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Weekend Discussion Thread: Wastes of Film StockOur pal Timmy opines:
Simple: “Moment by Moment.” Your pick? 62 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Wastes of Film Stock”Commenting at Satellite News
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did MST3K also get Moment by Moment?
Until this week I would have nominated anything on the Hallmark channel, but after seeing Mac and Me on the new season…
(The movie, not the riffing)
MST3K movie: ‘Santa Claus Conquers The Martians’.
Non MST3K: ‘The Lonely Lady’.
Both Pia Zadora films.
The Paul Thomas Anderson movie titled The Master. Did he really need to use 70mm film stock to show people in rooms talking and silently contemplating things?
Another waste of 70mm film was Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.
I will clarify that I’m not saying the films don’t have value, but they did not really need the special treatment in that film format.
Reportedly, they tried, but couldn’t get the rights. Rifftrax can’t, either, both because of rights issues (stopping a VOD release) and the lack of a legit video release (stopping a “jokes only” version).
My choice: “Hostel”. I inadvertently caught a moment of it on cable. Utterly horrendous.
‘millennium’ and ‘highlander 2.’
I’ll probably receive some flack over this, but I pick Donny Darko. I never got why it was such a critical darling.
Hoo boy, Inchon. So many big names, and for what? Reportedly Olivier consulted MacArthur’s ADC Alexander Haig, who told him that MacArthur sounded like W.C. Fields and wore make up and a girdle. I always wondered if that really was true, or if Haig was just pulling his leg. I like to believe it was the latter, with Haig thinking to himself, “Wait, he buying this?!?!? Keeeeeep a straight face.”
I dunno, maybe I’m overthinking the question, not as this week’s generic “What film’s, like, totally bad-like?”, and more as “What film should never have been made?”–
In the sense that no audience asked for it, and it was only in the mind of the director to even try and waste film to work out his personal issues, or the producer to work out his marketing strategy…Y’know, like “An American Carol”, or “Willow”, or D’nesh DeSouza, or why they can’t stop Adam Sandler from making more Netflix films. Okay, maybe overthinking it, but hey, wasn’t MY WDT idea.
And which later, of course, turned out to be one big foreign-investment by Reverend Moon (whose cult has a heavy reunite-Korea political message to begin with)
Like “Battlefield: Earth” and the Scientologists, word got out long before the bad reviews hit, the audience understandably stayed away, and even Olivier tried to distance himself from the red-carpet hoopla. Which is why you can’t find it on video, after Moon spent more money to buy back all the prints.
Although, like all great “lost” films, it’s on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqpsPjLTzWo
Started to watch it, and, well, hiring English-speaking Korean actors might have helped the pacing…
—-
(And wait, weren’t we going to have six weeks of running WDT’s about the new MST3K episodes, or are we waiting for everyone to finish “running the Gauntlet”?
I’ve watched Mac & Me, which I liked, and got twenty curious minutes into Atlantic Rim, before, like Kramer, plunking $50 on the table and saying “…I’M out!” For pretty much the same reason that those who were hoping to “binge” S11 probably decided against the idea half an hour into “Beast of Hollow Mountain”.)
As far as films featured on MST3K, certain ones like Red Zone Cuba, Wild World of Batwoman, Catching Trouble, Lost Continent, Invasion of the Neptune Men, Incredibly Strange Creatures, and Cry Wilderness, none of these films needed to exist. And, if the negatives to them got burned up, it wouldn’t have been a huge loss.
Non-MST3K: Too many to list, but I’ll just say this right now; the new Nutcracker movie by Disney was absolutely POINTLESS.
MST3K movie: “The Starfighters” Let’s refuel, shall we?
Non-MST3K movie: “Butterfly” Yep, a Pia Zadora film.
MST choice: CARNIVAL MAGIC. I expected a movie about a talking chimp to be cheesy and groan-enducing, but not boring and tedious.
Non-MST: Let’s stick with talking apes and go with the Tim Burton version of PLANET OF THE APES. Come to think of it, any of Tim Burton’s remake movies (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland) would count. Was anyone asking for these?
My husband and I vote for all the Coleman Francis catalog. Depressing, boring, and pointless. Starfighters is another. Ishtar comes to mind for a non-MST3K pic that’s a waste of film stock.
Agreed on Carnival Magic. That’s a rough one. Loved Alice in Wonderland, though. Awesome feminist twist on the tale with great performances by Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, and Christopher Lee. Not a waste for film stock for me.
Disagree on a lot of these, but I WILL go with “Inchon”-it goes on and on and on without ceasing. Korean stunt folks, blown up by the evil enemy, go flying through the air with agonized expressions, David Janssen looks stolid, Jacqueline Bisset looks as if she’d rather be anywhere than on set, and if you endure it all, you do get to see Olivier demeaning himself beyond redemption.
I got a copy ten years ago from one of THOSE resellers that got their copy somebody taped at three AM on some Canadian analog to KTMA. I THINK that’s the print that OEJ links to–note the watermark. It appears that there’s a live copy on That Website That Shall Not Be Named. If I successfully download it, I probably STILL won’t watch it. BTW, the surviving version IS either the original length or very close to it; there’s a cut version that is reputedly Hell Itself to sit through.
I’ve got to go away, so one more:
“Dondi. “Dondi” is unbelievable.
Recently, this became available on Amazon. Read the reviews on Amazon, then check out the comments on imdb. Believe the comments on imdb. It helps if you’re old enough to remember the stupid comic strip, but not necessary.
Because “Dondi” is one of that special category of movies that will make you angry. Not just angry that you wasted your time, but angry that such a thing could happen in a universe overseen by a just and loving God. It will make you want to hunt down the people who posted four and five star reviews on Amazon and leave flaming bags of dog poo on their doorsteps. Worth whatever you have to do to get a copy, because when you’ve watched it you can put your shredder on the Credit Card setting and turn it into landfill.
No jolk, folks.
Anything put on film by multi-millionaire hypocrite Michael Moore(who likes to portray himself as just another working class stiff even though he’s worth $125,000,000)should be considered a waste of both the film stock itself, and the oxygen and money spent to manufacture it.
Also…all the Harry Potter moron movies.
Also also…any Star Wars movie made after 1983.
Well, if we’re talking MSTed films, definitely, the entire Coleman Francis “oeuvre.”
Non-MSTed, well I’d say any of the Disney/Star Wars films. I see no purpose in their existence, especially since they pretty much abandoned George Lucas’ original concepts (assuming, of course, he ever had any).
After that, I’d say Avatar. I HATE this film with a passion; the most obvious example of James Cameron “borrowing” ideas from his betters, and the most racist thing I’ve seen since Birth of a Nation. And he still wants to make two more of them!
Back to Disney, IMO, Disney’s current trend of making live action versions of their classic cartoons (Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, and the new Lion King movie) serves no purpose. No reason for any of them to exist, but I guess they have their fans, so what do I know. Especially since they only started filming the Lion King
which everyone but Disney knows was a steal from Kimba the White Lion anyway.Actually, Michael Moore’s net worth has been reliably reported as over $600,000,000. Moreover, unlike most other children of union auto workers who became millionaires by their own hard work, he flaunts his wealth by riding in a gold-plated Bugatti Royale through the streets of Flint, Michigan, drawn by a team of sixteen ghetto children in knee breeches and powdered wigs.
Hey, if you’re going to make stuff up, why limit yourself? Go big.
Not too long ago, I shared with you all my list of “The Worst Movies I Ever Sat All The Way Through”, most of which are MST episodes. It’s interesting, though, that I wouldn’t necessarily say that they were a waste of good film stock, since so many of them produced some of my favorite MST moments: Manos & the Coleman Francis trilogy, for example. An overly fine distinction, perhaps, but a real one, nonetheless. Starfighters, on the other hand, IS a real waste of celluloid: you can’t even imagine what the film makers’ purpose was, what vision made them put out the effort (such as it was). The worst waste of film stock for me, though, are the blatant rip-offs of better movies: Starcrash, for instance, which was my “Worst Of All Time” until Thursday, when I saw Mac & Me for the first time. And then came Atlantic Rim!! They weren’t even TRYING, for God’s sake! (At least the riffing was good, and got better as the ordeal went on.)
Among films outside of the MST canon that represent a waste of film stock and other resources, I would put all violence porn: The Human Centipede, The Hostel, The Saw, etc.; Men In Black II–a crass attempt to quickly cash in on the original’s success; The Godfather III, which just made me want to cry, in part because it means that now no one ever will make a truly fitting end to the Corleone saga. These are all films that had no reason to be made. I would also add a lot of other sequels and prequels. But not necessarily the second Star Wars trilogy: these are miserably awful, but at least I can boil them down in my mind and distill the essential foundation story for the Skywalker saga, at least in outline form. Men In Black II, by contrast, adds nothing whatsoever to our appreciation of the first movie; and Godfather III actually detracts from I and II if you let it.
Oh, God, I definitely agree about Dondi! I detested the comic strip, and was therefore astounded to see that the film version is actually worse.
Catwoman, starring Halle Berry.
Bedazzled with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley.
The Golden Compass.
The entire Twilight saga.
Bewitched, with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell.
“‘Allo, G. I. Buddy!” Lordy Jeebus.
My wife and I are Fifties kids, so to get to real boredom we have to get through yelping about the cars, clothes, and hairstyles of anything Fifties or Sixties, especially anything made on a budget. And I LIKE the Coleman Francis movies, ’cause of that one cinematographer who did the interview on the DVD extras. There’s some real Life Magazine portraiture, there. Also, I was an NAS military brat. Those shave-headed junior birdmen in Starfighters AND their environs are one huge nostalgia trip.
So my touchstone for “waste of film stock” is whether I have to hit a movie more than once just to get through it. THERE’S a waste of film stock, because I’ve been known to watch the Weather Channel for hours, waiting for the national weather map to change.
And there, Misery Brothers is the king. No, I tell a lie. Chairman of the Board. Worse than Freddy Got Fingered. I never could get more than fifteen minutes in, after three or four tries.
I get the impression that you really didn’t like “Dondi”.
For me I could say that at least 50% of all the movies ever made since the silent days up to this year, color or B&W, have been a waste of film.
I’m going to stay within the MSTieverse and vote for “The Day Time Ended”.
I’ve seen goofier sci-fi plots; I’ve seen more poorly executed sci-fi films. But this is the first sci-fi movie I’ve seen which doesn’t earn ANY of the moments it tries to claim. It’s like someone read an issue or two of Analog, and said “let’s throw all of these ideas into a movie!”
Any film directed by Raja Gosnell, especially those awful, infuriating “Smurfs” movies.
Any movie directed by or involving Michael Bay.
Any of Adam Sandler’s paycheck movies.
“Howard the Duck,” ”Leonard Part 6,” and “Frozen Assets.”
Any film directed by Alan Smithee.
Hard to explain, I know, but…okay, put it this way: Tom Cruise in “The Mummy”–
The movie nobody wanted, to introduce the “crossover universe” nobody asked for, and which we ultimately never GOT. Is there any reason to say that this movie still “exists”, or has it become like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest?
Or maybe…
…YES! Thank you–That crystallizes my point perfectly. :)
The movie that Disney originally wanted to give Robert Zemeckis, back when they wanted him to crank out more CGI Christmas train movies for them on demand, but then he had that psychotic “Christmas Carol” episode, so scratch that idea. So, there’s Disney stuck with an unproduced memo, and doing what they always do with them: “Fairytales? Oh, you mean like Tim Burton’s Alice! :) ”
Never mind that they had just had a real Alice sequel that cratered at the box-office only two years earlier, and you’d think that lesson would have stuck.
Uh, you DO know that that was originally supposed to be Wes Craven’s horror-movie version of the American McGee computer game, that was bounced around Dimension and Universal, before landing at Disney who wanted to make it more “family-friendly”?
I haven’t even played the game, and I can already spot four or five giveaway clues that ended up in the movie, not counting the game originally creating that annoying “Red Queen/Queen of Hearts” confusion that’s been around ever since.
Music Man, starring Matthew Broderick. Shot in Canada, produced by Disney. (Cue Frank Conniff) ” WHYYY! WHY, DEAR LORD, WHY?”
I think, in general, “pointlessness” is the ultimate criterion for this topic, even more than “unwatchableness.” It’s not a matter of money badly spent, it’s a matter of money spent for no observable reason.
Sayonara Jupiter. Terrible Space Odessey rip off from Toho. Notorious for hogging resources that should have gone too Godzilla’s big 1984 comeback movie. Classic product of studio meddling.
The only amusing scene feature a American who is cast as a ‘cool’ spaceship captain. The actor is extremely flamboyant and it’s clear this went over the directors head.
Terrible, depressing final role for the great Japanese character actor Akihito Hirata. Last films of great actors that make a mockery of that actor deserve a special place in Hell.
I love anything Toho, from Kurosawa to Godzilla, but I absolutely hate Sayonara Jupiter.
All the movies on MST3K deserve there existence, except maybe Stranded In Space.
Re: “Inchon”, I don’t think I’ve seen it, but I have read about it. There is one good thing about it: it provided Laurence Olivier a great deal of money to support his family as his career and life started to wind down. Reportedly, he asked for a king’s ransom as his salary, and had it paid to him in cash. That’s one of those stories where if it isn’t true, you certainly wish it was.
As for MST3K movies, I’m not sure I can think of any I’d consider a waste of film. Some are actually enjoyable, others have a point of interest or two. Others are worth existing as an object lesson on how not to make a film. But I’m not sure I can come up with any that exhibited a sufficient level of pointlessness, hatefulness or just plain incompetence that makes it a total waste. Some come very close, though. I’ll have to consider this for a while.
OK, one more about Inchon, and I promise to quit.
There is one live torrent out there for Inchon, and it works. It’s the same as what’s on YouTube, better resolution. It IS from the same videotape someone made of a broadcast on GoodLife Network. GoodLife Network is now YouToo Network, one of SIX names this outfit has had, AND THE REASON INCHON GOT BROADCAST AT ALL IN 2001 WAS THAT AT THE TIME, GOODLIFE NETWORK WAS OWNED BY THE UNIFICATION CHURCH.
The Wiki article on YouToo Network is wonderful.
Kenneth Morgan’s Olivier story above is confirmed, as well as lots more fun stuff at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/Inchon
Agreed!
Remaking a movie that is already a perfect, timeless classic, is utterly pointless and a complete waste of film, money, and talent.
Even that shot-for-shot remake of “Psycho” at least had the (lame) excuse of “we want to see ‘Psycho’ in color”.
I know these have already been flogged to a pulp, but I have to include the Star Wars prequels as utterly unnecessary. One of the things that made the originals so much fun, was that they had a lot of backstory that was hinted at, and which provided depth to the fictional universe of the story. Making three more films to tell us EXACTLY how Anakin became Darth Vader is like a comedian telling a great joke, and then spending the next three hours explaining the joke to the audience.
Since Madison Avenue would have us believe that the “Season” is upon us I nominate –
SAVING CHRISTMAS – A Kirk Cameron vehicle in which he attempts to save Christmas from his brother in law Christian. Yes, Christian. Subtle, eh? The overtly delivered message is that Christmas needs saving from Christians. That is, Christians who don’t do things Kirk Cameron’s way. In a sense this is the Mac and Me of holiday movies in that the whole thing is basically an infomercial for Kirk’s religious viewpoint. Even putting all that aside the movie is just dull. Dishwater, gray, leaden, dull.
Okay, now THAT one we will never understand. And the Mummy had two eyes in each socket, and I will NEVER understand that either. In the end, Karloff is the Mummy. Karloff is the Monster. Lugosi is Dracula. Lon Chaney is the Wolf Man. Universal is just proving that will never change.
Well, since the discussion has moved to “universes” that nobody ever asked for–and acknowledging that this will out me as an “old guy” and hopelessly backward Luddite–I’m just going to come right out and say it: pretty much any superhero movie made within the past 10 years is a dreadful waste of film stock. I mean YOU, Marvel Universe, and YOU, Johnny-come-lately DC Universe movies.
Admittedly, I gave up watching these years ago, so I’m sure there must be some rare exceptions, but I think I’ve seen enough to recognize that, in general, these cgi-fest action-orgy over-the-top spectacles with two-dimensional characters have little to offer except cash-grabs, smarm, and ever-escalating ridiculousness. I’m all for escapism and suspended disbelief, but from the bits I’ve caught on Netflix from time to time, they are, in my opinion, inane and largely without redeeming value.
Superman (1978) was a great homage, charming for its innocence and its obvious reverence for its character. Spider Man (2002) and Iron Man (2008) broke some new ground and were fun to watch. After that I don’t think I’ve seen anything worth the film stock used to print it — let alone the untold millions (billions?) I’m sure it has cost to produce them.
… wow… sorry for the rant, guys; guess I was “triggered” there. ;)
Agreed for the most part. The two exceptions I would note are Wonder Woman and Black Panther. Both are definitely worth a watch.
Uh, no, Eric. I didn’t know that and I don’t really care.
Well, it would mean that MST3K couldn’t exist, but the sad fact is that about 90 percent of movies made shouldn’t have been. Even widely praised stuff like the Sound of Music basically stink. If there weren’t these wastes of film running around what web page could we go to to rag on them?
Sure, but there’s been some interesting discussion above of just how personal “shouldn’t have been made” is. It turns on why YOU watch a) movies, in general, and b) movies with a screw loose. Think about it, won’t you?
Ro-man:
How about “Superman II”? It’s fast, imaginative, juicy fun.
Remember the Demotivator poster: “It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.” (Find on despair.com.)
A movie that is so awful that it’s worth showing up on MST has served the purpose of serving as a warning to other filmmaker wannabes of what can go tragically wrong. Therefore, it is not a total waste of film stock. “Birdemic”, “The Room”, and “Baby Geniuses” also fit in this category. There are also the ones that are dumb, but they’re supposed to be, like “Sharknado” or “Ptarmegeddon”. They actually achieve their objective.
In order to be a total waste it has to be so drab and unmemorable that it makes no impact. Which I guess is why I can’t remember any of them. I suspect there are plenty of rom-coms and rom-drams that I would have forgotten had I ever seen them, but was repelled at a distance like a slug by vinegar. Add the worthless re-makes, where some twit thinks he can improve on perfection.
There’s another category, worse than a waste, where your life force is depleted for having seen them, or sometimes just for knowing that they exist. The aforementioned gross out films. And the ones that make the original story worse for having been told. Godfather Part III. The Star Wars Prequels. The live action Grinch, which made the story worse by making the Grinch the fault of the Whos. I’ve never seen “Hannibal Rising” because I was forewarned that watching it would retroactively deplete my enjoyment of “Silence of the Lambs” by turning Lecter into a sympathetic character.
There are also “based on a true story” movies that were so bad they soiled the memory of the actual event. Perhaps the worst I’ve ever seen is “Salyut-7,” about the crew that recovered a failing Russian space station. Don’t be put off because it’s in Russian. Be put off because it’s nonsense. There are a few underlying facts, but most of it is fake drama about things never happened. “Freefall: Flight 174” is a tragically awful telling of the story of the Gimli Glider, a nearly new 767 that ran out of fuel and had to make an unpowered landing at an abandoned airbase. I read the book. An amazing story about how things went wrong and how great the crew had to be to save it. The movie? Dumb down everything and replace actual events with voiceovers of the characters’ inner thoughts.
A related category is the fake disaster movie that didn’t happen and never will, which just leaves the viewers dumber than they were when they started. “2012”, “Armageddon” and “Gravity” are prime examples. The latter potentially affect perceptions of matters of serious public policy, thus leaving us all worse off for someone else having seen them.
Shrek 4.
pete_plumbs_drivers_license:
That the movie with Courtney Thorne-Smith? I haven’t seen it, but it has one very good reason for existing: providing Norm MacDonald’s funniest talk show moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6dXcW-_Fc
I, Robot.
I honestly do not understand how someone could read Isaac Asimov’s robot stories and then write a screenplay like that.
More cold-water movie stuff you didn’t really care about (but hey, Knowing is Half the Battle, and keeps down the complaints) :)
They didn’t–It was an original script (“Hardwire”), until the producers discovered that the Three Laws of Robotics WASN’T a universally-accepted public-domain tenet of science, but something Isaac Asimov made up for his book.
And it was cheaper to buy the book title outright than pay the estate for each single usage.
Consider yourself lucky: Jeffrey Katzenberg had a whole five-year battleplan leading into “Shrek 6”, but…that was two days before the Third movie had its audience preview. Needless to say, things were wrapped up quickly, and everything we were going to get was neatly squashed into the last half hour in recuts before going straight to the Finale.
I blogged on that subject a year or two ago: https://movieactivist.blogspot.com/2017/05/may-6-2017-capes-of-wrath-today.html
The folks that go around claiming “I’m so SICK of superhero movies!” aren’t really sick of them all, they’re sick of the saturation–The kind caused when one company creates a craze by producing their own in-house product, that one bit of home-cooking they’ve specialized in making for twenty years, and making it look so new and easy, everyone wants to have a bash at it…We saw the exact same thing with slasher movies in the 80’s, Disney-musical knockoffs in the 90’s, and bad CGI comedies in the 00’s. Not everyone can do it, of course, but the novelty is so new, it takes to public several years to discover that there ARE other people doing it. If you think it took us long enough to discover that the Pixar who made “Toy Story” was not the Dreamworks who made “Shrek”, it took us almost that long to discover that a different studio besides Disney was the one turning Batman and Superman into such loony depressing crap. And the X-Mens and Spidermans were even different ones too, even though they still had the big red logo and a Stan Lee cameo in them.
Thing is, even once we do realize that the whole problem is the cheap saturating imitators, for some reason, we never blame the imitators–Our childlike impulse is to blame “the guy who started it!”, and make him pay for “doing this to us!”. Despite the fact that The Guy Who Was Started It was technically the experienced guy who was doing it right, and made it look too easy in the first place.
I agree, except for that last line. Rogue One was good. I’d add that most films made after the late 1990s are all a waste of resources.
IMOP it would have to be Scream and Scream Again (1970).
Also stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
Awful. Like Castle of Fu Manchu bad. Like three Horror greats couldn’t save it bad.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scream_and_Scream_Again
My son made a good point when I mentioned that I thought Rogue One was ok… his question: “Can you name one character?”
I couldn’t.
Gare
Psycho (1998)
A shot for shot remake of the original. Why? WHY?!
Jyn Erso. I’ve only seen it once. I need to see it again (I own it; it would be easy). My favorite Rogue One-related story? The little girl who went to a Star Wars convention dressed as Jyn Erso and gave “data cards” to every Princess Leia she saw. https://news.avclub.com/tiny-jyn-erso-gives-death-star-plans-to-every-princess-1798261142
Back on topic: I generally don’t mind most movies, even if I find them boring, dumb, etc. (I do watch a lot of MST, after all). But Dracula 2000 is the only movie I stopped out of anger. It was right at the end, but I’d finally had enough when the “twist” was revealed. I’d already suffered through atrocious acting, cheesy effects, a nonsensical story, etc., and my defenses were finally worn down.
I attempt to 1-up you with TINIEST REY *EVER*! https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/143/603/a76.jpg