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SMB Film Thread 2025

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Gunn knows his stuff when it comes to superhero comic films. I fully expect that I’ll enjoy it when I see it!

One of my oddest purchases was back in 2008. I bought a book about kaiju films called Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo by Stuart Galbraith IV. At the time, I could only get a second hand copy from the US Amazon site. It was described as being in very good condition.

When it arrived, I was horrified to find that the first page had been defaced by some bizarre comment, and two signatures underneath. It said (all in caps):
Elliot - you’re our favorite D.P. But we still liked you best when you played Mr Green Jeans on TV. Love,
(Then the two names)

Under the Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo text they’d written ‘sabotaging our movie’.

I didn’t have a clue who these people were. They clearly had nothing to do with this book or this author. I put it on the shelf in a huff and didn’t look at it again for about 10 years.

I picked it up randomly one day and read the names. James Gunn and Sean Gunn. I checked it against online examples of their autographs and they matched. They’d even drawn little cartoon heads of themselves next to their signatures.

All very strange. I’ve no idea why they’d sign this random book.

Sounds like they bought it for someone as a present and put an inscription in it
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So, Eliot Rockett was cinematographer on a film called The Specials in 2000 that was written by James Gunn and had his brother Sean acting in it. He's not really done any acting so I reckon the Mr Green Jeans thing is some sort of in joke
 
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Sounds like they bought it for someone as a present and put an inscription in it
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So, Eliot Rockett was cinematographer on a film called The Specials in 2000 that was written by James Gunn and had his brother Sean acting in it. He's not really done any acting so I reckon the Mr Green Jeans thing is some sort of in joke

Could well be! It’s a great find. I think I might have encountered the name years ago when I first looked into it, but rejected it due to the single ‘l’, but it’s far more likely to be a hit than the other one I mentioned.
Especially since he’s done stuff like Crocodile, which I presume is a monster movie.
 
Could well be! It’s a great find. I think I might have encountered the name years ago when I first looked into it, but rejected it due to the single ‘l’, but it’s far more likely to be a hit than the other one I mentioned.
Especially since he’s done stuff like Crocodile, which I presume is a monster movie.

And Frankenfish!

He's also cinematographer on that Mia Goth horror trilogy that just came out
 
Continuing the Charles Bronson back catalogue, just watched…

Mr Majestyk.
Probably one of my favourites because it’s so nuts. The story goes all over the place, in a good way. The way Bronson is always one step ahead of everyone despite being about two steps behind cracks me up.

Gains extra points for physically showing he did his own stunts (on the back of a truck) along with it being very funny.

8/10
 
Just finished The Ballad Of Wallis Island. Man I absolutely love Tim Key. He probably doesn’t want it but I wish he got more recognition for what he does. He’s a real gem of a bloke like.

Anyway the film was great. Proper Sunday afternoon film. Looked great, really sweet story and very enjoyable. 9 and a half out of ten and my favourite film of the year so far.
Really looking forward to watching this; just been listening to Tim and Tom Basden on the Adam Buxton podcast talking about it.

I reckon if you like this then you'll enjoy Brian and Charles, starring David Earl (the pervert off Derek). I was literally crying laughing most of the way through it.

This was also developed from a short film.
 
Rewatching the Red Riding trilogy on Amazon.
Passed me by when they originally came out but if you like gritty, slow moving drama set in Yorkshire then definitely worth watching.
Plenty of familar faces throughout as practically every northern actor involved over the the 3 films.
 
Lion of the Desert (1980) 8/10
An Arab answer to Lawrence of Arabia, complete with score by Maurice Jarre and some of David Lean's production crew. I saw it in the cinema when it came out, on a print that looked and sounded awful. The 4K restoration is a revelation. (Oliver Reed made a habit of starring in films funded by Arab dictators. This was paid for my Gaddafi. He was also in Clash of Loyalties, filmed in Iraq and financed by Saddam Hussein.)
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Sands of the Kalahari (1965) 7/10
The film Cy Endfield made after Zulu. A plane crashes in the Kalahari; the survivors battle each other and baboons. Mostly filmed on location in Namibia, but their makeshift base in a cave is very obviously in the studio.
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Midnight Run (1988) 8/10
Road movie in which Robert De Niro is a bounty hunter with four days to get Charles Grodin across the US while being pursued by the FBI, the Mob, and a rival bounty hunter. Good fun.
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Continuing the Charles Bronson back catalogue, just watched…

Mr Majestyk.
Probably one of my favourites because it’s so nuts. The story goes all over the place, in a good way. The way Bronson is always one step ahead of everyone despite being about two steps behind cracks me up.

Gains extra points for physically showing he did his own stunts (on the back of a truck) along with it being very funny.

8/10
Its genesis was a screenplay by Elmore Leonard the worlds greatest post B&W film/TV crime fiction author (Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, Out Of Sight, 3:10 To Yuma, Joe Kidd etc). Originally titled iirc “American Flag” for Steve McQueen but McQueen dragged his feet for over five years with it so Elmore rejigged it for Bronson and once it started shooting quickly wrote the novelisation in time to cash in.
Most film adaptations of his work are dreadful as they’re filmed as crime comedies which drove him nuts. He reckoned his characters were serious dangerous people who just said funny things just not intentionally but directors shot them as Burt Reynolds type quipathons. Majestyks one of the average ones it was from around the time Elmore was changing from writing westerns to modern crime fiction.
Tarantino who rejigged Elmores Rum Punch as Jackie Brown claims the only time he was arrested was for shoplifting an Elmore Leonard novel on its release day as he was skint and couldn’t wait til payday! I think he now owns most of the remaining film rights to his unfilmed novels. Hopefully they include Swag, Pagan Babies and Bandits which imho are his best. Mesel I’d film Swag as a buddy crime movie with those two Ryan actor lads as the two crims just for the lookalike crack when they first meet.

Sorry to gan on a bit but I’m a bit of an Elmore evangelist
 
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Its genesis was a screenplay by Elmore Leonard the worlds greatest post B&W film/TV crime fiction author (Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, Out Of Sight, 3:10 To Yuma, Joe Kidd etc). Originally titled iirc “American Flag” for Steve McQueen but McQueen dragged his feet for over five years with it so Elmore rejigged it for Bronson and once it started shooting quickly wrote the novelisation in time to cash in.
Most film adaptations of his work are dreadful as they’re filmed as crime comedies which drove him nuts. He reckoned his characters were serious dangerous people who just said funny things just not intentionally but directors shot them as Burt Reynolds type quipathons. Majestyks one of the average ones it was from around the time Elmore was changing from writing westerns to modern crime fiction.
Tarantino who rejigged Elmores Rum Punch as Jackie Brown claims the only time he was arrested was for shoplifting an Elmore Leonard novel on its release day as he was skint and couldn’t wait til payday! I think he now owns most of the remaining film rights to his unfilmed novels. Hopefully they include Swag, Pagan Babies and Bandits which imho are his best. Mesel I’d film Sawg as a buddy crime movie with those two Ryan actor lads as the two crims just for the lookalike crack when they first meet.

Sorry to gan on a bit but I’m a bit of an Elmore evangelist
You also missed out Justified!
 
40 Acres

Post apocalyptic farming action film.
No idea why the critics fawned over it, it’s ok but it’s really just an episode of the walking dead without zombies.

Soundtrack was absolute guff licensed shite too.
 
Just watched Gosford Park on bbc4. Knew it was highly acclaimed but by god it’s awful. Waste of an absolutely fantastic ensemble cast (except Lawrence fox of course, who can fro).
 
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