luka

Well-known member
I also like how they don't try and be cute. They want a tough cool sounding name for the hero, so they call him 'Snake.'
 

luka

Well-known member
I've never played that. I missed that era of gaming entirely pretty much. I did play resident evil though. You can see lots of Escape from New York in the Fallout games too.
 

luka

Well-known member
That's one of the things I like about games. They don't feel any obligation to be original. They just exist as recombinations of elements from the rest of popular culture
 

luka

Well-known member
Craner's favourite geographer David Harvey talks about how New York was the victim of the first experiment in neoliberalism. Deliberately starved of funds and left to decay and turn into the Liberty Island you see in this film.
 

version

Well-known member
WG: Yeah, like Escape from New York never made it big, but it's been redone a billion times as a rock video. I saw that movie, by the way, when I was starting "Burning Chrome" and it had a real influence on Neuromancer. I was intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake: "You flew the wing-five over Leningrad, didn't you?" It turns out to be just a throwaway line, but for a moment it worked like the best SF, where a casual reference can imply a lot.

 

version

Well-known member
escape-from-new-york-glider-approach-1981-featured.jpg

 

luka

Well-known member
Craner's favourite geographer David Harvey talks about how New York was the victim of the first experiment in neoliberalism. Deliberately starved of funds and left to decay and turn into the Liberty Island you see in this film.
Same thing here. War on the city waged by right wing governments

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
No trying to be clever. Don't overthink it. Call him 'Snake.'
Also a joke in itself, how he says "Don't call me Snake" but in LA at the start they call him Plissken and he says "Call me Snake" but at the end he repeats the line "Don't call me Snake".
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I watched Scarface on telly the other day too... my analysis that - I don't think anyone will argue with - is, that it's very very long.
Like the opposite of Citizen Kane that feels as though a lot of time has passed and a lot of stuff has happened but it's actually relatively short.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It's this taken to the extreme. A city wholly abandoned to criminals. Like those South American prisons where the guards vacate the interior and let the prisoners run it themselves. You watch Rubble Kings and it doesn't feel all that far fetched. Vietnam vets coming back and imposing military discipline on street gangs. Cocaine money converted into weaponry etc.
A much underrated film is Wonderland. As I understand it one of the more literal versions of what actually happened - those guys who brought back heroin from Vietnam in the coffins of dead soldiers and sold it in LA, then they ripped off the wrong guy and he beat them all to death with metal poles - with help from pornstar John Holmes (allegedly). Nasty story, nasty film.
 

luka

Well-known member
The first few times I tried watching scarface if fall asleep and then wake up and it would still be on. Got a very fragmented image of it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I like bits of it - the green-edged scans of the city, some of the music, Kurt Russell, the general idea of what happens to NYC - but it's clunky and irritating. The car with the lampshade headlamps, the wrestling match. It's just a bunch of stupid and poorly executed ideas cobbled together.
Escape from NY? It's a cult film... John Carpenter, the music etc etc but when you watch it again it's just not that cool. The accepted truth is that Escape from NY is genius and Escape from LA is terrible but really they're not THAT far apart (though NY is obviously better don't get me wrong).
But of course it's not as good as Assault on Precinct 13 (which also has better music) which is in turn not as good as The Thing.
 

version

Well-known member
I watched Scarface on telly the other day too... my analysis that - I don't think anyone will argue with - is, that it's very very long.
There are some great moments, but I cba with all the domestic stuff consisting of him and his friends and family yelling at each other.
 
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