Cult Films - Page 2

DanWilde1966 · 11-09-2004, 13:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike

Again, apologies for being aggressive. I did genuinely enjoy your observations and I agree with a lot more than I disagree with

Don't worry about it.

To be honest, Heaven's Gate is a film which really does set the cat amongst the pigeons. I go back to what I said - I do need to look at it again. I have an un-chipped DVD player (with no special code to open up multi-region mode), so I'll have to wait for the film to appear on R2. I suspect it's one of the films DVD was made for...

Guest 29 · 11-09-2004, 13:38

Same with Blade Runner - not an especially popular film on its first release, but one which has grown in reputation and popularity largely due to the advocacy of its cult following.

Always amazes me to think that when I first saw this at the ABC Shaftsbury Avenue in 1982, there were 3 people in the audience - and one of them left halfway through. Similar story with John Carpenter's "The Thing" around the same time - about seven people in the cavernous Empire for the Saturday matinee.

DanWilde1966 · 11-09-2004, 13:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike

Same with Blade Runner - not an especially popular film on its first release, but one which has grown in reputation and popularity largely due to the advocacy of its cult following.

Always amazes me to think that when I first saw this at the ABC Shaftsbury Avenue in 1982, there were 3 people in the audience - and one of them left halfway through. Similar story with John Carpenter's "The Thing" around the same time - about seven people in the cavernous Empire for the Saturday matinee.

This brings back memories. I saw Blade Runner in 1982 at the Bracknell ABC (long since closed down), and I saw The Thing, in the same year, in Reading. The audience for the former was indeed small; the audience for the latter was so-so, but I was in heaven: it was certificated "X", and as a 16 year-old, I'd got in on the basis of looking a lot older. It was a joyous time for going to the movies, with lots of great movies coming out by the week, it seemed...

John Hodson · 12-09-2004, 14:35

I had a great 'I'll get me coat' moment walking out of 2001 - A Space Odessey. As we trooped out midst a stunned silence - obviously in reverence for what we had just witnessed - I turned to the future Mrs H and said: 'Wasn't that fantastic?' To a man, they stopped and stared at me wondering what kind of pitiful cretin I was...

Quote:

I suggest you look at Steven Bach�s fantastic 1985 book Final Cut. It is arguably the greatest book by anyone on modern Hollywood filmmaking

The book gave me the distinct impression that nobody came out of that mess with any real credit, certainly not Bach or his fellow 'suits', lending creedence to William Goldman's Heller-esque mantra that, indeed, nobody knows anything.

Quote:

Heaven's Gate is a film which really does set the cat amongst the pigeons. I go back to what I said - I do need to look at it again. I have an un-chipped DVD player (with no special code to open up multi-region mode), so I'll have to wait for the film to appear on R2. I suspect it's one of the films DVD was made for...

Amen to that; Heaven's Gate was in the first batch of R1 discs I bought, what now seems like an eternity ago.

anephric · 13-09-2004, 07:53

Heaven's Gate is, to me, Cimino's most interesting film (you can have the reactionary posturings of The Deer Hunter, which is a beautiful film to look at, but an unpalatable film to digest).

It has a massive problem with longeurs, though (Cimino seems to hold shots and scenes until the very last possible moment of any interest (subjectively) and in some cases well beyond (the roller-skating sequence).

What's most beautiful (in a halcyon sense) and simultaneously depressing is that it's the film which killed (not entirely singularly but in a kind of entente with Sorceror and Nickelodeon etc) the golden age of 70s "free" Hollywood through its excesses and ushered in a fiscal 1980s devoid of any interest (because of producers and studios willing to back anything of interest).

I love it, but I'm not really fond of anything else of Cimino's.

Guest 29 · 13-09-2004, 11:57

To expand the point made above, and to be fair to Cimino, it was probably more the last straw than the only offender - "1941", "Big Wednesday", "New York New York" and the disastrous failure of Altman's films made for Fox in a deal which gave him remarkable freedom (especially "Quintet") had a cumulative effect which "Heaven's Gate" seemed to bring into focus.