Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

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Dr Bunsen Honeydew
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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

Is it nignog you refer to, well you can hear that on youtube from a 1970's comedy program. What is important is not words it is context. In my late teens at college I was the only English guy in our party / fun gang, you should have heard the racism I got, but it was all humour and piss take and taken as such. Do you realise that as a Jamaican one of the biggest insults you can make is to call someone an African or a coolie or a nigger, but self humour is not racist.

As I say look at context. Yes there is real racism keep your complaints to that, go to football match or a South London Pub and you will get plenty of the real stuff. If you wish to report the forum go ahead, I see nothing to remove.

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Dr Bunsen Honeydew
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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

In case you missed it when posted before, this was me in 1966 outside Tottenham Tech with my best mate at College who went on to become the first black MP.

Image

Engypoos
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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Engypoos »

Whether we were 14 me and Ash went to Liverpool Empire to see Alice Cooper. When we were there we saw posters for Wings the next night.
So being impulsive and shtoopid we decided to go.
They were cack obviously... But the glorious thing was, we could see Linda's moustache shining right from up in the balcony !
I don't think she was a jew though so that's nothing to do with it.
But they did make a film of Alice Cooper for the Welcome video. And it was rubbish up to the live event.
And I watched it at the weekend.
Which is why it's on the thread. Ta day !

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Mississippi Blind Child Assburn
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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Mississippi Blind Child Assburn »

Who is "Linda"???


Anyways:

THE MAGIC MIRROR (2017, Croatia)

Gramma Baba Caca is a bona fide fortune teller of Romani decent but her daughter wants none of these old world supernatural nonsense ways.
The daughter's daughter, Manusha is being called a "dirty gypsy" at school on account of everyone is afraid of the grandma.
Grandma dies but the spirit lives on -and it is formidable.
The parents have lost their jobs and the electricity has been shut off. Consumed by these troubles, they neglect to notice the supernatural happenings going around the house.
The little girl Manushka with her ginger boyfriend ,Zdenko (the son of a funeral home director and therefor unafraid of death/spirits) attempt to assauge the furious ghost.
Manushka stives to break the ancient curse put on the grandma and her family.

Not bad, Jimmehs.

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Mississippi Blind Child Assburn
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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Mississippi Blind Child Assburn »

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (UK , '66)

Now here is one lesser-known film I never expected to make it to DVD release. You can imagine ME delight when ,unaccountably, this BBC production DID make it to DVD in 2010.

I have two DVD list books at home - the massive Vinylhound one put out anew each year, and another. Although both list at least four versions of Alice In Wonderland, neither mention this one.

This is the version that is truest to the Lewis Carroll book - stressing the author's wordplay and deconstruction/burlesque of logic, ridiculing middleclass values and college dons & professors alike. I would call it the academic movie version as opposed to all the other "Hollywood"-type effects-laiden versions.
Academic because, for one, its in the capable directing & production hands of the formidable Jonathan Miller.

Because it is academic, BlindChile definitely does not recommend it to American audiences who , not having the patience nor understanding , will find it dragging and turgid.

Here we have a sullen/very detatched (as she damn-well should be since afterall she is in a dreamstate) Alice. A dark Alice, not at all the innocent/cheery one of other productions.
She goes from one ridiculous figure to the next, always questioning their motives,etc and often at the end holding them in derision.

At first you'd think the tabla/sitar filmscore by Ravi Shankar would not fit this type of film, yet it does so, remarkably heightening the intense dreamlike/surreal feel of the film. Also, when you figure in the fact that India did play a large role in Victorian Empire (Victoria was the Empress of India) - it rather fits historically as well. As Miller points out, the real Alice would most certainly been aware of india from the magazines of the time. The music at the very beginning where the two girls walk out into the long grass, is simply brilliant. Just tablas,sitar and British composer Goosens on the most melacholic of instruments - the oboe. It is perfect music to give the feel of a lazy, dry summer afternoon. Miller remarks that the sitar fits because of the raspy "insecty" sound of the plucked strings.)


And now to the creme de la creme: the incredible cast. Note there are no single big parts in this film as, afterall, she moves from encounter of one bizarre character to another. All the same, whomever put this cast together (Miller I would think) could not have picked better:

Peter Cook, Wilfred Brambel & Peter Sellers (likely straight off the set of one of my all-time fav (comedy) movies of all time, The Wrong Box.)
John Gielgud.
Micheal Redgrave.
Malcolm Muggeridge!
Leo McKern (and a glimpse of the little butler from The Prisoner)
Miller's partner in comedy, Alan Bennett
John Bird
Wifred Brambell


Bizarre-Silly yet at same time dark, disturbing even bad-trippy.



Miller is a real intelligent man.
He was disgusted with all those stupid versions, Disney's "japing fun & games" version being the worst of all.

How do you like ass-fucked "casting" like this?:
Harvey Korman
Red Buttons
Jonathan Winters
Shelly Winters
Gene Wilder
Whoopi Goldberg
Martha Raye
Sammy Davis Jr
Imogene Coca
etc etc


Fucksake, Alice In Wonderland is no fucked Jewish comedy. It was written by an Oxford scholar & mathematician, fuck yor asses and fuck Disney too!


Miller refused to use all those animal heads and heavy facial rearrangements where you could not tell who the stars were. (The animal head idea came from the origional illustrations for the book by Tenniel, they are good as illustrations for a book go, but not necessarily in true spirit of the book.)

Also, he totally over-rided the playing card people approach which is common to all the various productions.

Miller auditioned some 400 unknowns for the part of Alice, none were acceptable till he came to the one he chose: a non-smiling, serious Alice. Afterall Carroll modelled Alice after one of the two daughters of a bishop or some sort of clerical scholar. You would expect such a girl to be the antithesis of Disney's smiley-airhead Alice. She is serious, intelligent, rude,questioning, rarely-accepting,know-it-all,deep, dark. Miller was ,rightly, looking for that "strange melancholic solemnity of the average Victorian child. (Like, I am reminded, of the croquet girl on the Genesis cover for "Nursery Cryme" by Paul Whitehead. And speaking of nursery, I have read that in the homes of the well-to-do, the children were often kept virtual prisoners on the third floor nursery. those were different times and children were heavily-disciplined. They were not the spoiled, over-active brats of today. There was no need for ritalin back then - the caning made sure of that. Children were to be "seen and not heard".)

................
Im not sure , but I think I see a young Eric Idle in the background on one or two shots. (Possibly so, since Miller/Cook/Bennett's Beyond the Fringe was a direct percusor of Monty Python.)

The movie was made for a paltry sum of something like 32,000 pounds. Miller asked the bigname actors if they would do it out of love for the book, paying most as little as 500 pounds.


When McKern was asked if he minded playing the disturbing role of the old Ugly Duchess nursing the pig-child, he absolutely slavered for the part.

Wilfred Lawson, who was splendidly cast as the lethargic doormouse, asked if there would be whiskey on the Mad Hater's tea party table, and that was it.

The DVD also has the full '65 film "Alice" which is the story of Dodgeson (Lewis Carroll ) and his infatuation with the real life 7 year old Alice Liddell, the inspiration for his two novels.
Carroll is played by a young Inspector Wexford and Alice's mother , suspicious of a pedophile* , is played by the remarkable Rosalie Crutchley. Both actors, you will recall, had roles in The Prisoner series.



The importance of Alice In Wonderland is that it struck with audiences at a very early time - earlier than Wizard of Oz. The earliest film version was in 1903! At this time the longest piece of British film.

The essence of Alice ,Blind Child would say, is not so much the portrayal of the indigenously queer logic of Dream, as it is the indelible, lingering allure of reversion to childhood in the adult.
Miller captures this sad, nostalgic yearning in the film perfectly.
It ends with the lines, "The things I have seen, I now can see no more."
Adulthood has closed the door on child-vision for ever.

Those lazy, long days of our youth are now excluded us.
The magical world we knew which we cannot ever go back to.

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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by joe »

I ENDORSE this review.

I unwillingly accompanied my younger daughter to see the Tim Burton version some years back. It was truly awful.

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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Engypoos »

Linda McCartney ya old fuckpig !
The groupie as married the cherubic Paulo !

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Dr Bunsen Honeydew
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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

OK time to cool it, your language is too extreme, it is all you contribute just to egg missy on. As I said I put up with missy as he contributes a lot of knowledge, you don't. As I said before this is not snake oil, contribute knowledge or shut up. 1st warning (not strike), you need to change attitude.

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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Engypoos »

I suggest you ask Missy if I'm winding him up.
You've got me wrong Mr Honydew. My knowledge is unknown here as yet but you won't be disappointed.
I know more about British music , especial the punk/new wave era than any man here or anywhere else.
I took Sid Vicious for a curry....had a fling with Gay Advert ...got kicked unconscious by Siouxsie Sioux at LeeDS F Club....met my wife of 38 years at a Sex pistols gig ...... set Topper Headon's kit up on the Music Machine gigs in summer 78.... knocked Billy Idol down a fire escape for being a p☆☆☆k ..... ( that ok?) .... And many other punkified adventures which are all yours if you want them !
I beat both the blokes on Mastermind on The Fall annorl !
Feel free to ask away. The prog meister will vouch for me.......if he feels like it.
I'll try to refrain from the industrial language then.
I've been Missy's mate for 30 years though so don't worry about him taking umbrage.
You gots to give people a chance , fellah......no tunnel vision loike.🙌
I've done my time .
I'm a changed man.
Gizza break eh ?

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Dr Bunsen Honeydew
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Re: Movie/series wot Blind Chile just watched

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

You are not winding him up, that is not what I said. You are encouraging him, but you make no contribution, and your language is foul. Missi has an excuse as he gives us knowledge and expertise, what are you giving but the foul language. This is not snakeoil.

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