Doppelganger 1: I remember The 6th Sense*. The company I was working for was looking to invest. A man came from Hollywood to sell it to us. He ran through the terms. “And what is more,” he added triumphantly to close the deal, “you get two Arnies for the price of one!”
Doppelganger 2: The Man Who Haunted Himself — Roger Moore’s best film by far, in my opinion, though of course the competition isn’t, ahem, great. Perhaps he was good because he was at the beginning of his career, was less self-aware and had something to prove.
Doppelganger 3: Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Under-rated. Catch it if it’s revived.
H
*Arrgh! I mean The 6th Day. Thanks everybody for being kind enough not to point out my error.
That’s the one! That’s the one I mentioned up-thread that spooked me as a kid. Brilliant. It seems it’s pretty hard to get on DVD now - I’m going to have to stalk Amazon Marketplace…
I don’t know; if you didn’t like it then you probably still won’t, as it may now seem even more of a curiosity with the eighties outfits etc. But the writing is superb. Apparently Shepherd was a nightmare to work with and was forever complaining about the scripts, which were 50% longer than normal TV scripts because of the fast-paced dialogue. Although there are a good few episodes that stick out in my mind, it’s hard to say how they would stand up alone as I am only partway into the second series at the moment, and there are five seasons. I wouldn’t like to recommend something from memories that are over twenty years old! If my memory serves, it really took off towards the middle of the second series and then into the third series. The last season - where Shepherd was pregnant, Willis had become McClane and they both really hated each other - was poor. As for the postmodernism… It starts off as a traditional detective series, but with exceptional writing in terms of dialogue. The writers didn’t care for plot much, though - they resolve one early episode with a pie fight and another with Willis throwing the bad guy’s money over the balcony in a mall, at which the bad guy just stops trying to kill them - go figure. And by later series they just had someone from the props department step into frame and remove the gun from the bad guy’s hand. Because as the show went on, it started to “break the fourth wall” more and more. This started off as being fun - the stars reading viewers’ letters out before the credits, the occasional quip about the network in-show, or the great episode where a kid is sent to do his Shakespeare homework instead of watch Moonlighting and imagines the whole plot of The Taming of the Shrew as starring the Moonlighting cast. But I remember getting more and more fed up with the postmodern episodes, and feeling really cheated by the last episode, in which the set is taken down around them and they chase through the studio asking for a reprieve. I’m curious as to whether I will find that more entertaining now, and whether it was just that as a teenager I expected my stories to take themselves more seriously.
Anyway, we somehow seem to have veered off into this thread:
I’ll go over the Moonlighting thread when I have the stomach for it. In the meantime, I’m quite happy to get back to Doppelgangers and SciFi.
Just one thing regarding
You can always count on mainstream media to ruin a good thing - even good writing ends up being coopted by success and turned into a self-defeating formula. The tyranny of what works. Sad.
If we are discussing doppelgängers and idea-based scifi movies, I have to add Primer into the mix – far and away my favorite science fiction film of the last decade or so. Not only is it a mindbending experience (I’ve seen it about 10 times, and am able to track the plot about every other time I see it) it’s a model for how to make a small film. Shane Carruth replaced effects and explosions with ideas, planning and invention, and it works like crazy.
The opening shot of the garage door is worth the price of admission. It’s available as a Netflix stream (in the US, anyway). You should stop working now and watch it.
Primer was mentioned earlier my Mr B. Seeing that it is approved by you I must wonder what I am missing by being the last person on this thread to have seen it. I have a new mission for the weekend.
On a less topical note, how are you these days? Seen any horses lately?
Indeed, I mentioned Primer back in my second post in this - now long! - thread as an example of great ideas sf movies (and one of the best of the past decade), and how they don’t need big budgets. It is indeed a superb film.
My only criticism is the overly simple plot, as demonstrated here:
That’s so true, Keith, particularly XKCD/whatever his/her/its name is.
I watched Primer, having added it to my Lovefilm list based on it being in TimeOut’s 20 ‘Mindbenders’ or somesuch. I didn’t read the preview, or the blurb or anything. I just knew ‘sci fi’ and ‘minbender’. TimeOut on the money. My wife and I watched it for 20 mins, then paused it and turned to each other for a mutual WTF?
We watched it, and then watched it again immediately all the way through with the Director’s narration.
I had ‘it’ for about five seconds. But ‘it’s’ now gone again. Perhaps I should put an earwig in my ear and learn to write left-handed.
The only other film I’ve watched that elicited the same reaction was Memento. I guess time travel (or the equivalent in this case) requires more concentration than other lagers, I mean plots…
Wait! I have seen Primer! I didn’t sleep for a week trying to figure that one out. Mrs banned me from ever watching it again after that week due to the fact that I kept having to go back and forth to figure it out. I’ll have to see if that ban still holds.
As for “sci-fi” v. “fantasy”, Primer and Gattica (sp) make the case that most modern sci-fi is really fantasy. Avatar would then be more of a “real world environmental fairy tale”.
Did I just drag this thread back on topic? That is way out of character. I must not be feeling well.
Spectacle. No one’s spoken up for spectacle. Avatar is spectacle or it’s nothing much. Not surprising, since sci-fi and fantasy are the prime domains of spectacle. Who can forget the impact of the opening shot of the original Star Wars?
I know that one’s not really supposed to be interested in spectacle, that it’s considered a distraction, perhaps sometimes intended as such. A famous guru almost spits out the word — “spec-tac-cul” — and he sees it as the antithesis of story.
But I like an amiable dose of spectacle now and again. I’d prefer it salted with story, theme, voice and characters, but if I can’t have them as well, now and again I’ll take spectacle on its own. Avatar delivered.
Spectacle as a means to an end – as a tool – is all fine and good. But it’s pretty empty as an end in itself. Even “story” as an end in itself is pretty boring in the long run. And besides, it’s not like there’s some great dearth of spectacle nowadays. Tackiness abounds – Avatar was visually impressive, but beautiful?
You will notice The green seat to the right is a pilots seat. The brown seat in the back is a jump seat in the back. You will also notice there is no wall or separation panel dividing the front from the back.
I think that is the “back seat” of the cockpit. In the scene where we see the floating mountains Sully and dork are both in the cockpit looking out. I could be wrong, but I think there is a wall there. A pretty minor point wither way when you consider that at one point Trudy’s windshield is shot full of holes but she manages to not need a rebreather(the holes are patched with tape in her last battle sequence).
Agreed. I was going to bring it up earlier, but I was on the verge of blathering on and didn’t have the energy.
I personally think that decrying Avatar because of its plot issues is not unlike criticizing The Wizard Of OZ because… well, I mean, why didn’t someone tell her that the slippers could get her home right away? And how can someone talk without a brain? And who just up and sings? To paraphrase James Cameron back in the Abyss days, criticizing Avatar because it’s not intellectual Sci Fi is like being hating a roller coaster because it’s not Proust.
(Side note: stopping the movie an hour in and posting online about it is not exactly the immersive experience Cameron intended. =-)
I have no doubt that 2D Avatar on home video is not a huge, life altering moviegoing experience. But – since I’m all similes today – that’s like watching a version of The Godfather that has edited out Brando.
On the Sixth Sense,
Now there’s a film - and a twist - that make no sense whatsoever. The whole of it is enslaved to the plotline. It’s perfectly understandable that an audience should twig a bit late to the fact that he’s dead, that’s the guiding purpose of the film after all. But for Willis to be surprised is just plain retarded.
As we see him sleepwalk through the film, the only interactions we’re shown him having are with the kid. Normal film editing as far as we’re concerned. But for Willis to fail to notice he’s invisible throughout is entire “edited out” life is simply impossible. One assumes he’s taking the bus, getting around, having meals, walking down the street etc etc in the background- all those things we don’t need to see as an audience but he would live as a human or ghost. The movie seems to take place over several days; and those edited-in bits we see give plausible reasons for his lack of interaction with the world, but what about all the other time he spends ghosting around?
Now you might argue that the only moments Willis experiences are the ones we see in the movie. Qu’il n’y a pas de hors-texte. But that would be pretty strange too wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t he stop at some point and say “Hey, how’d I get here? I seem to be living in a fairly tightly edited movie. How weird is that?..maybe I’m dead.”
Like so much of Shyamalan’s work, the entire movie is just an excuse for a surprise twist at the end. Pretty cheap trick.
