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Brazil

London_Calling said:
Fisher King:


I'd guess he had to prove he could behave himself with a budget after his excesses, otherwise the gig was over.
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In all fairness to Gilliam the budget overruns on Brazil and Muenchhausen weren't entirely his fault. His films are frequently plagued by bad luck. As Lost in La Mancha showed, the stories behind the production of his films are often as extraodenary as the films themselves.

To me The Fisher King (and Twelve Monkeys) shows that he is best when his tendency towards excess gets reigned in a bit.
 
Reno said:
In all fairness to Gilliam the budget overruns on Brazil and Muenchhausen weren't entirely his fault. His films are frequently plagued by bad luck.
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Though if he'd actually had a script for his Don Quixote film he'd have perhaps done himself a favour.
 
Last time this was on tele it was billed in the adverts as a DeNiro film. He's hardly in it!

I thought it were great, lovely dystopian claustrophobic feel to it. But TVland people billing it as a Deniro thing, presumably to sucker in people who wouldn't normally watch such a film, is irritating
 
Brazil is one of my favourite films - dark, disturbing, beautiful, moving and breathtakingly imaginative. Yes it throws loads at you - but I like that manic intestity and it also means it bares repeated viewing.

It always anoys me that Blade Runnder (boring, wooden acting, crap dialouge) gets singled out for being a 'groundbreaking, dystoipian vision' and all that when Brazil (which came out only a few years after and pisses all over it) gets ignored.

Gilliam's best film alongside Time Bandits.

12 Monkeys also very good.

Fisher King - far more pedestrian.
 
Kaka Tim said:
Brazil is one of my favourite films - dark, disturbing, beautiful, moving and breathtakingly imaginative. Yes it throws loads at you - but I like that manic intestity and it also means it bares repeated viewing.

It always anoys me that Blade Runnder (boring, wooden acting, crap dialouge) gets singled out for being a 'groundbreaking, dystoipian vision' and all that when Brazil (which came out only a few years after and pisses all over it) gets ignored.

Gilliam's best film alongside Time Bandits.

12 Monkeys also very good.

Fisher King - far more pedestrian.
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you so missed the point of that film. The dystopian rain-soaked desperation is fantastic.

Still horses for courses n all that
 
Kaka Tim said:
Blade Runnder (boring, wooden acting, crap dialouge) gets singled out for being a 'groundbreaking, dystoipian vision' and all that when Brazil (which came out only a few years after and pisses all over it) gets ignored.
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The story behind Ford's wooden monolog is that they called him back in to do the narration and he didn't want to do it. He spitefully made it a dull monotone so that it would be unusable, but they used it anyway. Personally i think it makes the film as it fits in with the despair in the film.

Shame they cut it for the directors cut and that you can't get the theatrical cut on DVD due to a legal fight about who owns it.

Bladerunner is great.

Of course its ground breaking as it was the first to do it. You can't complain that something isn't aclaimed for being ground breaking when it follows in another's footsteps.
 
Donna Ferentes said:
Extraordinary images.
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Yes - but the dialouge and the performances are stilted (this goes for the directors cut as well). Im not saying its a crap film - but thats its something of a sacred cow. Wheras Brazil generally gets filed under 'interesting but flawed'. I aslo find Bladerunner lacking in any warmth - its cold and self conciously 'arty'. Brazil aches with loss and desire.
 
Kaka Tim said:
It always anoys me that Blade Runnder (boring, wooden acting, crap dialouge) gets singled out for being a 'groundbreaking, dystoipian vision' and all that when Brazil (which came out only a few years after and pisses all over it) gets ignored.
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They're immature, emotionally stunted robots. What are you expecting, Vince Vega & Jules Winfield? Hardly surprising that the film that comes up with a ground-breaking set of visuals first does tend to be remembered.

Blade Runner is about memory, free will, the effects of violence, mortality and what it means to be human. Brazil is basically(and yes, I'm paraphrasing): "bureaucracy is boring and bad, no-one really wants to work in an office, and we all have dreams". With the sets from Metropolis.

You've opened a can o' worms here, KT...
 
I'd be disappointed if it did have warmth.
Why does everything have to have warmth and a happy ending?

The lack of warmth is to emphasis the question who is more human? Humans or the machines?

Do we know who all the androids are or not? That is meant to be in doubt too.
 
Marius said:
I keep hearing a rumour that he is going to do Pratchett's Good Omens but it never seems to materialise in any way.
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That's a perpetual rumour started perpetually to keep all us film/book geeks in perpetual wank mode, I'm afraid.
 
Kaka Tim said:
Yes - but the dialouge and the performances are stilted (this goes for the directors cut as well). Im not saying its a crap film - but thats its something of a sacred cow. Wheras Brazil generally gets filed under 'interesting but flawed'. I aslo find Bladerunner lacking in any warmth - its cold and self conciously 'arty'. Brazil aches with loss and desire.
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I like what you call it's stiltedness, the idea was to have the actors speak and act like they were from a 40's film noir. I always found Blade Runner rather moving, especially Rachel's realisation that she is a replicant, which is understated rather than obviously.

Brazil did the whole 40's-retro future thing a few years after Blade Runner and one reason I'm not that fond of the film is that I had seen that whole thing done before and better a couple of years earlier in Blade Runner. Design wise Brazil struck me as derivative.
 
12 monkeys fer me .....

When this film originally did the rounds in the cinema , there was a short "B" film (god ... remember those !) about some accountants doing a hostile takeover of another company .... in this case the whole building (skyscraper) moved and they were firing cannons out the window at the target company ... bit like Nelsons cannon decks on the Victory , except the ammunition was office stationary )

I think it was a Hand made shorty by one of the Pythons , but I've never seen it since ! well surreal !

Blade Runner is far better without the monolog ....... methinks .... the voice over was due to a worry by the money men ,that yer ave cinema punter would be too stupid to understand what was happening ....

DotCommunist
you so missed the point of that film. The dystopian rain-soaked desperation is fantastic
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Port Talbot at night was the inspiration of the start of blade runner..
Scott spent some time as a nipper in Wales ... isn't it..!
 
I thought the mood of dispassionate distancing – like (maybe) walking around a shopping mall in a Valium induced haze – was perfect for Bladerunner. I felt the sound was so key to that end.
 
Tankus said:
Port Talbot at night was the inspiration of the start of blade runner..
Scott spent some time as a nipper in Wales ... isn't it..!
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The ICI plant at Middlesbrough, I believe - Ridley Scott's from South Shields.
 
Tankus said:
When this film originally did the rounds in the cinema , there was a short "B" film (god ... remember those !) about some accountants doing a hostile takeover of another company .... in this case the whole building (skyscraper) moved and they were firing cannons out the window at the target company ... bit like Nelsons cannon decks on the Victory , except the ammunition was office stationary )

I think it was a Hand made shorty by one of the Pythons , but I've never seen it since ! well surreal !
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Are you thinking of the Crimson Permenant Assurance? The "Short Feature Presentation" at the beginning of The Meaning of Life?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KX61PUZ3xkI
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iakR7sB0skw

That was Gilliam and all, brilliant short.
 
Kaka Tim said:
It always anoys me that Blade Runnder (boring, wooden acting, crap dialouge) gets singled out for being a 'groundbreaking, dystoipian vision' and all that when Brazil (which came out only a few years after and pisses all over it) gets ignored.
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!

Sorry, just can't let that one slide. Blade Runner, IMHO, is probably the best sci-fi movie I've seen. Stilited dialogue is due to almost all of the key characters being replicants (yes, including Deckard!), but the original release was severely gimped by the terrible voiceover and removal of several key scenes. It's a masterpiece that I don't think Scott has bettered since. As Rutger Hauer put it, it was the first big sci-fi to really make the point that "the future is old". Perhaps we need another Why-Blade-Runner-Is-A-Fucking-Great-Movie thread? :D

Not that I think Brazil is any less of an achievment, I just think the two films are polar opposites of one another that happen to share a broadly similar dystopian setting.
 
Reno said:
I also think many of his films are poorly paced and structured. His last couple of films were almost unwatchably bad.
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Yes it's a shame. I think he has great vision and style but quite a few of his films (even the good ones) suffer from not only poor pacing (tends to be a floppy middle, repeating) but also being over long (maybe part of the same problem, I'm looking at you fisher king and the 12 monkeys).



The almost fairy tale style gilliam has would be suited much better to short and sweet snappy films, not so much the rambling giants.
 
stdPikachu said:
Not that I think Brazil is any less of an achievment, I just think the two films are polar opposites of one another that happen to share a broadly similar dystopian setting.
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On recent watching, Brazil seemed laughably tacky compared to Bladerunner.

Like it's got all it's sets from the BBC Doctor Who cupboard.

In fact, it reminds me of Orwell, great story and brains, but lacking in the style department.
 
I recorded this and missed the end. I saw up to the [point where they blow up the building after he escapes. what happens then?
 
In the one I just recorded that was on on wednesday night on BBC he gets rescued just as hes gonna get tortured by Palin in the mask. then they get out and blow the place up. Then my tape cut out and the film wasnt over yet.
 
grogwilton said:
In the one I just recorded that was on on wednesday night on BBC he gets rescued just as hes gonna get tortured by Palin in the mask. then they get out and blow the place up. Then my tape cut out and the film wasnt over yet.
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SPOILER

He gets rescued, they blow up the bulding and he happily lives with his girlfriend ever after. Then that whole 'happy ending' turns out to have been a dying fantasy into which he escaped while he was being tortured to death.
 
The last bits are kinda indescribable, but yes, it's pretty much as Reno describes.

I don't think he dies at the end though...? He's humming to himself just before the credits roll.
 
Yes, you may be right, he kind of goes insane/escapes into his own inner world. I just remember it ending with him in the torturers chair. Haven't actually watched it all the way through for over ten years.
 
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