da thing
― am0n, Tuesday, 20 September 2011 17:31 (twelve years ago) link
this movie does not look very good.
― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 19:46 (twelve years ago) link
you can use that for the pull quote
― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 19:47 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.revelinnewyork.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_main/recommendations/photos/thething.jpg
― HOOTERS FOOD AND BEVERAGE (Pillbox), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 20:02 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
no one knows how to shoot movies anymore
tell it to Christian Nyby
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 21:16 (twelve years ago) link
fuck off, Carpenter version's better than the Hawks movie.
― occam's hellraiser (latebloomer), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 21:19 (twelve years ago) link
^^^realness
― I saw Mike Love walk by a computer once (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 21:24 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8faq5amdK30
― DavidM, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 20:45 (twelve years ago) link
a+
― lagerfeld of modern despots (latebloomer), Wednesday, 12 October 2011 20:48 (twelve years ago) link
amazing! i thought it was a real Sinatra song for a good 30 seconds.
― piscesx, Thursday, 13 October 2011 13:57 (twelve years ago) link
The prequel opens tonight at midnight...
― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Thursday, 13 October 2011 14:48 (twelve years ago) link
this really isn't all that good.
― jed_, Sunday, 12 February 2012 03:00 (twelve years ago) link
but on the other hand it is
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 12 February 2012 05:10 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWPx-fw0mI8
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 12 February 2012 05:16 (twelve years ago) link
jed u talkin about the remake.... right???
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 12 February 2012 15:58 (twelve years ago) link
which remake?
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 12 February 2012 16:03 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToCq_c3wOM8
― mark s, Sunday, 12 February 2012 16:13 (twelve years ago) link
oh boo
― mark s, Sunday, 12 February 2012 16:14 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82164665/
― mark s, Sunday, 12 February 2012 16:16 (twelve years ago) link
omg lol
― Summer Slam! (Ste), Sunday, 12 February 2012 18:31 (twelve years ago) link
^ remake stakes were impossibly high
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 12 February 2012 18:33 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
i'm not arguing with that
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:19 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
A crowbar to the back of the head is better than Reality Bites.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:55 (twelve years ago) link
only a beguiling crowbar
― mark s, Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:57 (twelve years ago) link
Mm.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 15 February 2012 00:00 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
The Thing was just a really, really good seamstress.
― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:02 (twelve years ago) link
the parkas probably aren't organic either!
― sarahell, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:07 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
i thought it duplicated everything in the original?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:17 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
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 (twelve years ago) link
you are just now realizing this