Helluloid Cell

There I Was, Fretting

"What can Thursday's blog Intro be about? " because even at 05:37 in the morning the grey matter never stops working.  

     "Let's avoid the usual suspects.  Something different.  Nothing martial or maleficent."

     Well, I realised I had a backlog of film material, so thus we are here.  Art!

     This is a real blast from the past.  Up until recently, cinemas played reels of film through projectors, throwing the image upon a screen.  Each reel of film lasted for ten minutes or so and was about 1,000 feet long.  As one reel was coming to an end, the projectionist would cue up the successor on a different projector, which makes the next tale somewhat suspicious.

     Supposedly, the narrator worked in the projection booth and had cued up a horror film that they had no interest in watching, so they just let it run whilst they stayed in the box office.  Art!

 
     The platter did not engage; this is the disk that re-reels the played celluloid back into a reel again.  Thus there were thousands of feet of unspooled film that had to be rolled back onto the platter by hand.  Which took five hours.

     Nowadays it's all done with hard drives and digital projectors, much handier yet with no romance.  Art!

     You ought to be aware of the Youtube channel 'Terry Talks Movies' as we've mentioned it in the past.  Ol' Tel is an Antipodean from Melbourne who delights in watching and criticising films, especially horror and sci-fi ones, and has recently done a couple of livestreams.  Art!

Luna the cat makes a guest appearance

     'Replacement' as the first one was very glitchy, or so I'm told as I didn't see it.  Conrad was in this one for a good thirty minutes, the whole thing running for just over two hours, which I couldn't manage on a work night.  I did comment about the weather, which you'll have to take on trust as there's no stored Chat on the vlog entry.  Art!

     A collective comparison from Ol' Tel, and Conrad's attention was piqued because, despite it being a colour still from a monochrome film, I recognised - Art!

     The reveal that the 'invaders' are actually faceless robots is rather well done and a nice jump scare, especially considering the whole film's budget makes a shoestring look lavish.  There's also a rather amusing con

     ANYWAY that's us rather jumping the gun.  Let us look at the first film in this selection.  Art!

     Quite a genre mashup I think you'll agree, resulting in one of those uneasy miscegenations, a horror Western.  Ol' Tel seems to think it worth a watch, mainly because it's played dead straight, no camp poisons present, so Your Humble Scribe may have to indulge in a view if it crops up on Netflix.  Plus, as I know you want to see a bit of Frankenstein action - Art!

     Going by the principle of Chekov's Gun, all that delicate glass laboratory ware was always destined to be shattered apart in a fist fight.  Sorry, what's that?  O the plot.  Jesse James, in the dark clothing above, and Hank, the big lunk with the stitched head, meet up with Frankenstein's grand-daughter.  She's on a bender kidnapping people and replacing their brains, to turn them into slaves.  Hey, everyone needs a hobby.  At the end only Jesse and the infant Juanita survive, and he rides off into the sunset.  Art!

     I see the latest French fashions in hats have arrived this year.

     

     Now that we've got that out of the way, time for FILM REVIEWS!

     Since we've not done these for a while, let me recap:  we go solely by the title, perhaps also taking into consideration the colour palette of the bus poster, take things verrrry literally and may break any of these rules if we feel like it.  Art!

Props for using a chainsaw

EVIL DEAD BURN:  Another dodgy attempt to reboot the franchise, hmmm?  You can tell this is at the verrrry least a sinister film, thanks to the colour palette being all black, yellow and red.  O dear, was it 'inspired by'?  Number 6 in a franchise that ought not to have gotten beyond 2.  If they want to keep the 'Evil Dead' franchise alive, bring back the television series.  One is minded of 'Drag Me To Hell'.  Except it's not a horror film if it the evil can be defeated by a CO₂ fire extinguisher.  Art!

TOY STORY 5: Another franchise that has outstayed it's welcome.  One for the kids, going by the colours.  Let me crunch a few numbers.  The production budget was $250 million, with at least another $100 million for promotion, advertising and distribution.  That's a tidy $750 million.  The film itself turned $1 billion at the box office, meaning $500 million profit, so - still in the red.  Unsurprising as it's the most expensive animated film ever made.  Conrad suspects the law of diminishing returns is in effect here.  The loss will be partially balanced by merchandising, but Conrad isn't sure what amount that will be.  You never know, getting a tanking like this might put a part 6 into limbo forever.  Art!

Haven't seen it.  Not missing much.

DUTTON RANCH: More of cowboys.  This poster came with a pair of headshots of people I don't recognise, and Conrad, in his wisdom, is guessing that this is a spin-off from 'Yellowstone', which must be popular with people who like Yogi Bear and the wide open spaces.  Art!

Beef, bears and Barbours

SUPERGIRL: Various critical thunderbolts have been out on this one for a while, and coming to it late like this means we get to see what the long-term box office take is.  Art!

A heroine for the ages

 

Or not

     So, on the 50% rule it's made $62 million profit, on a budget at least three times larger, so Conrad can confidently predict there won't be a 'Supergirl 2'.  Who knew that audiences wouldn't flock to see a sulky, petulant drunken protagonist!  Art?

DISCLOSURE DAY:  Some have described this as a sequel to another of Steven Speilberg's previous films, the name of which escapes me, and I cannot be bothered to look it up.  Sue me.  It's about aliens and shizzle, and stars the rather delicious Emily Blunt.  I thought the poster was her face behind a broken opaque mask, but - Art!

     Once you see that it's the outline of a finch it's hard to unsee , and I was helped to see this by an animated finch that appeared over my Google search.  Very clever, yet it still didn't compel me to watch the film.  Is that flipping the bird?

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2:  Art!

     I haven't watched 'The Devil Wears Prada' because it concerns fashion and I care less for that than I do about the ballfoot game.  To be honest I have no idea what 'Prada' is, perhaps bespoke garden trowels? so I can't give even a fig stalk about the second iteration.

The Belles Of Hell

By whom I mean Greta Nissen and Jean Harlow, who were the female leads in "Hell's Angels", Greta only until Jean replaced her when the film became a 'talkie' from a silent.  Art!

     In glorious monochrome.

     That's not where things end, though.  You see, I came across another version of HA, one that has been rendered in colour.  Art!

     This process is a lot easier to do now that people can utilise the processing power of a computer; back in the day they used to hand-tint the celluloid, frame by frame, which in the case of HA would have meant doing it for 11,000 feet.

     Which is where we came in.