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polexia
Hottest Unattractive Nerdboy Type: Lee Ingleby
Ugliest Man in History: Jack Nicholson and his love child with himself, Christian Slater
Hottest Dwarf: Peter Dinklage
Prime Time Shows I'm Currently Watching: Breaking Bad, Dexter, Shameless
Whatever Happened To: Barrett Oliver -- dreadlocks.
RIP Elliott Spiers. You're missed.
I joined the IMDB on April 4, 2000 but I forgot the password to my previous account. (and I don't have that email anymore so lost password just doesn't work!) Also, the new board changed my second reg date which was actually Mon Sep 11 19:51:39 2000. Not the 12th. I had 1092 posts at the point we switched to these new blue and grey boards. (I keep mine set to the Old IMDB Boards theme!) UPDATE July 11, 2013: New boards added and they took out the option to use the old yellow boards theme.
Previous Sigs: &You're not the boss of me now and you're not so big!& (Malcolm in the Middle/They Might Be Giants)
And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight. (The Royal Tennenbaums)
To 11/29 :Don't threaten ME with a dead fish! - Withnail & I
To 7/20/10:There is only light, my light, my naked light, my gift to you all. Experience my bliss. - posted by vorakam24 in the V (2009) boards. Had to take out some of it to make it fit.
To November 7, 2015:
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
(In memory of Elliott Spiers)
Current Sig: I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose. Fire away, fire away.
Most Recent Post: Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) Re: Alice the Ship Captain Thu Jan 19 2017 12:05
The above post is my 2794th post on
36
these boards. I'll update on occasion
just to keep track.
reg: 4/4/00 | posts: 2758
For some reason this thread is missing from the Shameless board. Threads seem to be going missing without even a placeholder to say they were removed.
"Shameless" (2011) Re: the
american lip is soo ugly Sat Jan
1 2011 19:09
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1586680/board/flat/172898178?d=176047322#176047322
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Curse of the Elephant Man (2003)
Almost completely worthless, badly written, full of hyperbole
I expected to actually learn something in this documentary, but aside from getting to see some of Joseph Merrick's family members and at the VERY END a depiction of what they think he would have looked like had he not been so afflicted, the show really shares next to nothing useful.
The narrator constantly refers to Merrick's disease as a "curse" and I wish I had a dollar for every time he said it. The script is intensely repetitive and even offensive, making it seem like Merrick was supernaturally cursed rather than humanizing him as a person with a disease. They used a lot of hyperbole to create tension and drama "will his entire family be so afflicted? Will they all die horrible deaths like he did? Could the secret to his curse be in his remains? Can we unlock the secret and break the curse that has haunted his family for a century?"
Ugh. It goes on and on.
We get to see his bones, but you can probably do that on You Tube. The whole show keeps asking the question of whether he had neurofibromatosis or Proteus Syndrome and then at the end they slam you with, "Oh we will never know." Yep, they put so much effort in for no payoff. They don't know what disease Merrick had, and they can't find out. But they do tell you over and over that the scientist extracting the genetic material WILL ONLY HAVE ONE CHANCE TO DO IT. *gasp*
The whole show just builds up all this fake tension and then completely lets you down at every turn. They also inexplicably add in a couple of random people's health cases to illustrate I don't know what.
If you're looking for information on Merrick's life, look elsewhere. I think the people who made this movie are just extremely manipulative and needed to constantly fabricate excitement and mystery because they had such little solid information to work with.
Back to the Secret Garden (2000)
Martha the Meanie, Shades of Mrs. Medlock
This is a sequel though not one most dreadful. It was better than I expected, but I expected garbage, so that's not saying too much. The story is basically this: It's 1946 and Lady Mary goes to America to find a little girl to send back to Misselthwaite which has become a home for orphans, inexplicably. The little girl Lizzie conveniently loves working in gardens and sets about finding out why the garden is inexplicably dying. Mary doesn't return to America with Lizzie, inexplicably. We never find out where Archie Craven is or if he'd dead. And is Will Weatherstaff Ben's son or what? I'm an avid fan of The Secret Garden and I own 4 movie versions of it and have seen the Brodway show, not to mention I own a couple of copies of the novel (and the abysmal "sequel" by Susan Moody). That said, there are a few good things about this film: the lead actress Camilla Belle plays her part with sincerity and Florence Hoath (from Fairy Tale) does a great job as her friend at the "school". I quite enjoyed all of the (too few) scenes with a grown Mary Lennox (now Mary Craven, having married her first cousin, Colin. I doubt this would have happened in the early 1900's -- it was already 1911 when the children met. They must have been at least 16 or 17 before marrying which puts them at 1917 or so and during WW1. I'm just not buying it!) The main problem is with Martha Sowerby. She has utterly, completely and mind bogglingly inexplicably lost her Yorkshire accent! I despise how Joan Plowright plays the character (so much like she plays ALL of her characters). Martha could not have grown into that woman! It's like Mary Lennox only backwards. The film is set in 1946, Mary should be about 45. Martha looks at least 60. That means when Mary was 10, Martha was 25. Not buying that, either. The writer killed off Dickon in the war (isn't that convenient?). We see Colin only fleetingly. The show focuses much too much on Martha, who is so unlike the Martha we know from the books that we wonder if this impostor chopped her up and buried her in the garden and that's why it's dying! There's also the just-add-venom antagonist in the form of a Harry Potter clone with a superiority complex. And what's with the magical doors -- one minute it's there and the next it's not and there a new inexplicable "rule" that one needs the key to find the door or something. I might also mention the anachronisms. At one point Lizzie yells to a taunting meanie, "Fine! Be that way!" Did they say that in 1946? It's not a bad film for those who don't know and love The Secret Garden, but for really big fans, I think it's just another disappointment. I'm still waiting for a proper sequel in which Mary marries Dickon. Everyone knows she loves Dickon, not Colin!
All Forgotten (2001)
Story never quite picks up the pace
All Forgotten is a period drama, set in 1900's Russia and starring Kirsten Dunst and Nick Stahl. Stahl's character falls in love with next door neighbor Dunst, but she's too busy toying with much older suitors. The men fall at her feet and she loves it, teasing them endlessly and without shame. Stahl as Vladimir loves his dear Zinaida (Dunst) but is emotionally hindered.
There's a second story in the film concerning a young woman with a small son whose husband is away in the war.
I could not tell where this film was supposed to be set for a while because although the names were Russian, everyone spoke with a British accent. The costumes were lovely, and the landscapes beautiful (filmed entirely in the Czech Republic), but Dunst and Stahl, and everyone else is essentially wasted.
None of the vibrancy Stahl brought to his role in Man Without A Face was evident here in his Vladimir. It was almost as if he were simply walking from mark to mark, delivering his lines woodenly and moving on. He looked very preoccupied. Dunst conveyed the airs of a spoiled young girl who had been given too much too soon, but I found it difficult to really care about her. Although Vladimir is is love with Zinaida, there is no chemistry whatsoever between the actors so the characters are always distanced emotionally.
This is a nice film to watch on a very rainy day, but overall it's a disappointment. The plot never really took off, and I found myself at the end of the film still waiting for the film's point to be made.