rawlinson
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Joined: 13/6/2008
From: Timbuktu. Chinese or Fictional.
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295. Nothing Lasts Forever
(1984; Tom Schiller)
The greatest film ever made in association with SNL, Nothing Lasts Forever stars Zach Galligan as Adam Beckett, a young man touring the world, desperately trying to find the artist within him, but failing miserably. Deciding to return home to New York, he finds the city crippled by strikes and under the control of the Port Authority. The Port Authority run the city like a totalitarian nightmare, with regular loudspeaker announcements issuing instructions. After failing the test for artists, Adam is sent to work at the Holland tunnel, where he meets fellow wannabe artist Mara (Apollonia van Ravenstein). Mara takes Adam to various art exhibitions (the most memorable being a German man counting to 1000 while walking on a treadmill), gets him reading Dada, and breaks off in the middle of sex to watch Potemkin on a tiny t.v. Adam also befriends a homeless man who helps him gain entry to the true New York. Until this point the film has been designed to look like a product of 30s Hollywood, shot in black & white, with fake newsreel footage helping to show the desperation of Manhattan under its new leadership. When Adam passes through the gates to the New York underworld, the film steals a trick from The Wizard of Oz and changes to glorious colour. The underground civilisation of artists he meets, ruled by Father Knickerbocker (Sam Jaffe), persuade him to take a mission to the moon, where he is told he will find his true love, Eloy (Lauren Tom). His space shuttle takes the form of a bus packed with pensioners and ruled over by the sinister Sky Host, Ted (A film stealing Bill Murray). The government have established a base on the moon and turned it into a shopping centre, they chip the old folks who fly there to tell anyone who asks that they've been to Miami.
Some of the satire may seem a little obvious, but it's also incredibly funny. Especially as Murray tells the passengers to give praise to the Lunar God of consumerism before they travel to the moon base shopping centre, accompanied by a soundtrack of "We're going to shop! We're going to shop!" The moon set sequences are a perfect parody of 50s sci-fi, including the beautiful moon maidens who greet the consumers with Hawaiian style dancing. Nothing Lasts Forever is a loving tribute to classic Hollywood, from 30s romantic comedies to The Wizard of Oz and 50s sci-fi,but shot through with director/writer Schiller's sense of anarchic absurdism. One of the most inventive, funny and charming films of the 1980s.
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ORIGINAL: matty_b
I would plough my way through MonsterCat 
quote:
ORIGINAL: matty_b
I desire MonsterCat to go down on me.
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