Comments on: The Shame of Memory

The Shame of Memory

squidfartz — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 23:30:33 -0800

When I first saw it, my jaw hit the floor. After years of thinking I would suffer alone with the memory, I found others who knew. Along the way, I discovered other gems... even though my personal tastes were more epic. When she asked why I loved them so much, I replied, "Because they are so ambitious. They try so hard".

By: dydecker

dydecker — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 01:44:08 -0800

Not to be a negative nelly, but why are there so many posts about bad movies on Metafilter and hardly any about good ones? Personally, I have never seen the appeal of ineptly directed, badly-acted, cliche-ridden movies. Sure, there are probably a few diamonds in the rough, but for the most part the Z-movie is a world where dross become gems, failure is hailed as success and the ridiculous is confused for the sublime.

By: Jon Mitchell

Jon Mitchell — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 02:32:25 -0800

Because very few set out to make bad art. There are thousands - milllons! of us with a genuine and deep desire to make beautiful, heart-wrenching, profound things of beauty, and we are crippled, cruelly by an utter lack of discipline, skill and judgement. But we burn, nonetheless. We have the soul, fire, and passion of a true artist, trapped in the grim shell of the crushingly banal and mediocre. The Z-movie enthusiast happily celebrates the laboured mountings of the low and well trodden hillocks that are the personal Everests of the sincerely talentless.

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 02:51:08 -0800

Thanks for pointing this one out - I didn't know about it but clearly it's one to check out. I like to get some of these and have people over and we do the MST3k thing and laugh ourselves silly. It reminds me of the 1959 Santa Claus which is one off-the-wall movie.

By: dydecker

dydecker — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 02:51:37 -0800

Maybe sincerity is true for Ed Wood, but for every deluded naive there are a thousand who make movies for more cynical motives - for the money, or they like the idea of being filmmakers, or they have moved up the rungs through sheer determination. And their (lack of) effort shows and usually the result is zzzz tiresome to sit through. Why should that be celebrated?

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:20:56 -0800

Why should that be celebrated? Aw, c'mon dydecker, ain'tcha ever heard of "so bad it's good"? Some folks just like to watch something really, really bad cause it can be, you know, funny. All the more so because it probably wasn't meant to be funny. Also, there's this: people like to have a laugh at someone else's expense, as any regular Mefite should know very well!

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 04:35:05 -0800

OK, to save this thread let's make it "so bad they're funny" movies. Here's another: Modesty Blaise (1966, not the lame remake). Years ago while channel-flipping I saw this on late night TV, and was transfixed by the surpassing silliness of it. Sort of a female James Bond character, with 60's campiness. Obscure factoid: Travolta's character is reading a book version of this on the john in the boxer's house in Pulp Fiction.

By: dydecker

dydecker — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 04:48:18 -0800

Surely if the remake was "lame" that is a good thing, isn't it?

By: ab3

ab3 — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 05:07:47 -0800

wow. this thread was worthwhile if only for dydecker and jon mitchell's first two comments. well spoken!

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 05:47:10 -0800

So bad it's funny is an elusive quality, and is never attained in a remake of a movie that has achieved it. That's one of the Iron Rules of Cinema, like "Hollywood remakes of European movies are always worthless".

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 05:53:45 -0800

That's one of the Iron Rules of Cinema, like "Hollywood remakes of European movies are always worthless". You're telling me Scarlet Street is worthless? (Okay, that's the only one I could think of.)

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 05:59:42 -0800

Well, maybe you've pointed out an exception, but that's 1945. All modern examples I know of validate the rule.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 06:01:01 -0800

12 Monkeys?

By: dydecker

dydecker — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 06:13:25 -0800

jam_pony, but Modesty Blaise was supposed to be funny. It's a parody of James Bond flicks. I kinda get the look-at-the-trainwreck fascination of it (the movie doesn't make hardly any sense) but it's certainly a worthwhile movie - the direction is competent, it had a fairly big budget, great style - it's certainly streets ahead of say "Abducted 2: The Reunion". I guess I mean there are bad movies which are interesting despite their flaws (or because of them?) and bad movies which are best forgotten.

By: RubberHen

RubberHen — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 06:47:49 -0800

I thought this There are thousands - milllons! of us with a genuine and deep desire to make beautiful, heart-wrenching, profound things of beauty, and we are crippled, cruelly by an utter lack of discipline, skill and judgement. But we burn, nonetheless. We have the soul, fire, and passion of a true artist, was a quote from Salieri? ;-) SUN

By: squidfartz

squidfartz — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 07:10:26 -0800

To address dydecker's first comment... I love bad movies and enjoy pursuing awful films for the simple fact that it is fun. Really, really fun. The first film I wanted to share the most (Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny) is not just a "bad" movie or a grade Z film it is a work that will defy you to reason that the producers of which were capable of pulling up their own pants. It's not just inept and misdirected, it challenges one to try and understand how such a project came to be... and usually the background stories of bad productions are even funnier and more interesting than the finished product. Jimmy the Boy Wonder is just cheap and weird, but the next step up from Santa. I actually love Starcrash. For all of it's awfullness, it's really a delightful film and if I had seen it upon it's original release (and been a few years younger) I would have loved it just for the sheer color and adventure. All of the Italian sci-fi stuff is worth a look if you appreciate this sort of work. And it's lonely row to plow when you're one of the few people who actually likes Metalstorm. I think it's not a "bad" film. It was released in 3D and I saw it in a theatre and thouroghly enjoyed it for what it was -a cheap, sci fi western with a lot of cool ideas. A lot of work went into that production with very, very little money, and it shows. It succeeds at being funny and eery and unlike most films I see, never boring. I respect your point and would like very much to post and and share some of the "good" films I love -and I plan too, eventually... I thrive on people suggesting rare films (good and bad) that I haven't seen. Thanks for taking a look at this either way.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 08:22:09 -0800

"Hollywood remakes of European movies are always worthless". Insomnia is good. Dunno that it stands up to the version with Stellan Skarsgard, but it's far from worthless. I may be a philistine, but I prefer Cousins to Cousin/Cousine, though that's not really a proper comparison as they're very different films. But then I'd generally prefer a movie with Isabella Rossellini to one without her; yum. And Point of No Return isn't any more stupid than La Femme Nikita. Both are extremely silly. Magnificent Seven is nowhere near worthless, even if Seven Samurai is admittedly not European. Soderbergh's Solaris, while very different from Tarkovsky's -- different enough to not be a remake of the film but rather just another adaptation of the novel -- is very far from worthless.

By: BeerFilter

BeerFilter — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 10:33:12 -0800

If ever a post needed more YouTube, this one is it.

By: squidfartz

squidfartz — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 10:53:08 -0800

I agree, Beerfilter... but this is my first post on MeFi and my girlfriend told me not to 'overdo it'. If anyone is interested, many of these film do appear on YouTube in one form or another ...I highly recommend this trailer. It's in French, but I'm sure you'll get the point.

By: fandango_matt

fandango_matt — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 10:57:36 -0800

I absolutely love the name "The Agony Booth." /geek

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 11:09:48 -0800

I threw out that line half jokingly, unable to think of any counterexamples. Now I'll moderate it to: Hollywood versions of foreign films are always inferior. Soderbergh I don't think of as Hollywood. That's debatable I suppose but he's not quite mainstream. But the rule holds for all the above, IMHO, possibly excepting Scarlet Street which I'd never heard of until today. Cases like Cousin, Cousine are exactly what I had in mind. The original Star Wars may be as good as The Hidden Fortress tho it's hard to compare.

By: rusty

rusty — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 16:55:02 -0800

PinkStainlessTail: 12 Monkeys was not in any way a remake of La Jetee. It was very loosely inspired by it, but if Gilliam hadn't pointed it out it probably would never have been noticed.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:07:10 -0800

Yeah, I was wondering if anyone was going to call me on that.

By: rusty

rusty — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:30:37 -0800

Called. Totally called. I called you so hard, you're gonna stay called for the rest of the week, if not longer.