Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

The words do not have to be perfect.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

This really is a full service blog.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

T R E 4 5 O N

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

This fight is for everything.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Squishable temporary morning open thread

Squishable temporary morning open thread

by | 189 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Y’all. I think this is a real thing that happened:

What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen? Me: “The Man Who Loved Women,” starring Burt Reynolds. I was a fucking CHILD, and I walked out of the theater because it was so bad.

I also hate the sports drama movie “Rudy” and ridicule my husband for liking it. But now I know it’s not even the worst movie called “Rudy.”

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

189Comments

  2. 2.

    mrmoshpotato

    MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE!

    Thread over.  I win. ?

     

    Seriously – Disturbia can suck everyone’s left nut.  If I wanted to watch a shitty version of Rear Window, I wouldn’t.  I would just watch Rear Window!

  4. 4.

    satby

    Nope, not even looking at the tweet. Supposed to start snowing any minute, then switching to rain, then by tomorrow 50° and sunny. My poor garden has no fucking idea what’s going on.

  5. 5.

    SFAW

    Well, I couldn’t walk out of my house when I saw the “Rudey” scene above, but mainly because it’s cold outside, and I’m a wimp.

    Holy shit, that’s bad.

    I once thought Silverado was pretty bad, mainly because it seemed to re-hash every “Western” cliche. Others seem to have a different opinion, and maybe it was a parody, so maybe I need to watch it again

    ETA: And I can’t believe they made a movie about him. Was it “self-produced”?

  9. 9.

    Spanky

    What? You think I’m going to play that vid? No thanks. Just imagining him tucking in his shirt is enough.

  11. 11.

    raven

    If you are on facebook (and, no, I don’t care of you are) look up Jamie Harrison’s Dirt Road Coalition video.

  13. 13.

    Princess

    Red Dawn.

    The only movie I ever walked out of

    Blue Velvet sucked too. I guess I don’t like movies with colours in their names.

  14. 14.

    JPL

    Now I’m never going to be able to watch Rudy again, and I blame Betty

    btw   I truthfully thought the clip was a joke, because I don’t remember that movie at all.   Thankfully.

  15. 15.

    debbie

    The bit where he’s lying on the bed with his hand down his pants is as much Rudy Romance as I can handle.

    I’d rather dream of the executive order that Biden will issue on McConnell’s birthday. Something that curtails Mitch’s ability to wreak havoc on the country would be nice.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    I would watch the sequel to the Rudy Giuliani story covering the rest of his life.  That shit would be hilarious.

  17. 17.

    SFAW

    @debbie:

    The bit where he’s lying on the bed with his hand down his pants is as much Rudy Romance as I can handle.

    FSM will smite you for reminding us of that.

  24. 24.

    JMG

    Ned Kelly starring Mick Jagger is the worst I’ve ever seen. Left midway through. I love the Stones but there was a scene where hero Ned (like an Australian Jesse James/Robin Hood) engages in a bare knuckle boxing match. Mick takes off his shirt and you see his body is like clothes hangers wired together, yet he thrashes an opponent who’s got like 80 pounds on him. That’s when I walked. This was like 1971.

  25. 25.

    MagdaInBlack

    @satby: All white here in the NW Chi suburbs. Blessedly, not much traffic lately. Suburbanites lose their minds at 3 flakes.

  26. 26.

    satby

    @SFAW: rikyrah’s in Chicago, I’m a Chicagoan in exile in South Bend, where it’s also snowing. Supposed to get up to an inch before it changes to rain.

    I’ve had 4 cups of coffee, and I want to take a nap already.

  28. 28.

    SFAW

    @debbie:

    How could you have ever unsee it? Share your secret!

    By not watching it in the first place?

    Of course, there’s always some wise guy/girl who will describe it. But that did not stay with me as long as having it seared into my visual cortex would have done.

    Until you came along.

  29. 29.

    hueyplong

    Seconded on the Rudy (sports movie) hate.  Well, on the Rudy G hate, too.  Ink-drippy, self-diddling, Nosferatu-looking ghoul trying to fuck over the country under the cover of 911.  A perfect match for the orange pig.

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    The fact that James Woods plays Rudy is so extra. The clip’s worth watching because the person who filmed it (off TV) cracks up at the end. It’s also what makes this clip so magical:

  32. 32.

    satby

    @MagdaInBlack: I hate covid, but I hope people remember to dial back some of the frenetic needless running around we all did before we had to stay home to stay safer from the virus spread. Because I like the peace of reduced traffic and noise.

  36. 36.

    WereBear

    As a fervent MST3K fan, and prior to that, an early early appreciator of Ed Wood, I think terrible movies are a category unto themselves.

    If we are talking about big budget studio-released movies from people who should have known better, I nominate Quintet.

    Honorable mentions include Titanic (which at least wasn’t boring,) and Steel Magnolias… wait a minute.

    Damn! I just realized I actually hate Steel Magnolias most of all.

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I love it: Helicopter pilot finds ‘strange’ monolith in remote part of Utah

    A mysterious monolith has been discovered in a remote part of Utah, after being spotted by state employees counting sheep from a helicopter.

    The structure, estimated at between 10ft and 12ft high (about 3 metres), appeared to be planted in the ground. It was made from some sort of metal, its shine in sharp contrast to the enormous red rocks which surrounded it.
    ……………………………….
    The helicopter pilot, Bret Hutchings, told local news channel KSLTV: “That’s been about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying.” Hutchings was flying for the Utah department of public safety, which was helping wildlife resource officers count bighorn sheep in the south of the state. “One of the biologists is the one who spotted it and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it,” Hutchings said. “He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And he’s like, ‘There’s this thing back there – we’ve got to go look at it!’”

    Hutchings said the object looked manmade and appeared to have been firmly planted in the ground, not dropped from the sky. “I’m assuming it’s some new wave artist or something or, you know, somebody that was a big 2001: A Space Odyssey fan,” Hutchings said.

    The monolith and its setting resembled a famous scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, in which a group of apes encounter a giant slab.

  44. 44.

    coin operated

    I nominate Battlefield Earth.  Someone tried to condense that 1000+ opus into a 2-hour flick and failed miserably.  Someone had enough dirt on John Travolta to make him take up that horrible script…

  45. 45.

    swiftfox

    Worked with Dan Ruettiger and his brothers in 1980.  Showed me his picture in Notre Dame uniform. Nice guy.  I guess in the age of ‘greed is good’ I should not have been surprised he would have a movie made out of a molehill of circumstance.

  46. 46.

    randy khan

    Love at First Bite.  My friends and I spent the entire movie talking about walking out.  And I never talk during movies.  But it did mean that we saw the incredibly ridiculous ending.

  47. 47.

    SFAW

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Well, in fairness

    If I wanted to watch a shitty version of Rear Window, I wouldn’t.  I would just watch Rear Window!

    looks like it might be implying that “the original was shitty, so why watch a remake?”

    Glad to see you have some taste in movies

  48. 48.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I remember seeing an interview of the MST3K guys talking about Manos.  They’d wanted to do it since day 1 of the show but it took em years to work up to it because they felt it was so bad and so disturbed, they couldn’t write to the on-screen material.

  49. 49.

    mrmoshpotato

    @satby:

    I’ve had 4 cups of coffee, and I want to take a nap already. 

    That’s not how coffee works!

    Also (too), it’s about time the calendar sat the weather’s crazy ass down and said, “Now look here!  It’s late November!”

  50. 50.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SFAW: Looks like one of those movies made specifically for the “Christian”/right-wingnut subculture. James Woods as the star, giving speeches that are straight-up about how Republicans are better than Democrats? Yeah, it’s the kind of thing that in an earlier age would have been shown in the church basement.

  52. 52.

    Anne Laurie

    Betty, you are a Great Lady, and I apologize for putting you to so much trouble!

    (Still not watching that clip, though — I’m off to bed.)

  53. 53.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: Hutchings is a guy who clearly has never seen “2001.”

    Possibly my favorite Mad Magazine movie send up of all time was “201mins of A Space Idiocy”

  54. 54.

    WereBear

    I highly recommend God Awful Movies podcast if you really want to dip into this extraordinarily scummy part of the film pool. They take on the Fundamentalist Christian propaganda movies, and if you don’t mind very salty language (and if you do why are you HERE?) you might find it as funny as I do.

  55. 55.

    PsiFighter37

    One curiosity is that SecDef was not announced with a lot of the other foreign policy / national security positions. Wonder if they are still figuring out who to appoint as CIA director, and other positions, and waiting to include that announcement there. Would assume Flournoy is the choice.

  56. 56.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SFAW: Looks like it wasn’t, but, then, the monolith in the movie didn’t have 1:4:9 dimensions either–that was just in the book. Turns out if you actually make a box that shape it just looks like a brick, not the elegant, door-like slab Kubrick needed.

  57. 57.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: I never understood the love for 2001. Visually, it was… I don’t want to say “stunning” but something like that.  Otherwise I found it rather boring.

  58. 58.

    LurkerNoLonger

    @OzarkHillbilly: It’s 19 years too late. Come on, aliens, get a calendar!

    ETA: to answer the bad movie question: Freddy VS. Jason. I love horror movies and just I can’t get through it. It’s the only movie I walked out of while at the theater.

  61. 61.

    Anne Laurie

    @OzarkHillbilly: I dimly remember the Scientoologists building massive monuments, guaranteed to last thousands of years, to proclaim the godhood of Elron.

    Doubt it would be legal to build something like this on public land, but off the top of my head, I’d guess the monolith was dedicated by some cult — if not the Seagaters, then the Tesla promoters, some unusually technocratic Mormon offshoot, or possibly NSA (in one of its more cult-like moments).

  66. 66.

    Anne Laurie

    @PsiFighter37: Wonder if they are still figuring out who to appoint as CIA director

    If they told us, they would have to kill us!

    There’s a joke going around on twitter:  Pete Buttigieg.

    Just to make his detractors, on both the right & the (ostensible) left, completely paranoid.

  68. 68.

    PsiFighter37

    @Baud: There is always going to be pushback from the left, because nobody is ever too pure for any position (except for Bernie, of course). Boo fucking hoo.

  71. 71.

    PsiFighter37

    @Immanentize: Outside of Jay Powell and Chris Wray (more because it would cause unnecessary trouble to do so), every other Trump appointee that is fireable on 1/20 is gone. That includes Haspel. Worst comes to worst, just put Michael Morrell (who was deputy CIA director) in charge.

  73. 73.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @satby: There’s snow on the ground here this morning, and it’s coming down again now. It’s pretty.

    ETA: I saw this post go up, went to take a shower, and came back to find 72 comments. Holy cow, you all are up early and chatty.

  75. 75.

    clay

    @OzarkHillbilly: It has a great opening, then a great tense scene with “I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave”, then a bizarre ending.

    All the stuff in between is dulllllll…..zzzzzz…….

  76. 76.

    Tim C.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Fun story.   When I was teaching middle school,  I suggested building a Monolith in the middle of the central commons in the hope that many of the early adolescents would gather around it, scream and jump, and then perhaps mature some.

  77. 77.

    Brachiator

    Worst movie? Some terrible low budget horror movie about a winged monster in New York starring Michael Moriarty. The effects were terrible and the directing so bad it became distracting. There was one scene where a character chases a bad guy. It’s mid afternoon when the bad guy runs into a building, but night when he runs out of it.

    I also got to see Hollywood insincerity in full blast. I attended a special showing attended by the producers and some of the cast. When the movie ended, people came up to the director and writer and slobbered all over them with praise.

    I was dumbfounded. Looking back, it was just like GOP leaders lavishing phony praise onto  Trump.

  78. 78.

    Anne Laurie

    @PsiFighter37: There’s been rumors Bernie wants to be Secretary of Labor.  Which IMO wouldn’t be a terrible idea, since it would keep him busy, and Murphy the Trickster God knows he’d be an improvement over the current seatwarmer.

    (Nasty part of me wants him to find out just how much of a sinecure that job is *not*.  Or, more likely, to have to find an excuse for not taking the job, because he’s not stupid, just too damned fond of the sound of his own voice.)

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Anne Laurie:
    John McCracken is/was a New Mexico artist, and it is very much his style. As to the legalities, a lot of stuff happens on BLM land that nobody really cares about. (don’t know that this is on BLM land, but it most likely is) Personally, I just like the fact that who ever did it left it to be discovered by accident. Only s/he knows how long it’s been out there.

  82. 82.

    mad citizen

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m with you on 2001.  I watched it for the first time just 3 years ago or so, and also found it boring.  I think it’s because Kubrick would always F around with his source material until he got something he thought was better, was saying what he wanted to say, whatever.  I absolutely love 2-3 of his films, but some of the others are quite boring (Barry Lyndon).

    I’ve found as I was in my 50s I became more impatient with crappy movies.  It’s easy to turn them off or fast forward a dvd at home (as long as my wife falls asleep).  Last weekend I tried to watch Duck Soup (Marx Brothers, 1933).  FFd a few times to see if it picked up, but was not my cup of tea.

    My wife and I were at a free screening of the recent Adam Sandler Uncut Gems movie and walked out 40 minutes in.  That one was so loud and frenetic, an assault on the senses.

  83. 83.

    PsiFighter37

    @Anne Laurie: His colleagues won’t confirm him, and why put his replacement in the hands of a Republican governor? I know Scott is very liberal by GOP standards, but I wouldn’t trust him not to put a Republican (or an independent who decides to caucus with nobody) in the seat instead.

  84. 84.

    Bruce K

    I don’t know about “worst”, but I was subjected to multiple viewings of “An Officer And A Gentleman”, and the only reason I didn’t walk out halfway through the first showing was that I was about 35,000 feet over the North Atlantic. (This was back in the day when there was one in-flight movie played on a common screen in the front of each passenger section, long before individual video screens, and they repeated it over and over and over again on an 8-hour flight.)

    (And then they did it again on the flight back, which was a 10-hour flight.)

  90. 90.

    Sab

    @Anne Laurie: Having a niece who works in the Department of Labor doing actual work stuff, it would indeed be a terrible idea to having Bernie as their Sec. They need some restorative leadership after Scalia’s son has been hackimg away at them.

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    @FridayNext:

    I’m with Elaine. The English Patient sucks.

    Yeah, this movie was bad in so many ways.

    SPOILER for anyone who cares.

    When the nurse makes a crucial decision, I said to myself “If you had done that an hour earlier you could have saved us all from this rubbish.”

  94. 94.

    cmorenc

    @Princess:

    Blue Velvet sucked too. I guess I don’t like movies with colours in their names

    Glad someone beside me thinks “Blue Velvet” was a cringeworthy awful piece of crap.  Much of the acting is embarrasingly bad – including Hopper’s hyperventilating to attempt to convey menacing madness.

  96. 96.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    My nominations –

    Hot Rods to Hell

    Panic in the Year Zero

    Harry’s War

  98. 98.

    WereBear

    @Betty Cracker: The acting is excellent. That’s not my problem with it.

    Every single major problem was caused by terrible decisions made to please some male jerk who wasn’t even appreciative. Who took it as his DUE as a Y chromosome carrier.

    What was even worse is that I saw it with a group of ladies who loved to cry through the whole thing, so I couldn’t even vent :)

  99. 99.

    geg6

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Oh, thank dog I’m not the only one!  Yeah, the visuals are nice but that movie bored me to tears.  I walked out of it in the theater and I have changed the channel if I ever come across it.  Awful.  Kubrick made a lot of really shitty movies (don’t come at me…Eyes Wide Shut, ya’ll).  A couple interesting ones, but I really don’t understand why anyone flips their shit over his “greatness.”  I don’t see it.

  100. 100.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Matt McIrvin: Looks like I’m wrong about “Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story” — it was made for TV, specifically the USA Network. The rest of it is explained by it being 2003. That couple of years post-9/11 was a very… special time for popular culture.

  101. 101.

    Aleta

    Eraserhead.

    But that “Rudy” definition of  Republicans and “That’s what we’re here for”  as a lead in to moving in …  relationship poetry!   From there turn the script over to Stephen King and you’ve got a movie.

  103. 103.

    hells littlest angel

    A tie: Showgirls and Tough Guys Don’t Dance, two demonstrations of the deleterious effects of drugs and alcohol on creativity and judgment which would make a double-feature no human could survive.

  104. 104.

    Feathers

    Yeah. Bad movies. I saw hundreds of movies a year in my twenties. Was trying to be a screenwriter/indie filmmaker. Thought that my problem was writer’s block not undiagnosed ADHD with a pea sized working memory. I went to local film festivals and saw only films which hadn’t (and weren’t going to) find distributors. There is at least a basic competence in studio/professionally produced films. I’m remembering a horror sci-fi film by someone who thought that having an animal rights theme meant that the film didn’t have to be good. I’m also remembering a Stan Brakhage film which was an eternity of a film shot entirely tHrough a tiny basement window of chickens in the backyard, filmed on distressed, old filmstock, so that it was scratched and that wonderful pink and yellow of film that spent too long in the heat.

    As to “normal” films, that would be DESTINY TURNS ON THE RADIO. Which I saw opening night. Theater was packed. Four of us left by the end. I imagine the parties on location  were amazing. There is actually one good scene, very brief, Jim Belushi and a woman talking in a bar. You wonder if It was shot by a substitute film crew that filled in when the main one called in “sick.”

  105. 105.

    trnc

    @Betty Cracker: 
    I’ll tell you what sucks more than anything – finding out that someone who is really good at their entertainment job is a first class douche. I made a point of watching James Woods movies for a long time because he made every movie he was in better, but now I can barely look at him. I don’t have a problem watching movies, listening to music, etc, with republican stars like Bruce Willis if I haven’t heard them being progenitors of the Qanon Qrew and OANN, but Woods is way out front on that shit.

  109. 109.

    Gvg

    Excalibur. Rape in full armor. I was on a first date at 16. At least he agreed it was not a good movie. Stupid movie didn’t even understand the myths.

  110. 110.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin: 

    Yeah, I remembered that the movie was Q something, but it was so terrible that I didn’t bother looking it up.

    There are some movies that I say are not for me, but if someone else likes it, fine by me. But this Q crap is not for anyone.

  112. 112.

    leeleeFL

    @JPL: Made for TV, maybe LifeTime?  It sucked then. I think it was a James Woods fever dream.  Fuck him and Rudy. Is that supposed to be Donna Hanover?  Dumbass woman, falling for that piece of crap.

  113. 113.

    Frankensteinbeck

    The worst movie ever is famously The Room, but Fading Of The Cries is pretty hilariously bad.

    I will note there are two separate kinds of bad movie, so bad it’s funny and so bad it’s boring.  I have chosen the former.

  117. 117.

    Feathers

    @hells littlest angel: I saw TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE at the Boston film festival, with Norman Mailer in attendance. He seemed happy with it. It was a train wreck, but at least had an energy to it.

    Went to the cast and crew pre-release screening of OLEANNA. As the lights came up, somebody shouted “So, anybody seen any good movies lately?” It was supposed to star Mamet’s wife, Rebecca Pidgeon, an excellent actress. She got pregnant. Instead of delaying, they made the film with the actress who had been Pidgeon’s understudy in the stage production. Thinking back on it now, I wonder if Mamet just didn’t want to have to find an actress willing to play the “I’m just too stupid to understand that I was witnessing greatness, not being sexually harassed, and that I’m too ugly for that, anyway” part. Despite living nearby, Mamet was not at the screening.

  118. 118.

    trnc

    @WereBear: 

    The Room is best appreciated by reading one of the backstory books about how it was made.

    The movie “The Disaster Artist” is pretty good. It’s based on one of those books.

  120. 120.

    The Fat White Duchess

    @WereBear: YES on Titanic. I knew I didn’t want to see Steel Magnolias. (Well, I also had no interest in Titanic, but a friend I hadn’t seen in a while asked me to accompany her to the movie.)

    I nominate Leaving Las Vegas, not only for romanticising death by alcoholism but even more for the explicit gang-rape scene nobody warned me about.

    There’s another that I’m blanking on the title for. A knight going off on crusade, with Orlando Bloom in the lead? I’ll look it up. (ETA: Kingdom of Heaven. Ugh.)

  121. 121.

    Amir Khalid

    @coin operated:

    Battlefield Earth wasn’t made because someone had dirt on John Travolta. The book was written by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. Travolta is a prominent and devout Scientologist; he made the movie as an act of religious devotion. The movie is hilariously bad like the book, but don’t say that where Travolta can hear you.

  122. 122.

    Chief Oshkosh

    When Woody Allen was asked whether he would make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he’d do “everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus.”

  123. 123.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    That would be the Resident Evil movie that I walked out of my living room over it was so dumb.

  124. 124.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Amir Khalid:

    I like the book.  It is good at what it is, epic science fiction.  It shares the tropes that make that genre what it is, of the all-competent hero, simple solutions, questionable physics and causality with a lot of Rule Of Cool, and of course exaggerated good vs evil morality.  Within that framework, it is exciting, satisfyingly triumphant, and has a lot of strange things to sightsee.  Every character but the hero is interesting, and epic sci-fi heroes are by their nature generically perfect.  It is very mildly racist, and sexist in a “women are background objects” way, but that is par for the course from its time and again, very mild.  It is also pre-Scientology, and only has the briefest flashes revealing Hubbard’s moronic libertarianism.  Damn that man hated psychology/psychiatry, though.

  126. 126.

    NotMax

    Easiest answers to the question may be:

    1) regarding a female: “Any film with Mamie Van Doren in it.”
    2) regarding a male: “Any film with Arch Hall Jr. in it.”

    :)

    Here’s Arch warbling (I’m not making this stuff up, honest) Monkey in my Hatband.

  127. 127.

    PaulWartenberg

    Worst movie I ever saw was 3000 Miles to Graceland. Casting Kevin Costner (WTF) as an Evil (son of) Elvis vs. the Good (son of) Elvis in Kurt Russell (who was appropriately cast). It was an excuse to string together gun fight set pieces half of which made no goddamned sense, failed to play up the trope of emulating our myths (the legends/legacy of Elvis), and staged a Vegas casino heist by Elvis Impersonators at the beginning instead of properly having it as the buildup and climax to the whole movie.

    The worst movies are the ones that have a kernel of a great idea but then kills it with lousy execution, overkill, poor casting, and incoherence.

  130. 130.

    Keithly

    No hate for ‘Last Year at Marienbad’? Walked out of that and shook the popcorn hulls from my sandals.  Breathtakingly boring and bad.

  132. 132.

    WereBear

    @The Fat White Duchess:

    I nominate Leaving Las Vegas, not only for romanticising death by alcoholism but even more for the explicit gang-rape scene nobody warned me about.

     

    This was never on “something I would watch voluntarily” but thanks for the heads up. Yeesh.

  133. 133.

    trollhattan

    It is too damn early for the dramatic stylings of James Woods. OTOH that scene explains a lot about James Woods.

    Was that Rudy’s cousin, he’s beach-wooing? Best sales pitch for becoming Republican, evah.

  134. 134.

    SFAW

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Not sure how old I was when I found out Clarke based the book on the movie, not the other way around. But it was many years after I first saw and read them.

  135. 135.

    Immanentize

    @Feathers: Don’t dis Brackage!
    /S/ Film major in the avant garde days at SUNY Binghamton working with Ken Jacobs. Stan came often to show films and discuss stuff with us. He was an OK teacher and at least had a thorough theory about film and it’s place in history and memory.

  136. 136.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Ted Cruz said words to the effect of “you can take my turkey off my cold dead hands” as he staked his position as part of the defense in The War Against Thanksgiving. I assume the good Senator is so possessive of his bird because he stalked and killed it  like he did those couples in Northern California in the late ’60s.

  137. 137.

    Tim C.

    God, this is such a product of the period between September 11th and the invasion of Iraq.   It’s hard to process how long ago that was now and how deeply insane that time was.

  139. 139.

    NotMax

    @SFAW

    Either Kubrick’s or Clarke’s original plan was for it to be a pyramid, which wouldn’t have come across as anywhere near as enigmatic.

    Have experienced all or major segments of the movie at least 60 times. Because it played for more than three months at the theater where I worked as an usher. To the point that was almost begging to work the ticket line outside rather than stand through another showing.

  140. 140.

    trollhattan

    @Gvg:

    Saw “Excalibur” with a group of friends–it had had a fair amount of hype and Boorman was a mostly good director–and I felt fucking trapped in a (stylish) holding tank throughout. He resurrected himself later, with “Hope and Glory.”

    Helen Mirren seems to have recovered nicely.

    Bad movies become spectacularly bad when they have large budgets and hype, e.g., see Ken Russell (just not with me).

  141. 141.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SFAW: It was really neither–the book and the movie of “2001” were developed concurrently as part of a long and tortured creative process, and while they have the same story in broad outline, there are a lot of differences in detail. The book certainly feels much more like Clarke’s take on the story–it’s quite clear what’s going on, for the most part, and Clarke’s intellectual concerns are front and center. Kubrick wants to give you an atmospheric enigma.

  142. 142.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    I think it helps to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey when you’re stoned. It certainly helps you get through the tedium to the next astonishing visual.

    For the benefit of those who haven’t yet seen this: Alexa as HAL 9000.

  143. 143.

    piratedan

    i always liked this description of Kubrick to the uninitiated… Kubrick is considered to be a visionary director for those people who lack vision.

  144. 144.

    NotMax

    @trollhattan

    Have a long time buddy among whose favorite films of all time are “Excalibur” and “Krull.”

    Still count him as a close friend, even so.

    ;)

  146. 146.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax:

    Watching films from that era I’m struck by the pacing, which is simply verboten today. “2001” takes it to extremes (it builds, and builds, and then builds some more before kicking off some building activity) while today there would be a CGI space battle 80 seconds in.

    Part of the appeal back in the day was the almost literally immersive experience. It was shown at the local Cinerama [early surround image technology a.k.a. curved display beloved by gamers] and grew a cult following of repeat viewers not matched until “Star Wars” rolled out.

    Was too young and never got that experience. But H.A.L. made quite an impression once I did.

  147. 147.

    SFAW

    @NotMax:

    Because it played for more than three months at the theater where I worked as an usher.

    Little Neck Theater, maybe? I don’t recall it playing at the Squire or Playhouse, except maybe in rep.

    To the point that was almost begging to work the ticket line outside rather than stand through another showing.

    Yeah, the light show is pretty bad. And, frankly, having just watched it up to the Dullea-and-Lockwood-“conspiring”-in-the-pod scene, the movie dragged more than a little bit.

  149. 149.

    SaltWaterCleanse

    My wife and stepkids are huge fans of all things Harry Potter  (of which I know only enough to answer some recurring crossword clues). Couple years ago we all went to a multiplex to see Fantastic Beasts Something Or Other. I got so bored I went out into the lobby to get a beer and stretch my legs. Eventually headed back into the theater and stood in the dark watching the film without returning to our seats. Watched for 15 mins or so before I realized I was in a different theater. I was watching Aqua Man. Before realizing my mistake I managed to make sense of the Harry Potter-esque dude having a submarine.

  150. 150.

    SFAW

    @SaltWaterCleanse:

    Watched for 15 mins or so before I realized I was in a different theater. I was watching Aqua Man. Before realizing my mistake I managed to make sense of the Harry Potter-esque dude having a submarine.

    Beautiful

  151. 151.

    Lyrebird

    Dr. T and the Women

     

    worst movie evarrrr

     

    I sometimes re-read the amazon reviews when I feel down, just to get me to laugh

  152. 152.

    SaltWaterCleanse

    Also, slightly off topic but…Am I the only person on the planet who cannot stand the show Friends? If it’s on in the background (and it ALWAYS is somewhere) I have to leave the house, doctor’s office, airport, planet…

  153. 153.

    Tony Jay

    Highlander 2. A movie so bad on every conceivable level that I had to watch it all the way through in the vain hope that Michael Ironside (who I am sure must have a massive coke debt to pay off due to the amount of garbage he lends his shit-easting grin to) would finally snap and throat-punch everyone involved. He didn’t, which disappointed me.

    Blade 2 is also on my List d’Merde, but apparently people who are paid to have opinions about these things wrongly peg it as ‘quite good’. It’s not. Blade 3, though it has a sterling performance by Ryan Reynold’s motormouth and an off the cuff insult that never fails to make me double up, is bad. Blade 2 is just cosmically awful. It’s a comic-book movie so profoundly terrible that someone at Marvel seems to have greenlit the redesigning of their entire ‘Vampire genre’ around it just to piss me off. 

  154. 154.

    NotMax

    @SFAW

    Now long gone Manhasset Cinema, in the Americana shopping center.

    “Located on the Miracle Mile, where everyone wears a smile.”

    So frou-frou that they never used the studio provided posters or placards but employed an in-house artist to design their own. Also too, no popcorn, and a candy cart maybe ⅔ the size of a settee was wheeled out into the lobby only between showings, then locked away again once the film began. As it was owned by a coffee company they did serve free coffee in the lobby, complete with porcelain cups and saucers. All staff required to wear tuxedos.

  155. 155.

    NotMax

    @trollhattan

    AFAIK he lists it as a campy entertainment diversion.

    Happened to have Vibes running in the background for most of this thread. Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper in a celluloid train wreck. Parts of the strained dialogue are LOL-able, though

  156. 156.

    Lyrebird

    @SaltWaterCleanse: 

    I have no idea why people wanted to watch it.

    True story from the late 90s: I went with a good friend to a hair salon so we could have a Girls Afternoon Out. We got seated next to each other. I tried to explain what haircut I wanted.
    Stylist says, “so you want a Friends haircut?”
    I say, “Uh, my friend here has straight hair, so no I don’t think her cut would work on me.”
    Stylist says, “no, I mean do you want a Friends haircut?”
    My buddy cuts in, “it’s a TV show”
    I say, “oh. Yeah, no.”

  157. 157.

    SFAW

    @NotMax: Saw a bunch of movies at that one, also at the (I think also long-gone) theater on Plandome. At least, I think it was on Plandome. Maybe my memory is being tricksy again.

  158. 158.

    Shakti

    Maybe it’s not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but I hated Forrest Gump with a passion. I wasn’t very politically aware when I saw it.  There was no plot, just a bunch of episodes strung together by CGI and everything and everyone conspiring to give everything to this dope. He literally did nothing and everything happened around him while better or at least more interesting people died and suffered.

    I kept waiting for his love interest to die, because I thought that meant the movie would end. But it goes on for another half hour!

    *ducks tomatoes

  164. 164.

    Oklahomo

    @coin operated: The scene where the female Psyklo’s 4 ft tongue fell out of her mouth…there was a collective gasp in the theater, followed by tear-inducing gales of laughter.

  166. 166.

    Shakti

    @SaltWaterCleanse: I never understood the point of Friends.  

    They were awful to each other, and boring as fuck and ubiquitous. “Which Friends character are you?” Who knows, who cares. “Don’t you want a Rachel?” Nope.

    I guess they were filler tv of the ’90s.

  167. 167.

    SFAW

    @Shakti:

    everything and everyone conspiring to give everything to this dope. He literally did nothing and everything happened around him while better or at least more interesting people died and suffered.

    Forrest Trump? Except Trump actively tries/tried to kill people.

  168. 168.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: The seed was a short story Clarke had written in 1948 called “The Sentinel”, which was basically a very early version of the scene at the Moon excavation site from “2001”. In that, the artifact was a pyramid surrounded by a mysterious force field.

  170. 170.

    SFBayAreaGal

    @trollhattan: That’s where I saw 2001. It was at a local theater that had the Cinerama screen.

    At the time it was shown, I was 12 and was so impressed by the movie.

  171. 171.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: I saw a Rifftrax Live showing of “Krull” a little while ago, with some of the former MST3K guys doing their thing. Great fun. But “Krull” is a frustrating bad movie in that you can see the seed of something good there–many of the sets and effects are great; it’s a visually lavishly realized world, and “Star Wars meets Dungeons and Dragons” was a good enough conceit for a very 80s fantasy epic.

    But the story doesn’t really gel, the characters are mostly generic and unappealing, the pace is weirdly slow, things get established and then just forgotten about for a long time. Even that magical spinny shuriken thing that was so heavily emphasized in the movie’s marketing barely figures in it.

  173. 173.

    MoCA Ace

    Anything starring Jim Carey.  Can’t fucking stand his Biden on SNL either.

    Second worst… anything starring Adam Sandler.  Baby talk is fine for babies… when I hear adults do it to other adults I want to kill them.

  174. 174.

    Citizen Alan

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    I love the story behind the making of Manos.  Say what you will about the quality of the movie, because it deserves it. But the guy who produced, wrote, directed, and starred in it won his bet. He actually made a movie for $10,000 that people are still talking about decades layrt.

  176. 176.

    Just Chuck

    @MoCA Ace: Go watch Uncut Gems sometime and you’ll come away with a very different impression of Sandler.  But yeah, when he drops into his Happy Gilmore / Billy Madison character.  It’s like pretty much every comic role by Robin Williams.

  178. 178.

    trollhattan

    @Citizen Alan:

    “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” has a similar origin story, although costing a comparatively whopping $100k. Was tongue-in-cheek enough to work as entertainment.

  179. 179.

    J R in WV

    Ya’ll make me glad I don’t go to very many movies. Most of the movies I’ve seen I enjoyed.

    My favorite Bond movie was Dr. No. in which Bond doesn’t use space age gadgets to kill the bad guys, just his masculinity. I thot 2001 was OK,, but wouldn’t want to see it again. The space effects were good. Blue Velvet did suck.

  180. 180.

    lowtechcyclist

    Anaconda (1997).

    It’s not a movie I’d have ever bothered to go see.  But I saw a good deal of it while I was waiting far too long in the waiting room of a doctor’s office 20 years or so ago.  The human characters were so loathsome, I started rooting for the damned snake.

  183. 183.

    daryljfontaine

    @lowtechcyclist: but but but Eric Roberts does a great star turn as “Man Lying Down For Remainder of Film”!

    I saw Anaconda in a secondhand theater for $2.50, in a double feature with Batman & Robin. Coin flip which was the worse film.

    My vote for worst is The Thing About My Folks, a 2005 Paul Reiser ego-vehicle which was so ridiculously dull that I could not stay awake while watching it, apologized to my wife, and left the theater to go nap in the car for 2 hours instead since she kept trying to nudge me back awake.

    D

  184. 184.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @FridayNext: Yes.  There is a set of movies I have seen which got GREAT reviews etc. and then did not live up to the acclaim (IMHO) when I finally saw them.  I think part of the problem was the movie would be OK, but couldn’t live up to the hype. Forrest Gump comes prominently to mind. The English Patient I hated because it was so god damned impressed with itself.  My sympathy was all with Colin Firth as the cuckolded husband.

  185. 185.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Amir Khalid: I enjoyed Battlefield Earth.  It IS hilariously bad, but in an entertaining way (at least for me).  Forrest Whitaker is in it too, which is always a good thing.

  186. 186.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Boris Rasputin (the evil twin): Titanic was another movie which for me didn’t live up to its hype.  I guess a lot of teenage girls found the movie romantic and saw it a bunch of times, which is why it was such an over the top hit.  It certainly wasn’t the plot or the acting.  I clearly remember getting annoyed the THIRD time Leonardo and Kate get caught below decks.  Twice, OK.  But three times? What kind of morons were they?  Only thing I liked in the movie was Kathy Bates as Molly Brown.

  187. 187.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio: Now there is another category of films and TV shows: ones which are much better when you watch them stoned.  There was a TV series on a year or so ago called Rectify.  My husband liked it and I found it unutterably slow. However, since covid we have been getting stoned on weekend nights and when watching the last few episodes I found them actually very interesting.  Just had to slow myself down to its speed, I guess.

  189. 189.

    Ruckus

    @JMG:

    I was on a ship in the navy with a guy who regularly would go to bars to get in fights. He was about 5’11”-6’ tall, weighed maybe 175 but he was very fast, liked pain, and hit like he was at least 2 weight classes up. He always won. On night I came back to the ship and he was too drunk to recognize me and he started to take a swing. Luckily his buddy stopped him. Luckily for me.

Comments are closed.