Last Movie You Watched Part II, Electric Bugaloo

[CliffHanger2]

Power Project on Netflix. Pretty good action movie with a super powers slant.

Agreed, I really liked the ending too.

[Kirby101]

Agreed, I really liked the ending too.

Yeah, wonder if there will be a sequel?

[CliffHanger2]

Yeah, wonder if there will be a sequel?

That would be a good idea. I see it's 1# today on my netflix and it didn't seem that expensive to make so why not.

[Scott Taylor]

Watched KING KONG (1933), directed by Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, and ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932), directed by Erle C. Kenton.

KING KONG was the first big budget special effects spectacle of the talkies. Cooper was the creative force behind the picture. R.K.O. wanted the composer Max Steiner to just recycle music from previous films, but Cooper paid Steiner $50,000 out of his own pocket for an original score. The Empire State Building had just been completed in 1931 and was already a recognizable landmark for the epic conclusion. Willis O'Brien was in charge of the stop motion effects.

When I was a kid in school, our library had all of the H.G. Wells science fiction books. For a time there, he was my favourite writer and I consumed all of them. THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU is the book that shocked me the most. It was truly a work of horror. Laughton's portrayal of Moreau in the 1932 movie is chilling. At a brisk 71 minutes, the movie is mercifully short. The novel puts its protagonist (Edward Pendrick) through a long ordeal on the island. Wells was not too happy with the movie.

One thing I never understood as a kid was why "vivisection" was made out to be a crime against nature in the book (as it is also in the movie). Vivisection, in its neutral connotation, is surgery on a living being--which is a routine procedure. Moreau's real crime isn't being a surgeon--it's playing god with living creatures. In the movie, Laughton's character doesn't seem to use any anaesthesia in his surgeries, which is obviously sadistic (and pretty stupid for a doctor).

Surgery is done to benefit the subject. Vivisection is done to benefit the person conducting the procedure. There is a big ethical difference. Remove a leg because its infected, or remove a leg because you want to see what happens. Dr. Kildare typically did surgery, Josef Mengele conducted vivisections.

[Jim Kelly]

Surgery is done to benefit the subject. Vivisection is done to benefit the person conducting the procedure. There is a big ethical difference. Remove a leg because its infected, or remove a leg because you want to see what happens. Dr. Kildare typically did surgery, Josef Mengele conducted vivisections.

I happen to have my dictionary from school (I never throw anything out)--THE WINSTON CANADIAN DICTIONARY FOR SCHOOLS (copyright 1963). Page 725:

"viv-i-sec-tion (viv´i-sek´shun), n. dissecting, or experimenting upon, lower animals in order to gain scientific knowledge calculated to save human life:--v.t. viv´i-sect´."

The connotation you give is the one that's popuar now, but the denotation in my school dictionary didn't give me that sense. Given the above neutral definition, you can understand why I'd be confused. The word "vivisection" in Wells' 1896 novel is presented as inflammatory, but my ten year old self couldn't work out why.

[Celgress]

They Live starring Roddy Piper (1988)

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I happen to have my dictionary from school (I never throw anything out)--THE WINSTON CANADIAN DICTIONARY FOR SCHOOLS (copyright 1963). Page 725:

"viv-i-sec-tion (viv´i-sek´shun), n. dissecting, or experimenting upon, lower animals in order to gain scientific knowledge calculated to save human life:--v.t. viv´i-sect´."

The connotation you give is the one that's popuar now, but the denotation in my school dictionary didn't give me that sense. Given the above neutral definition, you can understand why I'd be confused. The word "vivisection" in Wells' 1896 novel is presented as inflammatory, but my ten year old self couldn't work out why.

I think your school dictionary DOES give you the sense of why vivisection is wrong. Dictionaries tend to be morally neutral in their definitions so you have to connect the dots yourself, but a human being is NOT a "lower animal" to another human being.

[YounG03]

Zombie Land 2 and Jumanji 2

Both very fun sequels. I was really surprised with Jumanji being so good. Woody Harrleson we son is the man!

[Jim Kelly]

THREE ON A MATCH (1932), directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Joan Blondell, is like a Depression Era VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

Three girls in elementary school (circa 1919) take different life paths. Mary the bad girl in school (played by Blondell as an adult) gets sent to reform school but acquires steady work as a showgirl. Vivian the popular girl in school (played by Ann Dvorak as an adult) goes to an elite private school and marries a well-off lawyer, Robert Kirkwood (played by Warren William). Ruth the studious girl in school (played by Bette Davis as an adult) goes to a secretarial college and becomes a stenographer.

One day, the three happen to reconnect and they light their cigarettes on one match, defying the superstition against lighting three cigarettes on one match.

Vivian--who always had everything handed to her, who has a loving husband and a beautiful little boy, Junior--she hungers for something new in her life and ends up with a no-good louse played by the handsome Lyle Talbot. She falls into drug abuse and poverty, but Mary rescues Junior from his mother's neglect and returns him to his caring father, Kirkwood. Soon Mary and Kirkwood fall in love and marry when he secures his divorce from Vivian. And Ruth becomes Junior's governess (Bette Davis was not yet the big star she would become and is rather a plane Jane in this movie).

Meanwhile, things are getting worse for Vivian and her boyfriend who owes a bundle to gangsters. Humphrey Bogart plays a small role as a gunsel. In one scene he makes a gesture to indicate that Vivian has been snorting coke. Vivian who always thought herself so much better than everyone and looked down her nose at Mary, now has fallen as far as a human being can go.

While the production code would soon make these kind of movies impossible in Hollywood, because they were viewed as immoral, these pictures actually conformed to the prevailing morals. Women are punished for going against the social norms--they must either reform and follow conventional morality or they must fall into degradation and lose everything.

Dvorak got in a pay dispute with the producers, Warner Bros., when she found that she was getting paid the same as the boy that played Junior in this movie. After that, the quality of work she was offered declined.

[Scott Taylor]

I happen to have my dictionary from school (I never throw anything out)--THE WINSTON CANADIAN DICTIONARY FOR SCHOOLS (copyright 1963). Page 725:

"viv-i-sec-tion (viv´i-sek´shun), n. dissecting, or experimenting upon, lower animals in order to gain scientific knowledge calculated to save human life:--v.t. viv´i-sect´."

The connotation you give is the one that's popuar now, but the denotation in my school dictionary didn't give me that sense. Given the above neutral definition, you can understand why I'd be confused. The word "vivisection" in Wells' 1896 novel is presented as inflammatory, but my ten year old self couldn't work out why.

Nazis have a lot to do with the change. Prior to them, the notion of ethnic cleansing was pretty much on the table. The idea of inferior humans - very much on the table, openly. Thats how you got the British Empire and all that Imperialism that occurred. But then the Nazis actually played out these concepts that some people are more equal than others - on a large scale. Tested the waters, so to speak.

Likewise I don't think vivisection has been inflammatory throughout most of history. Unless you were the one being vivisected, or that person's family. Its a matter of ethics, and those change with cultural changes. About 150 years ago, conservation was a matter of going out and shooting animals for closer study. Basically taxidermy. Now its got quite a different meaning because cultural has changed.

What I said holds, though. Humans dissecting living beings for self gain (to learn about humanity).

[Jim Kelly]

Likewise I don't think vivisection has been inflammatory throughout most of history. Unless you were the one being vivisected, or that person's family. Its a matter of ethics, and those change with cultural changes. About 150 years ago, conservation was a matter of going out and shooting animals for closer study. Basically taxidermy. Now its got quite a different meaning because cultural has changed.

What I said holds, though. Humans dissecting living beings for self gain (to learn about humanity).

When I was reading the Wikipedia article for ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, I found that the use of "vivisection" in the dialogue and in the scene of such (although it hardly shows anything) was one of the reasons that the British Board of Film Censors in 1933, 1951 and 1957 refused to certify the movie--presumably for cruelty to animals yet the movie shows human actors pretending to be animalistic, no animals were harmed in the making of the film.

When I was a very little boy (before I started school), I was immensely interested in the lives of insects and would study them. I went through a phase where I would pull them apart for my scientific interest. I then thought better of that and became saintly toward all creatures, worrying that I might step on a bug by accident and kill it. I wondered what would Jesus do? What would Superman do? They both had a code against killing, yet how could you walk around without crushing bugs under your feet? Isn't everyone a murderer?

[batnbreakfast]

Lincoln Lawyer
Didn't expect much and still was letdown. I general I dig movies like Rainmaker, A Time to Kill or Fracture but LL didn't deliver.

[Jim Kelly]

"Lincoln Lawyer" sounds like a skit they would do on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

[Largo161]

Step Sisters (2018) Netflix. I’ll just cut and paste the description from Wikipedia because I don’t want to waste another moment thinking about this movie: “black sorority girl who agrees to teach the art of Greek stepping to a house of party-obsessed white sorority sisters.”

This “comedy” has a well-deserved 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

[YounG03]

Step Sisters (2018) Netflix. I’ll just cut and paste the description from Wikipedia because I don’t want to waste another moment thinking about this movie: “black sorority girl who agrees to teach the art of Greek stepping to a house of party-obsessed white sorority sisters.”

This “comedy” has a well-deserved 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

What made you watch it?