About the worst movie ever… THE PIANO… is on.
I have switched to Live Free Or Die Hard which has a better objective and more explosions.
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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
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Yeah, that movie does have nice effects.
I’ve never seen The Piano.
Is it in fact worse than Killer Klowns from Outer Space or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?
The saving grace to it being someone else’s movie is that you can change the channel, turn it off, or walk out. The real problem is when your own subconscious and unconscious conspire to turn your own dreamscape into an unforgettable bad movie.
In my case, I once had a bizarre dream that Mel Gibson’s next movie was going to be some sort of post-apocalyptic horror in which the Knights of Columbus (swords) and the Swiss Guard (spears) are the two remaining technological military superpowers in the world and for some reason they’re implacably and violently opposed to each other.
Yes, I really did have that dream. Hand raised to God.
No, I don’t remember how much of Tom Monaghan’s pizza I ate the night before.
The Piano is bad because it’s a horribly pretentious chick flick about some mute woman with a brute of a husband who plays the piano and has an affair with Harvey Keitel. Then, somebody – I think her husband – cuts off her index finger so that she can’t play the piano any more (her only means of expression!!) and she continues to play with this ugly metal prosthetic finger clanking on the keys.
Yeah… it’s pretty bad.
Question: Why can you not sleep Fr. Z?
Well, Father, The Holy Smoke top item will give you and your readers a few more sleepless nights. If you read the comments you will see quoted a wholehearted endorsement by one bishop. The problem is endemic among the hierarchy in the UK. Dear Lord help us in our travails. Pope Benedict come to our aid.
http://www.blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/
http://reclaimthefuture.org.uk/
This is why we need a stash of either gentle, sleep-inducing movies (the kind with lots of nice people and pretty mountains), feel-good movies, or totally ludicrous but relaxing movies.
@Charivari Rob: Blast, now I want to see that dream-movie of yours. ;)
My money’s on the spears. The Knights’ standard-issue sword (no disrespect to the noble order) won’t cut through butter, but those Swiss Guard halberds will knock even P*****’s hard head clean off h** shoulders.
Most Sci-fi Channel made movie…man those can be just as bad as Killer Clowns
Most
Sci-fi ChannelLifetime made movies…man those can be just as bad as Killer ClownsFixed that for ya.
You can’t go wrong with Die Hard movies. And at least the first two also count as Christmas movies!
I go for anything involving Sigourney Weaver and fully automatic weapons! And “Predator.” (“I seee youuuu…”)
My favorite relaxing movie is the Hallmark TV movie “Sarah, Plain and Tall.”
“The Piano” brings back memories of being a young-married. My mother-in-law was visiting & I rented that movie for us to watch since it had either won or been nominated for several Oscars (I was extremely ignorant of Hollywood being so left), so I figured it must be good. We fast-forwarded thru several what I would term soft-porn scenes & I was mortified. She still teases (good-naturedly) that someone has to go with me to the store if I’m in charge of selecting a movie to rent.
I thought the Piano was about the plight of a Jewish Pianist in the Warsaw Ghetto? I know it is a slow-moving movie, but I rather enjoyed it! Am I thinking of something else? I don’t remember Harvey Keitel in that one!
At a pre-seminary residential, we were taken to the cinema to see The Piano, which had just been released. We were then required to sit and discuss the issues of gender relations raised by the film, one of the tutors leading off with “After seeing that film, I feel ashamed to be a man.” The students knew that if they didn’t join in accordingly, their cards would be marked.
Loathsome.
Kathi: I wonder whether you weren’t intending to rent the excellent and inspiring movie “The Pianist” (which Father Totton describes) rather than the evidently execrable movie “The Piano”.
Father Totton, you’re thinking of The Pianist (2002), not The Piano (1993).
Boy, superlatives can be hard to justify, since I’ve seen all or part of some real stinkers. Among movies I have actually sat all the way through (in a theater no less), way *near the top of the list was FERGULLY* — a neo-pagan/environmentalist movie that tried to imitate all that is worst about Disney. (I was taking the comps the next day, and I needed distraction more than additional studying by that point. Besides, I thought, surely it isn’t as bad as the commercials made it look… WRONG!!)
That movie really highlighted one of the important differences between modern and ancient pagans: the ancients knew that nature was powerful and could really kick their butts, so they thought they should worship it, whereas moderns are afraid that they will accidentally step on nature and crush it out of existence. (For cryin’ out loud, what sense does “save the planet” make? The planet has a mass of a dozen trillion trillion pounds, and it’s in good shape for at least another 5 billion years, whether polar bears make it that long or not.) Moderns really worship, indirectly, the evil god of technology.
(The most important difference between modern and ancient paganism is that ancient paganism could anticipate the Gospel, but modern paganism is an explicit rejection of the Gospel.)
When I can’t sleep and I want a movie… Three words: Evil Dead Two.
Failing that, another three words: Army of Darkness.
The undead and boomsticks. Groovy.
A man after my own heart. I must have watched that Bruce Willis movie about two dozen times.
“The Piano” was a stinker, now relegated to deserved obscurity, but unfortunately it’s mind-numbing theme tune continues to feature regularly on a British light-classic commercial station called “Classic FM”, which I listen to from time to time and as soon as I hear the dreaded opening chord sequence it’s as though that pretentious, over-rated dreck is resurrecting from the grave into which it has deservedly descended. I can’t hit the retune button fast enough.
But yeah, “The Pianist” was a whole different kettle of fish.
Is “Live Free or Die Hard” really that good? I haven’t seen it. What do you all think of the original Die Hard movie? Sometimes when I can’t sleep I play Crysis or Call of Duty 4 or I’ll just browse the web.. never saw “The Pianist”..
Rocco…
If you liked the other Die Hard movies, you will definitely like Live Free or Die Hard. The plot is at least interesting, and as Ronny Cox said in Robocop… “Guns, guns, guns…”
You really see the tender side of Bruce Willis as a loving father in that movie. I wept.
Even worse than “Manos, the Hands of Fate”?
“Tank Girl” was a top runner for all time stinkeroo. For those not familiar with it, Ice Cube and Ice T play mutant kangaroos with the reincarnated souls of humans. And it never gets any better, just worse.
Yes, I paid good money for that one. Me and four other people in the entire theater.
Hmmm, I’m pretty sure that the worst (or rather best movie for insomnia) is Jimmy Stewart’s last movie “The Green Horizon” aka “A Tale of Africa” or the original title “Afurika Monogatari” (yes, it is originally in Japanese but I saw the version dubbed in English).
My mother rented it once years ago. After all, who thinks that a Jimmy Stewart movie could be that bad?
Oh my. It is terrible. And long. Though, I wonder if it wouldn’t induce sleep since there are lots of weird montages of animals and maybe two words of dialog.
Funny how some movies are so awful they are memorable.
The all time “bore me to sleep movie” is Lost In Translation.
Thanks Tim, you beat me to it. Any MSTer knows that the worst movie ever is “Manos, the hands of fate.” ^_^
Erick – “Blast, now I want to see that dream-movie of yours. ;)
My money’s on the spears. The Knights’ standard-issue sword (no disrespect to the noble order) won’t cut through butter, but those Swiss Guard halberds will knock even P*****’s hard head clean off h** shoulders.”
Yes, and I guess spears would suggest a fundamental advantage of reach over swords.
I guess I’d be left out of that fight. I’m a Knight of Peter Claver. Apparently, they don’t trust us with sharp objects. On the plus side, it’s a lot easier to sit down without doing oneself an injury.
Now that I think of it, though, the sash would make an wicked slingshot. Hmmm…
Superb score.
And I agree with Bruce, Lost In Translation could replace general anesthesia.
(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
I guess you’ve missed “The Red Violin”–lucky you.