MovieChat Forums > Wavelength (1967) Discussion > Man, I would like to see this

Man, I would like to see this


I was reading about this film the other day in class, I really would like to see it.

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Don't wish too hard, it might come true!!

"He reminds me of me, before the weight of the world crushed my spirit."

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I've heard that it's unbearable to watch. Not that it's bad, but that you'll want to die by the end of it.

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Have you seen this movie? If so, tell me how if at all possible. Thanks... PT

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I rather enjoyed the experience. I ended up watching a good quality 16mm print of it in a proper theater. It was rather hypnotic, although me being stoned out of my gourd at that moment probably helped.

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LOL

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My film professor told me that it was a very experimental film that continously zooms into a single picture for 45 minutes. The tension is meant to build so much over what this picture is that we're looking at and the soundtrack is, well, horrific. If you've ever seen something called "Razorblades" you'll know what I mean. I'm not a really big fan of experimental films, because their vagueness only detracts from any enjoyment, but as far as they go I hear this one is a classic.

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[deleted]

no, you should want to see it. It's a very interesting and well-executed film. Important, even

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Does this one have Tangerine Dream music in it?

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No Tangerine Dream music (I believe the noises made come from sine waves). The version I had ended up being only a third of the actual film. I liked what I saw and if you have any interest in this film, I think you would like it (I think people that saw it and hated it were probably people in film classes and were expecting more conventional film).

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The movie wavelength 1983 is the right one for tangerine dream music, its supposed to be awesome movie for its time... based on true story too if u believe the interview with Henry Deacon' interview at http://projectcamelot.org/interviews.html

interview excerpt here:
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" What can you tell us about the ET presence?

Look up the movie Wavelength. It’s based on a totally true story. Have you seen it? It's based on an incident that took place at Hunter Liggett. This is a hot one.

No. Where’s Hunter Liggett?

90 miles south-south-east of Monterey, California. My primary station at the time was Fort Ord.

I was working there back in the early 70s, when I was in the military, and I was working under CDCEC, which is Combat Developments Command Experimentation Command. You can go look that up.

We were doing testing of all kinds of devices, and we lived out in the field there. We wore laser protection goggles a lot of the time and we had our eyes dialated routinely to check our retinas for burns. Some of the cattle in the fields even wore modified goggles! This was the most bizarre sight you could ever imagine.

Well, one day something happened while we were testing. A disk came into the area and it was hovering, it hovered right directly in front of us, out in a field. So [pause] we shot the ****ing thing down.

You shot down a disk?

[shaking head] We should never have done it. It wasn't me personally, but the group did. Between us we had all this gizmo weaponry and I guess they panicked and thought they were in a movie or something. The disk was disabled and it was captured, and so were the occupants, and I saw these very briefly. They were small child-like humanoids, with no hair. And they had small eyes, not large almond-shaped eyes. I don’t think anyone knows about this. As far as I know it’s not on the internet.

This is incredible. I've never heard of this incident.

Most of the other witnesses ended up in Vietnam and many were killed. I may be the only living witness to what happened... I don’t know.

The rest of the story is in a sci-fi movie called Wavelength, which was released in the early '80s. I’d never heard of it until I ran into it years later, in Arizona. Did I just say this? [laughs, for the first time]

When I saw the video, I was expecting some, you know, light entertainment with a beer or two, but I mean, my mouth just hung wide open. The beginning of the film just completely clearly and accurately describes the incident, and the film is very close to the rest of the story, including the use of an abandoned Nike base in Southern California to store them.

Go find it. It’s all basically true. I was just amazed when I saw it. The person who wrote it must have been there, or knew someone who was there. But I don’t know who.

I had a genuine alien photo once. I showed it to someone, a woman, a very talented woman, who was a microbiologist working for one of the agencies. It scared the s*** out of her. I couldn’t believe it. She just didn’t want to deal with it at all. And I’d say that just suggests that the public, even scientists aren’t ready for this information to be released. And this person was really smart. It didn’t stop her from freaking out, just not wanting to know. She was just, you know, totally spooked."
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excerpt ends

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Watch it, then read a few criticisms/dicussion papers about it. Sitting through it was painful (I think half my class fell asleep), but in retrospect it was worthwhile, and a little funny. Read about what the director was trying to accomplish, and you'll see how well he does it. I'd like to see it again sometime, but just once more. You can't call yourself a pretentious film geek (even tongue in cheek) without having watched this. This and "Blow Up".


Don't watch it at x2 speed though, that'd be cheating.

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It's pretty hilarious in retrospect, but I was convinced that I had died about 20 minutes into it. The thing felt like a 3 hour film.

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Blow Up was better than this ... creation.

After the screening in my film class two years ago one guy got up and yelled "who wants to go kill stuff" and received a loud cheer from many of the other students. This film was made to piss people off plain and simple.

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If the opening poster, and anyone else, would like to watch it, here it is on google video. I haven't actually watched it yet, but I will, despite what I've heard about it.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3009876496807585942&q=wav elength+%281967%29&total=4&start=0&num=10&so=0&typ e=search&plindex=2




www.myspace.com/frankboothdelarge

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I just watched it last night. Pretty hard to watch, but not a bad movie. When I heard about this, I thought, "a movie where the whole thing is a zoom onto a window, that sounds like pretentious garbage made by a pretentious college student." When I watched it, it was different from what I expected. I'm glad there was some human activity going on. Some of the human scenes were actually kind of creepy. Human activity made it slightly more watchable, as did the experimenting with filters. Otherwise, I doubt I'll ever watch this again, but it's worth seeing once if you're into experimental movies.



www.myspace.com/frankboothdelarge

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If anyone lives in the Atlanta area, the Georgia State University student theater Cinefest is going to be showing this and Antonioni's Blow up together for one night only on September 27th, at 7pm! I'll be there!
www.gsu.edu/cinefest

But I don't care darling, because I love you, and you've got to let me eat your brains.

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Awesome! What a great pairing. I'm in Macon. Not sure I can make it, but I'd love to see them together. Thanks for providing info on it.

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This is the second time on this thread where this is mentioned in the same sentence as "Blow Up". Is there some unmentioned link between these two quite different films that would be obvious to me if I wasn't so stupid?
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I suppose on a clear day you can see the class struggle from here.

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thanks!

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I went to a conference of Michael Snow and he showed three of his movies. This one was the first. It was interesting to see this on a big screen. He said he made this movie just for projection, not for DVD. It was interesting because no one made a sound for 45 minutes. Everybody was watching this very slow zoom. It was special. You have to be in the mood I guess to appreciate it. Not sure I would have liked it if I had just watched it in my living room. Michael Snow looked like a very nice man.

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Having grown up in Snow's neck of the woods and being a lover of film, I have been lucky enough to see this film on two or three occasions. Do not be fooled by the terse descriptions; there is a lot more to this film than a single zoom (which is not even technically correct). Whether there is enough in the film to please those who require narrative is another matter.

I can only say that, for me, this film is deserving of every plaudit. I am fortunate enough to have seen it first when I was still fairly young. I think it is not too much to say that it significantly shaped how I view the world.

Those who dislike the film based on rumours, hearsay, or their own lack of imagination will of course dominate fora like this one. C'est la vie.

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[deleted]

[deleted]

It's on YouTube.

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