Terry Gilliam - C/D, S/D

I couldn't bring myself to watch that last one about the guy with the magical computer program or whatever it was

although I was surprised that The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was not actually as terrible as I expected

12 Monkeys was my last in fact

but i love Don Quixote so much i dunno i would be torn

it would not be the same as don quixote, so maybe that's the deciding factor for you

I'm just finishing up my first ever read of it, inspired by the ilb thread - it's so so so great and I would be interested in seeing quixotic attempts to film it whose synopses don't begin "an advertising executive called toby from our world"

I loved Tideland, reading back over this thread it looks like it was more divisive than I would have guessed?

I haven't seen 12 Monkeys in forever, all I really remember about it was finding Brad Pitt unbearable as the nervous tics asylum guy.

actually, isn't there a whole crew of awful wacky asylum inmate types in that film?

12 Monkeys is p dire, idk what ppl see in it

strangely, Chris Marker liked it

haven't felt the need to rewatch it in 20 years so *shrug*

iirc it isn't uniformly terrible

some good imdb trivia for 12 Monkeys:

Terry Gilliam was afraid that Brad Pitt wouldn't be able to pull off the nervous, rapid speech. He sent him to a speech coach but in the end he just took away Pitt's cigarettes, and Pitt played the part exactly as Gilliam wanted.

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A tagline originally suggested for this film was; "The future is in the hands of a man who has none." This was considered to be a confusing tagline, as it made it sound as though he had no hands, as opposed to having no future.

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don't know whats wrong with the three people who didn't find the cigarette thing interesting tbqh

tideland is… challenging, but i liked it a hell of a lot more than we're supposed to

Tideland is fucking creepy. Yes, I get that it's supposed to reflect how dark a young child's life can get, but there's just some stuff I don't want to indulge in fully. This movie is uncomfortable to the max.

I really liked Zero Theorem.

Still haven't seen 12 Monkeys in full and still don't feel like it. Haven't seen Time Bandits since I was 10 and I didn't like it back then so I might see it soon.

This movie is uncomfortable to the max.

it's hard work and not pleasant in any way. really it's the huge risk that i enjoyed most, and as a bonus it's visually mesmerising.

Tideland is one of the worst films I've ever seen

Tideland not just suit but ugly and dull

12 monkeys great, his best effort at an actual movie

Parnassus far better than expected

Trouble with Gilliam is that he's sure he's clever and his one message is worth half making a lecturing panto about every three years when he's patently quite stupid and has little to say beyond denigrating competence

God knows Tim Burton is total shit but his best and his career average shits on Gilliam despite sharing almost all the same flaws

XP hi jjj I knew praise for Tideland would get you in

Parnassus started out really great w lovely concept, great art design, but towards the end when he was chasing his alt selves it went down tohe tubes

Just for avoidance of doubt I'm voting D btw

having seen Time Bandits again recently, it still rules and is a whole lot of fun

it's hard work and not pleasant in any way. really it's the huge risk that i enjoyed most, and as a bonus it's visually mesmerising.

― Autumn Almanac, Tuesday, 7 February 2017 22:50

Really? I found it quite pleasant because a lot of the time she's having fun. I still think it's great.

Pleasant? Her father goes on a heroin infused journey and checks out of her life and she spends most of her time dissociating from the cruelty of adults through her puppets. I guess that's the beauty of interpretation.

PS. Robert, didn't mean that in any way as an attack

yeah 'pleasant' isn't the word i'd be using. her apparent happiness is the absolute consequence of everything that's wrong with her life imo (iirc; it's ages since i saw it).

"Mirrormask" did a similar theme well I thought.

Ross- I don't think I would take it as an attack but thanks anyway.

The main thing that sticks with me about this is Gilliam saying that when she grows up, all this could be seen as the best or worst time of her life. But it's difficult to imagine her father's death not overshadowing the good times.

Munchausen, Brazil and Time Bandits are all the business. quality varies thereafter - am seriously trepidatious about the Imaginarium

― in a style known as "Early Cleveland" (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 17:41 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a mixture of trippy and bodacious? Fitting, imo.

― Goths in Home & Away in my lifetime (darraghmac), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 17:43 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

um

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trepidatious

― in a style known as "Early Cleveland" (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 17:46 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ur middle name ought to be 'understanding of wordplay'

― Goths in Home & Away in my lifetime (darraghmac), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 17:52 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually, that is the definition of "mo"

― ali-baba-boob-job-bomb.jpg (DJP), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 17:53 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

understanding of wordplay money understanding of wordplay problems

― Goths in Home & Away in my lifetime (darraghmac), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 17:57 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dont talk shite

― Goths in Home & Away in my lifetime (darraghmac), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 17:57 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see, you just don't understand wordplay

― ali-baba-boob-job-bomb.jpg (DJP), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 18:11 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good routine that

i wonder whether he got worse for the same reason george lucas got worse: everyone around him just doing what he says unquestioningly

e.g. 12 monkeys looking like brazil because production design thought he would like that

The problem with Tideland is not one of performance, technical execution or -as imago was typically desperate to enthusiastically doing round- the squares being shocked by the themes or plot.

It's the clumsiness. I said hamfisted above and it's still the right word. When you are clumsy and hamfisted and the topic is deliberately risky then the result will be a greater blowout than if you are as clumsy and hamfisted as Gilliam almost always is but the plot revolves around Johnny Depp mugging at a fish.

Gilliam's defence at the start of Tideland underlines his missing the point. It's not the theme. He's not shocked us with farts and underage sexual innuendo. His sin is that he earns nothing of the cloak of bold genius he thinks he dons by sheer virtue of a controversial attempt. He lets his actors down. Any drunk uncle can grasp at a shocking subject as he's being fucked out of the bar. Gilliam lacks the intellect, discipline and focus to actually shock, regardless of the theme. His level of execution isn't worthy of Sid James. The cunt is bawdy and he thinks he's dangerous. It's pathetic.

I'm not sure it was important that it be shocking. I think he may have even made an effort to take the edge off the nasty stuff.

He hasn't got an edge imo

admittedly if it weren't gilliam i probably would never have watched it

Darra- I mean just softening the uglier stuff like the corpse, child abuse and so on.

I didn't like Zero Theorem at all, it was just irritating and looked bad. I thought Parnassus was pretty good though. I think Gilliam is still capable of making a good movie but I don't know what it would take to get him to do that.

I liked things about Parnassus but the cgi and product placement puts a huge damper on it for me. I don't know why it'd look better than Zero Theorem.

darragh kind of 3 quarters otm

Not a bad return when the bloods up.

I'd note that it refers in the main to Tideland only, with a few recurring criticisms. If that helps.

well I've never felt the need to watch Tideland but bar a little rhetorical over-egging they felt like fair criticisms of the bulk of his career, the irony being that rhetorical over-egging is v. much a Gilliamesque trait, obv

Thing is I've never been able to get through the first twenty minutes of Brazil. So yknow there's that.

what

The order in which you approach an ouevre matters I guess.

Brazil, time bandits, same old Gilliam afaic

don't have much to add to this convo tbh but i just wanted to register my appreciation for dmac's new display name - a+ work

nod

so Don Quixote is finished. Already loads of criticism regardling charges that he 'destroyed' a convent, though the descriptions of 'destroyed' sound a bit overblown to me (a few broken modern roof tiles, and trees that were planted for another movie were removed).

He's a clumsy oaf