I agree, most of them are childish comedies but a few are childlike comedies where the humor is unabashadly silly and slapstick but reliable as to coaxing out a laugh. I still smile everytime I picture him as the doctor in "Airplane!," and his outrageous encounter with "Queen Elizabeth" in the "Naked Gun" (was it I of II?) The rest of them are pretty lame as comedies -- maybe a laugh or two but ultimately a ripoff of the best of the genre.
The only police TV series was " The New Breed," (1961) TV Series .... Lt. Price Adams (1961-1962) but his big break in TV was "Peyton Place."
I haven't seen it but friends who went to see "King Arthur" nearly left in the middle for boredom. I will certainly skip that one.
The most excrutiatingly boring film I ever saw was Clair's Knee. To this day, when someone mentions Eric Rohmer in my presence, I start to twitch.
In my movie going days, I was inclined to sit through almost anything. Now that I catch my movies on tv, I'm less likely to see boring films. If I'm bored, I change channels.
Roberta, that's the gawdsend of watching movies on TV. Unless it's Pay-Per-View and even then one has only lost 3.00 or 4.00 dollars and a bag of microwave popcorn. Hmmm...one still can finish off that bag of popcorn watching another movie. Or "Dead Like Me" which is better than most movies I've seen lately. The rock star episode last week was worthy of a feature film.
Ain't it the truth, LW? TGFTR. (Thank God for the remote.)
Roberta wrote:The most excrutiatingly boring film I ever saw was Clair's Knee.
Funny, I loved Le Genou de Claire: It was so delightfully French as in innocently perverse, or perversely innocent
Now a film that I though was surprisingly boring was The Passion of the Christ: I got so tired of all the beatings and cruelty that I became blasé and it didn't register anymore. The violence completely overshadowed the inner (and far more real) struggle of the Christ figure.
thiefoflight,
You took words right out of my mouth. I was going to say both the play and the movie "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett and then add that it is supposed to be boring. Two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon are somewhere waiting for Godot. Nothing happens in the first act. In Act II, they are still waiting for Godot, But he never comes. Nothing happens in Act II. We are never told who Godot is and why they are waiting for him.
The last lines of the movie and the play are "Shall we go?" "Yes, let's go." (The state directions read "They do not move." The play comes to an end end with a blackout.)
Boring, yes. But brilliant and dazzling with superb language, ideas, and philosophy.
I think an entire thread could be made around "Why is modern man so easily bored?"
In art, in this case film, I fine that what bores me is a constant level of pace or tempo or rhythm. It can be slow, but it can also be sci-fi a sci-fi, or thriller or any hyper, fast paced, there's no tomorrow, unrelenting movie that makes you say."Enough already!" An example of such a movie.
How about "Moulin Rouge."
Even shakespeare knew techniques to avoid being boring:
Short scenes contrasted with long scenes, private scenes with one or two characters contrasted with public scenes with crowds, sad scenes contrasted with happy scenes, etc.
The pace has to vary to keep us interested.
The John Huston "Moulin Rouge" or the Baz Luhrmann "Moulin Rouge!" I found as a musical, Luhrmann did observe using intimate scenes, the big crowd scenes being splashy musical numbers. The Green Fairy number was a languid fantasy interlude and the best part of the film other than the Apache Dance which I thought was brilliant.
Okay well firstly I lovede 8 1/2, adorded lost in translation (think that happens to most of us all the time) and I'm a Leone fan so long movies don't scare me but I have to agree about the thin red line walked out of the preview of it was so bored.
Scarface is so verbose and operatic dunno how you could get bored with that.
Now i went to watch a crap film called Win a Date with Tad Hamilton what disturbing hollywood studio tripe. I mean I had just had a Tarantino fest (from True Romance to Kill bill Vol 2) and then saw that and trust me Tarantino's violence aint got nothing on the disturbing saccharine garbage of Win a Date...
Any teen movie it's like the same movie over and over agian with a differnet title. Oh and Who ever mentioned Joe black was spot on
In site design, that concept is called "sequence of spaces", and it works the same way, holding off visual ennui.
BillyFalcon I think Warhol had the notion that if the experience of boredom is sufficiently intense it becomes interesting.
Warhol's thematic material was always the banal. Lines of soap cans right up to his sterile and haunting image of an empty electric chair. He was the ultimate objectivist.
The most boring movie you wll ever see is Rocky and Bullwinkle (I'm sad to say that a saw it once), it's pathetic, my 4(at the time) year old son thought it was pathetic.
I wish I could remember the title of this film, but it consisted of a brief sci-fi scene (not hi-tech), then of a robot and a man getting some popcorn, etc and sitting infront of a cinema screen. A fifties movie then plays. It was so odd, and although boring, quite intruiging. Has anyone else seen this?
Maybe it was 'Mystery Science Theatre 2000" which was a sci-fi spoof on the comedy channel...rather enjoyable as I remember.
The theatrical release of "MST" was "This Island Earth," actually not that bad a sci-fi film. I think the concept wore thin very fast.
Gladiator, most difinately. Sorry if there's fans here but I saw it in a Latin lesson...... so.........
et tu spartacus? a whole new meaning to parsing Latin...
