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Davonator

Listed below are comments made by Davonator between Monday, 20th July 2009 and Wednesday, 28th October 2009.

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The ten-second vampire movie 12:41pm on 28 Oct 2009 'Near Dark'

My favourite Vampire movie, it's a grubby grungey film that shows vampires relegated to hotwiring beat up old vans, and travelling across the American wilderness to feed off of hicks in seedy bars.

It's not a film about the sexiness, it's a film about the sad life of a bunch of parasites looking for their next fix. It's a film about squalid addiction. A Must See!
Trailer Treachery 3:26pm on 21 Oct 2009 Easy Peasy.
Tim Burton's 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5brXozjbno

^ Makes no reference, nor gives any clue that it's a MUSICAL, and numerous elements of the promotional campaign neglected to mention this.

You should mention Mark though, the upcoming 'The Fourth Kind' which has Milla Jovovich confidently stating that it's based on true events, that witness testimonies exist, she plays a real person and it really happened.....it's rubbish, and all viral marketing (as many movie blogs are showing).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5CaXWph02s
What Jennifer Aniston's Best Friends won't tell her 6:09pm on 05 Oct 2009 'Jennifer, you know you're in trouble when you're upstaged by a labrador!'
Music Lesson 00:36am on 28 Sep 2009 Yes, actors feigning instrument playing irks me...but nowhere near the level that 'unsuitable actors feigning highly complex jobs' does.

ie. Meg Ryan, helicopter pilot (Courage Under Fire)

Madonna, World class Fencing instructor (Die Another Day)

Denise Richards, nuclear physicist (The World is Not Enough)
Cost report 2:07pm on 25 Sep 2009 i Don't care much for boasting about vulgar 200 million dollar movies etc. But i do think low budget movies should advertise that they're low budget. For me budget doesn't matter if the film is good or not, but sometimes hearing about the struggle to get a film made due to lack of cash can add an extra dimension to the movie, making it extra special.

For example

* With Romero's 'Dawn of The Dead' money was so tight, they had to shoot in the shopping mall over night, and clear away all the fake blood and gore before the shops reopened.

* 'Aguirre Wrath of God' was so set on saving costs that the cast and crew had to live uncomfortably close together in tents in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in Peru. Causing such a pressure cooker for the infamous Herzog/Kinski rows

* To get those shots of a deserted London in 28 Days Later, a group of runners had to sweet talk, blag, charm countless of taxi drivers/ hungover revellers etc. to wait a few minutes, and not walk into shot so they could get the vital scenes they needed.

I LOVE these stories, and they make the films in question extra special for me. I don't see low budget as just meaning, not much cash. Often i read low budget as meaning rich in ideas, authenticity and resourcefullness,
5 Live Review: Gamer 1:49pm on 25 Sep 2009 I'm male, and whilst far from being a feminist, I definitely echo Mark's continued concern about the increasing misogyny in Hollywood movies (Gamer is just the latest). It seems more and more women in movies are being hired just to gyrate in hot pants, and bend over in tight fitting tops (mainly over sports cars).

Mark, if you're reading this, perhaps a video blog about your view on this rise in this 'hot-pants-ification' would be interesting.
John Boorman: an exorcism 3:07pm on 04 Aug 2009 Good post. Believing your own hype is what has killed many an artist

It's what has ruined Quentin Tarantino for me. 90s Tarantino was wonderful, edgy, fresh and cool.....Then magazines started to talk about him as an auteur, and then the Weinsteins started treating him like King Midas, promising to back any idea he had, with no budgetary limitations, and in any form he wanted it.

This cult of 'Quentin' has led to:

* The horrendously cynical 'Two Volumes' of 'Kill Bill' as QT and the Weinsteins couldn't stand the thought of cutting all that 'genius' footage, and so thought 'hey lets charge people to see it twice'

* QT's memorable pontificating about what's wrong with the British Cinema industry at Cannes in 2004

* QT completely misjudging Grindhouse, confusing the audience in the process (many didn't know it was a double bill). Then when it flopped he claimed it wasn't his fault, and it was the audiences because they didn't 'get' grindhouse culture.

* Self indulgence of the highest form. Kill Bill was half a movie and half a 'watch QT' shoe-horn as many obscure 70s references that only he and the fanboys know'.

He has gone from 'Enfant Terrible' to 'terrible middle-aged man' who believes his own hype. I hope 'Inglorious Basterds' is good, but the fact that QT decided to put an 'e' in the titles profanity as an 'artistic flourish' suggests that this is a man too far gone....up his own backside!
Obscene Publications Act 12:51pm on 30 Jul 2009 I agree, we do still need the OPA and a degree of censorship. A lot of damage can be done to an unsuspecting audience being exposed to dark and harrowing scenes.

The best modern example was the infamous BBC 'Ghostwatch' programme of the early 90s. It set itself up as being a fun halloween 'hunt for ghosts' documentary, but was in fact a pre-scripted mockumentary showing a poltergeist wreaking havoc on a young family. Many children watched the programme as their parents were led to believe it was a 'Scooby-Doo' style romp, when in fact it was much more akin to The Exorcist with a real sense of menace behind it. Therefore many unsupervised children watched the programme.

And as a result one disabled child killed themselves, two children had to have psychiatric help for Post traumatic stress disorder, and multiple kids had sleepless nights.

In a non-censorship, BBFC abolished (which some want) country, surely examples like this will become more widespread.
Loving Sandra Bullock 01:34am on 25 Jul 2009 I agree

but in her defence, Bullock is now mid 40s, and many actresses of a similar age (Meg Ryan, Michelle Pfeiffer and Sharon Stone most notably) have gone on record to say that the movie offers really decline when a woman hits her forties. In all honesty, she may be continually doing mediocre romantic comedies/dramas, because that's the bulk of what's being offered to her.

Forties is a difficult time for an actress in Hollywood. The studios consider you too old for the 'sexy babe' roles (think Megan Fox, Jessica Alba, Angelina Jolie), but too young for the 'senior lady with gravitas' roles (think Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Judy Dench). So you've really just got to tread water and take what you can get.
Moon Movies 3:11pm on 20 Jul 2009 Earth based sci-Fi movies, are also one of the best documents of a political era and climate.

For example if you want to understand what McCarthyism was in 50s America, and how hysterical the political fear of the 'red threat' was, you could do little better than watching 'Invaders From Mars (1953)' or Don Siegel's original 1955 'Invasion of The Bodysnatchers'.

With these films it is fascinating that the terror they portray, isn't from the aliens, or the UFOs, or the fact they had ray guns that can melt a tank......it's from the fact they're in YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD, and YOU'RE NEXT!'

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