chokeout
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Posts posted by chokeout
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37 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:
Similar to Peter Hyams. Made consistently entertaining genre films that audiences and critics liked but he rarely coined it in. Capricorn One did alright and Timecop was a hit but otherwise his films struggled.
Hyams is a great shout and is, in many ways, a far more versatile director than Carpenter with solid comedy, Sci Fi and action films. But unless you are getting 2 big hits in a row no one is giving you the good jobs.
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He just couldn't get films made and when he did they didn't make any money. He's probably the least successful 'successful' director of all time. Even his most popular films flopped. The Thing was seen as a disaster at the time and was heavily critised for the level of gore, not really finding an audience till its home release. When you actually look through his filmography almost none of it made money, which is shocking.
Studios were still willing to give him a chance because Halloween wasn't only successful, it was the success story, the original indie hit. The Fog was another decent money maker for him and followed up with Escape From New York which did well but its now only 1981 and the hits have stopped and never return and Universal buy him out of his contract.
The only job he can get is Christine. The Carpenter curse always seemed to be that he would make a good film that barely made money, then follow it up with a bomb that lost people money . For every Starman, there was a Big Trouble. For every They Live, we had a Memoirs of an Invisible Man
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It was everything I hoped it would be. It looked beautiful and most importantly they didn't feel the need to throw everything at the first episode and explain everything. That first clicker reveal is going to be something.
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Easily my favourite Director of all time and I was obsessive about his films for most of my teenage years.
Long before I was aware who directed what, I would watch Big Trouble in Little China, which seemed to be on ITV all the time in the late 80s / early 90s. I almost certainly recorded it in the 8pm movie slot that ITV used to have, which probably means I didn't see it unedited for years. It was almost comic book like in its stupidity.
It wasn't until Moviedrome became essential viewing in 1989 when the then 7 year old me saw Night Of The Comet that I started asking my dad about all things horror. Dad was very laid back with what we could and couldn't watch, had always explained that films weren't real, but if it was too scary we should stop watching. This led to us self censoring (specifically meant that I refused to watch Nightmare on Elm Street for years because the mere thought of it scared the bejesus out of me) This also led to Dad letting me sit and watch the previous nights recorded Moviedrome with him and answer the millions of questions I threw at him. Looking back it's crazy how many of the Moviedrome films linked back to Carpenter (Oh you like the bat shit crazy effects in Society, do you? Well say thanks to Bottin's work on The Thing and Screaming Mad George getting to work on Big Trouble, etc)
I know for a fact that the first time I saw Assault on Precinct 13 was on channel 4, which was probably years later, so I'm guessing it wasn't till the 1992 showing of Escape From New York and it's introduction showing little clips from the Fog and The Thing that I realised I needed to see EVERYTHING. I can't remember the first time I saw Halloween, it was one of those films that was guaranteed a showing once a year and I don't think i really appreciated it till I was 16 and our media teacher made us watch Friday the 13th and then spent most of the film explaining how much better Carpenter had done it. He was right and even then i could understand that even though Friday 13th had gore and campy fun, Halloween had tension and that sense of unease
The reason I never really thought Halloween was the bee's knees back them was because The Fog was, in my eyes, far superior. Its has spooky ghost pirates! Its still in my top 5 of his and was the first region 1 dvd I ever bought off the internet (along with the uncut version of Enter The Dragon) Its hokey but as a throwback horror film it's probably one of his best. I think the first time I saw it was probably 1994, with the Dr Terror introduction on BBC
Prince of Darkness was never on growing up, its so odd how few times it was shown on tv in the early 90s. I probably saw it least of any of the Carpenter films, probably only catching it once on TV so I found it much later than his other stuff.
In the Mouth Of Madness always reminded me of his later TV work, some of which could easily make this list. There's just something about it that felt hokey and not in a good way. It's probably the film that stopped him getting big cinema releases. We rented it on VHS in 1994 when it came out and I think it was the first film of his that I saw that i didn't immediately want to watch again. I don't think i rewatched it for at least 10 years after that.
But the answer to the question is The Thing. Not only is it his best film, it's one of THE best films. As close to perfect as it can get, note perfect performances, effects that at the time were groundbreaking (and most importantly for the 80s, looked horrendous in stills in magazines and on video covers) and still hold up today. It's such a well worn thing to do now but re-making a B-movie and turning it from what it was to this is amazing (matched only by The Fly).Oh and the score! you know what's better than Carpenter scoring his own movie? Getting Morricone in! Let's not even start on Drew Struzan's poster for it, nothing to do with the film at all, finished so late that the paint was still wet when it went off to print and still one of the greatest posters of the 80s.
TL;DR The Thing is not only his best film but also one of The best films and everything about it is amazing
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What is going on with that accent? It's like a weird AI generated version of what they think a Scottish accent should be.... But he's Scottish.
I've not been this confused since I watched Green Street and found out Charlie Hunnan was English.
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Watched the first 3 episodes tonight and it's not too bad so far. My gf has a soft spot for the DREADFUL Below Deck so wanted to watch it because it has Kate on it, despite not watching the UK series.
The biggest difference is that they are mainly all entitled arseholes and I really can't see any of them taking even minor critisim well. It also has that hyper emotion that US shows seem to have with one traitor crying about who to kill, saying it hurts and he loves him like a brother, after knowing him for less than a day.
Format wise its odd to see how much more open they are throwing accusations around in a whole group, even from the get go. The UK version always seemed to be hushed theories amongst splinter groups. This jumps straight into a packed room flinging shit at each other. Which is obviously marvelous.
@BomberPat I would only accept the fake reality TV winner if they used Chantelle from Celebrity Big Brother as a weird multilevel reference.
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I hope the US version of The Traitors is as good
.... Oh
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Just now, LaGoosh said:
Has this been reported by any major news outlets? There's a world of difference between real world journalists and wrestling "journalists", after all.
This industry was built on wild speculation and people with no idea what they're talking about offering their unwanted opinions as fact and i'll be dammed if anyone takes that away from me!!
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TIL he played Glen Ponders boyfriend in Knowing me, Knowing Yule. So he's been around for decades.
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1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:
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ZX Spectrum
For reasons i have never understood or had fully explained to be, my sister (who is 3 years older than me) was, as a baby, given a spectrum as a christening present. I'm 90% sure it was my dad justifying getting himself one because it's exactly what i'd do. Because of this, we always had games in the house. Memories of playing it are reduced down to playing Airwolf and never being able to get past the 3rd screen, Ghostbusters taking an age to load and crashing all the time and the usual classics like Jet Set Willy, Jetpac and Chuckie Egg.
Weird isometric games always send me into a weird flashback, especially the Batman game.
The Spectrum was set up far longer than any of us ever used it and wasn't retired even as we upgraded which led to...
The Amiga 500
My dad was convinced we needed a new computer and had narrowed it down to the Amiga 500 or the Atari ST. It was down to a coin toss between the two of them so we went, en masse, to Joe Micro's in Rhyl, a shop that could be best described as a cupboard full of pegboard and miserable men. They pushed for us to get the Atari, probably because they couldn't shift them. My dad asked us which one we wanted and I said the Atari because (and it's still a very vivid memory) the box art for the Amiga had a screenshot of Nighbreed on it which scared the living shit out of me. I thankfully got outvoted and we left with the Amiga Screengems collection. Nightbreed screenshot is on the bottom right.
I talked about this with my Dad over Christmas but i can't stress how important this computer was to me. I'll get to the games in a minute but the above collection came with Deluxe Paint II. I sat there and taught myself to paint and draw with a mouse. By the time I was in high school and wanted to do media they were using Deluxe Paint 3 to add graphics and titles to video in media and it gave me a natural boost already knowing how to do it and gave me something to excel at. It directly led to me seeking out Photoshop, premiere and After Effects and again teaching myself when i was 14 and ending up in the job i've had for the last 20 years.
Anyway, games...
Nighbreed has an early level where you button mash to run away from a dreadlocked ghoul in a cemetery or you get bit like in the screenshot. I played it once, got bit and then hid the disk so its evil could never be seen by anyone else!
Shadow of The beast 2 felt grown up and is always pone of the first games i find when i bust out an emulator but Back to the Future 2 was the best thing ever, with the great digi score and levels that are almost mini games. I played that game to death.
It wasn't long before my cousin, who was a year older than us started giving us copied games and we had access to everything. Monkey Island 2 became an obsession, as did almost every point and click, especially the Lucas Arts games. It became almost a running joke on which game had the most disks to swap and become almost unplayable. Willy Beemish, i'm looking at you. You've not known frustration until youve tried to play the Amiga port of Street Fighter 2, reducing the controls down to a 1 button joystick and having to reload from disk every time you change characters. Absolute horseshit.
The Ocean movie tie-ins that were all almost identical with their squat character designs. Total Recall being a personal fav. Moonstone with its OTT gore and games like Gods all seemed to throw as much blood as they could, making them feel grownup when, looking back, they were almost cartoon like.
Dad became obsessed with Lemmings, still to this day the only game he has ever played for more than 5 minutes
While we still had the Amiga we managed to get a MegaDrive 2 which I think came with Sonic 2 and Megagames 2 and 3. We used to rent the majority of games for it because they were so expensive so summer holidays involved blitzing games as quickly as possible to give them back. Most of the games were just whatever was available so i have memories of joylessly completing Quackshot and World of Illusion just to fill the days. I can remember hating playing Robocop vs Terminator and grinding through to the last level only for my brother to run into the room and knocking the powerlead out from the back of the console.
Playstation
Been mentioned in other threads but like many on here it was when gaming went from being a fun thing to an obsession. I have no idea how my parents could afford it but we got a bundle for christmas one year and Played Tekken 2 to death. Literally everyone came back from Christmas holidays with one that year, apart from Darren Jones, who got a Saturn, with no A/V lead and had to sit there while we all talked about how great the Playstation was. Enjoy playing Virtua fighter on your own, mate, we're all off to play Smackdown!
Renting Resident Evil from Blockbuster started a life-long obsession with the franchise. Randomly despite owning tonnes of games my strongest memories of it always seem to be linked to the Official playstation demo discs. Medievil, Pandomium, Cool Borders and wipeout all exist in my head as frantic short run throughs.
The timed Resident Evil 2 demo blew my mind. I think it came with the Directors Cut of RE but im sure i remember it being attached to a magazine as well.
Nintendo 64
Our media studies teacher let us set it up in the studio and we would waste hours playing Goldeneye on it. We were eventually allowed to play it in the Lecture Theatre which was basicially the cinema for the school which, at that point, seemed like the greatest thing ever.
Playstation2
Been mentioned loads on here before but was the natural progression for most and Timesplitters 2 was an amazing multi player game during Uni
Dreamcast
When I started Uni i got one in the first week when i had more money in my account then i'd ever had. Tony Hawk 2, the Capcom fighting games and Ready to Rumble became essentials in the student house and (the reason i bought it) Resident Evil: Code Veronica is still an all time great and almost made the VDU worth having.
By the time communal gaming in the student house became an obsession we ended up with a Kwiksave bag containing a...
SNES, a multitap and loads of games but most importantly Bomberman. that game never left the console for at least a year.
Gamecube
Was purchased specifically for Resident Evil 4
Xbox 360
skipped the original Xbox but by this point i was living in a shared house with friends and Call of Duty multiplayer became life
Xbox One
natural progression
Playstation 3
bought secondhand to play 3D blurays when i got a new tv. Ended up falling in love with Uncharted and The Last Of Us
Playstation 4
My brother lent it to me when he went travelling. I rarely pick up a controller any more but The Uncharted Games and God Of War are all time great games and story driven games are all i seem to play any more......oh and remasters of Resident Evil games
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The Pale Blue Eye
It looks beautiful, everything is cold and muted and empty, which sadly sums up the film as well. The pace is glacial and feels longer than it actually is which is odd because everyone is great in it, especially Melling and his odd face. He's got decades of character acting in his future.
On a side note I love Timothy Spall but since he lost all the weight it makes me sad every time he pops up on screen. I'm sure he's far healthier than he's ever been but he looks ill.
Oh and Toby Jones' career is stunning. He's just the best. £70million Netflix film, key role in the next Indiana Jones film and pop home to make a Detectorists Christmas special
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Absolutely. To be honest we've probably already seen the effects of the earlier UFCs but haven't really drawn attention to it. The earlier fighters from the first events were already bruisers and sadly I don't think many people would really be shocked by them being 'punch drunk' and they wouldn't get a lot of press attention because of how short their stints in the spotlight were (and we've already started to see fighters from the earlier days dying in their early to mid 50s) But now we're seeing the actual athlete fighters who were put on posters and marketed on primetime TV.
Tito and Chuck are walking PR disasters just waiting to happen. Rampage was acting erratic a decade ago. People who made a career out of getting hit hard (and turned into highlight clips on Facebook for revenue) like Don Frye and Mark Hunt are going to be suffering.
Bonner dying is the start of the well known guys, post UFC explosion, showing the effects of getting hit with 4oz gloves. It's only going to get worse
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Kelly Kapowski. She was too good for Zack Morris
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Horrible age to go, especially with a young family. He had such an odd career, leaving the band before they recorded their biggest hits, then coming back.
Always had a soft spot for them because of their connections with Grandaddy.
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@SuperBacon the one on the right is Dr stranges sanctum santorum. The others are lego creator sets
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@Dr. Alan Grant You only really get part substitutes if it's a new part made for a set so it's mainly the minifigures not being perfect. I think in about 15 sets I've had maybe 3 missing parts and maybe 15-20 parts that were changed. If it's a piece you want to display it's still cheaper to just buy the missing parts from bricklink. There are Facebook groups that review the sets in detail which is always great.
The manuals are almost identical to the lego sets but with more than one stage on a page (usually 3-4).
I don't really do the technic sets but have heard that some of the more technical sets can have issues, mainly due to some pieces being ever so slightly off and the gears having slightly more / less traction.
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22 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:
How do you search properly on there? I had a quick look but I'm sure there's more than I'm seeing
Go to joooooy.com you can pay via PayPal and the sets usually get here in less than 2 weeks. I buy myself 2-3 big sets to do during my Christmas break
I love lego, its genuinely therapeutic to me. Much like doing a jigsaw I can sit there doing it for a couple of hours and my brain just switches off. My ex got me a set about 10 years ago and I got hooked again and I'm lucky enough that my niece and nephew are obsessed and want a set off me every Christmas and want me to do it with them.
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It's crazy that he's exactly what Vince was trying to create for years; someone from outside the wrestling world who they could mould into a commentator, but it was TNA who struck gold with him. He's 100% what they wanted Mike Adamle to be but I doubt they would have given him a second look because he wasn't cosmetically what Vince wanted on his show (much like Tenay)
Just think how many commentators WWE has had on TV for years that still can't sell an angle as well as West did after 6 months in an industry he had no background in.
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Money was tight this Christmas so I ended up making a few things for people.
Not my drawing originally but it's my brothers fav film so I made a 3d poster frame for Planes, Trains and Automobiles to go along with the 4k release.
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Yep. I don't think they recorded any new animations so sub zeros fatality was just a punch while they stood there.
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2 hours ago, RalphyV2 said:
Never had a SNES, but had a MD, and loved Aladdin! I do recall watching a few things on gaming and generally, Sega allowed more violence and blood than Nintendo, right? seemed that way
Nintendo censored blood and violence. Mortal kombat released on snes and mega drive. Most people considered the snes version had the better graphics but the uncensored mega drive version outsold them by 4-to-1.
... They released Mortal Kombat 2 uncensored.
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On 12/19/2022 at 1:04 PM, Devon Malcolm said:
Oh go on then, if you've got time.
Sorry Devon. Only just seen this. My gf broke her arm so my Christmas time off disappeared while I looked after her.
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22 hours ago, Supremo said:
Can my avatar be made more festive please?
There we go, my good man
Things that cheer you up
in Off Topic
Posted
The 10 year old me always associates Christmas and lego with the ships and castles so this was my knockoff lego for Christmas