Passages

A subforum to discuss film culture and criticism.
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mfunk9786
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Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
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Re: Passages

#7501 Post by mfunk9786 » Sat Dec 01, 2018 12:57 am


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bearcuborg
Joined: Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:30 am
Location: Philadelphia via Chicago

Re: Passages

#7502 Post by bearcuborg » Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:17 am

Ken Berry

I always liked him as a kid, from F Troop to The Cat from Outer Space.

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Feego
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:30 pm
Location: Texas

Re: Passages

#7503 Post by Feego » Sun Dec 02, 2018 12:36 pm

I grew up with F Troop as well. He was also funny as Vicki Lawrence's dumb-as-mud son on Mama's Family.

Gaddis
Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2011 4:25 am

Re: Passages

#7504 Post by Gaddis » Mon Dec 03, 2018 2:25 pm


flyonthewall2983
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Re: Passages

#7505 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Dec 03, 2018 6:08 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Sat Dec 01, 2018 12:57 am
George H.W. Bush
I remember him as the first president, when I was just getting old enough to have an extremely basic understanding of what government is. I started seeing his face more on television, and in pictures at banks, etc. One thing about Trump that really bothers me is that a lot of my friends' kids will view him in the same way. Not that HW was any great leader himself, but that's really the first thing that comes to mind about him.

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Skrmng Skll Th Thd
Joined: Sat Oct 20, 2018 12:32 pm

Re: Passages

#7506 Post by Skrmng Skll Th Thd » Mon Dec 03, 2018 9:19 pm

I'm sure there are some knowledgeable JFK Assassination fiends here -- is there any merit to the assertion that Bush was involved in JFK's demise?

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Donald Brown
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:21 pm
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Re: Passages

#7507 Post by Donald Brown » Mon Dec 03, 2018 9:57 pm

G.H.W. Bush was responsible for thousands of deaths, mostly in Iraq and South America, but there's no credible evidence showing involvement in Kennedy's assassination.

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Passages

#7508 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:18 pm

Bill Rinehart, lead guitarist for the Leaves, perhaps best known for their garage rock classic "Hey Joe" (immortalized on the great rock compilation Nuggets curated by Lenny Kaye) and later covered by Jimi Hendrix, Love and the Byrds. They actually cut three versions, the last one charting and becoming a hit.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Passages

#7509 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Tue Dec 04, 2018 3:03 pm

Donald Brown wrote:
Mon Dec 03, 2018 9:57 pm
G.H.W. Bush was responsible for thousands of deaths, mostly in Iraq and South America, but there's no credible evidence showing involvement in Kennedy's assassination.
North America too, he sat twiddling his thumbs about the AIDS crisis like the rest of the Reagan administration into his own run as prez.

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Feego
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:30 pm
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Re: Passages

#7510 Post by Feego » Tue Dec 04, 2018 9:38 pm


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CSM126
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Re: Passages

#7511 Post by CSM126 » Wed Dec 05, 2018 12:23 pm

The Dynamite Kid, widely influential wrestler and miserable excuse for a human being.

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Professor Wagstaff
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 11:27 pm

Re: Passages

#7512 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Wed Dec 05, 2018 3:38 pm

Can you elaborate on the 'miserable excuse for a human being' comment? The obit doesn't say much to that end.

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CSM126
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Re: Passages

#7513 Post by CSM126 » Wed Dec 05, 2018 4:06 pm

Professor Wagstaff wrote:
Wed Dec 05, 2018 3:38 pm
Can you elaborate on the 'miserable excuse for a human being' comment? The obit doesn't say much to that end.
Constantly threatened his first wife with guns, beat various women, allegedly drugged numerous people (including fellow wrestlers). Also had a habit of blaming everyone but himself for his physical decline - which he brought on himself through steroid abuse and recklessly dangerous maneuvers in the ring. Just a rotten, bitter guy by most accounts.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Passages

#7514 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:44 am

What he's perhaps most infamous for in terms of backstage behavior was his treatment of the Rougeau brothers, and their eventual comeuppance on him (which occurred in my hometown no less). Raymond Rougeau talks about it here. Shortly afterwards him and Davey Boy Smith left the WWF, during which time they had their final falling out and Smith would return for a few runs in the 90's. Smith himself passed in 2002, after a long bout with drug addiction.

Bret Hart shared this on Instagram. After reading his book, I'm amazed that Bret could still think so fondly of someone who caused so much chaos around him.


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otis
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:43 am

Re: Passages

#7516 Post by otis » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:04 pm


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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Passages

#7517 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:24 pm

otis wrote:
Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:04 pm
Pete Shelley
That is very sad news. I recently discovered his album XL1 thanks to the excellent Retro Man Cave YouTube channel which did an episode about vinyl records in the early 1980s that featured code for computer programs on the disc, which was followed by a video showing the program playing to the full album.

Shelley also composed the twangy guitar based take on Frère Jacques for the opening titles of Channel 4's Tour de France coverage that ran for a decade between the mid 80s and mid 90s.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
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Re: Passages

#7518 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:24 pm

otis wrote:
Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:04 pm
Pete Shelley
Love the Buzzcocks, and Homosapien is an awesome album as well.

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FrauBlucher
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:28 pm
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Re: Passages

#7519 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Dec 06, 2018 7:05 pm

Me too. They deserve as much credit as the rest of the UK punk bands.

perkypat
Joined: Sat Dec 29, 2012 11:49 am

Re: Passages

#7520 Post by perkypat » Fri Dec 07, 2018 5:37 am

otis wrote:
Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:04 pm
Pete Shelley
Soundtrack to my youth. Absolute legend. RIP Pete.

j99
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 10:18 am

Re: Passages

#7521 Post by j99 » Sun Dec 09, 2018 5:16 pm

Pete Shelley was also responsible for putting on the Sex Pistols at the now legendary Lesser Free Trade Hall gig in Manchester, as well as releasing one of the first UK independent singles, the seminal Spiral Scratch ep, which is surely one of the best ever single releases. His importance in the punk era cannot be underestimated, and Geoff Travis of Rough Trade cited him as the prime influence for the beginning of his label. While I preferred the Howard Devoto version of Buzzcocks, particularly the bootleg Time’s Up album, which eventually got an official release, they were a great band, especially their first two albums, and their run of singles and B sides, collected on the Going Steady compilation, were superb. He went far too soon.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Passages

#7522 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Dec 09, 2018 11:34 pm

Their eponymous 2003 album was surprisingly strong too, nearly on par with their first three LP's, but everyone should definitely start with the singles conveniently collected on Singles Going Steady, which is simply one of the great singles collections in all of rock. Or just spring for Product, which is a brilliant three-CD collection - very affordable and I actually prefer the mastering over all other CD issues.

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MichaelB
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Re: Passages

#7523 Post by MichaelB » Wed Dec 12, 2018 7:23 pm

Hungarian director Ferenc Kosa. I only saw one of his films, but Ten Thousand Suns (1967) was exceptionally good - I wrote this review after catching an ultra-rare big-screen outing a decade ago.
Ten Thousand Suns

One of the most impressive Hungarian directorial debuts, Ten Thousand Suns offers clinching proof that Miklós Jancsó wasn’t the only mid-1960s master routinely offering breathtaking widescreen compositions featuring hundreds of men and horses. Shot by Sándor Sára, then well on his way to cementing his reputation as one of Hungarian cinematography’s greatest visual artists, the film routinely throws up stunning shots: mass wheat scything, dozens of horses crossing a bridge to market (followed shortly afterwards by train wagons crossing the same bridge heading in the opposite direction, a neat visual gag on technological progress), prisoners doing hard labour on a rocky hillside, numerous public festivities crammed with local colour. The aesthetic impact alone makes it’s easy to see why this once had a considerable international reputation, even achieving a commercial release in Britain.

Another reason for its acclaim outside Hungary may be that while it tackles similar material to Zoltán Fábri’s Twenty Hours (Húsz óra, 1965), it does so in the much more immediately accessible form of a three-decade family saga (the period alluded to by the title adds up to just over 27 years) which spans the pre-war era through to the János Kádár’s so-called ‘goulash communism’ of the 1960s. We watch the former peasants István Széles (Tibor Molnár), his wife Juli (a wonderfully expressive Gyöngyi Bürös, her silences as eloquent her sparse dialogue) and their friend Bánó Fülöp (János Koltai) negotiating all the pitfalls that history strews in their path, not always with complete success. Though long-term friends, István and Bánó are politically poles apart: Bánó is the local Communist activist, organising a trade union and enthusiastically implementing agricultural reform on the local collective farm. By contrast, István consciously shuns identification with a particular line, and while this makes him a much more clear-sighted observer of communism’s drawbacks, it’s not without considerable hardship along the way, including a long spell in prison – though he also refuses to side with the rebels of 1956, since they also stand in the way of his landowning ambitions. (More specifically, he refuses to shoot Bánó, despite the latter now being firmly established as his ideological ‘enemy’).

Kósa parallels this central narrative with a vivid portrait of the lot of workers over this period. Before the war, István, Juli, Bánó and their peasant cohorts live in extreme poverty, effectively slaves to the local landowners and all their actions are shown to have moral consequences above and beyond their notional illegality – for instance, stealing straw from the pigs to use as fuel on New Year’s Eve means that the piglets will be found frozen to death the following morning (in one of many quirky touches that separate this film from one of Jancsó’s more earnest parables, the miscreants are ordered to apologise to the surviving pigs). The potato is the staple diet, and not just as food – Bánó manages to get one to power a radio. A strike leads to a confrontation between those seeking higher wages and those who point out that they’ll starve without work, though the latter end up ritually humiliated by being tied to upended wheelbarrows and having dirt thrown in their faces.

Following the war, whose passage and outcome is efficiently conveyed by newsreels and shots of black-shrouded women in mourning laying candles on tombstones, a new government decrees that the land belongs to those who need it. This leads to scenes that echo one of the flashbacks in Twenty Hours, as over-excited peasants pre-emptively raid a grain store, a politician pleading with them to stop and wait as the grain will soon be theirs anyway. A massed celebration includes a speed-eating contest reminiscent of the ones in György Pálfi’s grotesque Taxidermia (2006) as well as mass wrestling, a twilight dance around a bonfire, and a merry-go-round (an iconic shot for Hungarian cinema ever since Zoltán Fábri made one the centrepiece of his breakthrough film Merry-Go-Round/Körhinta in 1955).

But the euphoria quickly gives way to disgruntlement: Bánó asserts that the more one gives, the happier one is, but when he seeks to put this notion into practice by requisitioning some of István’s grain for the benefit of poorer community members, István is unimpressed by the argument that it properly belongs to the people and resolves to steal it back, an action that leads to the death of his man-mountain accomplice Mihály (previously seen as a champion speed-eater and wrestler) and hard labour for István himself. When he returns, he finds his son grown up (and now played by András Kozák, a regular lead in Jancsó’s films) and evidence of the encroachment of progress – Juli tells him that the women wear nylon now, and the peasant houses are now dwarfed by much more modern buildings. This sequence of the film delights in juxtaposing the ancient and the modern: a lovely lyrical sequence sees a session of ploughing accompanied by the slow movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, a forest is mysteriously populated with riderless bicycles, and a trip to the beach reveals a bizarre juxtaposition of costume styles from modern bathing costumes to traditional Hungarian male headgear.

The film’s final sequences reveal Kósa’s ultimate thesis, as father and son are explicitly contrasted despite sharing the same name. István senior is a traditionalist, raised as part of a hierarchy, and consequently his notion of ambition is to rise up to the top – or at least to a level where he can ensure a life of comfort and plenty. He’s paralleled with King Lear, whose decision to give up his land resulted in his decline and death. But István junior is a child of the postwar era, raised in a very different environment where the physical and social needs of the community come before individual desires – and therefore, Kósa implies, a model citizen of a new socialist Hungary where theory and practice can finally become one.


flyonthewall2983
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Re: Passages

#7525 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Dec 13, 2018 7:15 pm


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