Be Excellent To Each Other

That's my main issue, really. I miss subtleties of personal interaction because I'm looking at the bottom of the screen.

I get why it doesn't bother many people, but to me it's an immersion-breaker.

o/

YMMV I suppose, personally I find that it takes such a tiny amount of time to register what the text is, it doesn't disrupt the film or how I watch it at all.

I find that after about 5 minutes of a subtitled movie, I forget that I'm reading the dialogue at all. I have a vivid memory of watching Pan's Labyrinth in english, but I know, for a fact, that it was subtitled when I watched it.

\o

what does YMMV stand for?

Your mum's magic vagina

'Your mileage may vary'.

It's a sort of catch-all for 'different people experience things in different ways' - very profound if you ask me.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=YMMV

Although that would be better.

Your mums moist vulva.

Young Malia Moistens Virgins

I've still got currency, boyo.

Nightwatch got it "most right".

I see this has a Land Rover, so I'm on it.

Død Snø is possibly comparable to this and the subtitles did not detract from my enjoyment a bit. I like hearing the foreign, especially if I can understand a little bit. Same goes for Wallander, The Killing, The Kingdom.. etc.

Downloading now.

I can take subtitles if I am in the mood for it, but often I just can't be bothered, it does take more effort, and if I'm tired or had a busy day, then it's just not worth it.

But then I wouldn't watch any type of intelluctual film when I was in that mood...

Malc

Dead Snow is fucking awesome!

DAMMIT what a load of crap that was

Honestly GY, you've got a lot of explaining to do.

There's absolutely nothing good whatsoever I have to say about this film, save for the fact it's finished now and I never have to watch it again.

EDIT - Actually, the quality of the Blu-Ray transfer was truly superb, delivering stunning picture quality (substantially better than a DVD) at under 3GB for a 100 minute film. That at least, is impressive.

It has a man hunting trolls with a stick. And a land rover. I'm sold .

You're making it sound a lot better than it is.

I think we might watch this tomorrow, should I be worried? What do others think of it?

I watched the first 70 minutes last night, and I was really gripped, someone described it as blair witch/cloverfield but in Norwegian, and I guess this next bit might be spoilers if you are fussy:



Malc

No, I've explained why I think it's good - let's hear why you think it isn't. Does he not hunt trolls? Are there not students filming him? Is it not Norwegian?

It's damn good. It is a fairly light, knowing, humorous film - no Blair Witch. Although the creature effects are definitely on the cheap and laughable side, the film has plenty of cool bits to make up for it, there is some tension and the characters are pretty good - especially the Troll Hunter. He leaves nothing wanting in that role. He hunts Trolls.
It's refreshing to see a monster film that isn't zombies or vampires for a change, too.

I love all the driving about Norway scenes, as I have done a fair bit of that myself. Also, a bit of nostalgia for the knackered old 110 County which features heavily, as my dad used to have one when I was little.


So yeah, I totally disagree with AE. It may be worth bearing in mind that he is someone who watches things like Serbian Film and Human Caterpillar for fun: if you're looking out for a terrifying visceral horror movie, this ain't it.

ALL that said, I have a bone to pick with GY over his previous recommendation. I can't remember the title, but it was a bunch of annoying Alaskans (including at least one character from Northern Exposure) battling $generic_evil using CB radio and trucks and dumbness. It was vastly, irritatingly poor. I can't even remember what the $generic_evil was, now.

What was it GY? Don't make me go and look!

I've just googled that and read about it on wikipedia. I fucking really wish I hadn't now, it's absolutely disgusting, and I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to watch it, let alone enjoy watching it.

No, it's not torture porn, it's a troll hunting film.

Well, quite. There is a whole thread about it on here, which is how I (regrettably) knew about it.

30 days of night?

No, that's good.

Dammit. What was it called?

Was it Ghostbusters II?

Shut up. I've wasted 10 minutes googling it now: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1331335/

WYVERN. GY, you're a massive wronger, that film was dire.

Woah there chaps, I'm all for debate and discussion, but let's at least make a vague effort to represent the facts when cussing up another BEEXer eh?

1) I've never seen Human Centipede (at least get the fucking name right) and I don't believe I've ever so much as mentioned it here at BEEX (or anywhere online for that matter). Indeed, I've specifically made no effort to acquire either the original or its (outright banned by the BBFC) sequel Human Centipede 2, because by all accounts they're a couple of deliberately gross-out and juvenile snoozefests with no redeeming story, characterisation, or morality.

2) Which makes them completely different from A Serbian Film, about which I said the following here at BEEX (oh the wonders of search!):

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5618&p=458630&hilit=serbian+film#p458630 -

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5618&p=487768&hilit=serbian+film#p487768 -

and:



In summary, I've never watched Human Centipede at all, and I've never stated or implied that I've watched A Serbian Film for 'fun' and/or derived any enjoyment from it.

In fact, I actually said the complete opposite to that.

Outright lying about someone or a distortion of the truth so total that it's tantamount to lying isn't very nice chaps, so please don't do it in future.

Cheers!

I think I'm glad that someone can make a film like 'A Serbian Film', but not keen on watching it. If that makes any sense at all.

AE, no need to go off the deep end. I specifically remembered you writing a lot about it, including "highly recommending" it, as your quote above does show. You also said in the recent "internet wtf" thread that you are into that type of stuff, and defended it somewhat, so I don't think that was too wide of the mark but apologies if it looks like I've branded you as the antichrist, or whatever

I certainly wasn't 'cussing you up', just pointing out why this film if billed as a "horror" isn't in the remotely same category as the horror you watch, which I assumed was the reason you didn't rate it. Seeing as you didn't elaborate.

FWIW I agree with the sentiment of some things you wrote although I'll still say I won't be watching it and am all that keen on reading about it, nor the sort of video nasties / real life nasties you described in the wtf thread.

Anyway, "for fun" retracted - sorry.

AE: Sorry if I've caused you offence, I thought I was being careful enough to use 'anyone' rather than 'AE'.

And most of what Kalmar said, he's far more erudite than me at times.




It sits somewhat uncomfortably with me. But that's another story for another day.

Find the bit where I said that I was 'into' the type of stuff described on the internet wtf thread. It's OK, I can wait.

No prob Mali, and to you and Kalmar I did go off at the deep end so my apologies. It's just that I generally can't post to BEEX during the day (yesterday I was on leave so it was an exception) so I was a bit narked to get home, log in and see the suggestion that I was the kind of person who would actually derive enjoyment from A Serbian Film.

I defend it as a highly effective and stunningly powerful piece of work, but enjoyable it is not, as I made very clear.

I really liked Troll Hunter. Thought it was bloody fantastic.

Hang on, AE - given that in your own quote of yourself above you describe A Serbian Film as a "good film" you can see why people might assume that you enjoyed it, no?

Also, in the "wtf" thread, you certainly seemed to give the impression that you at least went through a stage of watching wtf stuff voluntarily, which also has its own implications.

Less so with "wtf" internet stuff, perhaps, but you can certainly easily take the view that people watch films specifically for enjoyment, and a "good film" is one that you enjoyed watching. As opposed to something truly horrific an unforgivable, like, say, Transformers 3.

Not having a go, but you can see why Kalmar (and others, me included) may have come to the conclusions that he did above.

OK then, Troll Hunter, and why it's shit - will be spoilerific so if you haven't yet sunk 90 minutes of your life that you'll never get back into this dreary piece of crap, please be advised that they would be far better spent slowly masturbating over a picture of Paul Daniels whilst playing Metallica's 'Fade to Black' on a loop.

THE SHITNESS - CONTAINS SPOILERS

1) The premise. It's real footage, wow, that's highly original and whilst Blair Witch just about managed to pull it off in the early days of the 'mass-market' web, today it's just boring and pretty much says from the off 'This is a cheap-ass knock-off film and we didn't have much money.' Unfortunately they didn't have the cleverness to pull it off either.

2) The pacing. Slow and deliberate is fine if it's actually building tension, or explaining things, or developing the characters. Here it's just flat out slow, and whilst Norway looks lovely in the film, there's only so much of it you need to see. Especially the bits where they're just driving around at night.

3) The characters. Or rather, the lack of characters. Three faceless non-entities we have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST IN WHATSOEVER and are given no reason to care about them, be intrigued by them, want to see them succeed or fail, or indeed form any sort of emotional attachment with at all. Will they live or die? Who cares? The director and scriptwriter certainly didn't seem to think it was important.

4) No identifiable goodies and baddies. The trolls are sort of the bad guys, but ultimately they're just dumb trolls who aren't being particularly evil or malevolent, they just do what trolls do. The troll hunter himself explains in tedious detail how thick they are, as such they have no motivations behind their actions and therefore we're not overly bothered about them as baddies. As for the goodies, the troll hunter himself is the only character in the film who's given any sort of presence, but even there we're told precious little about where he came from, why he's doing what he does, and what his motivations are. He's just a civil servant who kills trolls, by all accounts.

5) The humour. It doesn't work, there isn't any of note, I didn't crack a smile at any point. There were a couple of bits that seemed to think they might be trying to be funny, but they weren't - and it spoiled the efforts the film was otherwise making to present itself seriously.

6) The logic gaps. The government guys who leave the film makers alone despite saying NO FILMING all the time, the way the troll hunter refuses to have anything to do with them at the start and then spills his guts about everything. The pointless rabies idea that doesn't add anything to the story at all, apart from demonstrate that the super giant troll is apparently more mental than the other mental trolls, which they all are anyway.

7) The ending. There isn't one, it's a total 'nothing' of an ending, perhaps intended to imply what was happening or what had happened, but since the whole premise of the film was a load of cobblers in the first place, it's just a case of 'WTF?'

8 ) EVEN THE TROLL HUNTING IS RUBBISH. He flashes a fancy camera at them and they either explode or turn to stone depending on how old they are and what level of Vitamin D deficiency they have. Seriously. The Land Rover has a bigger camera flash on it.

9) The trolls are too big, which makes the notion of 'hunting' them as such impossible.

10) Subtitled films are automatically rubbish.

OBJECTION - (1) "Blair Witch" didn't manage to carry it off, because Blair Witch came across as EXACTLY what it was - a bunch of twatty acting students improvising in a forest.

Sorry, off topic, but I fucking hated that overrated heap of shite.

(10) touched on earlier, but subtitles are absolutely right when the alternative is dubbed. I bought a film with rave reviews, Stalingrad, but the only version available here is fucking dubbed. I can't watch it.

It's like Ghost in the Shell or Akira - if you watch it dubbed it's just not right. You don't get the same range in the voice acting from the low rent no mark dubbers over here.

I agree with you about Blair Witch as a film, but it was a clever idea that managed to ride 'web word of mouth' at the time.

As for subtitles, I think you missed the point dude. I have no problems with subtitled films at all which is exactly what I said earlier in this thread, it was a silly way to try and fill the No 10 slot.

Mehhhhh, I really don't think it was that clever an idea, to be honest. The fakeumentary thing had already been done, in things like Cannibal Holocaust.



ah, sorry.

I'm just a subtitle purist so couldn't help but jump in - I realise a lot of the conversation was people like Craster being wrong, but you were the last to mention it.

I described it as 'unbearably brutal', 'fucking horrible', I said I'd never recommend it as a good watch, and that the ending reduced me to tears.

I also linked to the director's statement and said it explained my feelings about it better than I could.

That statement contains:



Seriously, you got that I enjoyed the film from any of that?

"GOOD". "FILM". Implications thereof.

I appreciate with some forms of cinematic "entertainment" the words "good", "entertain" and "enjoy" may be inappropriate (50s musicals, for instance, where "rapture" is more like it), but come on, you really can't see why people might infer that you enjoyed it? Why the doogly dangly did you watch it all the way through if you weren't enjoying it? If you weren't enjoying it, surely you'd rather have been doing something else and, you know, gone and done that instead?

It's like people who look at modern art. Yes, it may be "challenging" or "unpleasant", but they're still doing it because they enjoy it.

Unless they're all masochists, which I guess isn't outside the realms of possibility.

Kindly, I can see where Kissyfur is coming from.

I found A Serbian Film to be gruelling and increasingly unpleasant, the last 30-40 minutes of it particularly so.

It was cleverly constructed in that it started off pretty gently, and spent a lot of time and effort developing the characters and giving the viewer an emotional investment in the protagonists, so when it started to turn dark, I was interested to find out what happened, it had made me care about Milos and his family and whilst I found what played out horrifying and dreadful, I was determined to see it out to the end.

Enjoyment is defined as 'giving or capable of giving joy or pleasure', A Serbian Film gave me neither. I watched it mostly because the negative press about it had piqued my interest as it was clear there was more going on than the media were giving it credit for, and that turned out to be correct. I'm not sorry I watched it, but the idea that anyone of sound mind would enjoy some of the horrors that were played out in the final sequences is bizarre.

I watch films for a variety of reasons, as odd as it might sound one of my base criteria isn't necessarily to 'enjoy' it. In fact, I didn't enjoy Troll Hunter at all (albeit for very different reasons), and I still watched that to the end. In fact, I almost never stop watching a film halfway through (I'm actually having a hard time thinking of when I've ever done it), if I'm not enjoying it for a variety of reasons, I'll almost always see it out to the end once I've made a decision to watch something.

I kind of feel the same way about A Serbian Film as this guy does:

http://www.fearnet.com/news/reviews/b18 ... _film.html

All three Ghost in the Shell films were rightly praised for their English dubbing.

Really? I found the dubbing in the first one, at least, to be distracting. I haven't seen the latter two films (and nor was I aware of their existence, actually - thanks! I've got some Amazon money left to spend), although I've seen about half of series 1. The dubbing in the series is pretty gosh darned bad. Not as bad as in, say Blood: The Last Vampire or Urotsukidoji (sp?!?), but still.

I've always meant to watch 'Ghost in the Shell', but haen't. And the dubbing on 'Stalingrad' is terrible.