Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
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Is there a book/movie/series/ song/album that you were really looking forward to but ended up thinking it was the worst – or one of the worst – books / movies / series / songs / albums ever?
What were you expecting, and what did you get? How did it end up being what I like to call “not as advertised”?
*The idea for this post came from someone who wrote to me or texted me a week or so ago. Maybe Jackie or Scout211? I thought the idea was good enough that I immediately added it to a draft post so I could use it at some point, but I neglected to include the person’s nym. Out yourself, please! h/t Scout211
I can think of two.
I saw Ishtar at the dollar movie, and I still thought I had paid too much! It starred Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, so I had high expectations. It was so bad, I don’t even really recall what it was about. But I googled just now to find the other good actors that had led to my high expectations, and I found this:
Ishtar is one of the most underrated movies of all time. Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty are brilliant as a hopelessly hapless singer/song writing duo who take up residency as lounge singers at a hotel in Morocco after their lives fall apart in New York.
I had to do a double-take because I was sure I had read that wrong, and it was supposed to be “one of the mot overrated movies”, but nope. So at least some people disagree with my take on this movie. Did anyone else see it? What did you think of it?
As for my second movie that fits this category, I don’t even recall the name. It was a Gene Wilder movie, so of course I thought it was going to be funny. But it turned out to have been the first Gene Wilder movie after Gilda Radner died, so of course it was one of the least funny movies ever. At least that’s how I recall it.
Anyway, please share your versions of this experience, and I hope you’ll share details because the threads are always so much more interesting when BJ peeps do that. If you’re an early commenter, this is your chance to set a good example. :-) (For once?) Sorry, I didn’t really mean that.
Have at it!
In case you are new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.
WaterGirl
Just seeing the image from Ishtar brought my negative feelings back. I expected so much more from those two!
Teresa
The Bourne movies. I loved all the books. I went to see the movies and just couldn’t get into them, so I went back and re-read the books to cleanse my brain. 😂
Authors that take decades to complete a series that I throughly enjoyed always disappoints me. Namely George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss.
brendancalling
I remember, being really excited to see my first Metallica show, in around 1990. But a few weeks before the show, a friend of mine gave me some bootlegs of Metallica on tour after their first Bass Player had just died. The banter between songs at every show was the same. The Song order was the same for every show. At every show, they made a big deal about having forgotten to play this one song, and at the end of the show, they would play the song and its entirety. For a band that was known as being real and spontaneous, they were anything, but. When I went to go see the 1990 justice for all tour, it was so boring. All the banter was the same as on the three year-old tapes. I never really liked anything they did ever again.
WaterGirl
@brendancalling: I totally get how you feel. That’s really disappointing. Fake banter. Gah!
lowtechcyclist
George Harrison’s Living in the Material World. Two and a half years went by after he released All Things Must Pass, which is still one of my favorite albums of all time, before he released this, his next album of new material, so when it came out, I was dying to get hold of it.
It was just plain tinny in its sound. With the lone exception of “Give Me Love,” the only song from the album that got airplay, IIRC. And it was nothing special.
I think I still have the record in a box in the closet, but if I do, it’s been decades since I’ve played it.
Mark’s Bubbie
Treasure Island was one of my all-time favorite books, so I thought I would really like Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Nope! 👎 Didn’t care for it at all!
Melancholy Jaques
I like Wes Anderson films, but The French Dispatch & Asteroid City were hard to watch
It’s hard to say why they were so disappointing, unless one likes Wes Anderson movies. To people who don’t, there was never any anticipation
Both films look great, both feature actors I admire, but both are assemblages of scenes rather than narratives.
Scout211
WaterGirl, consider me outed. ;-)
Don’t hate me jackals but my most recent big movie disappointment was the Barbie Movie.
We don’t go to the theater to see movies and I don’t stream them so I was super excited to see it on TNT. Maybe the small screen just couldn’t project the movie like the big screen in a movie theater. But the over-the-top sets and the overacting, while maybe was part of the original charm, just seemed like the whole thing was trying too hard. And the characters seemed silly to me. I ended up hating it and I really thought I’d love it.
narya
@brendancalling: that’s sort of how I felt when I saw the Stones! I don’t think it was as rote as you’re describing but it didn’t have the energy I expect from live music. Glad I saw them, but no real urge to do so again.
MattF
I’m a big Phillip K. Dick fan, but the movie A Scanner Darkly was one of the very few I’ve ever walked out on. There was just too much of a haze of pot smoke hovering over it.
lowtechcyclist
Dylan’s Slow Train Coming.
You have to understand that I was (and still am!) both a born-again Christian and a Dylan fan. So when I heard he’d become a Christian, I couldn’t wait to see how that would play out in his music. Even then the desert of ‘Christian’ music desperately needed someone to give it some life, and who better, right?
Wrong. Slow Train was an album of one plodding song after another, very much including “You’ve Got to Serve Somebody,” the one song that got airplay. Not to mention he seemed to have absorbed a fundie view of the world, given his lyrics: “It may be the devil, and it may be the Lord, but you’ve got to serve somebody.” No you don’t, actually, and even if you did, there’s some missing middle ground there.
The only exception to the ploddingness was a song, “Precious Angel,” that musically would have fit in nicely on, say, Planet Waves. And the lyrics weren’t bad either. But it was the lone mildly bright spot on an otherwise terrible record.
azelie
I remember watching the movie The Avengers (based on the 60s TV show with Diana Rigg) – it had Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes and Sean Connery. I think we rented it so we knew it hadn’t been a success at the box office but we weren’t prepared for just how bad it was. Couldn’t get through it – I think we turned it off around some scene with people dressed in brightly colored teddy bear costumes wandering around the grounds of the villain’s estate.
Teresa
@Scout211:
I’m outing myself and saying that i never even had a desire to see that movie and still haven’t seen it. 😂
BellaPea
I used to love Geena Davis back in the 90s and those movies–Thelma and Louise, The Accidental Tourist. And then we went to see Gena–what an awful movie. She played a working-class girl who gets pregnant by a married man and goes through this whole bunch of scenarios. The tackiest thing was her showing up in a pseudo-Santa outfit and cavorting around with her work mates. She also had a weird conversation with some fake baby in an incubator. I never felt the same about her ever again.
ArchTeryx
Mine was the sci-fantasy 9. The premise, the short film, and the trailer were insanely cool and had the makings of a great story seed. An alternate Earth where we created fighting robots for WWI and their controller eventually went full Skynet. Humanity was mercilessly wiped from the planet as was most other life.
All but the stitchpunks, little sackdolls given life through unknown means, wandering the post-apocalyptic world while they are silently stalked by cyborgs intent on wiping out Earth’s last life.
The movie quickly turned into a cliche riddled mess, with each of the 9 stitchpunks having a very one dimensional personality. Even Elijah Wood couldn’t bring real interest to 9 himself. And the ending made absolutely zero sense, as did a lot of the movie … even anime explains its settings better.
Massive disappointment.
They Call Me Noni
Momma Mia!! Had heard so much about it but never saw it. Went with some ladies for a girls weekend at a cabin along the river and on Saturday evening we decided to watch a movie. Most voted for Mama Mia which they had all seen. I was pushing for Under the Tuscan Sun which I have seen (and could watch another 50 times) and they had not. So….. we watched Mama Mia. I could barely sit through it. I’m guessing the ABBA music was the big draw but IMO it did not save the movie.
Professor Bigfoot
The original Dune movie with Kyle MacLachlan.
Anticipated it enormously; got tickets for the theater for the Friday after its release.
The theater was full of people who obviously were fans of the book and… by the end the entire place erupted in boos, popcorn being thrown at the screen, and many noises of disappointment.
piratedan
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace – the first three films, great Space Opera, awesome special effects aliens that looked they were actually functional, actors that brought the 50s space opera serials dialogue some gravitas…. then…. hoo boy.
arguably, what could have been the best scene in the movie (IMHO) the POD Race was ruined by the play-by-play done by one of my favorite improv peeps (Greg Proops), perhaps it was that the dialogue was so awful that there was no saving it, the acting was sooo wooden, it couldn’t save the dialogue, the chemistry between the leads was non-existent and that there was no one present to pull aside Lucas and tell him that perhaps that there might be a bit too much reliance on thinly veiled racist tropes in play on the vocal performances.
just ended up being MST3K worthy in its final edited form (which has always made me wonder how bad it may have been before the editors felt that this was worth releasing),
frosty
Great topic! Should be fun to read everyone’s reaction.
zhena gogolia
I hated Ishtar. Felt as if it lasted forever
CaseyL
This one’s easy: The David Lynch “Dune” movie from the mid-1980s.
I loved the book. I was excited by the cast. I respected Lynch. I talked up all of this to my friends, and rounded up about eight people to go to the movie with me.
I lived in South Florida at the time, which matters because Mel Ferrer was a booster of a local stage theater in Coral Gables. That meant we got a special premiere of “Dune,” with Mr. Ferrer in attendance. Tickets were on the pricey side, but it would be oh, so worth it. I thought.
Also, the premiere played in a multiplex. This will be an important point.
Anyway: the movie starts. And almost immediately I start blinking hard. The acting is too mannered. The personal shield effects are peculiar. The treatment of the Jessica character is off. By less than halfway through, I am realizing the movie really, really sucks.
But maybe it sucks only to me, because I’m a fan of the book? Maybe people who didn’t read the book are enjoying the film version, having nothing to compare it to?
So I turn to ask my friends what they think. And that’s when I notice about half of them are gone.
They snuck out of the theater! and went down the hall! to another theater, where the first “Terminator” movie was playing! (Nor were they alone; a mass migration was happening as seats emptied all around us.)
The remaining friends and I stuck it it out for another few minutes – mostly, I must say, out of respect for Mr. Ferrer, who surely had to notice people leaving. But soon even that quixotic gesture was more than we could stand.
The last of my group left and joined the others down the hall, watching Terminator. (Which, BTW, knocked my socks off.)
WaterGirl
I am sad that I missed the opportunity to use Festivus somehow in the title of this post.
Shalimar
Maybe Ishtar is underrated now because everyone has been saying for decades that it is awful? Though it sounds like that one particular reviewer actually liked it. There are contrarians for every point of view.
Lumpy
I liked Ishtar (directed by Elaine May!) It’s kind of a farce. Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty are a folksinging duo who are pretty terrible, but they go on tour in Saudi Arabia (if I recall) and get caught up in international espionage. I think the movie is good (not great) but I measure comedies by how much I laugh, and Ishtar does have some laughs. I think it’s been unfairly maligned. The trailer for Ishtar makes it look terrible though.
Rachel Bakes
@azelie: agreed. We made it through but it was a strange and disturbing disappointment.
MattF
@WaterGirl: It’s the Airing of Cinematic Grievances.
West of the Rockies
This goes way back, but John Waite was wretched. I saw him the very night his song (Missing You) went #1 in America. He was playing in Chico, CA and came out 45 minutes late (no opening band), played 11 songs with not one word to the audience, and stalked off stage. Just an empty experience.
Phylllis
The Monuments Men. Terrific book, movie was all wrong. Couldn’t get past the feeling of Clooney, Goodman, and Murray ‘playing a part’.
Rachel Bakes
Mission:Impossible movies. Rented first one and was disgusted. Jim Phelps does not turn coat.
Second one a friend told us it was closer the original show so we went to the theater. Not sure what original show she saw but it bore no resemblance to any episode i ever saw. Walked out about 30 minutes.
different vein but we saw Wild Wild West in the theater. Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, and a ghastly plot that made no sense. We expected a campy, corny, steampunk romp with great actors chewing on the scenery but it lacked everything.
sixthdoctor
The 2017 Dark Tower movie. I wasn’t optimistic going in because the reviews were lukewarm at best but I was at least hoping for an experience that wouldn’t fill me with rage. That lasted until the inane opening crawl which had me audibly whispering “Oh, no…”
MobiusKlein
Highlander 2.
The prime example of a sequel that time travels to ruin the original.
The Should Only Be One.
And also Phantom Menace, covered above
ArchTeryx
@CaseyL: The Villaneuve version of Dune is far, far, FAR better, though it still messes with the book in various ways. (Such as The Beast Rabban, under Feyd-Rautha’s guidance, actually being a competent tactician and going straight after the Fremen with heavy artillery, right at their sietches. The shields were mostly there for show. Nobody was doing any choreographing of the slow blows required. But these are nitpicks compared to the final product.
The scene with the black (IR-band only) dwarf sun on Geidi Prime was INSANELY cool. So was the added scene on Salusa Secundis, with the Sardaukar initiation ceremony. Straight out of Warhammer 40K.
Almost Retired
Spaceballs. I was so excited. Mel Brooks is a deity and I find the whole Star Wars franchise to be…um….eminently susceptible to parody.
Plus, I saw it at a semi-private advanced screening which included an after-film discussion with an assistant to a production assistant or something like that (Los Angeles is a strange place – my friend who got me the invite was a Dalit in the Hollywood caste system, as were the other invitees).
Even with several glasses of free wine from a box and a cheese-like substance on crackers (again, this was not a high-end premiere) , the movie was spectacularly unfunny – the jokes were forced, the acting was atrocious and a giant super-parody rich target was mostly missed. Really…”Pizza the Hutt?” Is there a stoned sophomore who didn’t also make that joke?
But I still love Mel Brooks and my Spaceballs opinion is perhaps not widely shared.
Chetan Murthy
@CaseyL: there’s not much I can add to this, but this: do you remember when they’re riding the sandworms, with their little hand-projector-weapons, and …. TOTO is playing? TOTO? TOTO?
Oh lordy, I lost it.
Maybe you didn’t last that long in the movie. I watched it all the way thru, when it first came out. But …. when tried to rewatch, I didn’t even make it to Arrakis. Just ponderous shite.
Betty
Two books that got a lot of hype that I found disappointing were The Bridges of Madison County and The Help.
Phylllis
This! And for money, of all things. Jim Phelps probably signed his paycheck back over to the agency.
pajaro
The time I attended a Van Morrison performance some years ago. I like some of his music a lot, and I was really looking forward to the event. It was awful. He mumbled his way through the lyrics–they were basically unintelligible. His lack of interaction with the audience was almost spooky–it was like the audience wasn’t there. It was a real disappointment.
Scout211
Me too! The TV series was so campy and clever with fun plots. I was so excited to see the movie. But the movie was dull, overacted, unfunny and mean. Not one clever moment in the whole damn movie.
Jackie
I was in high school when Deliverance came out. Never saw any trailers. Only knew I loved the song Dueling Banjos and assumed the movie would be a lighthearted something based on the song.
I. Was. Not. Prepared. For. Deliverance. A bunch of us teenagers went together so I couldn’t go home. I ended up sitting in the theater lobby trying to bleach what I just saw out of my brain…
Hungry Joe
“The Natural.” I know people love this movie, but Bernard Malamud’s book is about failure —the American Dream as sham, mirage, cruel joke.
Spoiler:
The last scene, in which Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford), as a climax to a long, hard comeback, hits a triumphant home run — up into the lights, which (of course) explode, Fourth-of-July-like. The crowd in the theater cheered; I sank in my seat, appalled: At the end of the novel Roy Hobbs strikes out. I stalked out of the theater furious, just FURIOUS.
For the record: Redford catches and throws not like the last, but like one of the last kids you’d pick for your team.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
By the time I saw it, word had already gotten out that it was a clunker, so I didn’t have the big letdown, just confirmation of what people had already been saying.
zhena gogolia
@Jackie: Yeah, I survived that one too. I didn’t expect it to be lighthearted, but I still get sick when I think of it.
ETA: And it took a long time before I could enjoy a Ned Beatty performance.
Almost Retired
@pajaro: Ha! I feel ya. I was super excited that Todd Rundgren was playing for two nights at a bar within walking distance of my house. I didn’t occur to me that perhaps in the universe of potential concert venues, there must be a reason he was playing at a bar within walking distance of my house. He sucked. It was like a karaoke bar where they only did Todd Rundgren songs.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: Deliverance and
Apocalypse NowThe Deer Hunter are the only two movies I have ever walked out on.Mathguy
Ahsoka. Seemed like a perfect fit with Rosario Dawson and the rest of the cast, good show runner and writers….and it was a dud.
Shakespeare in Love. My wife and I looked at each other 30 minutes in and she said, “This sucks. Let’s leave,” which was exactly what I was thinking. We left. Can’t believe that piece of cotton candy won the Oscar over Saving Private Ryan.
ArchTeryx
@Jackie: That must have been a pretty insane shock. You go in expecting a comedy and instead you get a horror movie. It’s rather like going to the theatre to see E.T., picking the wrong theater and ending up watching The Thing instead.
( Which actually is the reverse of a lot of these! When it came out everyone hated it, but now it is recognized as one of the finest horror movies ever made and John Carpenter’s magnum opus. And nothing captures the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror better than The Thing. )
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: I walked out on The Draughtsman’s Contract after 15 minutes. I think that may be the only one.
schrodingers_cat
The Good Shepherd. Interminably long and boring. It takes special talent to make a movie about CIA’s origin story and spying boring. But they nailed it
Slumdog millionaire. I thought it was nothing special. Boyd got several details about Mumbai wrong, which took me out of the movie. In one scene Dev Patel’s character is on top a Mumbai local and when he gets down he is at the Taj
Its like taking the NYC subway and then landing in Chicago.
zhena gogolia
It’s fun that some movies I really enjoyed are here among people’s disappointments — Barbie, Mamma Mia!, and Shakespeare in Love.
CaseyL
@ArchTeryx:
I saw these, Part 1 and Part 2. I do have quibbles (including one really major quibble), but overall the movies were faithful reflections of the book. And the visuals nothing less than stunning.
Here’s the funny part: I saw Part 1 with a friend who had not read Dune, and in a theater where the sound system was so bad half the dialog was indistinguishable. The only way I knew what was going on was because I knew the book.
My friend? When I asked her whether she was able to follow any of it, she said “I know the fat guy is the villain, and that’s about it.”
@Chetan Murthy: I did finally see the rest of it, on cable, and was outraged all over again when, out of the blue, it started to monsoon on Arrakis. Paul does some mumbo jumbo and stares real hard, and the rain falls. GAAHHHH!
ETA: Many thanks to everyone commenting on their own Great Disappointments. You’re reminding me of many stinkers I had forgotten all about!
Chetan Murthy
I have been an enormous ABBA fan since, like, age 13. If I had to take only one band’s music to a desert island, it would be ABBA. I have never watched that bway show, nor movie, nor whatever. B/c sheesh, there’s no way I want to be disappointed, and I know i would be. B/c gynormous ABBA fan.
dm
My biggest disappointment was an early viewing of Blade Runner. I’ve heard since that there were early audience screenings where the reaction was so bad they changed the film, and I’ve always assumed that I must have seen one of those early screenings.
Ten years later I saw the film (this time, I think, the director’s cut), and I couldn’t believe it was the same film, I thought it was so good.
A couple of weeks ago we had “great movie lines” here, and of course there were many mentions of Rutgers Hauer’s semi-improvised final lines.
Chetan Murthy
Blessedly, I have forgotten everything about that movie, except the scene I recounted. Growing old and having memories shuffled-off is a blessing, truly.
lowtechcyclist
@zhena gogolia:
I somehow managed to stay through the whole thing, but it’s easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
Josie
I had heard people talking about how great the series Breaking Bad was. I started watching it and stayed with it through three episodes, I think. I hated the main character and disliked all the others. I honestly can’t think of one good thing to say about it. My middle son, who is a big movie buff, thought it was one of the best ever. I guess it takes all kinds.
Chetan Murthy
@dm: I’ve always loved Blade Runner. But for sure, the voiceovers -really- detracted from the film, and (of course) completely changed the story. Which is an impressive demonstration of how much power is wielded in the cutting room, eh?
Jackie
@WaterGirl:
My now exhusband made me sit through it. I did, with eyes tightly closed and my ears covered as best as I could. Still could hear it, but I managed to keep the images out of my head.
Hungry Joe
@pajaro: Same. Lucked into great seats for a small-venue Van Morrison show in San Francisco. We were SO PUMPED.
He never said a word, never looked at the audience … and didn’t sing, just played a saxophone. We were stunned — couldn’t believe that a big-time professional musician was doing this.
Chetan Murthy
@Josie: I was that way about Game of Thrones. I could handle the gratuitous violence, but the soft-core porn just got to it, and after a few eps I stopped and never went back. I mean, I’m a red-blooded Texas boy inside, but still ….. if I want porn I know where to get it.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Mamma Mia was good fun. I like Abba.
Mathguy
@CaseyL: I actually enjoy it because it’s so awful. I love the scene with the navigators’ guild. Their uniforms look like something you wear to decontaminate a nuclear power plant. The whole thing is so ridiculous and over the top it turns into parody.
VFX Lurker
The film adaptation took the title of Max Brooks’ wry World War Z and that’s about it. The classic shuffling zombies got replaced with fast zombies. The failure of human systems to handle a crisis got discarded. We got a fast zombie film with Brad Pitt, but it wasn’t the thoughtful examination of human society from the book.
I still listen to the 12-hour audiobook adaptation of Brooks’ book every Halloween season. It’s so good!
Teresa
@zhena gogolia:
I do enjoy the Momma Mia! movies. Although Cher’s appearance in the second one wasn’t what I expected. I enjoy musicals and dancing.
Chetan Murthy
@Hungry Joe: Can I ask when this was? His antics during COVID spoiled my appreciation for his music. Every time a song comes up on my home random jukebox, likely as not if I’m near a keyboard I’ll hit “skip”.
CaseyL
@Josie: My Aunt, whose taste runs to very dark TV shows, keeps recommending them to me. She’s honest enough to admit most of the characters are awful and there’s no one to root for. I’ve been just as honest back, and told her I have no desire to see TV series (or movies, or anything else) where everyone in it is an awful person.
Never saw Succession, nor Breaking Bad, or Sons of Anarchy… and had a lot of trouble with Game of Thrones. All for the same reason.
@Mathguy: OMG, the Navigators in the Lynch movie. I seem to recall they looked like giant vulvas. Am I remembering correctly?
zhena gogolia
@Chetan Murthy: I guess I’m not a big ABBA fan, so I enjoyed both movies, the sequel even more than the first. But if you don’t want to hear Pierce Brosnan butcher “SOS,” maybe stay away!
lowtechcyclist
@MattF:
Hey, we’ve got rock/pop music grievances as well!
Josie
@schrodingers_cat:
My ten year old granddaughter saw a local production of Mama Mia and fell hard for Abba. Her favorite song was Money, Money, Money.
MagdaInBlack
@CaseyL: Same.
Chetan Murthy
@zhena gogolia: I’m the kind of ABBA fan that when I went to see Chess on Broadway, I felt it wasn’t faithful to the original CD version.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Not watched the sequel.
Hungry Joe
@Chetan Murthy: 1975.
Heidi Mom
@Phylllis: Agreed! Not having read the book, I had no particular expectations, but I was still disappointed. Out-of-shape guys struggling through basic training, overwrought dialog (“If we lose the Altarcloth of Ghent, we lose Western Civilization!” or some such), meaningless role for Cate Blanchett–just nothing to get excited about.
dm
@Chetan Murthy: Well, I’ve loved the film since that second viewing, but yes, the narration ruined the first viewing for me.
I’ll echo many of the comments about the Lynch Dune, though the only thing I remember about the film was our first glimpse of the Guild Navigator floating in his tank of spice fumes. That was okay, and I wouldn’t have minded Villeneuve retaining that.
Josie
@CaseyL: I feel the same way. I try to avoid the really dark stuff.
Chetan Murthy
A film so replete with howlers that each of us has a different “worst memory”. *grin
WaterGirl
@Jackie: -ex seems like a good place for him to be if he did that. :-)
frosty
Continuing with the David Lynch theme: Eraserhead. My friend and I were expecting a John Waters type cult movie. It wasn’t! I don’t even know what it was but it was definitely disturbed and not a comedy. Yuck!
Kayla Rudbek
@Chetan Murthy: I bounced really hard off the incest and rape in the Game of Thrones books, never had any interest in watching the show.
zhena gogolia
@Chetan Murthy: 😂
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: I liked it. I always like Lily James.
schrodingers_cat
i watched Top Gun, Maverick on the flight home and was surprised at how good it was. Usually most sequels suck.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Thanks will keep that in mind next time I am looking for a movie to watch.
Dmkingto
@pajaro: I had forgotten about the first time I saw Van Morrison – it was at Universal Amphitheater in LA. Similar experience to yours. He spent at least half the show with his back to the audience. Acted like a jerk to the stage crew. And to top it off, some ass a few rows down and over spent half the concert yelling “VAN! VAN THE MAN!” over and over.
I did see Van Morrison one more time and it was definitely better, but I don’t recall him interacting with the audience at all. But the music was good. That was a show at The Pond in Anaheim (I think it was still The Pond at the time). It was a 3 headliners show and I got invited to see it from IBM’s suite. The other two acts were Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. A memorable show to be sure! Musically, three of my favorite artists, but all of them are pretty strange people.
dm
@Chetan Murthy: If you ever get a chance, watch Jodorwrosky’s Dune, a documentary about a film that never got made, with designs by Moebius, HRGiger, scenarios by Dan OBannon (Giger and OBannon would go on to collaborate in Alien). It would probably make the Lynch movie look tame, but….
I’d love to get a book of the storyboards Jodorwrosky circulated while seeking funding for the film.
glc
The Blackadder series
I like everything else with Rowan Atkinson that I’ve seen, and this has a reputation of being exactly the sort of thing for people who like that sort of thing. I should have given up after one episode but I stuck with it for at least two, not believing it could remain that uninspired throughout.
I could see that the actors seemed to be enjoying themselves. But I had no idea why.
By way of comparison, I was thoroughly satisfied by, and have rewatched, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, so I certainly don’t suffer from excessively good taste.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: I was as disappointed as you with the movie, but I went with my dad, who rarely went to movies and never read fiction. He was utterly entranced. He didn’t care that it had no perceivable plot. He loved sandworms. It was like going to the movies with an enthusiastic five year year old.
We also went to see The Untouchables with him, and he had no idea who Sean Connery was.
Kayla Rudbek
Divine Endurance was another book I did not finish (I saw it on the new bookshelf at the library, I thought the title looked interesting, but the molestation early on made it a DNF). Also hated and didn’t finish Remove Protective Coating a Little at a Time. I tend to pick up library books based on either titles or authors if I’m not looking for a particular subject.
noncarborundum
8 Million Ways to Die with Jeff Bridges. Loved the book (Lawrence Block), which, in addition to being a gritty noir mystery where the NYC setting plays a major role, is also a moving chronicle of the (anti-)hero’s coming to terms with his alcoholism. Spoiler: his admission in front of an AA meeting at the very end is the emotional climax of the book.
The intellectually and emotionally stunted Hollywood drones moved the action from New York to L.A., totally ruining the atmosphere, and they had the main character acknowledging his alcoholism in the first 5 minutes or so, totally ruining the emotional arc of the story.
On top of that, I don’t much care for Bridges (so sue me), but I knew that going in and it was by far the least of my problems with the movie.
CaseyL
And another thing… talking about disappointing concerts….
Many, many years ago Bob Dylan played at The Gorge, a magnificent outdoor venue near the Columbia River in Central Washington. A fellow I was dating at the time had tickets. I was incredibly excited. I wasn’t a Dylan-is-God fan, but he was a towering presence and influence in music and I was eager to hear him live.
Dylan spent the entire concert either mumbling into the microphone or playing a harmonica disjointedly into the microphone. He seemed to have forgotten his own lyrics to some of his best-known songs. Was he stoned, drunk, or possibly senile? Or did he just have a monumental sense of entitlement on his own behalf, and contempt for the audience, and was letting us know?
I was gobsmacked at how bad the experience was. Have never felt the same way about Dylan ever since.
sab
I had read Lord of the Rings every year from when I was eleven or twelve until my mid-twenties. I was really looking forward to the movies. I walked out somewhere in the middle of the Council of Elrond early in the first movie.
Scout211
@Dmkingto: I saw Bob Dylan probably sometime in the 70s and it was a great performance. Probably 30 years later I saw him again and oh my, what deep disappointment. The acoustics were awful, the band was too loud and he mumbled through songs and sometimes didn’t even sing, more like a talkie. He sounded awful with no apparent tune to anything he did attempt to sing and he did not sing even one of his classics.
Most of the audience was bored and restless. Some near us started just ignoring Dylan and had conversations with each other.
We left early, so disappointed.
ETA: @CaseyL. Your experience mirrors mine. Maybe it was the same tour.
TF79
Weezer – “The Green Album” –
CaseyL
@sab:
Sometimes I think, the more you love a book, the less you should see a movie based on it. Odds are slim that the film creators will love the same things you loved about the source material, or interpret it the way you did.
Or maybe just accept in advance that their vision of the story won’t be yours. Sometimes, like HungryJoe says, the filmmakers’ version is a complete reverse of what the story was about.
zhena gogolia
@noncarborundum: I don’t much care for Bridges either. Don’t see what all the fuss is about.
Just look at that parking lot
As a kid I loved Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs & Ham when it came out in 1960. One of my favorites. But I was disappointed in his next effort, One fish two fish, red fish blue fish. Thought it lacked originality and character development. But then in 1961, he bounced back strong with the publishing of The Sneetches & Other Stories.
zhena gogolia
@sab: I’ve never read LOTR, but man, are those movies boring.
MagdaInBlack
Waylon Jennings, mid 80’s, Bloomington-Normal concert. He was so coked-up/drunk we walked out. We had seen him before, with Willie, so we were not expecting this version at all.
billcoop4
I do not understand the appeal of Bob Dylan at all, tbh. And the LOTR movies lost appeal to me one by one but I’m also a book purist on that. Fellowship was the best. [Casting, acting, setting, filming all fab — but the changes to the story and the idiocy of a cavalry charge downhill at a 45 degree angle lost me completely].
BC
Jager
@Hungry Joe: A musician friend knows guys who have played with Van; their consensus, he’s a total asshole.
My wife loved him until we saw him at the Hollywood Bowl. Good thing we brought two bottles of decent wine.
Booger
@Scout211: The movie gets better in retrospect once you’ve watched Kevin Smith’s take on Jon Peters and…whatever else he was talking about. Batman maybe? It’s hilarious.
CaseyL
@Scout211:
I wondered the same thing when I read your account :)
Teresa
@CaseyL:
For the most part I do agree with that philosophy. The exceptions for me are The Discovery of Witches, Outlander and Witcher. I read all the books, listened to all the audiobooks and throughly enjoyed all the movies.
Dmkingto
@CaseyL: I had the opposite experience the first time I saw Dylan. It was at the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa in the late 80s or early 90s. For at least a couple of years before, all his concerts were getting panned. But I decided i needed to see him before he died. (And for some reason I took a dare, despite expecting a bad show!)
But he ended up playing mostly his old classic stuff AND he enunciated clearly. Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but you could understand the words. Turned out to be a great show, and I was greatly underestimating his lifespan. In my defense, he had looked like crap for several years.
Central Planning
I was eagerly awaiting the Star Trek movie Section 31.
The plot was bad, acting was bad, and character development was bad. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I don’t think anybody liked it.
Dmkingto
@Dmkingto: I just looked it up, and it was a short-lived West Coast only tour called the Three Icons tour. Apparently at most stops they all performed together for a final song. But I would swear that didn’t happen when I saw them. That was my only real disappointment with the show.
And in my comment about the Pacific Amphitheater Dylan show, that’s supposed to be “date” not “dare”
ThresherK
@They Call Me Noni: I hope you saw Under the Tuscan Sun later. It’s not unlike Eat, Pray, Love or the second half of Baby Boom but I found it easily outdid both.
If you are disappointed with Mamma Mia! I invite you to dip your toe into the cult of Chess. I plan to see it on B’way later this year.
FelonyGovt
Just watched the Thursday Murder Club movie after reading and loving books 1 and 2 of the series during my convalescence from surgery (books 3 and 4 are on hold at the library).
I HATED the movie. No spoilers, in case anyone here wants to see it, but they changed several things from the book, including a major plot point that would affect a character who is prominent in Book 2. My husband, who never read the books, liked the movie much more than I did.
Dmkingto
@Just look at that parking lot: love this!
Another Scott
@Professor Bigfoot: I never read the books but was looking forward to seeing what the fuss was about.
I didn’t understand the story or the characters. About all Sting seemed to do was stand around and smirk.
It didn’t make me want to read the books (and I’ve had no interest in seeing anything from that universe since).
I felt kinda sorry for the fans of the books…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: @MattF:
Yeah, I love It’s the Airing of Cinematic Grievances. I’m not sure I’ve seen any books here that were a big disappointment, but what about the music?
But it’s a great title, and if I had thought of it, I could have separated them out into two different Medium Cools. :-)
Tehanu
@Chetan Murthy: Oh, me too! Not sure what that says about me… I thought the violence was over the top but I could stand it (well, sort of), but the sex stuff was just so gratuitous and so un-sexy. I’d read all the books too, except I just totally lost interest about halfway through the fifth one.
@sab: The Lord of the Rings movies: parts of them were wonderful because they really got what was in the book (Gandalf’s fireworks, the gate of Moria, the murder of Deagol) and other parts were absolutely horrible — quite often, completely missing the point of what Tolkien was saying, or even saying the opposite. I enjoyed them, but I went into them knowing that they were not going to be what I had always envisioned, which helped me get through the parts that I thought were wrong.
The Unmitigated Gaul
@Josie: I loved Breaking Bad, but the prequel – Better Call Saul – was abysmal. In BB, Saul Goodman was delightfully amoral, one of television’s great likeable villains. I laboured through 5 seasons for that character to emerge in Better Call Saul – never did.
WaterGirl
@Josie: @CaseyL:
I have to like or be able to root for at least one person, otherwise, I just can’t watch.
Splitting Image
Batman Begins.
I saw the first two Batman movies when they first came out, but then became less of a movie-goer. I bought the two Schumacher movies as well as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight for about a buck each when Blockbuster went under. Objectively, the Nolan movies are probably better than the Schumacher ones, but I came away with a more positive impression of Batman and Robin than of Batman Begins. Bat-fans hate hearing this.
Batman and Robin isn’t great by any means, but I thought that it was nowhere near as bad as its reputation. On the other hand, Batman Begins just felt underwhelming. At that time there were Bat-fans acting as though the Nolan films had saved the character, and thus Western civilization, from total destruction. Dark Knight had some good acting, but Batman Begins just felt off to me. I think both films are probably among the better comic book movies done in the past 30 years or so, but I had heard Bat-fans praising them to the point of greatness, and they didn’t live up to the hype for me.
Marc
@West of the Rockies: I saw Tom Waits twice in the Boston area during the late 70s. The first time the show was an absolute blast. He had a strong connection with the audience, everyone was singing along, we were all stoned, so it was all good. The second time a year or two later was just as you described. Maybe the drugs/booze his “persona” consumes get out of control once in a while (though for all I knew, he may actually have been clean and sober both times).
Chetan Murthy
There’s a -particular- scene that was my breaking-point. It’s one where a whore (only word for it) gets transfixed (and killed) by an arrow (or a spear? I forget) So she’s basically nailed against the wall, up a ways. I still remember it, and it’s basically the only thing I remember from the few eps I saw. Maybe what I’m saying is, the violence got to me too. But really, if it’d been a clothed person (woman or man) it wouldn’t have been so problematic.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I liike Jeff Bridges, but not Beau.
Rich Gardner
The movie “Wicked” is quite good, but the book was terrible. The character of Elphaba had no clear connection to the Wicked Witch of the West. I think the author fell in love with the character and so I couldn’t see how WWW grew out of Elphaba. In the movie, I can see one growing out of the other. .
hitchhiker
I seem to have it backwards on LOTR. Never read the books, found the movies astounding, so decided to read the books.
Nope. I’ve tried 3 or 4 times and can’t get past the first ten pages.
I loved Shakespeare in Love so much. Vivid memory of sitting in the theater just being glad to live in a world where such a thing was possible.
The movie I walked out on was Clockwork Orange, right after the scene with the old people. WTF.
I was looking forward to Breaking Bad, but couldn’t stand it. Same with Mad Men, and I’ll die on that hill. Tried repeatedly, because really, could all those people be wrong? The dialogue was so terrible and clunky and distracting that I couldn’t even enjoy the time travel aspect of seeing the world of my youth. Ugh.
Just as a palate cleanser … I saw Leonard Cohen twice. Absolutely wonderful, start to end, every single minute. Loved that guy.
Splitting Image
@glc:
With Blackadder it may depend on which series you were watching. Blackadder ran for four seasons, each set in a different time period with the cast playing descendents of the original characters.
Most fans regard the first season as the worst of the four, so if you started at the very beginning, and gave up before the end of the first season, you may have tapped out before the series starts to get really good.
On the other hand, if you were watching the second season or the fourth and didn’t like it, then yeah, the series probably just isn’t for you.
MagdaInBlack
@Rich Gardner: I actually enjoyed those books, but they are definitely weird. I enjoyed that author’s other books as well, for the twisty weirdness
eta: the one based on Snow White, I feel requires cannabis to understand.
Citizen Dave
@lowtechcyclist: My friend freshman year (who was to become my lifelong friend) got a giant (like 5 feet by 5 feet) poster of the Slow Train Coming album cover from the local small town record store (I think) and it was on his wall the whole year. As Dylan covers go, it’s probably one of the best (no pic of Bob for one thing). As far as the music, I tend to agree with you, although I do find Gotta Serve Somebody’s wordplay and such kinda funny and entertaining. I don’t think too deep about that one.
Re: Wes Anderson films, I am most definitely off the wagon with him. I tried watching The French Dispatch one night and couldn’t make it through 10 minutes. I did enjoy–enough–Asteroid City though. His newest one looks like a no-watch to me.
The disappoint I recall was end of the second year in college–wiki tells me The Who released the album Face Dances on March 16, 1981. I was determined to like it (as a major Who/Townshend fan), so I played it every day for a month. It did not improve upon repeated listens.
I had read the book The Irishman about the killing of Jimmy Hoffa. Scorcese is a favorite, and he got the gangster team of actors back together for it. Netflix have him $200 million or something to make it. They used de-aging for one of the first times (looked weird, because you know the actors real age and visage). Super long movie. Very boring. What happened?
NotMax
Hm.
Two tales of disappointment stemming from a product being rushed so given neither a sequel nor another season to fully develop.
The first Dune movie.
The Netflix series 1899.
p.a.
Saw Dylan on one of his summer minor league ballpark tours, in the Charlie Sexton as his guitarist era, and the songs in the set were mostly what everyone wanted to hear, the sound was ok, his voice was meh, but he played electric piano the whole set. Nitpicking I guess, but Dylan on electric piano?
Saw him within the last 5 years inside, pretty good show, even a little bit of chatter (maybe he was drunk.) I own some of his 2000’s cds, so I knew his voice was shot, therefore not disappointed by that.
LOTR book fan, read them many times, thought the Fellowship movie was ok, after that, WTF? I know time often gets compressed and stuff gets edited out, but to edit out Tolkien’s stuff then add shit that never happened, that’s not quickening pace. Destroyed book-Faramir, a character I believe JRRT said he felt closer to than any other.
Someone previously said they walked out at The Council of Elrond scene. I stuck it out through all 3 movies, but I can sure see how a Tolkien fan could react that way.
Just look at that parking lot
@noncarborundum: Agreed. One of the worst book to movie adaptations ever. I never could look at Andy Garcia as a real actor after watching that hammed up shit of a performance.
Mr. Bemused Senior
I wouldn’t say I hated the movie but it was a bit disappointing. I agree with your complaint.
You will love books 3 and 4. The character development is very touching.
Citizen Alan
@glc: Did you only watch episodes from the first series (the one set in the 15th century)? Because that was by far my least favorite season. The second series (Elizabethan) and third (George IV) were absolutely hilarious. The fourth (WWI) was too dark and bleak for me.
Citizen Alan
@Booger: It was Jon Peters failed treatment for Superman. Smith claims Peters was for some reason absolutely obsessed with incorporating a giant robot spider.
Citizen Dave
@Marc: Um, the upthread post was about John Waite, not Tom Waits. They are two very different artists. (!)
Don’t know about 1970s Tom Waits, but he became a Top 5 artist for me in the 1980s, which is when he entered his prime. I finally saw him twice on the 1989 tour, and another time around 1996, I think it was.
Snarki, child of Loki
The ONLY case where I both “watched the movie” and “read the book” and thought BOTH were just wonderful:
The Princess Bride.
Okay, this is the opposite of the OP task, but what the Hel.
Citizen Dave
@p.a.: I’m likely seeing Dylan and Willie in 11 days when they are just up the road from me. Have seen Dylan 10+ times over the last 30 years or so. I think the word on the switch from guitar to piano was that he found the guitar too heavy to hold for the whole show, etc.
p.a.
Oh yeah-er-yes. 14 year old me purchased Tales From Topographic Oceans upon release. Played it twice.
Citizen Alan
I remember being so excited in 1998 about the upcoming film version of The Avengers (the British spy series with Steed and Mrs. Peel, not the comic book). It was one of my favorite things from my childhood, and Diana Rigg was probably my first crush. And then, I watched the movie and it was like watching a trainwreck with a British accent. It was the worst thing Uma Thurman had ever done (even worse than Poison Ivy), and I completely lost respect for Sean Connery as an actor.
...now I try to be amused
@Splitting Image:
Ben Elton was added to the writing staff beginning with Series 2. He had a noticeable impact on the show’s quality. I think Blackadder got better with each series, though my favorite is Series 2, the Elizabethan one. (“I have a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.”)
laura
Fer meee, the movie version of The Milagro Beanfield War, was the biggest disappointment, despite Robert Redford Directing an amazing cast, but dang, it did not achieve the heights that the written material provided. That book was ‘a test’ that some women, back in the early 80’s used to jump me in to a life long friendship. It’s a really good sorting hat of a book. My dad had to wake my mom up to read her the tales of the Arm of Onofre so they could laugh together. Spouse, also, had to read it, and wasn’t a reader who appreciated magical realism- and yet, I’m still keen on him. That’s the book, I’d be so keen to remake by film, because the setting and the story are so rich, vast, and filled with characters that I’d be thrilled to be neighbors with.
WaterGirl
@Snarki, child of Loki: It’s Medium Cool, close enough! :-)
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
@zhena gogolia:
I’m glad I’m hardly the only one here who has a low opinion of the LOTR movies. As I said to my sister at the time, it probably means another 30 years or more before someone tries to do them right.
I haven’t seen any of them since they were originally in the theatres, but I still have a bill of particulars I can run through anytime any fan of those movies brings them up.
glc
@Splitting Image: Hmm. Thanks for that. At this point my best guess would be a bit more than one season. But the memories are mostly repressed now.
I generally start things from the front except on rare occasions when an external intervention is made to protect me. And this was not one of those occasions, unfortunately.
Booger
@Citizen Alan: Yes! Thank you!
caphilldcne
@Jackie: I completely sympathize. I went to see a play called Charlie Victor Romeo and perhaps influenced by the fact that the theater was kind of in the gayborhood made an assumption that it was a lighthearted bi/gay comedy. This was my mistake for failure to do a bit if research. Charlie Victor Romeo stands for cockpit voice recorder. The play dramatized the recordings of 6 airplane crashes which was not a light comedy. I continue to be a bit traumatized over the years and am now very careful about knowing the basic subject of a play before I go.
Steven Holmes
My wife and I saw Ishtar when it cane out, we both thought it was fun and enjoyable. I never understood the critics hate, I felt like they just wanted to take Hoffman and Beatty down a notch.
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
Connery frittered away whatever respect he might have garnered with 1974’s Zardoz.
Percysowner
The film Neighbors. It had John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in their hey day. It was a comedy. It had to be good, right? I HATED It. I didn’t find it funny, disliked the characters and the situations. I was having my period, went to the bathroom and decided my cramps were more enjoyable than the film. I ended up sitting outside the theater, waiting for the film to finish and my husband to come out so we could go home. It is now a cult classic for some people, but for me, it’s just one of the worst movies I ever saw.
They Call Me Noni
@ThresherK: Never did see Eat, Pray, Love. What I loved about Under the Tuscan Sun is how everything Frances pictured when she bought the house came true, just not in the way she thought. And I adore Sandra Oh.
I have never seen a Broadway show in New York so we are going at the end of the month to celebrate our 30th anniversary and will see Hell’s Kitchen. Love, love Alicia Keyes.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
The year after that, he co-starred in The Man Who Would Be King with Michael Caine, and that was a terrific movie.
cintibud
I guess my disappointment was when I went to see Joni Mitchell on her Court and Spark tour. How could it not be great? The opening act was the Tom Scott band. They came on stage and lit up the place! Great musicianship, great showmanship, smiling and having a great time. The audience was amped!
Then Joni came on. She did many great songs – well – but with no real soul or spark. Didn’t seem to look at the audience, didn’t smile, hardly said a word. Someone in the audience cried out “Speak to us!”. I don’t remember exactly what she said but it was some like, “what about?” and maybe mumbled another word or two.
The Tom Scott band was also her backing band for the show and they tried their hardest to make up the energy and joy missing from her set. I really wonder what happened. Did she get upsetting news just before the show and the band was trying to lift her up? Or was it their thankless task for the entire tour to try to salvage the mood. Anyway, I shouldn’t say thankless – I saw a great band that night – The Tom Scott band
ETA: for clarity
PJ
@Marc: Just an FYI: Tom Waits and John Waite are two different people.
My two cents: I’ve seen Tom in concert four times, and all three times were phenomenal. He’s a tremendous performer and a great storyteller.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: That was hilarious, though. I got more laughs than I did from Ishtar.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
I disagree with you on that, but that is more a matter of personal taste than abject production failure.
@Percysowner
Also too, 1941.
Buggrit
@WaterGirl: I saw the second half of Ishtar on TV and thoroughly enjoyed it, couldn’t think why it was so poorly reviewed. Then later I saw the movie from the beginning. The first half made me want to gouge my eyes out with a dirty spoon.
John Revolta
I went to see the first Star Trek movie on opening night. People were very excited. They cheered every time a character first appeared (including the Enterprise)….hell they cheered the credits! Then, as time went on, a sort of miasma crept over the audience………………….. the crowd outside afterward was pretty subdued. I’ve heard stories about people going to see The Phantom Menace and well, I guess it was kinda like that. Nobody cried or anything- we didn’t take this stuff quite so serious back then- but people were pretty puzzled. “Wha’ hoppen?”
...now I try to be amused
@Percysowner:
I won’t say Neighbors is good, but I found the role reversal interesting: Belushi was the straight man and Aykroyd was the psycho.
WaterGirl
@PJ: Case in point.
WaterGirl
@Buggrit:
LOL.
StringOnAStick
I want to re-read the LOTR books but it has to be long enough from seeing the movies that I don’t visualize the characters as the actors, and who knows when that will happen. Reading them did not leave me feeling horrified and that everything and everyone was doomed, but the movies did. Same thing with Dune. The riding the sand worm scene in the first one was just so lame.
The only time I’ve ever seen a movie and read the book and still loved both was Contact. Jodie Foster is brilliant.
My late BIL love Sons of Anarchy, and I swear he stayed alive long enough to see the last season. Dropping into that thing, it was clear to me it was a soap opera with Harleys and plenty of gratuitous violence, but having the hot female pediatric neurosurgeon fall in love with a hardcore biker gang guy? Yeah, right; that pushed the credibility limits into the next galaxy. Dumb show.
Scamp Dog
For me it was Starship Troopers. Somehow they were able to use incidents from the novel to make an over the top satire of fascism. I don’t love the novel now the way I did when I first read it, but the movie was a complete travesty.
mvr
Before I read the whole thread (I’m already late to the party), and without remembering the name of the Movie, the sequal to Chinatown was a real disappointment. Admitedly a hard movie to follow up on only because it is so good. But they could have left it alone.
Also this is a good idea for a thread!
mvr
@zhena gogolia: Good Choice.
mvr
@Citizen Dave: FWIW, the reopening Dylan show of the present(?) leg of his tour in Tulsa at Cain’s Ballroom was just fabulous and he did play a bit of guitar. The thing about BD is that he is a great singer because of his timing, not because of his voice (contra one of the most embarrassing reviews of an Album by Jann Wenner in the 70s – might have been Slow Train – I can only remember the hero worship getting in the way of analysis). And that remains good for the most part, even when his voice is shot, the melodies change and the instrumentation is different. Also, he knows so many songs it is crazy. So some shows are better than others, but some of his recents have been quite good.
BTW, Charlie Sexton is on tour with Elvis who is also one of my favorites.
mvr
@laura: I really liked that book when I was young though I have only an ethereal memory of it. A couple of years ago I was in a used bookstore in Taos browsing while the owner talked with an old somewhat weathered/decrepit man dress almost all in black who seemed to be a character. When he left the owner told us he was Nichols. i think he died within a year. Have wished I’d spoken to him and looking at the back cover photo of him as a young man (which happens to be sitting on top of a pile at home) is bracing and sad.
Kristine
The remake of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” with Gary Oldman as George Smiley. A number of my favorite actors—Cumberbatch, Firth, Oldman.
I hated it. In order to condense the book into movie length, they took too many shortcuts and easy outs with characters (Anne Smiley was many things, but a blowsy drunk was not one of them). I read that Cornwell was in favor of the remake and apparently made a Hitchcockian appearance. Oh well.
mvr
@cintibud: Kind of had the same reaction to that tour or a show on a tour from that era. I don’t remember if the Tom Scott band opened but it was a good band with famous Jazz musicians who had played on her records of that Hejira era, but it was an excellent band and the music was excellent throughout. But it felt like listening to the record too much. And I lost my enthusiasm for her music until recently as a result. Probably my bad, but I was also getting caught up in punk music by then.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
Anaconda
I gotna free pass to see this film. Even that was too much to pay.
My impression: a Jurassic Park project on a Full Monty budget. The cast – and they were formidable – couldn’t save this one.
kalakal
Late to the party and many of mine have been covered eg The Phantom Menace, Highlander II, Lynch’s Dune – though I thought Sting was good, The Avengers film ( I loved the TV show).
I saw Van Morrison in the mid 90’s – he was ok ish. definitley not great.
The Hobbit was ridiculously dragged out – just terrible
Blues Brothers 2000 – avoid
Alien films after the first 2
I totally agree about Blackadder – I quite enjoyed the first series ( I saw them when first televised) but the rest are in a different league.
The Princess Bride – everyone says it’s wonderful. I found it about as funny as cholera. I could see every joke coming a mile away. I have tried several times but it just does not work for me
The original film release of Das Boot. The ( German) series was fantastic, the film was literally the 6 hour series chopped up to fit into 2 hours. Utterly awful
Steve Paradis
@WaterGirl:
I expected much from Elaine May. I lasted 15 minutes.
Made me realize that her best picture, “A New Leaf”, was taken out of her hands and had about half an hour and two murders cut.
Steve Paradis
@Chetan Murthy:
The film’s two writers, David Webb Peoples and Hampton Fancher, avoided each other at the premiere out of embarrassment–each thought the other had written the narration.
(It was probably Scott.)
Steve Paradis
@piratedan:
But without it we wouldn’t have Mr. Plinkett’s take.
Which after the razzie stuff, is a pretty cogent take on narrative voids and misjudgments.
youtu.be/QgWcNsdmoyE?si=PcenLnbtNjMbH8g0
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@piratedan: I was living with a friend who had her MFA in directing when that came out. We went with a bunch of friends.
After watching, we all decided that:
1) We had all cut Lucas a lot of slack with SW4:ANH because of what we assumed was budget limitations. The bad cutting, the awkward pacing in spots, some of the effects, all left in because there weren’t funds to fix it. That had clearly been a misjudgment.
2) We had assumed that there was some thread of Lucas continuity in TESB and ROTJ that was more than just the directors’ imprint on those films. TPM proved that assumption wrong.
3) TPM showed us what Lucas could do with big stars and unlimited funds. It was ANH all over again, with all the bad choices made over again.
Based on all of that we all decided that Lucas really cannot direct, that ANH would have been just as clunky with an infinite budget, that ANH was saved by performers who stood up to Lucas and didn’t let him direct them into mediocrity and that TESB and ROTJ were saved by directors who knew their craft and could keep Lucas at arm’s length from both projects.
I regret to say that AOTC and ROTS only reinforced that impression.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
I do not know if this has been made known to anyone here, but industry scuttlebutt has it that in Tinseltown Waterworld is nicknamed “Fishtar” and The Postman is “Dirtworld.”
Trivia Man
ET, biggest disappointment ever. I had spent about 5 years devouring golden age sci fi. Mostly anthologies of “Best short stories of 1955” and such. I went in expecting golden age sci fi and got… that.
ive seen it since and its ok, but what a let down. Shortly after that i got hyped for the Natural. I love baseball! Instead i got… that.
Trivia Man
@zhena gogolia: That name reminds me if Ploughman’s Lunch. I walked out wondering what the hell it was about. I couldnt identify a single plot point, moral lesson, or gratuitous decadence. Later i saw it listed as a CLASSIC and i am completely baffled.
Jacel
@Trivia Man: For a baseball palate cleanser, watch “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings”.
Chris
Stargate: Universe. Was an avid fan of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, so I was hopeful for the next one. Just complete crap. Abandons the vibe of the series in favor of a dime store BSG imitation. Takes a franchise where one of the nice things was that it steadfastly remained true to its nineties roots while the rest of television increasingly turned to grimdark after 9/11, and turns it into exactly that sort of grimdark. Doesn’t even really make the grimdark stuff interesting enough to justify it.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I assume there’s no need to elaborate, everything’s been said. But man, having grown up on a diet of eighties blockbuster movies and utterly adored the original trilogy as a kid, it was sad how crappy the follow-up was.
Chris
@Teresa:
I had the same experience in reverse; I saw the movies and thought they were just crap, then a few years later read the book trilogy and was amazed at how much better it was.
Benno
Late to the party as I always am, living 10-12 hours ahead of most of you…
Ishtar came out when I was 12. I remember seeing it and liking it well enough, but literally the only other things I could remember about it were Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, and desert. But the second I saw the screenshot you posted my first reaction was, “oh, that’s clearly a Bob Hope Road to… series homage.” Then the summary you posted. That’s what it was about? Obscure-in-2025-reference achievement unlocked.
Gloria DryGarden
Anora
I felt like I’d wasted my time, watching it.I know the lead actress won an Oscar for it. Oh well. I didn’t enjoy any of the characters, I didn’t feel uplifted, or deepened into human nature.
sempronia
Haven’t read the comments at all, so I don’t know if others share this opinion. Disappointing books after a lot of buildup by other people, and anticipation on my part:
All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Midnight Library – Matthew Haig
lowtechcyclist
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq):
I unfortunately saw a good chunk of that movie once because it was playing on the TV while I was waiting around for something, I’m not sure what. Maybe before/after donating blood? Yes, it was terrible. Had me rooting for the damned snake.
Trivia Man
@Percysowner: Agree. But i did walk away with an admiration for belushi as an actor. I only saw it once (obviously!) but as i recall it, his performance as a nebbish was terrific and understated.
Trivia Man
@Jacel: I love the Bad News Bears original version, much better baseball flick then The Natural.
lowtechcyclist
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq):
I was a huge fan of SF writer David Brin, so I was excited when one of his novels, The Postman, was turned into a movie. Major disappointment.
cintibud
@mvr: Yeah, that was the Tom Scott band – part of the tour, played on her albums along with other great Jazz players. Love her music, just not a great show person.
Gloria DryGarden
@hitchhiker: at 18, I had a boyfriend who loved clockwork orange. Hopefully for some artistic aspect of the filming, not for the violence. Should have been a red flag… very weird uncomfortable, revolting movie, IMO.
Miss Bianca
I believe Lord Paul McCartney was the first person I ever heard who used the word “anticipointment” to describe this phenomenon. He may have coined it, for all I know – clever cove in the wordsmithing department, Lord Paul, or so I’ve heard.
Miss Bianca
@glc: Funny. Exact opposite for me. I love Blackadder (well, first series I could do without), and thought I would love Buckaroo Banzai since I’ve had so many of its quotable lines quoted at me so many times and I…hated it. I think I got it out on DVD and actually stopped watching about 2/3 of the way through.
Similar reaction to Mad Max. Just couldn’t stand it and bailed before it was over and then found myself wondering why all these other people thought it was so great.
(And OMG, dozenth on dunking on Lynch’s Dune…all I can remember of it, besides that it was so wretched we were all laughing in disbelief, is Kyle McLaughlan intoning, “The worm…the spice…the worm…the spice” over and over again.
Paul in KY
Space Jam (the 1st one) was completely unwatchable.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@lowtechcyclist: The visible wireframes in the “animation” were too much for me.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Miss Bianca: “Anticipointment” sounds like the flipside of a Carly Simon song.
BillD
This will never get read, so low in the string. But Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger was a letdown. Great writer, but if you title a book The Passenger and build a mystery of how a passenger in a plane that crashed in the ocean off Louisiana was unaccounted for, you have to resolve the mystery by the end. He didn’t even try.
Just look at that parking lot
@BillD: My “Someone is bashing Cormac McCarthy” alert went off, so I thought I’d check it was from here.
Some great sentences/paragraphs, but your right, the story made no sense from the start & didn’t the ending just wandered off.
The second part of that release, Stella Maris was just gibberish. I got thru a quarter of it and decided cleaning my bird feeder was better use of time.
BillD
@Just look at that parking lot: I didn’t bother with the second. Liked a lot of his stuff, but No Country was based on an event that would never happen. Who would be so nuts as to go back to the site of a drug shoot-out after getting away with a suitcase of cash?