Questionable Taste Theatre: “Dark City”

I could make this entry two words long: HELL YES.

Instead, I will make it one million words long. (Don’t worry, your comments can still say “Hell no!” and it will look all clever.)

Dark City is a film by Alex Proyas, who gave us perennial Gothbomb movie The Crow and then said, “You know what I want to do next? I want to fill a foggy basement with bald guys worshipping a clock shaped like a human head.”

Way to live the dream, Alex!

Nutshell: In an awesome, slimy city, a fugitive with no memories begins to realize the world is being manipulated by a basement full of bald guys who worship a clock shaped like a human head.

“When was the last time you remember doing something during the day?”
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Six reasons you should be watching The Middleman.

1. It’s the sort of show that fills its promo shots with bubbles, because who the hell cares?

“You kiss your mother with that mouth, huh? Garbage mouth? Yes, you! ”
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Today’s Questionable Taste Theatre is extremely questionable. (Aren’t they all? Isn’t that why I named it Questionable Taste Theatre? Oh, never mind! You and your semantics!)

I first saw this movie when I was ten, and I thought it was the funniest, most romantic, most elegant movie ever. I saw it again recently. Apparently in the intervening years I had totally forgotten that it’s a story about forced therapy, mind control, enormous man-eating flowers, and vandalism.

That’s right, it’s Carefree, the 1938 Astaire-Rogers semi-musical that captured the hearts of psychiatrists everywhere!

Nutshell: Radio broadcaster Amanda is engaged to a society boy who insists she go to therapy to find out why she can’t commit to him. (Assface.) She falls in love with the psychiatrist, Dr. Fred Astaire, which serves that other guy right. Then she goes on a drug-fueled rampage through the streets, destroying all she touches! It’s like Godzilla, only with heels.

Check out the graphic design on this puppy! This is what my nightmares look like: he’s a one-man hovercraft, and she’s on fire! (Best part is the bottom right: See them do THE YAM!)

“By clicking this, you acknowledge that this is 1938 we’re talking about.”
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Tomorrow is the Questionable Taste Theatre as planned, but I couldn’t wait to post this movie, probably my perfect example of Go Big or Go Home.

Devdas is a Bollywood blockbuster that is seriously one of the most beautiful films ever made. Whatever you may think about it (overblown – check, overlong – check, overrated – maybe), you really, really can’t think, “It’s ugly.”

Set in a magical-realism style 1930s Calcuuta, Devdas is the story of the young, upper-class man who comes home from university, falls in love with the lower-class girl next door, rejects her, regrets it when she marries another dude, and starts drinking.

(No, really, that’s the plot. Like, all of Calcutta gets really upset all the time that he’s drinking. There’s whole musical numbers about it. )

He ends up living in a brothel under the care of Chandramukti, a courtesan who falls in love with him knowing he can never love her back, and watches as he descends into death from occasional light drinking. (OH THE HUMANITY!) For me, though, hers is the real story, because Madhuri Dixit is just amazing in this part.

BUT NOT AS AMAZING AS THE COSTUMES.

This is Chandramukti’s introductory costume. It weighed over 50 pounds. FIFTY POUNDS.

This is the first time Devdas sees her; I have no further commentary, except that there is no way mortal humans can dance that number whatsoever, much less in a fifty-pound dress. This woman has superpowers.

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Feeling steampunky today? No? How about alternate-history…y? Failed-Hollywood-marriagey?

Well, are you in luck, because today, Questionable Taste Theatre tackles Time After Time, a time-travel romance that is probably incredibly cheesy, but is too busy being gleeful and nerdy to care. Just how I like my movies!

Nutshell: H.G. Wells, nerdy inventor, finds out his best friend is Jack the Ripper, and has used Wells’ time machine to escape into the future. You know what that means. It means it’s time for a poem:

Roses are red
Time machines are blue
I’m going to vanquish
The shit out of you.

“What have I done? I’ve turned that bloody maniac loose upon Utopia!”
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