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Rediscovered Lucas-Commissioned Short "Black Angel" Released On YouTube
eldavojohn writes: Youtube now offers Black Angel, a short film shown in UK theaters before ESB. What was once thought lost is now found; enjoy. This may be the best half-hour you spend today, even if you must "set your clocks back 34 years," as writer and director Roger Christian advises. (Christian is also known for directing 2000's Battlefield Earth .)
What do you mean, one of the worst movies ever made?
It's the worst movie ever made!
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The SSL certificate for the video source won't validate, making the youtube video halt downloading after a while.
What? I've heard this repeated many times.
The movie was awful. But it was _much better_ than the book.
The only reason I finished the book is I was very stubborn back then. Like watching a slow motion car wreck, you think 'this has to get better'. Not unlike the 'Red/Green Mars' series. They only get worse.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not unlike the 'Red/Green Mars' series.
How much duct tape did it take to get Red Green to Mars?
Not according to IMDB.
It's 88th.
I've actually seen R.O.T.O.R (the 70th worst of all time) -- trust me, it outsucked Batlefield Earth by a long shot. I've seen Leonard Part 6, number 59 on the list, and it was atrocious.
Hell, the 6th ranked "The Hottie and the Nottie" has Paris freakin' Hilton in it (who has 2 of the top 20). Fortunately I've not seen that.
You should really never underestimate how many absolutely terrible movies have been made.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No idea, but surely it took at least two C64's to get there.
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IMO, you won't miss much. I was bored before it actually started, by the director's monotone, talking about how wonderful a film it was, and how Lucas copied him in one of the SW movies. Yawn. Then, the opening credits took about five minutes (which is to say, five minutes of Scottish scenery, with bland music, followed by a few seconds of the title), then about five minutes of the protagonist riding his horse though Scottish scenery, with bland music. So you're nearly halfway through before anything happens at all, including dialog.
And whoever choreographed the fight scene has never been in the same room with an actual sword - they couldn't even cut the scene well enough to hide the fact that the protagonist is staring constantly as the stunt man's hands to avoid breaking his fingers.
So, as I said, you won't miss much. Unless you like Scottish scenery and bland music.
I thought it was a total piece of crap. If this is their idea of drumming up interest in a new film, I'll pass thank you. I'm angry because I lost a half hour of my life over that piece of crap. 34 years ago it would have also sucked!
Hard to believe but there are far worse.
Today you can watch BE in context and it's pretty funny. A lot of the dialog and plot is 'good bad' to the point of being laughable. You can see places where there are honestly good actors and directors working around such an unbelievably shit script written to promote the CoS cult's agenda and the result is.. Funny.
A lot of the FX is pretty good for the era and a lot of the visual concepts are at least interesting. I love how the alien's tech is almost sort of future-analog-retro. Clunky, solid, brutal, unfriendly, but effective.
If you want pure, unashamed cinema trash look out what Adam Sandler's production company puts out. The fact that Mall Cop 2 exists, and the fact that so many people went to watch it, makes you worry for the future of the human race as rational, thinking beings.
... and you're still a virgin at the end of the day. Otherwise, no.
Six words: Star Wars Holiday Special.
It was bad, but it wasn't a movie.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
And an atmosphere so unstable that any radiation sets off a chain reaction that destroys the planet? They must be well shielded from cosmic radiation and other things, which would cause problems with evolution, since radiation is believed to introduce mutations, most likely helping with the random mutations that got the planet where it is today.
Or the ancient fighter jet that flies with no maintenance. I'm sure he just skipped the part where the hero read a book on aircraft maintenance and fuel and rebuilt the thing, and distilled fuel for it.
Yeah, if you were to make a good movie about the book, it wouldn't be good. The book has too many holes that readers just skip over that would be made clear on screen.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't know, something about his character seemed a little fishy...
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No Jessica Alba. Doh!
Don't say I didn't warn you. I won a bet on that, on Usenet, with a guy who claimed that it wasn't possible for Bruce Campbell to make a movie so bad it was just bad, since he's the all-time master of so bad it's good. I sent him a copy of the DVD from Amazon[1], on the condition that he watch every frame, and write us a review. His review started, "Wow. I was wrong. Bruce Campbell made a movie so bad it was just bad."
[1]My personal Scale of Suckage for DVDs is a fraction, the bottom of which is the retail price on Amazon for a brand new copy, and the top of which is the cost of shipping. When that number exceeds one - the shipping is more than the price of the DVD - you know you have a real turkey. It's also a bad, bad sign when used copies are selling for more than new copies.
Also, I'm told Man with the Screaming Brain, made with the same people at the same time, is actually worse, but Alien Apocalypse aired first, and my momma didn't raise that big a fool.
This may be the best half-hour you spend today
Only if the other 23.5 hours were spent getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick. What a load of crap.
You know that Kim Stanley Robinson and Spider Robinson aren't related, right?
zardoz is great and a critically acclaimed success.
and it has some deep things to say about quite a few things, like punishments, ai, immortality and what have you..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
not really, to fly a harrier you have to be trained to fly... a harrier.
It is primarily a STOVL, second to being able to hover and land vertically. Generally it has to use a short runway or ramp to takeoff since it'll invariably be laden hence too heavy to lift on corner jets alone. As it's a single engine aircraft, the corner jets are gimballed giving it a far different control behaviour than a helicopter (which has three points of yaw authority (rotor head/rudder/tail rotor), two different points of pitch authority (rotor head/tailplane) and two points of roll authority (rotor head/tailplane), as opposed to a plane's 1-2-2 (rudder-(aileron/tailplane)-(aileron/tailplane)). As a harrier has no differential adjustment for each jet, control direction depends entirely on the orientation of the aircraft and the direction the jets are facing. ONE degree off and the thing can flip or drop out of the sky. This is why so many did. Yes, it's a great idea, but the execution is poor - albeit resulting in the most successful STOVL strike aircraft ever conceived. Hell, it won us the Falklands War. That and several thousand Royal Marines.
FWIW, the F-35 JSF is also a great concept, it's a crying shame the thing does not perform anywhere near as well as promised - it barely does supersonic, it barely climbs, and supercruise? Forget it. Oh, and the RADAR return instead of being sparrow like, is more like an Airbus. I have a prediction: the UK will suddenly find itself having to find an excuse (like overspent defence budget - HA!) to cancel its order, which started at 140, now sitting at 14 for the SAME PRICE.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
You just have to read it early enough... Like when you're 11-14.
Old enough to be interested in SciFi beyond simple space opera but not yet learned enough to be repelled by bad or pulpy writing. Though Hubbard sorta-kinda covered his ass there by claiming in-universe that the book was intentionally written that way.
E.g. On the inside cover of my library copy someone wrote "money is an idea backed with confidence".
Someone found that information so novel and fascinating, they had to write it down.
On the inside cover of the book they've read it from.
Just try imagining what could someone write on the inside of the DVD case of the movie.
Also, the book is full of some really fine pulpy action and adventure.
And it even manages to make negotiations and CONTRACTS exciting.
The movie literally put me to sleep first (and only) time I saw it.
Plus, the book is not dumb enough to have them flying harriers and raiding Fort Knox and doing all other nonsense which was not in the book.
Later though... One might find the book even more fascinating, but in a different way.
Like how much it echoes stories intentionally written to be a satire of an ultra-right pulp fairytale.
All of it clearly without the author realizing how steeped in those ideas his writing was.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens