DISQUS

The Film Talk: Escapism Festival Preview #1: The Last Unicorn

  • kiley · 2 months ago
    OMG! I LOVED THE LAST UNICORN!! heh heh heh...when ur a young child u let movies get away with a lot: laybrynth, dark crystal, unico...legend....looking back, movies for kids in the 80s were really dark and meta-physical, (Flight of the Navagator was very disturbing to me, probably should give it another watch now i'm older...)and i mean 'Dungeons & Dragons' was a saturday morning cartoon!! times have really changed...

    and OMG professor doctor! I LOVED BMX Bandits and The Dirt Bike Kid!
  • StanleyRumm · 2 months ago
    Neither here nor there, but this reminded me of something... A gang of us wanted to go see the latest movie that was being hyped on every channel at the time (that means _both_ channels -it was the early 80s). The movie was The Last Flight of Noah's Ark... starring thefilmtalk's recent guest Mr. Elliot Gould -still hot property at the time, at least round chez Rumm.
    But it was sold out! Full House! So someone said c'mon let's go to the other ark one. None of us knew what that was about, but figured it'd be much of a muchness. "How come there are two films about Noah's Ark all of a sudden?" we wondered, paying the money completely oblivious to what we were about to see. My eleven/twelve year old brain had never considered seeing a melting face before, but the climax to Raiders especially left me glued to the spot.
    It was far more terrifying to me than The Exorcist or anything else I had seen up to then.
    It was a special "cinematic discovery" I think I've spent my life trying to repeat -go in knowing absolutely nothing about a film, with no expectations either way and being totally blown away by it.

    I never did get to see The Last Flight of Noah's Ark. I wonder where is it now? I don't think I saw The Last Unicorn either.
    Ho hum.
  • slyboots · 2 months ago
    The Last Unicorn is one of the markers in my past I can point back to and say, definitively, THAT helped shape me into the person I am today. Which is to say, a flaming nerd, and a girl one at that. It broke my tender heart right in two at such a SAD story, with such a bittersweet ending that you hardly see in movies any more, let alone an ostensible child's movie. I wept when I was 6, I wept when I met Peter S. Beagle and shook his hand and explained what an impact his creation had on my life, and will undoubtedly weep on Sunday when I take my three nieces, who are 6, 14, and 17. All little girls deserve unicorns. I am very excited.
  • Tom · 2 months ago
    Recently re-watched BMX Bandits, and I hate to shatter some good memories but it was pretty dreadful - lots of unintentional laughs though.

    Also saw Explorers, that forgotten Joe Dante film of the 80s. The Jerry Goldsmith score kept reminding me of Innerspace, which came later. Only of interest to me to see a 10 year old Ethan Hawk and spot the mannerisms so familiar to me in Before Sunrise/Sunset.