Watching the first Zodiac killer movie, made in 1971. "Loosely based" doesn't even come close to describing this. Super amateurish sensationalism and entertaining on that level. Fun fact: it was made chiefly in the hope that the real killer wouldn't be able to resist seeing it and that he'd somehow give himself away at a showing.
I would never have done that, yelled the Zodiac Killer.
A-ha! Said the undercover cop for that night's screening
Policing at it's best
Re: movies
Posted: 13 Nov 2017, 10:28am
by JennyB
I thought the case was solved and that Ted Cruz is Zodiac?
Watching the first Zodiac killer movie, made in 1971. "Loosely based" doesn't even come close to describing this. Super amateurish sensationalism and entertaining on that level. Fun fact: it was made chiefly in the hope that the real killer wouldn't be able to resist seeing it and that he'd somehow give himself away at a showing.
That was a creative kill, I'll give them that.
Re: movies
Posted: 13 Nov 2017, 9:47pm
by Dr. Medulla
Somehow I've never actually seen more than a few minutes of this before, but it's on a movie channel and I am utterly smitten. There are plenty of ways to criticize it, but I prefer to submit to the romance of bravery and achievement. Especially considering that all seven grew up during the Great Depression, a time of great anxiety and loss of national confidence, and take part in what is arguably their nation's supreme act of success. Hell, I can even overlook Dennis Quaid's presence (tho he has a massively creepy smile—like Nicholson's Joker).
Re: movies
Posted: 16 Nov 2017, 7:46pm
by Dr. Medulla
So I'm reading this book on The Manchurian Candidate, particularly a chapter that deals with with Ben Marco (Sinatra) meeting Rosie (Leigh) on a train. That scene has generated a shit ton of analysis because it's unclear who Rosie is and what her intentions are. Greil Marcus and Roger Ebert argued that she's a communist agent—more precisely, she's Marco's controller—each pointing to odd dialogue that suggest she's activating his programming. The authors of this book argue that she's a variation of Eleanor Iselin (Lansbury), who has an incestuous relationship with her son. That is, Rosie simultaneously wants to mother Marco and to be his lover. Worse, she is the sexual aggressor in it all (that is, she acts more like a man than he does). Okay, maybe.
But my reading of that scene has been that it's a lot simpler and more clever than others'. She is, in fact, an innocent bystander to this conspiracy, a genuinely decent person who is concerned about a strange man who is troubled, but the audience has been primed to suspect everyone and so we assume her to be part of the plot. That's the unfunny joke, that creating a climate of suspicion makes everyone both monitor and suspect, character and audience alike. When we look at Rosie and start looking for proof that she's guilty of something sinister—she can't just be a decent individual—we act out how easy it was for McCarthyism to take hold. Establish that there are traitors in our midst and we will multiply their numbers with our own imagination. I think this reading makes the scene/her character far more powerful than her being yet another subverter. Isn't it more significant to implicate the audience?
Goddamn but I love that movie. For the years I've said that Talk Radio is my favourite movie—big surprise that I'm attracted to a story about self-destruction—but maybe The Manchurian Candidate is actually my favourite.
Re: movies
Posted: 17 Nov 2017, 8:40pm
by Dr. Medulla
This is on a movie channel right now, so I have it on in the background. I don't think I'm being unfair for not giving it greater attention. The premise is that the Zodiac made home movies of his crimes and fifty years later they are discovered, leading to some trailer park amateur detectives to track him down. Turns the Zodiac story into a lazy crazy killer story with zero tension. I like the 1971 flick better in terms of Zodiac schlock.
Re: movies
Posted: 18 Nov 2017, 8:41pm
by Kory
Finally watched Summer of Sam and found Adrian Brody's appearance as a punk rocker totally accurate.
It seemed to me that Spike wasn't trying to be accurate, he was trying to make the character an obvious poser. Am I misreading it?
Oh definitely, of course he's supposed to be a poseur. But it's so completely off-base that he's less a poseur than a complete idiot. It'd get the point across for him, this Brooklyn(?) kid to just speak in Dick Van Dyke cockney after spending a couple months in the UK. It'd be like a movie set in the early 90s where a Limey comes back from New York claiming to be into PE and sings Lionel Richie songs. It's totally farcical in a film that isn't otherwise (intentionally) dumb.
Policing at it's best
