The Thing

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.

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.

lack of (apparent) personality in this new version, i mean.

yep. this movie is POINTLESS

you might even say it's lacking a certain.... SOMETHING

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.

the original is playing in LA tomorrow on a double-bill w/ cronenberg's 'the fly'

trollhunter is fun

this trailer is like what happened to elaine's hair over the course of the seinfeld run.

seeing trollhunter on sunday. excited!

oooh I hadn't heard about trollhunter - i wanna see it!

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.

I don't think I even want to watch the trailer after these reactions.

The trailer itself isn't bad! It's just impossible not to be cynical about this movie.

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!

surprised that term hasn't caught on yet

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...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZkkIsLiNg

The Fog has my favorite Carpenter trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XI559irkMQ

The Fog is the most underrated Carpenter. Scared the poop out of me when I was little.

did you get your poop back

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.

The Fog, the scene near the start with the guys on the boat. Fucking superb shit.

I guess i don't have very high expectations for this prequel, but that trailer looks alright.

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.

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]

Might as well, otherwise people would be making inevitable requests/references to it for the next six months.

masochism kind of goes w/the territory

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.

With this and Blade Runner, 1982 seems like some kind of high point of special effects. It's essentially all been downhill since then.

I think it's spiritually significant that I was born in 1982. It's one of the best years for genre movies ever.

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 ...

Ruddy hell, seeing it written down like that...what a year for films.

Yeah, it was really something in my memory, a lot of things happening all at once.

Also, Road Warrior came out the very end of December 1981, so I'd count that in there, too.

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.

the thing is on telly right now! there is literally nothing wrong with this film

you've got to be fucking kidding

\o/

£%$

there is literally nothing wrong with this film

― mark s, Monday, August 22, 2011 6:02 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

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 line
2: real in the sense that a thingified norris has norris's bad heart
3: "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

there is literally nothing wrong with this film

― mark s, Monday, August 22, 2011 6:02 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

double OTM

the world needs a book by mark s about this movie, 33 1/3 style.

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.

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"

what kind of name is Windows anyway?

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?

war with Norway iirc

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.

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