (2 years ago) Permalink
wtffi hate this to the core of whatever disgusting mass of faux-humanity concocted it over a fusion-food speed-lunch meeting
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:30 (2 years ago) Permalink
xp!nothing is sacred :(
yeah but carpenter was remaking! and that was good! cmon people be hopeful!
― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:32 (2 years ago) Permalink
I gotta vote with rrrobyn and latebloomer here just because that photo looks so wrong.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:33 (2 years ago) Permalink
oh come on like you guys would have been all "oh for sure that's gonna be awse" if it was 1982 and you were seeing this
― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:36 (2 years ago) Permalink
Yes! Because that does look awesome!
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:36 (2 years ago) Permalink
Hell I remember when the Escape from New York ads and posters were running and I couldn't understand why my mom wouldn't let me see it.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:37 (2 years ago) Permalink
right now is not a good era for remakes, as far as i've witnessed, that's the thing :/xpit looks so awesome
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:38 (2 years ago) Permalink
x-post
this isn't a remake, though! it's a prequel to a remake.
we live in an age of movies-as-fan-fiction. it's really depressing.
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:40 (2 years ago) Permalink
right now is not a good era for remakes, as far as i've witnessed, that's the thing :/
exactly
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:43 (2 years ago) Permalink
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, October 10, 2010 12:40 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark
otm
― dayo, Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:45 (2 years ago) Permalink
prequel is worse, it's true! can nothing remain mystery? fan-fiction with big budget! gahhhhi do wish it could be good, as i wish all sci-fi movies could be good. but then, i wished so hard about Alien 4. never forget.
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:45 (2 years ago) Permalink
gotta say, wtf is with that brutalist ice tunnel they are running through. did antarctic researchers really have time to hire architects to stylize their bases.
― dayo, Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:47 (2 years ago) Permalink
this is pretty awesome
― dayo, Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:48 (2 years ago) Permalink
I mean, the picture. haven't read the comic
― dayo, Sunday, October 10, 2010 4:47 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark
I think it's supposed to be the Thing's spaceship they're running through
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:52 (2 years ago) Permalink
why can't they just make their own damn movie
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 04:53 (2 years ago) Permalink
that is my basic question
Is that one of the Daft Punk guys on dayo's poster?
Also, did anyone else think about warning the people in the screenshot about facehuggers?
― StanM, Sunday, 10 October 2010 05:17 (2 years ago) Permalink
Just re-reading this whole thread, and saw this: i suspect childs's thing-dom is kept exactly as ambiguous (and remember someone finds a bit of mac's torn clothing: so he's not out of the picture, just cz he's the hero => yes he's behaving mac-like, but then the thing-that-became-mac WOULD, to fool the others or fool us!!)
Mac and Childs both passed the blood test, yo. Childs gets separated during the whole final battle thing, so the audience can assume some ambiguity there, but I don't think Mac is ever off-screen after he passes the blood test.
― not Morbius old, but still (Phil D.), Sunday, 10 October 2010 10:25 (2 years ago) Permalink
I would totally see this if they'd called it "..And Another Thing"
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 10 October 2010 13:21 (2 years ago) Permalink
Or "You've got another thing coming"
"That Thing You Do"
― dayo, Sunday, 10 October 2010 13:23 (2 years ago) Permalink
I don't thing so.
― StanM, Sunday, 10 October 2010 13:32 (2 years ago) Permalink
There's SomeThing About Mary
― Neil S, Sunday, 10 October 2010 13:35 (2 years ago) Permalink
ha ha, rom com version
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 10 October 2010 14:16 (2 years ago) Permalink
infected dog escaping from Norwegian helicopter, taking shelter in US base = "meet cute"
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 10 October 2010 14:22 (2 years ago) Permalink
you guys who're all like "why can't they make their own movie" understand that Carpenter's Thing was...a remake...right
― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 10 October 2010 15:43 (2 years ago) Permalink
Yeah that's been pretty well established!
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, 10 October 2010 16:46 (2 years ago) Permalink
If any of the recent spate of remakes/prequels/"re-boots" of old horror movies had been any good I think more of us would be optimistic!
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, 10 October 2010 16:48 (2 years ago) Permalink
^ this. The Thing is a good, 80s interpretation of a cold-war horror original, neither detracting from it nor losing out because of it. in that, it can stand on its own form of originality (much like The Fly did). whereas current remakes (lol of 80s remakes or not) have little to do with 'interpretation' and creating their own real of-the-now qualities, and much more to do with studio quotas. sure, i wish this new movie was from the heart of hollywood magic but, uh.
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:12 (2 years ago) Permalink
but hey, maybe the pairing of the screenwriter for the new Nightmare on Elm Street AND the new Final Destination + a some-time screenwriter for Battlestar, with a first-time feature director will have created the combo we're looking for
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:21 (2 years ago) Permalink
we all gotta start somewhere!
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:23 (2 years ago) Permalink
seriously though, i mean, john carpenter actually directed B horror movies in the 60s! i feel like his The Thing was more like 'let me show you how i can do it better' - and now we've gone back to hacking out half-assed stuff that isn't about doing better except in the special effects dept.
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:30 (2 years ago) Permalink
Real of-the-now qualities? What if this time, in the prequel, we find out that the first movie was a dream (Inception) by the team that dug up the creature, that was actually buried under the ice by the Vatican in the middle ages because it was the illegitimate child of Jesus and Mary Magdalen (Da Vinci Code) and by waking it up they start the Apocalyps, that will end the world in 2012? (oh, and there should be a diversion about terrorists too, obv. - maybe one of the team should be a muslim who jokes about bombs all the time)
?
― StanM, Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:43 (2 years ago) Permalink
what if it turns out the thing was brought to earth on a predator ship
― drawl the whine (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:45 (2 years ago) Permalink
fuck washing a post-post-modernism
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:46 (2 years ago) Permalink
maybe this is actually the next bourne movie
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:47 (2 years ago) Permalink
That Bourne Thing You Do (romantic horror sci-fi comedy)
― StanM, Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:55 (2 years ago) Permalink
That Bourne Thing You Do To Me (the pr0n parody remake)
― StanM, Sunday, 10 October 2010 17:56 (2 years ago) Permalink
Bourne Again would be a good title for the inevitable 2022 franchise reboot starting Frankie Muniz.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 10 October 2010 19:52 (2 years ago) Permalink
Exactly! They're all half-arsed plot + reuse of dialogue from first film + ironic winks at audience + stunt casting
Carpenter's remake took the basic idea and ran with it in all sorts of interesting new ways, with some really quite startling effects
― buildings with goats on the roof (James Morrison), Sunday, 10 October 2010 22:47 (2 years ago) Permalink
ugh
http://io9.com/5659983/they-live-remake-might-ditch-the-infamous-alien-sunglasses
― StanM, Monday, 11 October 2010 15:39 (2 years ago) Permalink
seriously though, i mean, john carpenter actually directed B horror movies in the 60s!
erm, carpenter didn't direct his first feature film until 1974 (Dark Star) and didn't make a horror movie until 1978 (Halloween)
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 11 October 2010 15:46 (2 years ago) Permalink
Well, yes but he did direct short films; they are technically movies (and not tv)
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Monday, 11 October 2010 15:50 (2 years ago) Permalink
Whatever the case, he had ideas, man
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Monday, 11 October 2010 15:51 (2 years ago) Permalink
oh fer sure, i mean halloween alone is a game changer
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 11 October 2010 15:55 (2 years ago) Permalink
― Ward Fowler, Monday, October 11, 2010 11:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark
why didn't you just say "until 1978 (Oct. 31)" if you're trying to be so accurate
― cathy: ACK-er (s1ocki), Monday, 11 October 2010 17:41 (2 years ago) Permalink
lol
― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Monday, 11 October 2010 17:43 (2 years ago) Permalink
dbl lol
the 'funny' 'thing' is, until the carpenter movie halloween wasn't really 'celebrated' here in the uk - and it took ET to really popularise trick or treating. i love seeing our supermarkets full of spooky crap, so god bless you john carpenter
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 11 October 2010 20:20 (2 years ago) Permalink
Amazed to find that this movie received such negative reviews when it was released.
Watched the film last night and really was struck by how skilled and confident Carpenter was when he made his great 80s films. What the heck happened after They Live?
― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 07:27 (2 years ago) Permalink
He still had one more great one in In The Mouth Of Madness, but yeah, ever since it's been pretty dire. Even his lauded material for the "Masters of Horror" series was basically shitty.
― Ian Curtis danced like a tortured chicken DO U SEE (Phil D.), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 10:18 (2 years ago) Permalink
Love it.
― ENBB, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 11:03 (2 years ago) Permalink
I think what happened is that Carpenter got old but, like so many of his peers (Romero, Craven, et al.) , no longer had the vision or energy to make something great on a low-budget. So many of his later movies are like half-assed big-budget aspirants hampered by their limited resources. I mean, I can only guess how much more "Escape from LA" cost than "Escape from NY," and the difference between those two says it all, really.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 11:57 (2 years ago) Permalink
the great aspect of this film is really all in the casting and the characterization. you've got a bunch of dudes who are already bored and trapped by their situation, some of whom clearly don't like each other already and some of whom are power-tripping or misanthropic or weak-willed, others who are utter pros and smart as hell. it's essentially '12 Angry Men' vs a super fucked-up alien.
― omar little, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 22:59 (2 years ago) Permalink
YES!
― ENBB, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 22:59 (2 years ago) Permalink
this film is perfect
― in my world of suggest bans (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 23:06 (2 years ago) Permalink
the making-of featurette on the DVD is probably the best one of those I have ever seen (except for maybe Tron)
― in my world of suggest bans (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 23:07 (2 years ago) Permalink
The Thing: A 140,000-Year-Old Organism Discovered in Antarctica's Ice-Shrouded Lake Vostok
An ancient living laboratory of our planet's past in Antarctica may have provided a preview of what we can expect to find deep below the barren surface of Mars and in the ice-shrouded seas of Jupiter's Europa. Two of the world's leading experts on life at the lower temperature extremes, Buford Price of the University of California, Berkeley and Todd Sowers of Penn State observed that microbes colonizing life appear to have two levels of metabolism: a survival metabolism in which they remain alive but become dormant until exposed to nutrients or higher temperatures, or, a maintenance metabolism for steady sustained growth.The team observed that some organisms in permafrost appear to have "protein repair enzymes that maintain active recycling of certain amino acids needed for cell repair for at least 30,000 years." They added that the "extremely low expenditures of survival energy enable microbial communities in extreme environments to survive indefinitely."In the Antarctic's ancient ice-bound Lake Vostok they reported that nitrifying bacteria with low but active metabolisms have been found encased in liquid veins at minus 40 degrees F for more than 140,000 years. And, it takes about 108 years for carbon to turn over in the cells.They projected from their conclusions that life moving so slowly that it appears to be frozen, dormant, or undectable may survive in the cold, icy and "cosmically radioactive conditions of outer space."
The team observed that some organisms in permafrost appear to have "protein repair enzymes that maintain active recycling of certain amino acids needed for cell repair for at least 30,000 years." They added that the "extremely low expenditures of survival energy enable microbial communities in extreme environments to survive indefinitely."
In the Antarctic's ancient ice-bound Lake Vostok they reported that nitrifying bacteria with low but active metabolisms have been found encased in liquid veins at minus 40 degrees F for more than 140,000 years. And, it takes about 108 years for carbon to turn over in the cells.
They projected from their conclusions that life moving so slowly that it appears to be frozen, dormant, or undectable may survive in the cold, icy and "cosmically radioactive conditions of outer space."
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Friday, 22 April 2011 01:48 (2 years ago) Permalink
so fuckin awesome
― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, 22 April 2011 02:17 (2 years ago) Permalink
It's also just...comforting, in a cosmic sense. I love knowing that life exists in such complexities.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 22 April 2011 02:39 (2 years ago) Permalink
I adore Lake Vostok. Did not realize it was only discovered in '96!
― last name ever, first name gjetost (Jon Lewis), Friday, 22 April 2011 02:55 (2 years ago) Permalink
Ready or not, here comes the prequel...
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 01:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
fucking swedes
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 01:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
Terrible poster.
― that mustardless plate (Bill A), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 07:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
Norwegians. And yeah, terrible poster. Doesn't the tagline directly contradict that image?
― Millsner, Wednesday, 13 July 2011 07:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
IT'S NOT HUMAN. NEARLY THOUGH. ONLY HAND TO GO. BRB.
― that mustardless plate (Bill A), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 07:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
There was a (pretty great) computer game that already told the story of what happened before the events of The Thing.. I wonder if that story's been discarded?
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 09:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
"from the producers of Dawn of the Dead"
no need to say more.
― Marco Damiani, Wednesday, 13 July 2011 10:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
x-post - If it's the one I'm thinking of, I loved that game.
I'm not ready for this.
― (｡◕‿‿ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ◕｡) (ENBB), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 10:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
I just find interesting how all these awful remakes (no wait, they're calling them reimaginings), for all their excess and ultra graphic violence, look like highly sanitized, disinfected versions of the original movies.
― Marco Damiani, Wednesday, 13 July 2011 10:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
will this have model work? (this will not have model work)
― thomp, Wednesday, 13 July 2011 10:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah that games talked abt upthread iirc
― just sayin, Wednesday, 13 July 2011 11:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
I am nothing if not consistent
― t(o_o)t (ENBB), Tuesday, March 16, 2010 10:19 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
― (｡◕‿‿ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ◕｡) (ENBB), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 11:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Marco Damiani, Wednesday, July 13, 2011 10:25 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark
^ this
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great example of this
― Rachel Puppetry (latebloomer), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's 100% gorier than the original but it still can't replicate the low-budget sleaziness
― Rachel Puppetry (latebloomer), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
The wikipedia entry for this sounds vaguely encouraging, though. They WILL use animatronics for a lot of it. And they're going with a deliberately slow pace, to match the 1982 version. I dunno, this could be pretty rad as long as somebody gets to pour bourbon into a computer
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
Why is it being pushed as a prequel? "Three days before the astonishing events of the original film... exactly the same thing happened!"
― ledge, Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
IGNORE ME
― ledge, Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
I dunno, this could be pretty rad as long as somebody gets to pour bourbon into a computer
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, July 13, 2011 8:11 AM (4 minutes ago)
J&B scotch iirc
― it's a meme i made and i like (Steve Shasta), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
Ha I should have remembered that, I love J&B
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
They WILL use animatronics for a lot of it. And they're going with a deliberately slow pace, to match the 1982 version
this is all PR bullshit
― a man is only a guy (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
Oh yeah? Dish, dish!
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
Xp You're all PR bullshit
― BIG HOOBA aka the stankdriver (Phil D.), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
j/k
the makers of these remakes/"reboots"/reimaginings ALWAYS say this kind of thing. "We love the original movie because it's so perfect - we are going to be very faithful to the tone and spirit of the original" yadda yadda. It's part of the schtick.
― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, all these remakes all go filter-happy in an effort to recreate the original scuzzy visuals, with the result being this surreal disconnect between reality and some TV commercial version of reality.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
hey shakey you know who else says that kind of thing? your mom. she reimagined my schtick last weekend, though, was pretty awesome
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
*cries*
― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
*does the knucks with imaginary friends*
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
Wellllll here's the trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uHzlAjpDSEM
― Rachel Puppetry (latebloomer), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, July 13, 2011 8:43 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark
^ this this this, more than anything, this. fucking hate the tendency in contemporary horror to make everything look like a fucking audi commercial with added "grit".
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
where do i know that "hey lo lo ley" scandewegian yodelling song in the background from?
― ledge, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
Sound of Music
― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
LOL Uncle Owen from the Star Wars prequels is in this.
― BIG HOOBA aka the stankdriver (Phil D.), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
trailer predictably reveals several bad decisions right off the bat
― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
oh my gosh that looks shit
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
ie, mixed-gender cast, CGI face-morphing, car crashes, various shots cribbed from the original
that's the funniest tagline ever.
― ＤＥＨＵï¼ï¼¡ï¼®ï¼©ï¼ºï¼¥ ＹＯＵＲＳＥＬＦ ＡＮＤ ＦＡＣＥ ＴＯ ＢＬＯＯＤＳＨＥＤ (Princess TamTam), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
in a place with nothing...they found....BWOMMMMM.....SOMETHING
lol it stars "Kim Bubbs"
rly? have never seen sound of music, guess it's achieved full background media ubiquity tho.
― ledge, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
don't see why any of these are bad or uninevitable.
― ledge, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
trailer looks okay-ish, if unremarkable. points for fairly naturalistic cinematography for a contemporary film and a suitably grizzled cast. lead seems terribly unconvincing, but i'll reserve judgement on that. the fact that she's a fish out of water seems to be the point, so i won't fault her casting on that score. a few details (such as the black & white dog chewing his enclosure) suggest that it's going to be a straight-up remake, but who knows. maybe it's just the dog that escapes at the end to complete the chain...
like the idea that it'll have a longer, slower build-up than the original, which pretty much hit the ground running.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
was kidding about the Sound of Music, didn't really notice the music
I dunno if I wanna get into why all of those things are particularly bad. The mixed gender thing should be fairly obvious, I would think.
― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Dawn of the Dead remake is a lot better than any of the recent horror remakes I can think of.
― bill magill (milo z), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, DOD remake is pretty fun and it's quite unlike Snyder's subsequent films. Best opening credits sequence of modern times too.
― Number None, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah, the opening scene of the DOD remake is brilliant. don't think the rest of the movie really lives up to what the opening promises, though. failure to follow-through on zombie-baby chestbuster kind of broke my heart.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
belly burster, w/e...
re the yodelling: eurovision, of course.
1:20 in
― ledge, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
i really want to like this but.. there's a shaggy funkiness to carpenter's movie that goes beyond kurt russell and which seems.. well, not in evidence here. everybody has great hair, for god's sake! in an antarctic research station!!! in the 1982 movie there was this kind of crass bonhomie, pot smoking, everybody a little nutty, as you would be. it's funny how sequel peeps will architect everything down to the nth degree as far as plot and set continuities go but then just throw hairstyles out the window, and the look of the movie, too. why not match the cinematography as well as the plot? why's it all got to be this ultra-contrasty shiny wetness?
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
like, the research station looks positively tasteful. it would not be. it would be dirty and drafty and cold and the lighting would suck.
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
Man, no good will come of this. Why don't they ever remake bad movies and make them better? Why must they remake classic movies? I can name a million on-paper solid horror films that could be better.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Ste, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
okay, so tracer OTM. especially about the "shaggy funkiness" and dirty, careless, human lived-in-ness of carpenter's research station. also the lack of oddball personality, both in the cast and the cinematic style.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
lack of (apparent) personality in this new version, i mean.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
yep. this movie is POINTLESS
― Ste, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
you might even say it's lacking a certain.... SOMETHING
― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
y'all should go and see the troll hunter instead, if you want quirky gritty original norwegian horror. well more comic fantasy than horror but anyway, it's good.
― ledge, Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
the original is playing in LA tomorrow on a double-bill w/ cronenberg's 'the fly'
― jesus and mary chapin carpenter (donna rouge), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
trollhunter is fun
― ＤＥＨＵï¼ï¼¡ï¼®ï¼©ï¼ºï¼¥ ＹＯＵＲＳＥＬＦ ＡＮＤ ＦＡＣＥ ＴＯ ＢＬＯＯＤＳＨＥＤ (Princess TamTam), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
this trailer is like what happened to elaine's hair over the course of the seinfeld run.
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 14 July 2011 22:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
seeing trollhunter on sunday. excited!
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 14 July 2011 23:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
oooh I hadn't heard about trollhunter - i wanna see it!
― (｡◕‿‿ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ◕｡) (ENBB), Thursday, 14 July 2011 23:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
It worries me that there's not a scene in the trailer (except for vehicle falling into crevice in the ice) that doesn't seem to be a lift from Carpenter's movie. And there seem to be very few Norwegians.
― not bulimic, just a cat (James Morrison), Thursday, 14 July 2011 23:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
I don't think I even want to watch the trailer after these reactions.
― (｡◕‿‿ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ◕｡) (ENBB), Thursday, 14 July 2011 23:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
The trailer itself isn't bad! It's just impossible not to be cynical about this movie.
― Rachel Puppetry (latebloomer), Friday, 15 July 2011 00:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
a few details (such as the black & white dog chewing his enclosure) suggest that it's going to be a straight-up remake, but who knows. maybe it's just the dog that escapes at the end to complete the chain...
it's a direct prequel. but it's basically a remake anyway, i.e. the same basic events happen.
it's a pre-make!
― Rachel Puppetry (latebloomer), Friday, 15 July 2011 01:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
surprised that term hasn't caught on yet
― Rachel Puppetry (latebloomer), Friday, 15 July 2011 01:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
Bailed out on the trailer halfway through. First of all, can we FUCKING GET RID OF THE PSEUDO-GREGORIAN CHANTERS THAT INDICATE "UNKNOWN SCARY SHIT FROM THE ANCIENT PAST"
Zero suspense, no indication that this movie is even supposed to be scary.
Trailer for the original 100% better...
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Friday, 15 July 2011 02:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Fog has my favorite Carpenter trailer.
― ephendophile (Eric H.), Friday, 15 July 2011 02:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Fog is the most underrated Carpenter. Scared the poop out of me when I was little.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 15 July 2011 03:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
did you get your poop back
― Rachel Puppetry (latebloomer), Friday, 15 July 2011 03:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
John Carpenter stole my childhood poop, and now I will never get it back.
The Thing: "Man is the warmest place to hide."The Fog: "What in the living hell is out there?"
Now these, my friends, are tag lines.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 15 July 2011 03:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Fog, the scene near the start with the guys on the boat. Fucking superb shit.
― Ste, Friday, 15 July 2011 08:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
I guess i don't have very high expectations for this prequel, but that trailer looks alright.
― Kerm, Friday, 15 July 2011 12:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
i'm sure this will be terrible, but i still got chills in the first ~20 seconds of the trailer just because i love the original premise so much. show me an antarctic research base and i'm set, i'll watch you even if you're a prequel to alien vs predator.
― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Friday, 15 July 2011 16:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
whoa, this just seems masochistic (if true):
Annual viewing on "The Ice"
The Thing is typically viewed by members of the winter crew at the U.S. South Pole station after the last flight out (usually in a double-feature with The Shining). [31]
― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Friday, 15 July 2011 16:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
Might as well, otherwise people would be making inevitable requests/references to it for the next six months.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 15 July 2011 16:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
masochism kind of goes w/the territory
― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Friday, 15 July 2011 16:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
Just re-read Ebert's old review. He misses the point on a couple of fronts. One, he complains about the lack of characterization, but the fact that these characters remains so vivid to us today is surely because of the way Carpenter drew them; most films today, I leave not knowing half the characters' names. Two, he complains that the dudes would have benefited from the buddy system, but how so? If Ebert was paying attention, it's introduced way, way early that someone may have already been Thing-afied by way of the Norwegian dog wandering around. The buddy system would not have helped.
Anyway, re-watching again tonight, this movie is just tight.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 16 July 2011 02:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
With this and Blade Runner, 1982 seems like some kind of high point of special effects. It's essentially all been downhill since then.
― Number None, Saturday, 16 July 2011 14:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think it's spiritually significant that I was born in 1982. It's one of the best years for genre movies ever.
― cave duel (latebloomer), Saturday, 16 July 2011 15:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
ET, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Dark Crystal, Conan/Beastmaster, Star Trek II, Tron ...
Plus a host of other touchstones: Porky's, Fast Times and . Diner, Liquid Sky, Fitzcarraldo, Fanny and Alexander, Sophie's Choice, Tootsie, The Verdict, White Dog, 48 Hours, First Blood ...
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 16 July 2011 15:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
Ruddy hell, seeing it written down like that...what a year for films.
― that mustardless plate (Bill A), Saturday, 16 July 2011 16:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, it was really something in my memory, a lot of things happening all at once.
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 16 July 2011 16:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
Also, Road Warrior came out the very end of December 1981, so I'd count that in there, too.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 16 July 2011 16:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
Right, I was ten years old in '82 so only saw ET in the cinema, the rest on VHS over the next few years. Given that the space shuttle has been retired, couldn't those funds now be reassigned to a u&k time-machine-building project to get us back there? deadly srs.
― that mustardless plate (Bill A), Saturday, 16 July 2011 16:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
the thing is on telly right now! there is literally nothing wrong with this film
― mark s, Monday, 22 August 2011 22:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
you've got to be fucking kidding
― Countdown to Alma Cogan (Noodle Vague), Monday, 22 August 2011 22:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
\o/
― mark s, Monday, 22 August 2011 22:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
£%$
― mark s, Monday, 22 August 2011 22:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
there is literally nothing wrong with this film
― mark s, Monday, August 22, 2011 6:02 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Monday, 22 August 2011 22:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
i think the early silhouette is norris's: which means his heart-attack is
1: genuinely faked to take norris-thing out of the firing line2: real in the sense that a thingified norris has norris's bad heart3: "real" in the sense that the thingified norris can give itself a heart-attack as a ruse
haha at the diff between 1 and 3
who gets into the blood cupboard? copper and garry are both proven non-things, judging by subsequent events -- unless copper too is already a thing when his arms get bitten off and he's faking death? (but his body gets tested, doesn't it...)
can the thing in one body recognise other things in other bodies? everyone in the film assumes yes, but maybe no? maybe it's only as aware as the body it's hiding in
― mark s, Monday, 22 August 2011 23:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
double OTM
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 22 August 2011 23:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
the world needs a book by mark s about this movie, 33 1/3 style.
― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 01:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
x-post - Triple.
I tried to get my parents to watch it with me last weekend because it was on On Demand but instead they made me watch some Gerard Butler crapfest. I was displeased.
― ladies love draculas like children love stray dogs (ENBB), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 01:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
The nature of the Thing:
It has a heart-attack when it's hiding in Norris's body. It is stoned when it's hiding in Palmer's body, and in fact says "You've got to be fucking kidding"
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 10:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
what kind of name is Windows anyway?
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 11:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
I am still a bit perplexed as to why that scientific research station in the antarctic had so many machine guns knocking around. Is this usual?
― The New Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 11:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
war with Norway iirc
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 11:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
who gets into the blood cupboard? copper and garry are both proven non-things, judging by subsequent events
OK, so Bennings and Windows are in the storage room, and Bennings tells Windows to go get the keys from Garry. Windows leaves, comes back in, finds Bennings being assimilated, and you can hear the keys fall to the floor. From that point on, it's chaos, and the keys are unaccounted for. But here's the important thing (lol) -- while all this is going on, Blair is missing, and when they're burning the bodies from the Norwegian camp along with Bennings' remains, they notice he's missing. Blair was probably already a Thing, got the keys when Windows dropped them, destroyed the blood supply knowing that Copper or Fuchs would think of the serum test, then either returned them to where they were dropped or slipped them into Garry's room.
― Ad hom . . . in em's cock? (Phil D.), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 12:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
aha YES! though actually bennTHINGs could also have them and pass them to A.N.OTHERTHING when off-camera -- or just split, unless things only split when under attack?
we have always been at war with norway
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 12:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
also: conservation of mass is way more of an issue here than machine guns
"is this usual?" <-- it is an unusual situation all round really
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 12:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
I saw the trailer for the Thing remake/reboot the other day and all I could think of was mark s on this thread -- it remains one of my favorite things from ile.
― ¯\(°_o)/¯ (Nicole), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 12:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
oh sure, but fantasy-horror only works if the inrusion of the bizarre and grotesque is the only thing marking things out as an otherwise normal situation.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 12:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
the antarctic is only a "normal" situation in quite an extreme sense: i'm not startled by the idea that a US base, even a research base, has a small stock of weaponry
a: the antarctic treaty has always a fragile affair and military activity is not beyond the imaginationb: if this is US territory, then the right to bear arms applies!
i don't actually remember any machine-guns, as opposed to rifles, and isn't the flame-thrower souped up from items to hand?
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 12:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
i believe guns are pretty standard in the antarctic - you might need them for wolves, bears, psychotic penguins, etc
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 12:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
wolves and bears ?!
― ledge, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
if they got lost
― Number None, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
packs of feral huskies descended from countless polar expeditions
― ledge, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
mutant experimental bears and wolves introduced by the evil norwegians
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
^^Ăªveryone who goes to the antarctic has read this, why be unprepared?
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
that was at the north pole tho xpost
― Number None, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
the events pullman described were north, but the bears are from svalbard which is in norway, so why wouldn't evil norwegian scientists bring them south also?
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
well OK, killer microscopic invertebrates
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
Guns would kill them for sure
― Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
i: obv you need guns in case someone goes mental ii: everyone who goes to the antarctic MUST already be a mental
QED
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's like i'm the only one that understands the meaning of the word normal
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
to anyone who adores this film, i highly recommend this book:
― sold my soul to satin (the table is the table), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
xpost Yeah, there are no machine guns in this movie. And most of these dudes seem the type of cats to carry weapons regardless of location.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
Did "Alien" start the whole team of characters being called by a single name thing (Ripley, Macready, etc) or is there a war movie precedent I'm not thinking of?
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
MASH is pretty single-name isn't it?
many of the characters take their names directly from the john w. campbell original: copper, blair, norris, macready, commander garry -- so it's already pretty single-name, and the all-maleness presumably amplifies this; there's a military tinge to it even though the film's camp isn't military
alien is slightly diff -- and at the time more startling -- bcz women get militarised
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
good god, i had never known this aspect of campbell's life:
His mother, Dorothy (née Strahern) was warm but changeable of character and had an identical twin who visited them often and who disliked young John. John was unable to tell them apart and was frequently coldly rebuffed by the person he took to be his mother.[3]
!!!!!!!
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
omg that is what this film is entirely about!
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
this changes everything
― ledge, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
i mean, how completely insane is that.
(was searching wiki cause i thought i remembered campbell having been in the military (hence the slightly military tone of Who Goes There) but no)
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
except "penetrated with slimy tendrils" instead of "coldly rebuffed"
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
oh wow
xp
― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
dunno ... MASH is fairly two-name, characters with nicknames, titles (Hawkeye Pierce, Hotlips Houlihan, Father Mulcahy, etc)
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
As Sam Moskowitz has written about Campbell in his early critical study of science-fiction writers, "From the memories of his childhood he drew the most fearsome agony of the past: the doubts, the fears, the shock, and the frustration of repeatedly discovering that the woman who looked so much like his mother was not who she seemed."
hope this moskowitz guy wasn't pulling our leg
― ledge, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
i just remembered everyone saying "hotlips, hawkeye, radar" etc, but yes, we were aware of titles and non-nickname surnames, so poor guess on my part
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
Sgt. Bilko
― Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
... tho he was called Ernie occasionally.
― Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
So, yeah, war movies basically.
― Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
"Where Eagles Dare" has a one-name-only cast but "Dirty dozen" has first names, ranks, etc
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
― dell (del), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
...and a mere 9 years later: i recently obtained and read the Anne Billson book mentioned by mark s when opening this thread...
(It is, as he said, very readable)
― Snowy Mann, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 19:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
― ¯\(°_o)/¯ (Nicole), Tuesday, August 23, 2011 8:21 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark
same!
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 19:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
amazing anecdote if true
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 19:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
the doubts, the fears, the shock, and the frustration of repeatedly discovering that the woman who looked so much like his mother was primarily composed of chitin and radioactive mucus
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 20:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 20:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
^want
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 21:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
One thing I noticed is when PalmerThing's blood hits the floor, it's right next to a stack of puzzle boxes and model kits.
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 22:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
what kind of name is Windows anyway?― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, August 23, 2011 4:13 AM (10 hours ago)
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, August 23, 2011 4:13 AM (10 hours ago)
Windows is the radio operator - his nickname comes from being the "window to the rest of the world" or something.
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 22:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
Most of Sam Fuller's war movies have single name characters. Steel Helmet from 1951 might be the first (can't remember if it has a "Griff" in it though)
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 22:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
bah forgot to look out for the puzzles and models by palmerthing blood (it was on telly again so i watched it again)
― mark s, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 22:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
what i keep coming back to about this movie is weird (uncanny) contradictions inherent in the monster's m.o.
as childs says, "if i were a perfect copy of myself, how would you know?" - to which the doc replies he's thought of a "blood serum" test. but this test makes no sense - if the thing is an exact copy, surely childs' blood would be exactly the same if he's really childs or if he's been taken over by the thing.
but further, imagine that the thing comes into contact with the rest of civilisation - and the entire world becomes thingified..
how would we know?
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 09:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's uncanny valley time!
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 09:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
"radical post-human" = "never does the washing up"
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 09:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
'human likeness' axis figures curiously elided beyond 100%
― ledge, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 09:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
maybe the answer is that actually it is NOT an exact copy. the dog, for instance, is preternaturally calm, and the other dogs react to it; thing-blair builds a spaceship (real blair wouldn't know how and wouldn't want to); so along with superfast body-morphing The Thing's real talent is for subterfuge. it is more, and different, and less than human but it is good at hiding it.
but maybe not perfect: i remember a scene when they're putting blair up in the shack above the camp and somebody (bearded nerd scientist dude?) plonks down a bottle of vodka in front of him - blair's favorite tipple. blair doesn't touch it. macready picks it up, takes a big swig, sets it right back down. blair ignores it..
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 10:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
cf. gygax upthread:
in the last scene when Childs takes a pull of whiskey, MacReady shoots him a kinda "knowing" glance, which i interpreted as "why the hell would the thing be drinking alcohol?"... the thing wants to proliferate, not impede it's spread by killing it's own cells with alcohol!
― ledge, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 10:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 15:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 15:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
The weird thing is, in the Alan Dean Foster novelization, "Windows" is called "Sanders." >>shrug<<
― Ad hom . . . in em's cock? (Phil D.), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 16:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
is that the only difference?
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 16:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
I always thought Windows was an allusion to a) his role as the radio/comm guy and b) the fact that dude is always wearing shades. even inside, at night.
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 16:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
it was the film's one gesture in the direction of utopian science fiction: a world where Mac kills Windows ?
(i'll get me coat)
― Snowy Mann, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 16:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
uggghhhhh
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 16:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
Would it be too many xposts for me to reply to mark s with "No, there was also a pred ship?"
― Ad hom . . . in em's cock? (Phil D.), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 17:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
"pred"?
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 17:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
don't ask
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 17:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
to catch a pred(ship)
― Puff Daddy, whoever the fuck you are. I am dissapoint. (Steve Shasta), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 17:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
so lemme get this straight, a "prequel" with the *same name* as the previous film... has this been done before?
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 18:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
for some (swedo-norwegian) reason i have totally got it mixed up in my head with the remake of tinker tailor soldier spy
― mark s, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 18:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 14:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
The thing is an "exact copy" in that it is not visually different from the original, but clearly the thing has different motives. Hence the test. Childs may not know if he's a thing or not, but the thing that's part of him sure does. It wants to survive above all else, so that's why the test works. Now, what the alien's motives are beyond survival are never mentioned. It's like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" - they take over earth ... and then what?
Plus, really, in the end none of the characters know anything about the thing. They're just quickly adapting under stressful conditions. The Thing and us ... we are the same!
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 25 August 2011 14:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
maybe it doesn't want to take over the earth but just wants to be left in peace so it can finally build that spaceship out of helicopter parts and not be INTERRUPTED all the GODDAMN TIME and get the hell off this stupid planet
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
I have somehow never seen this movie
― If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be An Airport, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
i think you need to question a few things abt yr life then
― just sayin, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
The thing is an "exact copy" in that it is not visually different from the original, but clearly the thing has different motives.
ha i thought you were talking about the movie versions here
― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
Cell by cell the Thing has different motives, but does it have its own "humanscale" consciousness? The Norris-Bennings "puppetshow" scene is interesting in the sense that the larger part of the body on the autopsy table puts on an absurd diversionary show so that the smaller part -- the NorrisHeadSpider -- can creep away under the table, and perhaps escape. So is this liKe a wolf in a trap gnawing off its own leg? No: because the leg is also conscious. It's more like Gandalf holdng off the Balrog while the others flee: one Thing self-sacrificing to save another (even though they were just one "creature" beforehand).
And then of course Palmer -- himself also a Thing, albeit a stoned Thing -- dobs the NorrisHeadSpider in, and gets it fried. Suggesting that once the Thing is in DIFFERENT hosts, it no longer operates collectively. Is the Thingmind in Palmer being canny in some to us unreadable way? Or is it at the moment overriden by Palmer's consciousness? Or are different Things indifferent to one another's Host's well-being, since one cell is actually enough? Or are they perhaps even mutually hostile? Or mutually unaware, once in host bodies which lack sensory Thing-awareness.
The dog seemed to know the dogthing wasn't a dog. Why? Smell? Doggie racism (bloody Scando Huskies coming over here taking our Pedigree Chum...)
In Darwinian terms: How would a Thing even evolve? Would it evolve intelligence? Would it need to?
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
jeez i hadn't even twigged that Palmer was a Thing already in that scene.
i like those videos. quite a bit.
i had never considered that abstaining from a shared bottle of liquor could be considered an indication of human-ness, i.e. you don't want to risk infection. so maybe blair up in the shack wasn't infected (yet), but childs accepting the J&B might prove he already is infected, since he doesn't care about the possible contamination. it IS a little funny how the soundtrack starts up the ominous BUMP BUMPS the moment he takes a sip.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
In the original story, the Thing has a degree of telepathic ability -- it can certainly broadcast into dreams, whether or not it can read. In this film, Blair at least leaps to various conclusions about what's going on WAY in advance of any the evidence. (Quite a lot of time passes -- it's set over several days, which isn't readily apparent -- so we obviously miss many agitated conversations, but even so, when Macready says "aliens", we have at least seen a flying saucer and encountered some very weird morphological shit; but when Blair says "this creature can imitate anything it wants, down to the cell level" -- or however he says it -- he is fronting.)
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
No reason to suppose the saucer-building alien is of the Thing's race: it might just be infected. The bugthing and the orchidthing presumably predate the saucerthing. Is the Thing a threat to "lower" lifeforms? There aren't any flies in the Antarctic (I seem to remember).
I actually think Carpenter sets up the final chat between Mac and Childs to be literally undecideable: I feel that formal story undecideability trumps clues here -- sometimes putting on a white fur coat is putting on a white fur coat, as Freud would say. But he's absolutely right you should be paying attention at that kind of level. (You always should: the wardrobe designer may be sending out a secret message-in-a-bottle...)
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
so he's either become Thing or has been thought-implanted by Thing. if it were the former, you'd think he'd keep schtum about the Thing's M.O. unless... unless Thingblair figures that if the men knew it could duplicate them, they'd turn on each other..
xpost ha you are saying that the bugthing and dogthing might have just hitched a ride on some other alien's craft?
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
no dogthing i am fairly confidenct came from the norwegian camp! we will have to wait for the premake to revolve that...
my "plausible" backstory is that the Thing is originally quite "primitive" organism in "great chain of being" terms: and perhaps evolved on a planet without too many -- large -- mobile animals. It can't -- or doesn't -- infect "down": otherwise bacteria in the air would carry it from person to person. So it starts as a fungus and gradually grows into a swamp-full of uglies, maybe on an isolated island. The aliens land in their nice saucer, pick some flowers and fly off -- gradually realise something is horribly amiss, and crash the saucer into Earth, but not before they're all Thingified.
The bug fits somewhere into this story. Maybe it was the ship's pet bug.
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
bug? orchid? I missed these...
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
It depends on the subtlety of Thing intelligence: I feel it is aware and hyper-driven by a local, connected sense of survival, which is also intensely situational in the sense that is articulated "through" the intelligence of the copied body. So Thingblair may reason that if the "rest of" the Thing is identified and destroyed, it gets off unnoticed.
I don't think the Thing is very bright in itself. It hitches a ride on the intelligence it has to hand. Blairthing could think "I'm also the saucerthing! It could build a saucer out of stuff in this shed. I will bodyshift back." But dogthing could not think this.
It is not as bright as people.
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
The bug grows out of Norris's head -- also we see someone break off a buggish-looking leg at an earlier autopsy. The "orchid" is in the dog compound -- a sort of flowerhead that pokes out at MacReady, while the big talons are smashing through the roof. It's what jumpstarts him into frying it.
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
ah gotcha
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
So many autopsies!
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
they're like the memories of lifeforms it's imitated in the past (on other planets?? or maybe the norwegian camp have a greener thumb than our ice jocks; in any case, those tentacles aren't native antarctic fauna)
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
or ARE THEY
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/science/2006/01/who-needs-europa/
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
omg the guy who discovered lake vostok just died three weeks ago!!
http://int.rgo.ru/news/andrey-kapitsa-dies-in-moscow/
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
Its MO is funny, because it alternates between hiding as well as it's possible to imagine, and going BOO as chaotically as it's possible to imagine -- and the latter, though it's when we jump most, is actually when it's at its most vulnerable in some ways. Providing you're not frozen in fear, as poor old Windows is, and let yourself be actually bitten, it's not that strategic, or even quick, when it comes to growing effective mandibles. Tendrils is a plant's trick.
The final monster is BIG, and has some kind of turbo-tendril traction for speed -- not legs, though big snakes can move fast -- but its threat is primarily weight, and strength. I assume from its size it had gobbled Nauls also.
Grenades don't entirely strike me as a lasting solution: but maybe I have watched T2 too often.
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
PROF. ANDREI KAPITSA (Moscow State University): The best way to warm yourself up you eat butter. A pound of butter goes in you and suddenly you are warm again and everything is nice and it's like drinking a glass of vodka but much better.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/vostok_transcript.shtml
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's almost like at the moment of transformation it has to recapitulate all its prior transformations, sort of a "greatest hits" (play the old stuff first, then play the new stuff)
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
like the T-1000 in the molten steel at the end of Terminator 2
― Kanye Borst (Kerm), Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
During transformation its "brain" is presumably quite basic: I think it's like a workman shuffling through all its tools to see which one will work, waiting for a kind of muscle-memory instinct to kick in: "It's slimy pistil time" -- but it only knows this when a bit of the pistil sort of quivers in readiness as it forms...
I am off to the pub now.
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
The "orchid" is in the dog compound -- a sort of flowerhead that pokes out at MacReady, while the big talons are smashing through the roof. It's what jumpstarts him into frying it.
An "orchid" made out of dog tongues with teeth running down the middle, no less:
― Ad hom . . . in em's cock? (Phil D.), Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
that moment above was one of the 'HOLY FUCK' ones in this film - but i think the 'orchid thing' (itself in the same bracket) is just a wee bit earlier than that ?it's when the dogthing's head first splits open, but the main body is still intact (albeit quickly punctured by spiny bug/crustacean legs) - the head kind of 'peels back' into 4 flesh-petals, and a tentacle/tongue comes thrashing out from the neck cavity - the whole thing looks like a giant horrible orchid...
ref. the 'intelligence' - love the idea of it being a low-level lifeform 'hijacking' whatever is to hand - but i like how the dog, before we know it is a dogthing, is already acting in a sinisterly 'deliberate' way - e.g. that moment when it is peering intently through the window, as they return from the saucer investigation - and it gave me the impression that it was much cleverer than a normal dog. ('saucer-building activities hampered by lack of opposable thumbs - must temporarily grow some when no-one is looking')
― Snowy Mann, Thursday, 25 August 2011 18:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
oops not 'saucer investigation' - 'visit to the norwegian camp'
― Snowy Mann, Thursday, 25 August 2011 18:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
I actually always read the dog as being sort of confused and uncomfortable, like it knows something is wrong with it but can't articulate it ... because it's a dog. Sort of the way dogs bark at the weather.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 25 August 2011 18:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
In the making of documentary included on DVD, I recall Bottin mentioning that the final Thing incorporated elements of it's previous incarnations: dog parts, Blair head, etc.
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Thursday, 25 August 2011 18:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
Trivia from Bottin's Wikipedia page...
From there, Bottin's reputation grew when he again worked with Carpenter on The Thing. Bottin worked on The Thing seven days a week (including late nights) for a year and five weeks straight, making himself so ill in the process that John Carpenter had him admitted to a hospital when production was complete.[4]Bottin also worked on the Star Wars cantina scene creatures.[5] He was, in fact, the tallest player in the Cantina band. He kept some of the masks from that scene in his private collection.
Bottin also worked on the Star Wars cantina scene creatures.[5] He was, in fact, the tallest player in the Cantina band. He kept some of the masks from that scene in his private collection.
amazing thing abt bottin is how young he was when he did the howling and the thing, like 19 or 20
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 25 August 2011 20:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
iirc the dvd documentary is pretty interesting - carpenter smoking a cigarette - but v v static, just endless headshots speaking direct to camera.
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 25 August 2011 20:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Thursday, August 25, 2011 2:25 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark
yeah, im positive this is why bottin is semi-retired, along with the industry seachanges wrt practical effects. he put so much energy into every movie, and he's not so young anymore!
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Thursday, 25 August 2011 22:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
pete baran's theory -- which i love but cannot endorse -- is that the Thing is an Actual Real Elder Shoggoth already on ancient Earth when the alien saucer crashed in the ice beside it, thawing it out. The alien/s were thrown clear and then Thingified. And etc. Hence why the bugs and the flowers are earth-ish, I guess.
― mark s, Thursday, 25 August 2011 23:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
Want to say that Bottin is, like Savini, sort of in a behind the scenes advisor capacity. Greg Nicotero, however, flies the banner high for practical gore effects.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 01:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 01:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
Wow, Bottin did "The Howling,'' "The Thing," "Robocop," "Total Recall," "Se7en" and "Fight Club." Looks like he built up quite the relationship with Joe Dante (with whom he did five or so movies, plus Verhoeven. No credits on IMDB past, um, "Mr. Deeds," in 2002. What's up with that?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 01:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
like i said, he's basically retired
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Friday, 26 August 2011 01:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
you dont work on Serving Sara and get away clean
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Friday, 26 August 2011 01:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 01:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
Reading a couple of related interviews he seems more than retired. Like he totally dropped off the map.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 01:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
Actually, last semi-reliable mention I found was that he's in real estate!
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 01:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
The doc on the Thing DVD is great. Lotsa interviews with the actors and Carpenter and Bottin.
― thick-necked and hateful (latebloomer), Friday, 26 August 2011 02:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, August 26, 2011 1:13 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
― (Princess TamTam), Friday, August 26, 2011 1:19 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
― (Princess TamTam), Friday, August 26, 2011 1:20 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark
lol^
― thick-necked and hateful (latebloomer), Friday, 26 August 2011 02:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
Antarctic scientist finds creature. Gory horror remake. Power-of-suggestion original was much better. Read the reviewNY Times
If it's the most vividly guesome monster ever to stalk the screen that audiences crave, then The Thing is the thing. On all other levels, however, John Carpenter's remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 sci-fi classic comes as a letdown. full reviewVariety Staff, Variety
Because this material has been done before, and better, especially in the original The Thing and Alien, there's no need to see this version. full reviewRoger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
― Puff Daddy, whoever the fuck you are. I am dissapoint. (Steve Shasta), Friday, 26 August 2011 09:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19820101/REVIEWS/201010349
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 26 August 2011 09:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
One of the aspects the Billson book discusses over several early pages is the reviewer response when Carpenter's film came out: which really was was 99% negative, when not actively hostile then baffled (pretty sure she includes a bad-review quote from Ebert). She was a young critic, I think at Time Out, and loved it: the NME critic Richard Cook had good stuff to say (also very shrewd, iirc, he was a great critic); but mainstream and genre comment was not positive, across the board. She says it only gathered its rep via video and cult word-of-mouth: and even in 1997, when her book came out, it was still seen as an outsider film, and a daring one to be writing a BFI modern classic about.
But more about my remake Scando-fusion: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, THING. They are of course THE SAME FILM ANYWAY: "am i standing next to an inhuman monster/am i standing next to the MOLE" -- "in the bleakly inhospitable, icy and distant reaches of Whitehall, a group of men are turned inside out by their own paranoias..."
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 09:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
wtf i could swear i read somewhere that Bottin died in the 80's. pretty cool that I'm wrong.
He was the pirate captain in the Fog too, which is just aces
― Summer Slam! (Ste), Friday, 26 August 2011 12:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://www.411mania.com/siteimages/the-fog-movie_73989.jpg
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 12:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
gah why haven't i ever seen the fog?? must correct this immediately!
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 26 August 2011 12:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
it is literally impossible to post images from the fog on the internet: the film is cursed
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 12:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
curse lifted by switching on brane
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 12:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Fog is scary as shit, and totally slept on by fans and director alike. Carpenter considers is a failure!
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 14:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's kinda hokey imo
― Number None, Friday, 26 August 2011 14:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
Fog missing something ... like the action is spread too wide. Carpenter works better in closed quarters.
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
pink poop!
― Splendid Curving Oasis of Ivory (Latham Green), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, August 26, 2011 8:18 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark
same
― your mom the burrito (ENBB), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Fog is awesome! It was on all of the time when our family first got cable and it seemed so completely terrifying.
― ¯\(°_o)/¯ (Nicole), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
And it's on Netflix instant view. Housebound due to hurricane movie watching weekend material - yes!
― your mom the burrito (ENBB), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think it lends itself to stormy weather watching.
― ¯\(°_o)/¯ (Nicole), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too.
― your mom the burrito (ENBB), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
I like the Fog but it's no Thing.
Back in the 80s when I shared a flat with my sister and this French dude, we had gone off to Shropshire for xmas with mum and dad, and Philippe was watching The Fog alone in the TV room. He went to bed already quite scared, and as he was dropping off the ceiling fell in on the sofa he's been sitting on, like half a ton of bricks!
He told us he lay in bed staring into the dark for about three hours before he plucked up courage to investigate.
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
watched the Fog recently actually - there's good stuff in it but the pacing is very strange, probably due to the brutal last-minute re-editing
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
Oh, yeah. I admire it despite its flaws. Carpenter originally wanted it to be more of a spooky ghost story, which it is, but they made him add some shocks and grue.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
Personal Life
Carpenter is a Godzilla fan.[citation needed]
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
What's his actual worse film? I've never got very far with "In the Mouth of Madness" or whatever its called.
Worst film he's been in is "Silence of the Hams", which may actually be the worst film I ever had to sit to the end of, ftb reviewing it.
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
Carpenter? He's made a lot of shot lately. "Ghosts of Mars?" Never seen "Memoirs of an Invisible Man." I thought "Mouth of Madness" was OK.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
Shit, not shot.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
carpenter's most recent flick, the ward, is p bad, sadly :-(
his contrib to the portmanteau 'Body Bags' flick is also the weakest segment, imho
b-but i was actually coming here to say that 'In the Mouth of Madness' is his most underrated movie, so...
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
Village of the Damned is similar to The Fog (sleepy village horror) but I think is a notch better.
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
Cigarette Burns is totally over-the-top creepy and gruesome.
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think that I quite liked Ghosts of Mars -- on the nothing-Nastassia-does-is-non-excellent principle -- but I actually can't remember much about it: I saw it on TV and probably skipped over to CSI in the middle.
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
Natasha not Nastassia. My typing is gone to shot today.
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
his vampires movie with James Woods was AWFUL. there's a few of his I still haven't seen (Ghosts of Mars - which reads like a retread of Assault on Precinct 13, and Mouth of Madness which was on TV the other day and looked pretty terrible). but the vampire movie... ugh
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
bah i am going to have start 'refining' my 'all horror movies w sam neil in them are grate' theory eg possession, in the mouth of madness, dead calm, the omen 3 (hang on...)
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
you watched the Omen 3
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
I mean, that's REAL dedication
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 15:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
dedication to ART
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 26 August 2011 15:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
vampires is awful, yes -- hadn't even twigged that was him
haha the only halloween i have seen is "III: Season of the Witch" <-- it is p silly but quite watchable
― mark s, Friday, 26 August 2011 16:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
that's the non-Mike Meyers one right? v odd entry.
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 16:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
WATCH HALLOWEEN MARK S
― Number None, Friday, 26 August 2011 16:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah the first one is unfuckwithable
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 16:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yes, Halloween is wonderful.
Vampires is probably the worst movie I have ever seen at a theater.
― ¯\(°_o)/¯ (Nicole), Friday, 26 August 2011 16:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
Halloween 3 was originally written by Nigel Kneale, who take his name off the credits once Carpenter and his producers started tinkering with the script. It still has its moments.
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 26 August 2011 20:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
ugh I saw this in the theater too. was actively angry/irritated when it was over
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 20:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
I remember feeling aggravated when it was done as well. It was just so aggressively dumb and terrible.
― ¯\(°_o)/¯ (Nicole), Friday, 26 August 2011 20:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
Vampires and Ghost of Mars were both total shit, and each time they underperformed and got terrible reviews, Carpenter started whoa is me-ing. Oh, my budget was too small, oh they were mismarketed, oh we didn't get the cut we wanted, oh, you should have seen the original script. Romero pulls the same shit, too. And then they inevitably make a come-back low-budget return to roots movie that sucks, too. At least Carpenter doesn't pretend to be anything other than totally burnt out.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 20:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
Carpenter slagging off Cronenberg as being too high-falutin for his own good these days is lolzy
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 20:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
Also, Carpenter in particular seems very happy to accept checks after people remake his films. Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Precinct 13. Even an Escape from New York remake has been in the works for a while.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 20:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
xpost To be fair, Cronenberg is totally in I Want an Oscar mode these days.
well whatever, Cronenberg has also continued to make decent movies, unlike Carpenter.
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 20:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
No contest! Cronenberg in Oscar mode has been great!
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 20:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
But unlike Carpenter, he totally bristles at being pegged a horror director. Which Carpenter reads as an implicit slight.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 August 2011 20:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah, Carpenter gives him shit for considering himself an "artiste"
― satisfying punishment for that thing he said about lesbians (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 August 2011 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
first viewing of mouth of madness left me flat, but i recall i was all 'ooh a new carpenter film it will be great'. then of course second viewing was more of a neutral position and i actually enjoyed it.
can't say the same for mars and vampire, they are awful.
The whole spooky recorded sections in Prince of Darkness still crop up in my mind as one of the creepiest things i've seen in movies ever.
― Summer Slam! (Ste), Friday, 26 August 2011 22:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
Ghosts Of Mars isn't *bad* per se - it's just a rewrite of Precinct 13 with a little bit of Outland thrown in. Vampires is still the bottom point.
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Friday, 26 August 2011 22:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
but there was no ice cream van scene!
― Summer Slam! (Ste), Friday, 26 August 2011 22:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
Interesting exploration of this by excellent biologist and sci-fi author Peter Watts in his story 'The THings', which won all sorts of awards/nominations last year. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
― not bulimic, just a cat (James Morrison), Saturday, 27 August 2011 01:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
vampires has some cool gore effects and a fun james woods performance going for it, but the second half is awful. ghosts of mars doesnt have a single creative or interesting moment in it, and to me signals the moment where he was no longer capable of making energetic movies on low budgets. then again, i thought his masters of horror ep was pretty good. memoirs is pretty bad all the way through. christine isnt very good by the standards of his early stuff. havent seen The Ward yet but i havent heard anything good.
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Saturday, 27 August 2011 01:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Ward Fowler, Friday, August 26, 2011 11:54 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark
EVENT HORIZON explodes that theory :(
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Saturday, 27 August 2011 01:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
the omen 3 does rule though
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Saturday, 27 August 2011 02:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
Cronenberg always watchably entertaining and interesting, even when he's committing an "honorable failure" (filming unfilmable novels! the clue is in the word "unfilmable"!)*, but -- big caveat: existenZ was the last i saw -- he's NEVER made a film as flawless as The Thing.
*Even as failures, Crash and Naked Lunch aren't remotely down in a league with Vampires: I'm glad they were made, and both have excellent individual scenes, they just don't really gel, in themselves or as translations of the source material. With NL this is as much as anything an allergy on my part to the RoboCop guy, actually.
― mark s, Saturday, 27 August 2011 11:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
Cronenberg's films always too studiedly "illustrational" for my tastes: he's making a politico-philosophical DO-YOU-SEE point, albeit often quite an unusual one, at least the the time, before the point became a much-borrowed cliche. So yes, he's grossing people out, but with a (Perverse) Moral Nostrum embedded; he too often fails to goose-cum-creep those who are already onside with his idea, maybe. He's not as bad as Clive Barker in this regard.
― mark s, Saturday, 27 August 2011 12:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
Ugh/LOL
― Woolen Scjarfs (Phil D.), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 17:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
lol'ing right off the bat at use of Friday the 13th trademark sound effect
― I saw Mike Love walk by a computer once (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 17:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
da thing
― am0n, Tuesday, 20 September 2011 17:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
this movie does not look very good.
― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 19:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
you can use that for the pull quote
― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 19:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
― HOOTERS FOOD AND BEVERAGE (Pillbox), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 20:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
really couldn't care less about the cgi but this looks so tragically BRIGHT and high-key and bland
― occam's hellraiser (latebloomer), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 20:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
no one knows how to shoot movies anymore
tell it to Christian Nyby
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 21:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
fuck off, Carpenter version's better than the Hawks movie.
― occam's hellraiser (latebloomer), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 21:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
^^^realness
― I saw Mike Love walk by a computer once (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
nothing i've seen so far here is a deal-breaker; i mean yes i complained upthread about the look - it is all gleaming and contrasty and teal and orange and people's hair looks great - but that's just what movies look like these days. i mean regardless i am going to see the fuck out of this.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 21:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
The final scene in the Carpenter version totally makes the movie for me
― If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be An Airport, Friday, 30 September 2011 22:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8faq5amdK30
― DavidM, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 20:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
a+
― lagerfeld of modern despots (latebloomer), Wednesday, 12 October 2011 20:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
amazing! i thought it was a real Sinatra song for a good 30 seconds.
― piscesx, Thursday, 13 October 2011 13:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
The prequel opens tonight at midnight...
― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Thursday, 13 October 2011 14:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
this really isn't all that good.
― jed_, Sunday, 12 February 2012 03:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
but on the other hand it is
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 12 February 2012 05:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 12 February 2012 05:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
jed u talkin about the remake.... right???
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 12 February 2012 15:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
which remake?
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 12 February 2012 16:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
― mark s, Sunday, 12 February 2012 16:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
oh boo
― mark s, Sunday, 12 February 2012 16:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82164665/
― mark s, Sunday, 12 February 2012 16:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
omg lol
― Summer Slam! (Ste), Sunday, 12 February 2012 18:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
^ remake stakes were impossibly high
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 12 February 2012 18:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
Best scene in v minor (tho v beguiling) Thing-remake* "The Faculty": when Alien Jon Stewart -- for it is he -- is stopped in his tracks with a pen-case full of crystal meth stabbed into his eye
(The kids who defeat the alien render themselves inviolable by DOING DRUGS THEY MAKE THEMSELVES: there's some script flummery that the drug is "caffeine and other household shit", but the guy saying it is TOTALLY LYING obviously)
This is the film that Reality Bites should have been: with Selma Hayek in the Winona role. There's even actually a Gen X ref in the tidy-up montage, alongside Elijah's mugg on a mag cover you only spot for a moment...
*They very carefully cheerfully and geekily lampshade-hang all the OTHER films/stories it remakes: viz Bodysnatchers, Puppetmasters etc. There's a whole Whedon-esque scene where they gameplan their fightback by discussing science-fiction plot cliches. But (TELLINGLY) they don't mention The Thing.
― mark s, Tuesday, 14 February 2012 11:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
only beguiling thing in The Faculty was the bit where attractive woman from 'Defying Gravity' chases the 'hero' for extended period of time while nude
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Faculty was probably the best movie Robert Rodriguez has ever been involved in imho
― max buzzword (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
i'm not arguing with that
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
beguiling in the sense that if it's ever on TV, i always think "not that again" but if by chance i flick onto it i end up watching it to the end: ie descriptive not evaluative
also: better than reality bites
― mark s, Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
A crowbar to the back of the head is better than Reality Bites.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
only a beguiling crowbar
― mark s, Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
Mm.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 15 February 2012 00:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
Just saw the remake/prequel/whatever and while it was complete horseshit, it wasnt for the reasons you might expect - betraying the originals steez or whatever, it was because vast amounts of screentime were devoted to IDEAS THAT MADE NO SENSE. most tellingly the central conceit of the movie that the thing cant reproduce non-organic material so thats how people can be ided except uhoh what about the zippers on peoples parkas you stupid fucking sons of bitches, also just flamethrowers and grenades conveniently hanging out on an arctic research station and goddamnit fuck this movie in the eye
― Thu'um gang (jjjusten), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 16:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Thing was just a really, really good seamstress.
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
the parkas probably aren't organic either!
― sarahell, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
when i saw it, i just figured the thing takes the parka prior to killing the victim - but then i found the movie "beguiling" so ...
― sarahell, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
haven't seen the remake, but in the original, it only duplicates tissue, right? not clothing and dog collars and such.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
i thought it duplicated everything in the original?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
well, it's always mutating and exposing tissue and organs and whatever. it never exposes bits of jackets and shoes from within. it's always just this fleshy ooze. i always assumed it just inhabited the clothes of whoever it duplicated/replaced, or found some others.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
this "issue" is elided in the original because it doesn't fucking matter
― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
The only thing that still makes me at all want to see the newest remake is this (quote is from an interview with its composer Marco Beltrami in Film Score Monthly):
And, like Morricone had his heartbeat, you wrote a motif to represent an organism breathing?
MB: There’s that homage to the original Morricone score but the real identity to this score is from three elements. One of them is this notion of treating the orchestra like a living organism itself that breathes. The way I envisioned it was to expand and contract down to a single note then outwards to a wider spectrum. Then it bends in and out, sort of like the billows on an accordion or a human breath. That was the impetus because in the movie you don’t really know who is a thing or is human. There is constantly a play on suspicion and fear that your friend or someone that you trust will be turning against you.
The next theme or idea I incorporated is the idea of being alone and isolated, which is what this movie is ultimately about. It’s set in Antarctica. Even though these people go as a team they really can’t rely on anybody. The main character is this girl Kate [Mary Elizabeth Winstead] and she has to deal with her increasing ostracism in the group and her loneliness. So there’s a theme for that. This is more of a melodic idea, very simple melodic idea. These two themes work hand in hand.
Also related is a third idea, which is an ever-present wind. The movie starts with it and plays throughout it. Rather than have it be a constant aural, audio presence, we decided to treat the wind as a musical identity as well. So we actually tuned it to the pitches of the organism, which was the first idea, so that the wind itself would subtly bend in and out one pitch center to this chordal, minor triad thing. Actually the movie starts out this way over the old Universal logo. It starts out with the sound of the wind and in the sound of the wind is the bending motif.
We achieved that in a couple of ways. Up here in the studio we get some strong Santa Ana winds. We put some bottles outside of the studio. We put microphones in the bottles to pick up the pitches then we were able to process those pitches. We also got the sound that the sound guys were doing and treated that. And we even had a glass wind player come in and perform some wind effects for us.
― Axolotl with an Atlatl (Jon Lewis), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
a monster that can sprout spider legs from someone's decapitated head needs to be scientifically realistic, yup
― dayo, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
it may not matter narratively, but it does matter as a scientific technicality of the sort that sci-fi thrives on. in the original, under a microscope, we see the thing reproduce itself by attacking, destroying and then copying host cells. this suggests to me that thing can only duplicate living tissue, and i think this is a reasonable, common-sense conclusion. it raises questions about dead tissue like hair and fingernails, but that i'm willing to let slide on "doesn't fucking matter" grounds.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
everything that happens in a story needs some sort of rationale, unless it's art for art's sake or deliberate dream logic or something.
the thing is a creature that can control the organization of its cells at will. that's a stretch, perhaps, but the fact that it's an alien lifeform does give us a good deal of wiggle room wr2 the seemingly fantastical. though we don't really know, it seems that the thing can't make itself into just anything. in reshaping itself it has to work with the patterns it's "learned" in the process of absorbing and copying other creatures, even if it's riffing more than faithfully duplicating. this is a nice touch, imo, as it sets some limits and implies a process.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
It's not elided. It's made clear that it destroys your clothes when you get taken over. Made clear more than once. It's a plot point and everything.
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
MacReady: [talking into tape recorder] I'm going to hide this tape when I'm finished. If none of us make it, at least there'll be some kind of record. The storm's been hitting us hard now for 48 hours. We still have nothing to go on.[MacReady briefly turns of tape recorder and takes a drink of whisky. He looks at the torn longjohns and turns it back on]MacReady: One other thing: I think it rips through your clothes when it takes you over. Windows found Bennings' torn and bloody clothes in the storage room after he was taken over. Earlier, Nauls found a pair of shredded and dirty longjohns in the kitchen trash can, but the nametag was missing. They could be anybody's. Nobody... nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired..
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
it destroys the clothes because of the violent nature of the transformation, not because of any inherent relationship to dead tissue
― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
also, the sprouting spider legs tell us something interesting: that the thing has probably absorbed not only humans and dogs, but other types of creatures.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
you are just now realizing this
Maybe spider legs are part of its "natural form" xp
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
it destroys the clothes because of the violent nature of the transformation
just to elaborate - it needs to physically contact/get to the living tissue to copy it, the clothes are just in the way.
― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah, this is how i've always taken it. just assumed that once the duplication was complete, the creature found more clothes. i mean, we never see the clothes any of the infected characters are wearing transform. they always change from within.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
It doesn't have to go under your clothes, your face will work as well as anything, as Windows finds out to his peril.
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
And that's why Fuchs recommends they all prepare their own meals.
uh, no. that's always been clear. but it's interesting in watching the movie to speculate about what the thing might have copied. dogs and humans we know about. spiders/insects seem likely. but beyond that? are the other things we see, like the weird "flower" that erupts from inside the dog, elaborations on the internal structures of those creatures, or are they deliberate indications of other creatures absorbed? or are they more or less meaningless special effects designed only to look cool?
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
You guys are terrible at watching movies.
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
or are they more or less meaningless special effects designed only to look cool?
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, March 21, 2012 1:44 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark
I think you just answered your own question
― dayo, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
I like how with a simple line of dialogue you can bring a hokey and unbelievable effect back into the realm of believability with a realistic and honest reaction. I always helped that the fact that an onscreen character voice what's in your head.
You have the scene where the detached heads sprouts legs and we're treated to this massively absurd thing, so Windows(dude from the Warriors, I think) actually says "You gotta be fucking killing me."
This is one of the bits that make me love the film, where you have believable character reactions in an unbelievable situation. The first thing Mac does when he spots something bad-weird in the dog kennels is to grab a shotgun and hit the fire alarm. Real people do that. Most horror films do not feature real people.
― Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
are the other things we see, like the weird "flower" that erupts from inside the dog, elaborations on the internal structures of those creatures, or are they deliberate indications of other creatures absorbed?
as Blair notes, who knows how many lifeforms from how many planets it's copied
― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
"You gotta be fucking killing me."
I think it's "kidding" actually
Have we posted that short story on here, the one from the pov of the thing?
― Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
BTW the flower things is made of dog tongues lined with teeth. Really.
That said, I don't think it enhances anyone's enjoyment of or understanding of the movie to know that? Would it be a better movie if we cut away to a planet full of flower-headed creatures that might have been absorbed by the Thing?
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
You're right, it is kidding. I'm tapping this out on a phone with predictable autocorrect fuckery.
― Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah, of course. that was my implication. but it's still fun to speculate. another possibility might be that these strange structures reflect the thing's "actual form", though i prefer to think that it has none, that it's basically just a collection of single-celled organisms.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
thanks for the info on the flower, phil! never caught that.
yeah, i remember that, but it's weird that we never see much but dogs, people and the spider head - especially given phil's explanation of the flower. maybe the other stuff the thing has copied wouldn't be viable on earth (temperature, gravity, atmosphere, etc)?
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
idk man, down that road lies midichlorians
― dayo, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
Maybe we can get Lucas to digitally add Darth Maul into the giant monstrosity we see at the end of the movie.
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 18:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
or mitochondria! tiny little cell mice!
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 18:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
to the peeps that are getting all "oh who gives a shit" re: this whole organic tissue deal im bitching abt can i be clear that i am complaining about the prequel whatever, not the carpenter one because in the prequel the organic vs non-organic is the central driver of the plot so it is a big deal when its mismanaged
― Thu'um gang (jjjusten), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 18:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, March 21, 2012 5:53 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
the flower headed creature is actually dog teeth!
― Conmetheus (latebloomer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 22:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
how do you like my poetry
― Conmetheus (latebloomer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 22:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'll say this - being able to replicate non-organic material would go a long way towards explaining how the Blair-thing builds the spaceship in the first movie
― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 22:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
wondering how the thing went from fully copying humans to being three dogmutants to being a spiderhead and all that kinda jarred me a little, i kept trying to work out how it worked. still awesome though (carpenter)
― less of the same (darraghmac), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 22:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
jjjusten ot bloody m
carpenter thing didn't matter because it was never brought into the front of the picture. The stupid prequel went and made a big deal about it, but failed to handle it with consistency. and thus it became a noticeable mistake.
― Summer Slam! (Ste), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 22:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
carpenter thing didn't matter because it was never brought into the front of the picture.
right - this is what I was getting at upthread. original works without bothering to address this distinction
― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 22:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
sigh, so sad that lucas could have done all three prequels without addressing midichlorians
― dayo, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 22:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
Got this (Carpenter's) for $9 on Blu-ray last week. Glorious.
― Lawanda Pageboy (Capitaine Jay Vee), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 23:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
and still fucking Gross.
― Lawanda Pageboy (Capitaine Jay Vee), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 23:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
This is also referenced in either the commentary track or the "Terror Takes Shape" documentary on the DVD.
As much as I love the "you gotta be fucking kidding" line, Clark's "I dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off, whatever it is" is just as terrific.
― Reality Check Cashing Services (Elvis Telecom), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 23:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
This is one of my main apprehensions about Prometheus: that they'll succumb to idiot studio or fanboy pressure or something and do the medichlorian thing. Where they feel the need to over explain some thing irrelevant to the actual story and in doing so fuck up and ruin some of the core mystique or vibe that helped made the franchise interesting in the first place.
They're already treading on dangerous ground by having an entire flick dealing with the Derelict and the Space Jockey, two things that still have some coolness because of the awesome design mixed with us knowing fuckall about it.
So how do you thread that needle where you show a little to scratch the itch of necessary backstory or exposition to make the flick compelling without going overboard and over-explanatory? Hell, John Carpenter couldnt do this nowadays, can Ridley Scott? Hell, can any major 21st-C American summer blockbuster do this?
― Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 23:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
Where they feel the need to over explain some thing irrelevant to the actual story and in doing so fuck up and ruin some of the core mystique or vibe that helped made the franchise interesting in the first place.
I will bet money that this happens
― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 23:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
Me too, that's what I'm afraid will happen. My head is wired such that disappointment is connected to depression, so I try not to get my hopes up about genre entertainment that my geeky friends online or elsewhere are openly slathering about in anticipation.
I think the RedLetterMedia vids and reading Film Crit Hulk and whatever detritus left over from a coupla undergrad film classes have gotten me to the point of not trusting any heavily marketed entertainment aimed at geeks, shall we say.
― Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 23:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
okey, i just watched the prequel/remake. it's okay, decent if unspectacular for quite a while, then kind of off the rail ridiculous and ott towards the end. not a patch on carpenter's masterpiece, but not a complete failure, either. there is, however, one thing that puzzles me...
there's a lot of talk upthread about the film's inconsistency in handling the "can only replicate organic matter" business. i didn't notice any. the scenes involving the metal plate, the fillings and the earring all made sense to me. as in the original, it seemed pretty clear that the thing doesn't replicate clothing, but instead only copies the flesh inside. again and again we see it tear its way out of a character's garmentry to expose the boiling, pedipalpous tissue frenzy within. the clothes themselves never transform, never become monster tunics or anything. of course, this leaves us to wonder where and how the newly created thinglets keep getting fresh duds, but as they seem able to think like educated humans from the get-go, it's reasonable to suppose that they can figure out where to dig up the odd extra pair of pants when necessary. and carpenter's never provided a clear answer to this question, anyway, so the clothes mystery here is at least in keeping with the franchise.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Saturday, 24 March 2012 09:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
pedipalpous eh?
― Number None, Saturday, 24 March 2012 11:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
uh-huh. film's biggest failure of logic is the thing's decision to reveal itself on the helicopter. this is the only moment in either film during which the thing "uncloaks" for no clear reason, and it's suicidal in a way that the creature would surely understand. while the creature's motives and actions generally make good sense in carpenter's original film, the prequel/remake leaves us to wonder why an intelligent creature that can hide out in a host body for as long as it wants (???) would attack others in such a thoughtlessly brazen fashion, with little regard for the likelihood that its victims might raise an alarm or escape to warn others.
i was also bothered by what i saw as the remake's jingoistic streak. at the outset, one of the american helicopter pilots warns the protagonist that "the last place" she wants to be during as storm is "cooped up with a dozen norwegian guys." subsequently, the film's four principal american characters are all portrayed as honest, decent, brave and rational people of the sort you'd like to have on your side in a crisis. the leaders of the norwegian team, meanwhile, turn out to be a paranoid, ego-driven cowards, and their underlings are more "inscrutable" than sympathetic or helpful.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Saturday, 24 March 2012 18:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
the second half of this thread exactly replicates the first half, except for the zips and stuff
― mark s, Saturday, 24 March 2012 18:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
theatrical thread vs DVD
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Saturday, 24 March 2012 18:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
as in the original, it seemed pretty clear that the thing doesn't replicate clothing, but instead only copies the flesh inside.
fox ex, when the thing absorbs henrik in its first attack after escaping the block of ice, we see it draw him in fully dressed. yet when kate and dr. halvorsen dissect the creature afterwards, the half-replicated version of henrik they find inside the creature is apparently nude. there's no indication that the organism was making clothes for him, too.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
― dayo, Sunday, 25 March 2012 13:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
There's no implication in the original that the Thing is particularly smart, or that it's got a long-term vision or anything. There's no definitive answer as to whether that's even the Thing's ship, or just some ship it hitched a ride on. The only thing we know is that it's all about immediate survival, which may explain its less than rational behavior. Like the Blob or something.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 March 2012 14:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
not so sure about that. in the original film, the thing is able to communicate "in character" in a way that will advance its ends*, which seems likely to require a high degree of adaptive intelligence. and we find out at the end that it was, in the guise of dr. blair, building a small spaceship, right?
* i may be misremembering this, but doesn't it talk sensibly while posing as both blair and windows?
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 16:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
My read on this (see several posts way above) is that it can only think as well as the brain it just mimicked: it carries a protocell-level instinctual impulse to absorb and prosper, and -- but how? -- presumably transfers its will-to-plan across to whichever body it arrives in, presumably during the non-instant transformation process: and also (presumably) it would prefer to trade up, intelligence-wise, ie not from saucerbuilder down to dog IF POSSIBLE, let alone down to spiderleg tongue-orchid, but sometimes needs must in the danger of the moment... i don't actually think the THING is that bright in itself*; it's just that sometimes (as with blair) it lucks into an excellent brain to piggyback on...
(it doesn't ever really get to "be" windows: are you thinking of palmer?) (in which case, all palmerTHING says is "you've got to be fucking kidding!", which is as sensible as you wish to take it, i guess, but not rocketscience --of course the entire norris/palmer/puppetshow sequence is incredibly pregnant with contradictory explanations)
*eg its LET'S ABSORB THE ENTIRE PLANET strategy is a bit self-defeating, since it will -- once it has eaten all the other living organisms -- have to start (a) eating itself or (b) dying
― mark s, Sunday, 25 March 2012 20:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
One of the possibilities the puppetshow sequence raises is that while a contiguous thing will happily sacrifice the larger part of itself (norris's body, complete with dancing hideous bennings-head) to distract from the scuttling smaller part (norris's head with legs), there is clearly no honour among separated things: palmerTHING dobs in spiderheadTHING and gets it torched... of course this does distract attention, including especially viewer attention, from HIM as THING...
...also tho the THING that mimicked him inherited a total dopehead's brain, so may be really not that quick
― mark s, Sunday, 25 March 2012 20:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
My read on this (see several posts way above) is that it can only think as well as the brain it just mimicked:
that's an interesting theory. i don't think there's any direct, on-screen support for the idea that the most recent brain absorbed and/or form taken are the only determining factors wr2 thing-intelligence, so i'm dubious about that part. the idea that the thing is a fundamentally simple creature that merely uses the intelligence of its victims to accomplish its fundamentally simple ends does, however, make reasonable sense of the creature's behavior relative to its structure (treating carpenter's original as the only canon). if we accept that, then we only have to attribute a few basic motives to the thing itself: blend in, absorb other creatures, seek new prey, escape confinement, attack/defend/flee as necessary. as you suggest, this would justify the "escape pod" that thing-blair was building as a combination of real-blair's intelligence and the thing's instinctive desire to escape and find new prey.
no matter how smart we think the thing is, we almost certainly have to accept that its intelligence will be limited by its cellular complexity. at the most basic level, it seems to be a colony of independent, singled-celled, virus-like organisms. as such, any information that could be carried by a single thing-cell would likely have to be rather basic. i.e., a cell probably couldn't pass along a specific language or instructions on how to build machinery.
this limitation doesn't necessarily preclude A) the existence of fairly sophisticated intelligence among "things" of sufficient size. like, even if they are just cell clusters, as large blobs they could well have developed long-term, continuous intelligence & culture similar to that of humans. a smaller blob cut off the larger organism would probably lose this, especially if it weren't the brain-part (assuming thing-intelligence isn't holistic), becoming a simple, prey-seeking animal.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
that's OK, though, as a lot of sound biological "strategies" would ultimately be self-defeating if they faced no environmental opposition. can't imagine that a think could eat itself. wouldn't find any foreign cells to convert.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
i don't assume carpenter thought about this as much as y'all are tbh
― less of the same (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
being a sci-fi geek means never having to worry about that
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
true true
― less of the same (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
the reason i don;t think it has any capacity to think out the box of its most recent host -- once it's achieved proper mimicry -- is that it doesn't have anything to do this extra over-arching thinking with: it's an exact copy, with all the host's memories and capabilities, and no more
what it might have is
i: a primal built-in cellular impulse ii: transferred former-host memories (but eg no one begins to speak norwegian) iii: transferred "original thing" memories (but i think this is actually the same as i: the original thing is not going to be a highly evolved creature; it doesn't need to be and nothing can make it be, so there isn't much "cultural" to pass on) iv: holistic consciousness -- i think the palmer episode tends to speak again this, but as i say that whole sequence is capable of generating various explanatory theories (in the original story the THING had a degree of telepathic ability; it gets into blair's dreams and somewhat reveals its being -- but there's no real in-film evidence beyond the fact that blair guesses what's going on strangely quickly)
the fact of the self-defeating overall absorbtion strategy tends to support the argument that the THING hasn't achieved much by way of insightful social foresight (though easter island trees/global warming blah blah, so maybe we haven't either...) (or we have but we continue to behave this way anyway)
xp no one has thought about this as much as me
― mark s, Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
alternative theory i just thought of: the film THING has telepathic capability not over humans in its own vicinity, but over john carpenter, so JC didn't have to think abt all this, it was dictated by TRANS-CELLULOID THOUGHTWAVE
― mark s, Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
there it is
― less of the same (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
so who does that make me?
― mark s, Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
merely another branch of the wider slimey consciousness i guess, an internal checking mechanism or summat
― less of the same (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
i don't know that this is true, either. it constructs an exact external semblance of its prey (and probably an internal one, too, for the most part), but i don't know that this precludes its maintenance of the structures necessary to support independent intelligence, at least to the best of its ability. i mean, it can repurpose its mass at will to suit whatever ends it might desire, so this doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. could thing blair speak norwegian? i don't think there's any way to know for sure. it probably wouldn't even if it could, except under certain circumstances, as this wouldn't help it "blend in".
just speculating, but i think the story leaves lots of room for interpretation on this score. it's maybe most reasonable to assume that the thing is just a simple but dangerous space-disease that arrived on spaceship it didn't build, but we don't really know for sure.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
the film THING has telepathic capability not over humans in its own vicinity, but over john carpenter, so JC didn't have to think abt all this, it was dictated by TRANS-CELLULOID THOUGHTWAVE
A+
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
fact-checking cuz
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
also, if the thing is true hivemind, and there's reason to think this might be so, then all its cells might function as brain cells, regardless of any other apparent purpose.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Thing arrived on a pred ship iirc
― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yes I think "hivemind" is where my own "but that's scientifically impossible" is kicking in -- which is a factor limiting my imagination i suppose (i also feel a hivemind would behave differently, but nothing rules it out)
Yr absolutely right tho that the undecideability is part of what makes it scary: people we like (or don't dislike) improvising solutions to a threat they really haven't pinned down even by the end of the film... I actually think Carpenter did sit down with the monstermaker and think through fairly exactly what he felt the THING can and can't do (iirc there was a longish unexpected hiatus between the script and design stage and the actual shooting); he never makes it explicit but its behaviour feels to me (as someone who has watched and pondered this film FAR TOO MUCH) logically of a piece, certainly not purely BOOspectacle-led or "who cares, they'll be too busy screaming"
― mark s, Monday, 26 March 2012 07:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
otm, agree w all that, except that i'm a bit more inclined to accept hivemind as a possible & satisfactorily sci-fi plausible explanation.
something that's vaguely suggested by the original that i was disappointed to see the prequel/remake ignore: to become thing is not necessarily to be annihilated. one might be the thing and not know it, might have no rupture in the continuity of self. all the characters focus, naturally, on the idea that someone else must be the monster, because they know that they themselves are not. but what if this assumption were faulty? what if the monster were hidden not just in a simulacrum of your body, but in your experiencing self, in your "i am"?
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Monday, 26 March 2012 08:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah, this was the central existential dread of the first movie.. i believe it's childs who voices it
it suggests a creepy rejoinder to the question of what would happen if the entire world were Thingified - if the Thing "trades up" to become every single person in the world... what would be the difference, between that world and this one? (presuming that beyond this limit-point no further trade-ups are possible/desirable)
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 26 March 2012 09:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
re Thing intelligence and what sort it is: i like to imagine that Things in their native environment are actually quite fastidious and genteel, and that back on Thingworld there is an elaborately ritualized form of Thing-on-Thing sex that Earth conditions make impossible (for whatever reason)
which explains the instinct to get the hell off our godforsaken planet, and get back to where the Thingin is good
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 26 March 2012 09:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
I prefer to imagine Thing planet as full of hilarious body horror japes - voluntary autodecapitation, head running off on spider legs, etc.
― ledge, Monday, 26 March 2012 09:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
Taking the "jacket on back of chair" to next level by having your body actually stay in work while your head is down the pub.
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 26 March 2012 11:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
only needs one orchid-tingue head-spider to get hammered and the whole hivemind has a hangover
"there is no i in thing" <-- tagline for the high-concept horror-comedy based on this insight
― mark s, Monday, 26 March 2012 12:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think of the Thing as viral. That is, survival is paramount. It exists to exist. I'm not sure the Thing has any motivation other than survival.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 26 March 2012 13:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
Alternatively: we are all the Thing!
Makes you think. (Thingk).
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 26 March 2012 13:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
Another thingk coming.
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 26 March 2012 14:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
what would be the difference, between that world and this one? (presuming that beyond this limit-point no further trade-ups are possible/desirable)
yeah, to my mind, that's the interesting question. greg bear asks it in his novel blood music: if everyone were infected and transformed, and happy about it, still in some sense "themselves", then would that be so bad?
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Monday, 26 March 2012 16:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
in some sense "themselves"
these four words doing a lot of work here
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 26 March 2012 16:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
troo
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Monday, 26 March 2012 16:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
but that's the question, innit? what are we but what we think we are? and aren't we always engaged in a process of transformation, anyway? you can never step into the same river twice, etc.
yes, i know, "makes u think"
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Monday, 26 March 2012 16:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
"makes u thingk"
― PSOD (Ste), Monday, 26 March 2012 17:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
what are we but what we think we are?
it's definitely subtextual (and this is not an original take) but always took the horror of The Thing to be precisely the possibility that we aren't who we think we are, and that the movie dramatizes an ultimately futile quest to distinguish Ego from Other (or that the Ego is always already infected and inhabited by the Other), etc....the real protagonist is then the Thing itself because that's the drama we all face, having to "pass," to fake it, to have no identity but pursue one. that's what i thingk anyway.
― ryan, Monday, 26 March 2012 17:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
someone should write an academic treatise on this very phenomenon: on "thingking"
― ryan, Monday, 26 March 2012 17:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 26 March 2012 19:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
See also the original novel and the first 2 film versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers--once the pod people take over, they just go about their normal lives, 'happy' to be emotionally dialled-down group-thinkers
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Monday, 26 March 2012 23:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
saw this tonight...first half hour I was like, "eh, maybe it won't be as bad as I thought" and then it just turned into SCREE!alien!flamethrower!SCREE!alien!grenade!flamethrower-flamethrower!SCREEEEEEEE for like, ever.
jjjusten pretty much nailed it upthread. My feeling is that the whole point of the original Carpenter movie was the characters' reactions TO the alien. Like, actually developing some of the characters to show their personalities under stress etc etc. In the remake they had like, what, TEN plus people in that research station and I didn't give a hoot about any of them, including fake Uncle Owen. I think that's what bugged me the most, is that it was like the worst kind of sci-fi to me, where whoever's making it thinks it's all about the creatures and the spaceships and for the most part it's the people in these movies and stories that make the creatures/spaceships memorable. I'd be curious to see Ronald D Moore's version of the screenplay.
and it made the same stupid mistake that Super 8 made in its shonky ending. I DON'T WANT TO SEE INSIDE THE SHIP if you don't know how to end the bloody movie. That's not an exciting thing that needs to happen if the story's pretty much over with. It's like, "uh guys we've still got 20 minutes of movie left to fill in, whaddya wanna do? I dunno. Show em inside the ship maybe?" So dumb.
The only thing I liked was the closing credits where they recreated the helicopter scene from the Carpenter original. And the music was pretty good I thought.
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 9 April 2012 07:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
agree on all counts, except that i didn't really hate it. just half dug it for a while, then started to roll my eyes and tune out as it slid off the ledge into SCREE!alien!flamethrower!SCREE! all of the characters were dull, two-diminesional and poorly motivated, including the creature itself. disagree abt the music, though. found it very distracting and inappropriate. especially jarring when they switched to carpenter-style minimalist thingmusic for the end credit linking scenes. i mean, i liked that music, but it made me wonder why they'd gone for the orchestral glop earlier.
― preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture (contenderizer), Monday, 9 April 2012 07:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'm not sure the Thing has any motivation other than survival.
As opposed to all the other species out there...
― L'ennui, cette maladie de tous les (Michael White), Monday, 9 April 2012 15:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
I keep wondering if the Thing reproduces sexually or by some kind of parasitic host takeover or are the taken-over hosts just programmed to destroy/self-destruct?
― L'ennui, cette maladie de tous les (Michael White), Monday, 9 April 2012 15:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
xpost yeah contenderizer despite my ranting I didn't really HATE it, but it got really boring really quickly.
but I also don't want to be placated by the fact that it didn't out-and-out suck. Mediocrity is still unacceptable, lol.
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 9 April 2012 15:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
Problem with genre entertainment as a whole; too easy to focus on the genre trappings as those are the lowest hanging fruit and either miss or not care about characters or dialogue or plot or anything you can have an actual emotional connection to.
It's one of the reasons why I get irritated over friends online or elsewhere gushing about some upcoming flick cuz its got spaceships or superheroes or some shit in it.
Not that I'm substantially less gullible or susceptible to genre stuff(I'd get a kick out of someone doing a cyberpunk genre exercise or something), but by only going off the most superficial details means you can't tell the difference between, say, Brett Ratner's Xmen 3 and First Class, or even the 2nd Xmen flick.
― Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Monday, 9 April 2012 15:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
you are so otm with all of what you just said, kingfish
I will *double* otm you :)
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 9 April 2012 16:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
"uh guys we've still got 20 minutes of movie left to fill in, whaddya wanna do? I dunno. Show em inside the ship maybe?" So dumb.
Didn't this start with the re-release/re-edited Close Encounters: The Special Edition?
― Reality Check Cashing Services (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 01:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
I haven't seen that version. Tell me they did not do that.
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 01:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
They did, but I want to say Spielberg considers it a mistake, like the walkie-talkie for guns swap and CGI E.T. in "E.T." He still did it, though.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 10 April 2012 01:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, he did it under studio pressure because he was never happy with the film as released, and wanted to do some additional editing. His preferred cut is kind of a weird hybrid of the original and "special edition" edits minus the inside-the-ship stuff.
― Frank Youngenstein (Phil D.), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 02:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
yuk
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 02:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's weird that he dissatisfied with the original cut/version/whatever. it was critically lauded and hugely popular at the time, certainly one of my favorite spielberg films.
― preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture (contenderizer), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
I know, mine too!
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
the dvd/blu-ray has all of the various cuts btw so it's not like a star wars scenario
― I cannot host as my wife hates Walker (latebloomer), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, ET, too, has both versions on it.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think we have an old dvd editon, never upgraded to a blu-version
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
if you have the older dvd, then it's probably Spielberg's hybrid cut, which is pretty close to the original cut with some of the special edition scenes spliced in (minus the "inside the ship" scene).
iirc before the movie was on dvd the only version available for many years was the special edition.
― I cannot host as my wife hates Walker (latebloomer), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
I don't quite get this...? Super 8 never showed us the inside of the ship (since SPOILER! SPOILER! it literally ended with the ship being put together and flying away). The alien itself was only properly shown in the finale though, but that was necessary to establish the connection between it and the kid (since SPOILER! the big theme in the movie was forgiveness, and the connection between helped the alien to forgive the human race and move on), because in the end Super 8 wasn't a horror movie but an E.T. variation. I agree with your point in general, but I don't see how Super 8 is an example.
― Tuomas, Tuesday, 10 April 2012 07:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
the most unrealistic part of this movie is that MacReady would waste both good liquor and his only friend/source of entertainment in the opening. although maybe he has a huge stockpile of booze and back-up Chess Wizard computers in his shack, wouldn't put it past him.
― have a sandwich or ice cream sandwich (Jordan), Thursday, 1 November 2012 15:34 (6 months ago) Permalink
childs is such a fascinating and singular character. definitely holding the place of the "#2" in the film and meant to be on par w/macready in strength and conviction and technically an ally in the "action film" sense but also spending much of the film diametrically opposed to macready and his theories. i recognize this stems from the crushing paranoia of the film but in probably most other hands childs would be macready's bff and would stand fast with him every step of the way, and also he'd probably die 2/3rds of the way in.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:16 (4 months ago) Permalink
in most other movies childs would be the first guy killed why because he's black
― Welcome to my world of proses (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:24 (4 months ago) Permalink
Both black guys in this movie last until the final reel, which is kind of amazing. Not to mention that there are two black guys to begin with.
― Gollum: "Hot, Ready and Smeagol!" (Phil D.), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:25 (4 months ago) Permalink
also two jittery dudes two assholestwo paranoid scientists
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:27 (4 months ago) Permalink
which is kind of amazing
it's def anamolous for the time
― Welcome to my world of proses (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:35 (4 months ago) Permalink
John Carpenter was always pretty good about giving prominent roles to women and non-white actors.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:35 (4 months ago) Permalink