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FBG Movie Club - DotM: George Miller (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter KarmaPolice
- Start date
jdoggydogg
Footballguy
Bruh I am so jacked to see Furiosa.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
It would be great to have you in the conversation! You have some catching up to do.
Now also go to the horror countdown thread and let them know about what is and isn't horror...
jdoggydogg
Footballguy
It would be great to have you in the conversation! You have some catching up to do.
Now also go to the horror countdown thread and let them know about what is and isn't horror...
Roger that.
Don Quixote
Footballguy
Two sazarecs in, and fired up the original Mad Max. If I’ve never seen any, should I skip over this for one of the sequels?
(About 20 minutes in and these car chases are just boring the heck out of me. Is this what these movies are?)
(About 20 minutes in and these car chases are just boring the heck out of me. Is this what these movies are?)
Eephus
Footballguy
Basically yes with increasingly more elaborate production values and some mythological mumbo jumbo.
Don Quixote
Footballguy
Alright. Gave it another 15 minutes or so after my post before flipping on American Fiction. More my speed.
Eephus
Footballguy
Here's a brief interview with Miller where he talks about some of the challenges he faced with Mad Max's minuscule budget.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I think you will enjoy some of next month, August, and Sept a bit more.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Imo Fury Road is one of the best action movies ever. The rest of the series is ok. There’s no doubt Fury Road is the one to start with. You don’t need any backstory at all
Eephus
Footballguy
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
I saw this one during its original theatrical run and I'm pretty sure this is my first viewing since. I remember being disappointed by it back then but couldn't remember exactly why. The only scene that really stuck in my consciousness was the fight in Thunderdome. I was surprised that this took place within the first half hour of the movie; its the first action sequence after Max arrives in Bartertown.
By the high standards of the series, Beyond Thunderdome is the lightest on action and heaviest on mythological mumbo jumbo. The movie bogs down a bit after Max is sent to the wastelands. Max's reaction to being worshiped by the child tribe is fun and in line with the character we've known. But there's a lot of exposition about the Captain Walker legend in the flabby middle of the film, delivered in dialect no less. Miller is an always an inventive visual director so these scenes are still interesting to watch but the pacing suffers. The long-awaited vehicular mayhem doesn't happen until the final half hour. It's typically awesome but the setup is very reminiscent of the climactic chase of MM3 except the tanker is now on rails.
The train chase was mostly worth the wait but I think my favorite parts of the movie took place in Bartertown; I wish Miller would have explored more of it. It's a cool set and it was a shame it had to be blown up but Auntie Tina can rebuild civilization again.
I saw this one during its original theatrical run and I'm pretty sure this is my first viewing since. I remember being disappointed by it back then but couldn't remember exactly why. The only scene that really stuck in my consciousness was the fight in Thunderdome. I was surprised that this took place within the first half hour of the movie; its the first action sequence after Max arrives in Bartertown.
By the high standards of the series, Beyond Thunderdome is the lightest on action and heaviest on mythological mumbo jumbo. The movie bogs down a bit after Max is sent to the wastelands. Max's reaction to being worshiped by the child tribe is fun and in line with the character we've known. But there's a lot of exposition about the Captain Walker legend in the flabby middle of the film, delivered in dialect no less. Miller is an always an inventive visual director so these scenes are still interesting to watch but the pacing suffers. The long-awaited vehicular mayhem doesn't happen until the final half hour. It's typically awesome but the setup is very reminiscent of the climactic chase of MM3 except the tanker is now on rails.
The train chase was mostly worth the wait but I think my favorite parts of the movie took place in Bartertown; I wish Miller would have explored more of it. It's a cool set and it was a shame it had to be blown up but Auntie Tina can rebuild civilization again.
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Eephus
Footballguy
40,000 Years of Dreaming (aka White Fellas Dreaming: A Century of Australian Cinema) (1997)
MIller wrote and directed this one hour documentary for the British Film Institute as part of their Century of Cinema series. You may remember Scorsese also participated in this series with a four-hour personal history of American film.
Miller's contribution is just over an hour in length because there just aren't as many Australian movies as American. He bemoans the fact that the local film industry was virtually inactive during the quarter century after the end of WWII which were also the formative years of Miller's love for the art form. Where Scorsese's film took the now standard auteurist view using his favorite directors, Miller takes an approach equating the medium of film as the white fellas' version of aboriginal songlines and oral history. Rather than focusing on filmmakers or genres, Miller organizes his taxonomy using a set of typically Australian character types such as bushmen and diggers to show how film and culture influenced each other. Some of these categories like black fellas and wogs wouldn't fly today but Miller strives to be inclusive to show how the nation grew from boatloads of convicts to today's multi-cultural society.
It's an interesting thesis but one that's hampered by the unfamiliarity of most of the film clips he uses. I did get a few new films to my never ending queue. Miller is an enthusiastic and engaging guide though, coming off more like a guru than Scorsese's cool professor persona. There are certainly worse ways to spend an hour although this print is a VHS rip.
vimeo.com
MIller wrote and directed this one hour documentary for the British Film Institute as part of their Century of Cinema series. You may remember Scorsese also participated in this series with a four-hour personal history of American film.
Miller's contribution is just over an hour in length because there just aren't as many Australian movies as American. He bemoans the fact that the local film industry was virtually inactive during the quarter century after the end of WWII which were also the formative years of Miller's love for the art form. Where Scorsese's film took the now standard auteurist view using his favorite directors, Miller takes an approach equating the medium of film as the white fellas' version of aboriginal songlines and oral history. Rather than focusing on filmmakers or genres, Miller organizes his taxonomy using a set of typically Australian character types such as bushmen and diggers to show how film and culture influenced each other. Some of these categories like black fellas and wogs wouldn't fly today but Miller strives to be inclusive to show how the nation grew from boatloads of convicts to today's multi-cultural society.
It's an interesting thesis but one that's hampered by the unfamiliarity of most of the film clips he uses. I did get a few new films to my never ending queue. Miller is an enthusiastic and engaging guide though, coming off more like a guru than Scorsese's cool professor persona. There are certainly worse ways to spend an hour although this print is a VHS rip.
40000 Years of Dreaming (White Fellas Dreaming A Century of Australian Cinema)
A Film by George Miller I own nothing, this was shared for education purposes ONLY
vimeo.com
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Not sure if this is covered but Sergio Leone has to be a massive influence on Miller. So let's go to the desert and check out this new 4K restoration of Once Upon a Time in the West. This is a movie that has grown on me over time and I am guessing will continue to with this viewing. I didn't always get it at first but I now love and appreciate Leone's patience.
Right off the bat, this movie is screaming "I love you John Ford" and wow, the story is by "Sergio Leone, Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci". NDB.
Right off the bat, this movie is screaming "I love you John Ford" and wow, the story is by "Sergio Leone, Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci". NDB.
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KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I took a dystopian side step in my viewings, but it fits with the themes and another movie new in the theaters - Planet of the Apes. I might stick with this and watch more in the series. I'm not in the mood for going down the kids movie rabbit hole and I think watching all the Mad Max movies was good coverage for Miller.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
Ok, I just read the synopsis for Three Thousand Years of Longing. WTF? I just found what I am watching tonight.
Eephus
Footballguy
It's absolutely gorgeous but the story didn't connect with me at all.
It was good for Miller to try his hand on non-franchise IP for the first time in 30 years.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Yep that is next on my watch list. The reviews on it are very mixed. Critics I respect have loved it and others hated it.
Eephus
Footballguy
@Ilov80s have you ever expanded before on your Ford-Lean-Leone lineage? I don't understand what you're getting at. Even though they're on the same page of the phone book, there's a gap between Lean and Leone
I think Miller and a bunch of other modern filmmakers (e.g. Tarantino, Carpenter, the Coens) were influenced by Leone's films, both in visual style and their postmodernist twists on genre.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
So much of it is in the use of landscapes. The landscapes often dwarf the people themselves. Movies about people in worlds harsh lanscapes, forced to go to great extremes to survive and find meaning. An incredible patience in their storytelling. Always very deliberate with a way of being technically advanced visually without ever coming off as flashy. They aren't showboats but their films are so technically perfect, so visaully obsessed. Yet never soulless. Tarantino is too showy and too obsessed with pastiche (shout out to Wikkid). Carpenter is more Hawks to me and like QT, he's also very obsessed with genre/B movies. The Coens bring so much humor into their films. To me they are so much Preston Sturges- an truly American sense of humor but like the previous directors, they seemed to want to tap into so many past forms from Busby Berkley to The Big Sleep. Ford, Lean and Leone seem far more singular and foused to me.
Miller brings those landscapes into his films. He sets his characters against impossible menacing natural worlds. But something is different. Perhaps it's just the energy?
