#11
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I wonder why they picked THIS fake trailer to make a full movie out of. It wasn't even included in the version of Grindhouse I saw in the theater. Of all the fake trailers, Machete was the obvious favorite to be made into a feature, but come on, Werewolf Women of the SS must've been (an albeit, distant) second.
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"Me fail English? That's unpossible!" |
#12
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Im with burt on this one...i didnt want to see it until i heard the complaints on this thread.
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#13
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I caught this on HDNet Movies tonight. I'm not really surprised by how terrible it was, I'm just surprised that RUTGER FRICKIN' HAUER would agree to be in it. Wasn't he in Batman Begins just a few years ago? I'd call it a B movie, but that's an insult to B movies. Machete has Danny Trejo, De Niro, Jessica Alba and Jeff Fahey, this movie has Rutger Hauer and... that guy from Trailer Park Boys. It felt like a student film. A student film starring Rutger Hauer.
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#14
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Quote:
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#15
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#16
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Hobo With A Shotgun, however, was selected out of a number of similar fake trailers in a contest to be shown on the DVD and in Canadian theaters. The film was created in Canada, where production costs are much lower, using mostly unknown talent and independent, young crew. The assumption is that it went over well in Canadian theaters, the producers approached them about turning it into a feature as the narrative was simple and costs would be low in the director's (and audience's) native Canada, and, as the exploitation film formula dictates, bringing on a single, older name actor to play the title character. The differences between the actual production of this film and Machete, despite genre similarities, are night and day. Machete is not a B movie. To say that Machete is a B movie and then follow it with a laundry list of A-list actors just demonstrates that someone has been fooled. Hobo With A Shotgun was a relatively low-budget film, using a single name actor and a few quick, cheap cameos. It thrived on shock value and violence and takes itself as seriously as any exploitation movie during the hayday of the genre did. Machete is a farce, taking high production values, high budget production costs, high-end acting talent, and dressing it up as a low-brow, low-rent B movie. The reason Machete takes itself less seriously is because it is not what it pretends to be, and everyone involved knows that. |
#17
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Charles Bronson RESPONDED to every single act of violence and rape on an innocent person by killing those responsible. Eastwood and Freeman RESPONDED to a prostitute getting her face cut to shreds by a rustler by killing them and any who defended them outright. Wayne RESPONDED to a young girl's father being killed by hunting down the man responsible and ending him and his cohorts. Mind you, no one said Wayne made exploitation films, he occasionally made B movies, but for his time, he was and A-list actor. He doesn't belong in this discussion. An act of unmitigated violence has to happen before a vigilante is able to respond to the crime on the streets with force. It's the definition of the genre. If a vigilante acts before the criminal does, he's a part of the problem and not the unlawful solution. Please remember, this is a MOVIE. Millions of innocent people have been murdered, torture, unrightfully punished throughout the history of mankind, hell, even since the advent of cinema, and that's where your outrage belongs. Getting miffed about an actor pretending to harm another actor, with food coloring and corn syrup on their clothes, rubber weapons in their hands, and a very shiny check in their pockets, is just pointless. There are so much better places to put your outrage and consideration. |
#18
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I wanted to add to my previous comments, as a few friends and I drove up to New York last night to see the film, as well as a Q&A session with the director and other crew.
First of all, for a genre film, and for anyone going into the theater knowing what they're going to see and who enjoys this sort of exploitation piece, the film was fantastic. It was creative, it was interesting, it was engaging, and yes, it was crass, but I was never offended to a degree that upset me. The film was gory, violent, and abrasive, and I can list you 20 other films that it was clearly inspired by that are, for their time, just as grating and harsh. Mind you, the films it emulates were created 20, 30, or more years ago. Many of them played out fairly slow, and had a few very graphic, violent scenes with which they are remembered for. A modern audience, even one who loves those films, won't accept that. We need more, we need it faster, and we need it more consistently. It's to be expected, and if you went in to the theater expecting something else after seeing the trailer, reading any press what so ever about it, or even just seeing the poster and reading the title, I question your ability to rationalize your own choices. Yes, the language was tough. I am always surprised, in this day and age, with the sort of media that is available and the degree that major blockbuster films and television after 10pm takes language to, when anyone is offended by language anymore. This is nothing worse than any episode of South Park, which can be seen on basic cable. Yes, there were extreme acts of violence, some of which were incredibly disturbing... had they been real. The majority of the visual effects were just so over the top that, if you were disturbed on a real level, I have to wonder what you think real violence and viscera looks like. While the acts were violent, many of the effects that depicted them on screen were simply blood. It's a film expressly written about a lead character with a shotgun, the most common effects are blood and gore blasting out of a protagonist in the most cartoonish way possible. The realism involved is on the same level as when a character uses cocaine, smashing their face violently into a comically oversized pile of white power and wiggling their face back and forth. Other violent acts aren't even shown in graphic detail. The previously mentioned bus burning is almost entirely suggested; you see the attackers with flamethrowers get on the bus, you see the reverse shot of the children, the attackers talk to the children, the attackers use the flamethrowers in the direction of the camera. A single child is seem pressing against the back window trying to escape, and that's as direct as the scene gets at depicting violence on children. I mentioned this scene, after someone here brought it up, to my girlfriend, who went to see the film with us, to warn her of the level of violence. She started to cry, not because of the film, mind you, but because she had been reading a book about Darfur and a very similar chapter, a true story, in which children were chained to a bus and burned alive. She was not, however, taken aback by the violence in the film. It was comic, it was cartoony, and at no point do I think she needed to tell herself "it's on a movie." She, and everyone else who attended, is an adult, and is capable of separating real life from cinema. If she wishes to get offended, upset, disturbed, or outraged by something, there are plenty of real-life issues with which she can occupy herself with. Film is an escape from that. That, after all, is my point. There are films, Cannibal Holocaust, Last House on the Left, dozens of others, in which the violence on screen is graphic, it doesn't cut away, and it appears incredibly realistic. That is not the case with this film. While the script is intended to shock, as with many of the films it emulates, the filmmakers are capable and competent, and they know full well that showing the violence for the duration is not going to be the most filmic approach, or the best approach to tell the story. To involve the audience with the characters, you need their reactions, their responses, and despite how outlandish the story is, I genuinely felt involved with the characters and was concerned for their well-being or wished for their demise, respectively. All in all, I thought it was a fantastic film for what their were trying to achieve, and judging from the applause and amount of questions asked of the director, no one was disappointed. I should also add that the director and crew were very nice, insightful, and intelligent people. They weren't sadists, misanthropes, or any sort of negative tag which could be thrown on a filmmaker of this sort. They simple love the genre, know how it works, and work within it. I was very happy to have seen the film in that setting. |
#19
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There's one thing this film proved, regardless of critical opinion; Canadians can still make gory, over-the-top violent films if they want to. Soviet Canuckistan can have fictional films just as nasty as anyone else's.
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