On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 14:52:30 +0000, Lenona <lenona321@yahoo.com> wrote:

I tried to find a site that has all of this on one page, but I couldn't.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/the-25-most-outlandish-sci-fi-films-of-all-time/ss-AA1oRya3?ocid=ue07dhp

I've only heard of ten of these, and of those, I only saw six.

But then, I haven't paid much attention to those sci-fi movies from THIS >century.

I didn't count how many of them I have seen; most of those are
well-known, but /Upstream Color/ may not be.

The /Brazil/ image was omitted in the "Director's Cut" because Gilliam
no longer understood it. This may explain /The Zero Theorem/, whose
ending was because he thought his audience would expect something like
that. (Both assertions are from my memory of documentaries on the
DVDs, and can safely be taken with a large grain of salt).

(I am sick and tired of carefully choosing a movie, paying $10 or so,
and STILL being very let down 25% or so of the time. So I rely mostly on
any movies I can get for FREE. The library has thousands, after all.)

I gave up on that a decade or more ago. My disappointment with films
that /looked/ OK but turned out to be was more like 100%. I went to
Red Box, but then got into online. I do pay for some films -- but not
$10, I have a limit of my own choosing -- on Amazon. I haven't been
inside a theater for a long long time, and never expect to be in one
again.

On the plus side, I have seen a /lot/ of small films, some of them
very much worth seeing or even buying on disc. And, more recently, a
fair number of films from other countries, which can be very
entertaining as well.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

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On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 16:42:53 +0000, Paul S Person wrote:

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 14:52:30 +0000, Lenona <lenona321@yahoo.com> wrote:

(I am sick and tired of carefully choosing a movie, paying $10 or so,
and STILL being very let down 25% or so of the time. So I rely mostly on >>any movies I can get for FREE. The library has thousands, after all.)

And while this may not be the best analogy, would you keep trying out
new restaurants if you were being disappointed at that rate?

Of course, many people don't care to watch the same dozen movies over
and over, whereas many are happy to eat at the same restaurants over and
over.

But one can try out new recipes at HOME, while paying relatively very
little.

I gave up on that a decade or more ago. My disappointment with films
that /looked/ OK but turned out to be was more like 100%. I went to
Red Box, but then got into online. I do pay for some films -- but not
$10, I have a limit of my own choosing -- on Amazon. I haven't been
inside a theater for a long long time, and never expect to be in one
again.

Well, I love the thrill of watching with a well-behaved audience and
hearing their reactions. Depending on the movie, it's easy enough to
avoid rowdy teenagers - or even stupid parents who won't take out their
crying babies and rowdy children.

(I saw the 1949 Japanese classic "Late Spring" some months ago - not SF,
for those who don't know. The audience was completely civil.)

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On 9/5/2024 7:03 AM, Lenona wrote:

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 16:42:53 +0000, Paul S Person wrote:

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 14:52:30 +0000, Lenona <lenona321@yahoo.com> wrote:

(I am sick and tired of carefully choosing a movie, paying $10 or so,
and STILL being very let down 25% or so of the time. So I rely mostly on >>> any movies I can get for FREE. The library has thousands, after all.)

And while this may not be the best analogy, would you keep trying out
new restaurants if you were being disappointed at that rate?

Of course, many people don't care to watch the same dozen movies over
and over, whereas many are happy to eat at the same restaurants over and over.

But one can try out new recipes at HOME, while paying relatively very
little.

I'd say that "meals" is a better analogy than "restaurants" here.


--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

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n Thu, 5 Sep 2024 14:03:44 +0000, Lenona <lenona321@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 16:42:53 +0000, Paul S Person wrote:

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 14:52:30 +0000, Lenona <lenona321@yahoo.com> wrote:

(I am sick and tired of carefully choosing a movie, paying $10 or so,
and STILL being very let down 25% or so of the time. So I rely mostly on >>>any movies I can get for FREE. The library has thousands, after all.)

And while this may not be the best analogy, would you keep trying out
new restaurants if you were being disappointed at that rate?

Of course, many people don't care to watch the same dozen movies over
and over, whereas many are happy to eat at the same restaurants over and >over.

But one can try out new recipes at HOME, while paying relatively very
little.

I gave up on that a decade or more ago. My disappointment with films
that /looked/ OK but turned out to be was more like 100%. I went to
Red Box, but then got into online. I do pay for some films -- but not
$10, I have a limit of my own choosing -- on Amazon. I haven't been
inside a theater for a long long time, and never expect to be in one
again.

Well, I love the thrill of watching with a well-behaved audience and
hearing their reactions. Depending on the movie, it's easy enough to
avoid rowdy teenagers - or even stupid parents who won't take out their >crying babies and rowdy children.

(I saw the 1949 Japanese classic "Late Spring" some months ago - not SF,
for those who don't know. The audience was completely civil.)

I'd recommend avoiding Sundance theaters, then, or any other theater
with a liquor license, as I suspect a drunken audience would not be to
your liking. Particularly if assigned ("reserved") seating is
involved.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

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* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 16:16:59 -0400, Cryptoengineer
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/4/2024 12:42 PM, Paul S Person wrote:

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024 14:52:30 +0000, Lenona <lenona321@yahoo.com> wrote:

I tried to find a site that has all of this on one page, but I couldn't. >>>
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/the-25-most-outlandish-sci-fi-films-of-all-time/ss-AA1oRya3?ocid=ue07dhp

I've only heard of ten of these, and of those, I only saw six.

But then, I haven't paid much attention to those sci-fi movies from THIS >>> century.

I didn't count how many of them I have seen; most of those are
well-known, but /Upstream Color/ may not be.

The /Brazil/ image was omitted in the "Director's Cut" because Gilliam
no longer understood it. This may explain /The Zero Theorem/, whose
ending was because he thought his audience would expect something like
that. (Both assertions are from my memory of documentaries on the
DVDs, and can safely be taken with a large grain of salt).

Whether that image was in the Dirctors cut or not didn't change much,
but the ending was drastically different, much as the original Blade
Runner was modified.

Actually, I think that one's still in there. The one where her face is
wrapped in plastic to show Our Hero what his mother will look like
after her operation and his reaction was cut.

It was in the version released in America to theaters and VHS. But
that had the same ending as the Director's cut. The network TV
version, however, substituted a "happy" ending for the Real Deal.

The Director's Version is the one on the original 3-disk Criterion
DVD, with the film on one side of one disk but with a very nasty layer
change. IIRC, this was the Laserdisc set with the two film discs on
one side of the DVD. My on-one-side DVD of /Into the Woods/ (there was
a flippie version I avoided) had the same sort of layer change,
probably because it was the two sides of the flippie put on one side.
The DVD I have of /Bridge on the River Kwai/ did this /deliberately/,
claiming it saved time with starting the chapters on the second layer.

As I understand it, each layer on these discs is a completely separate
file [1], forcing the player to seek the start of the second layer
instead of the more normal method, which apparently contains a single
file spread over the two layers, avoiding (or minimizing) the seek.

One way to tell is to see if each layer has it's own "clock": that is,
if the DVD player's display shows each having its own length or if it
shows the length of the entire film.

Note that these are are very old DVDs and may have been superceded by
newer ones done the usual way. Also, how bad the layer change is
depends on how seeking works for the player/drive in use.

[1] Actually, I'm not sure "file" is the quite the word to use.
"Program", as a technical term including, say, trailers and other
features (special or ordinary), might be better.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

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* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

Actually, I think that one's still in there. The one where her face is >wrapped in plastic to show Our Hero what his mother will look like
after her operation and his reaction was cut.=20

It was in the version released in America to theaters and VHS. But
that had the same ending as the Director's cut. The network TV
version, however, substituted a "happy" ending for the Real Deal.

The version I saw at an American college film society (16mm print from Swank) had the happy ending on it. Curious to know how far that went.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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On 5 Sep 2024 20:46:30 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

Actually, I think that one's still in there. The one where her face is >>wrapped in plastic to show Our Hero what his mother will look like
after her operation and his reaction was cut.=20

The link below metions this:

After watching Mrs. Lowry's first plastic surgery treatment, Sam
exclaims "My god, it works!"

although its the /planned/ treatment with the plastic pulled back to
show what she will look like, not the treatment itself.

It was in the version released in America to theaters and VHS. But
that had the same ending as the Director's cut. The network TV
version, however, substituted a "happy" ending for the Real Deal.

The version I saw at an American college film society (16mm print from Swank) >had the happy ending on it. Curious to know how far that went.

<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/alternateversions/?ref_=tt_ql_dyk_4>
has information on the versions.

If I read it correctly, the "happy ending" version didn't go anywhere.
Yet the Criterion set (LD, I believe, and DVD) has it, and it
apparently made its way onto the 16mm circuit.

Well, unless watching Sam singing to himself and revealing his escape
etc as a dream is what you mean by a "happy ending". I consider it
rather bleak: the girl dead, the protaganist incurably insane, the
Ministry with nobody to bill.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 06 Sep 2024 09:58:47 -0700, Paul S Person
<psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

<snip Brazil>

If I read it correctly, the "happy ending" version didn't go anywhere.
Yet the Criterion set (LD, I believe, and DVD) has it, and it

and the Blu Ray

apparently made its way onto the 16mm circuit.

--
Jerry Brown

A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)

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On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 13:04:39 +0000, Michael F. Stemper wrote:

Hearing the audience's reaction? Really? Do you mean things like, "I
knew it was the butler!" The only audience reactions I've ever heard
were occasional laughter.

Let's face it. Plenty of old, low-key, good comedies will not make even
people of pre-boomer generations laugh out loud UNLESS they're
surrounded by laughing people in a big audience.

One example would be "Roman Holiday" with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory
Peck. I (Gen X) certainly wouldn't have laughed out loud at certain
scenes - or even realized there WAS intentional humor in those scenes, necessarily. Seeing it with an audience was very helpful.

Even the Muppets are a lot funnier, with an audience. (I had to agree,
somewhat grudgingly, with George Carlin's lack of enthusiasm for them.) Comedies in general are just plain better that way.

And other reactions can be fun, too, such as when I saw a John Waters
movie (and the man himself, afterwards) and the youngish audience went
"EWWWWW" at a certain scene. (No, it wasn't "Pink Flamingos" - it was
"Female Trouble.")

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On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 2:35:30 +0000, Cryptoengineer wrote:

On 9/5/2024 10:03 AM, Lenona wrote:

(I saw the 1949 Japanese classic "Late Spring" some months ago - not SF,
for those who don't know. The audience was completely civil.)

I would expect that the audience for a 75 year old B&W Japanese language
film without Godzilla will be somewhat depleted of rowdy teenagers or
young parents.

I should have explained that it was a free screening.

While I was lucky, one never knows what sort of jerks will show up for something that's free.****

But I also remember a regular screening (with tickets), many years ago.
While I don't remember the title, it was definitely not a movie where
one would expect a loud audience. But, there was a woman sitting alone
and talking audibly - possibly not even about the movie. Again, I can't remember. So finally, someone called out: "lady, would you please be
QUIET?"

Maybe she had mental issues. Who knows?

****And speaking of awful people ruining free events/institutions,
forcing the authorities to take drastic measures...


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/massachusetts-cities-businesses-adjusting-after-school-operations-due-to-student-misbehavior/ar-AA1pFHmr?ocid=BingNewsVerp

(I should explain that Somerville, MA is a pretty safe city to be in,
most of the time. After all, it's right next to Cambridge.)


Excerpt:

"...The Somerville Public Library is not the only entity being impacted
by misbehaving teenagers.

"In Brockton, a local Starbucks close to the high school has decided to
close its dining room after school to prevent hordes of teens from congregating, while the serving counter will remain open, according to
reports. A McDonald’s in the city is also locking its doors after
school, letting customers come in one at a time..."

And:

https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-08-29/safety-concerns-prompt-midday-closures-of-somervilles-central-library

Yes, the part about having to "clean up the blood" is accurate. (No, I
wasn't there at the time, but I got the info from a good source.)

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