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Baron Von Humongous
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:59 am    Post subject:

ocho wrote:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
Cutheon wrote:
also has anyone seen palm springs yet?

Watched it recently when I was feeling a bit down and it was a great pick me up. A surprisingly sweet, warm hearted romantic comedy with a top notch cast and impressive performances from Sandberg, Miloti, and, of course, J.K. Simmons

Time loop movies are catnip for me and Palm Springs adds to its Groundhog Day riff with a legitimately touching romance between its two flawed, but likeable lead characters. It captures that feeling of being in a private world with the person you're falling in love with as well as the fear of both being stuck and the unknown future of any relationship. And it's funny to boot albeit with some gross out gags that may not work for everyone.

Good flick. Solid B.


I liked it too. Millioti is a star.

Definitely. I went from "oh, her" to "why isn't she a star yet?" within the first hour.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 12:58 pm    Post subject:

yeah i liked her episode of modern love. and she was really good in black mirror too
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 1:02 pm    Post subject:

Cutheon wrote:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
Cutheon wrote:
also has anyone seen palm springs yet?

Watched it recently when I was feeling a bit down and it was a great pick me up. A surprisingly sweet, warm hearted romantic comedy with a top notch cast and impressive performances from Sandberg, Miloti, and, of course, J.K. Simmons

Time loop movies are catnip for me and Palm Springs adds to its Groundhog Day riff with a legitimately touching romance between its two flawed, but likeable lead characters. It captures that feeling of being in a private world with the person you're falling in love with as well as the fear of both being stuck and the unknown future of any relationship. And it's funny to boot albeit with some gross out gags that may not work for everyone.

Good flick. Solid B.


good looking out. meant to check it out last week but my superior half wasn't feeling the schmaltz.

no thoughts on demme and kubrick? you asked, i answered, friendo.

*phew!*

Demme - empathetic, flexible, and known as an actor's director. Much more effective as a "studio guy" who worked within a given genre to guide it towards his sensibilities whereas Kubrick's early studio work is his weakest,* imo, until he fully breaks out with Dr. Strangelove and imposes his sensibility over everything.

Demme was a writer turned director via the Roger Corman machine in the late-60s and 70s and was always less formally stark in his compositions and mise en scene, but his films also feel more "natural" for it. Even in his most visually heightened movie, Silence of the Lambs, there's something alienating yet inviting to the filmmaking - compare it to A Clockwork Orange, which is what I imagine Kubrick's version of a Hannibal Lecter movie would look like. There's an opening scene in Swing Shift (1984) stupidly cut from the mediocre theatrical release - Demme hated the studio heads there and years later pieced together an informal director's cut you can see floating around YouTube - that's a 2 minute continuous tracking shot of Ed Harris coming home from his job at the mill while Goldie Hawn waits for him on the front porch that's both lovely, technically impressive, and yet doesn't feel showy. That's Demme to me.

Anyway, I'm on a Demme kick so I could go on forever, but he had some real clunkers later in his career outside of the transcendent family dramedy Rachel Getting Married and his peaks are well below Kubrick's best, which were more formally inventive and challenging. But Demme was still a talented synthesizer of styles - he drew on Kubrick quite a bit - and his unique combination of empathy and rhythm - perfected as a concert filmmaker most famously with The Talking Heads collaboration Stop Making Sense - lures the viewer in while allowing the screenplay and performances to rock you back.



* excluding the exceptional Paths of Glory and the very good The Killing.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 1:14 pm    Post subject:

ocho wrote:
My concern with the Gone With The Wind business was that it would lead to all sorts of movies getting unwanted explainers that would deprive viewers of discovering certain classics and forming their own thoughts about them. Now there’s a mandatory explainer at the top of Blazing Saddles explaining what satire and jokes are.

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Blazing Saddles is currently streaming on HBO Max, along with a new introduction that automatically plays before the Mel Brooks classic begins.

It is unclear exactly when the intro was added to the 1974 comedy classic starring the late Cleavon Little and the late Gene Wilder, but it was sometime after the film premiered on the streaming service in July.

"The intro was added to ensure that the film was put into the proper social context," an HBO Max spokeswoman told The Hollywood Reporter.

Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that Jonathan Swift really doesn't want you to eat babies?
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Baron Von Humongous
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 1:46 pm    Post subject:

ocho wrote:
My concern with the Gone With The Wind business was that it would lead to all sorts of movies getting unwanted explainers that would deprive viewers of discovering certain classics and forming their own thoughts about them. Now there’s a mandatory explainer at the top of Blazing Saddles explaining what satire and jokes are.

Quote:
Blazing Saddles is currently streaming on HBO Max, along with a new introduction that automatically plays before the Mel Brooks classic begins.

It is unclear exactly when the intro was added to the 1974 comedy classic starring the late Cleavon Little and the late Gene Wilder, but it was sometime after the film premiered on the streaming service in July.

"The intro was added to ensure that the film was put into the proper social context," an HBO Max spokeswoman told The Hollywood Reporter.

I can fast forward through the intro so this is a minor inconvenience, but these automatic intros along with pulling problematic films/show episodes from streaming is going to become more and more of a CYA solution for media conglomerates and it sucks.

Supplemental materials from critics, academics, filmmakers, etc. to provide context and analysis are great - see the late Filmstruck and now the Criterion Channel - but those aren't imposed on the viewer before they can watch and form their own opinions, as you note, ocho, which is especially egregious with a satire like Blazing Saddles. Maybe the Disney people are doing something right in threading the needle with a quick CYA text disclaimer like a parental guidance warning but for people who don't know that America has always been quite racist.
q
Apropos of this, no one ever told me that Fred Astaire had a blackface number in Swing Time until he popped up smiling and singing "Bojangles of Harlem" two thirds of the way through. The chilling shock is better not being watered down by a disclaimer. Not to mention that creating introductions for every problematic work is a fool's errand given the resources it would require, but I do support critics getting another paycheck.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 1:52 pm    Post subject:

Baron Von Humongous wrote:
Cutheon wrote:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
Cutheon wrote:
also has anyone seen palm springs yet?

Watched it recently when I was feeling a bit down and it was a great pick me up. A surprisingly sweet, warm hearted romantic comedy with a top notch cast and impressive performances from Sandberg, Miloti, and, of course, J.K. Simmons

Time loop movies are catnip for me and Palm Springs adds to its Groundhog Day riff with a legitimately touching romance between its two flawed, but likeable lead characters. It captures that feeling of being in a private world with the person you're falling in love with as well as the fear of both being stuck and the unknown future of any relationship. And it's funny to boot albeit with some gross out gags that may not work for everyone.

Good flick. Solid B.


good looking out. meant to check it out last week but my superior half wasn't feeling the schmaltz.

no thoughts on demme and kubrick? you asked, i answered, friendo.

*phew!*

Demme - empathetic, flexible, and known as an actor's director. Much more effective as a "studio guy" who worked within a given genre to guide it towards his sensibilities whereas Kubrick's early studio work is his weakest,* imo, until he fully breaks out with Dr. Strangelove and imposes his sensibility over everything.

Demme was a writer turned director via the Roger Corman machine in the late-60s and 70s and was always less formally stark in his compositions and mise en scene, but his films also feel more "natural" for it. Even in his most visually heightened movie, Silence of the Lambs, there's something alienating yet inviting to the filmmaking - compare it to A Clockwork Orange, which is what I imagine Kubrick's version of a Hannibal Lecter movie would look like. There's an opening scene in Swing Shift (1984) stupidly cut from the mediocre theatrical release - Demme hated the studio heads there and years later pieced together an informal director's cut you can see floating around YouTube - that's a 2 minute continuous tracking shot of Ed Harris coming home from his job at the mill while Goldie Hawn waits for him on the front porch that's both lovely, technically impressive, and yet doesn't feel showy. That's Demme to me.

Anyway, I'm on a Demme kick so I could go on forever, but he had some real clunkers later in his career outside of the transcendent family dramedy Rachel Getting Married and his peaks are well below Kubrick's best, which were more formally inventive and challenging. But Demme was still a talented synthesizer of styles - he drew on Kubrick quite a bit - and his unique combination of empathy and rhythm - perfected as a concert filmmaker most famously with The Talking Heads collaboration Stop Making Sense - lures the viewer in while allowing the screenplay and performances to rock you back.



* excluding the exceptional Paths of Glory and the very good The Killing.


But do you see how PTA draws from them? Kubrick seems especially obvious but PTA is a noted Demme fan and you can see it most in his close ups - thinl Macy in the dentist chair in Magnolia, or any number of shots in The Master, particularly in the processing scenes, and particularly particularly when Amy's eyes turn to black

and apologies if this is not as substantively compelling a response to your well thought out post - too busy. but wanted to circle back to our original discussion of PTA that prompted this chain
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 2:04 pm    Post subject:

Great minds thinking alike about Cristin Milioti. I never saw that popular show she was on. I first saw her on Black Mirror and thought she was great. As an aside, I can't believe that Off Topic doesn't have a thread devoted to this great show, but I digress. Then, I also saw that episode of Modern Love as well and was officially smitten. She's smart and funny in interviews as well. Palm Springs was solid. I'm a fan of Samberg as well. It's no Groundhog Day but what is?
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:24 am    Post subject:

Rest in peace, Linda Manz.



https://youtube.com/watch?t=1s&v=Q9NG1xYMcA0
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:53 am    Post subject:

So I recently watched Zanussi's A Year of the Quiet Sun, Cassavetes' Husbands, and Tarkovsky's Sacrifice. I watch so many movies and I keep forgetting what great movies actually look like.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2020 3:17 pm    Post subject:

BOYS STATE is a sharp and insightful doc that is also quite timely. It’s streaming now on Apple+.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 5:30 pm    Post subject:

Baron Von Humongous wrote:
So I recently watched Zanussi's A Year of the Quiet Sun, Cassavetes' Husbands, and Tarkovsky's Sacrifice. I watch so many movies and I keep forgetting what great movies actually look like.

Husbands and The Sacrifice are both leaving the Criterion Channel on 8/31.

A Year of the Quiet Sun is streaming on Kanopy.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 6:17 pm    Post subject:

Walker (1987; Cox): Amazing. I could watch it twenty times. Universal tanked the marketing budget for this aggressively on the nose, hilarious, and vicious satire of US foreign policy in Central America over the centuries - despised by the no doubt Reagan supporting, Iran Contra loving studio execs at the time - and Cox's blank check movie predictably bombed. He was then blacklisted by the DGA after turning scab under a pseudonym during the 1988 strike, which ended his brief, weird stint in Hollywood after Repo Man was a cult hit that earned him an unexpected studio contract.

But if you do have to go out, few rarely go out with a movie this entertaining, this funny, and this thorny. Ed Harris is the most Ed Harris he can be* and Joe Strummer's score is to die for. What a picture!


* I would double bill Walker and Romero's Knightriders just for the Harris performances.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 12:04 am    Post subject:

John Carpenter is one of America's greatest living filmmakers (and composers): Big Trouble in Little China is Wuxia via Howard Hawks. Masterpiece.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 6:39 am    Post subject:

I watched Case 39 on Netflix the other night. It was unintentionally funny. Do not bother unless you are a bad movie aficionado.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 10:59 am    Post subject:

Baron Von Humongous wrote:
Walker (1987; Cox): Amazing. I could watch it twenty times. Universal tanked the marketing budget for this aggressively on the nose, hilarious, and vicious satire of US foreign policy in Central America over the centuries - despised by the no doubt Reagan supporting, Iran Contra loving studio execs at the time - and Cox's blank check movie predictably bombed. He was then blacklisted by the DGA after turning scab under a pseudonym during the 1988 strike, which ended his brief, weird stint in Hollywood after Repo Man was a cult hit that earned him an unexpected studio contract.

But if you do have to go out, few rarely go out with a movie this entertaining, this funny, and this thorny. Ed Harris is the most Ed Harris he can be* and Joe Strummer's score is to die for. What a picture!


* I would double bill Walker and Romero's Knightriders just for the Harris performances.


Its easy to say that one likes Breaking Bad. As such, I appreciate it when someone bucks the trend by providing a contrary opinion to the general sentiment of a work. And for that, I will give this one a whirl when next I see it on one of the networks or providers.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 28, 2020 4:51 pm    Post subject:

Don't know if this fits here. If you have Netflix I suggest a look at "Becoming." It's about Michelle Obama. She is a very real woman. She doesn't seem scripted. Her smile never seemed forced, it was genuine. Michelle emits real in the highest definition of the word.
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 29, 2020 10:44 pm    Post subject:

A lot to catch up on in this thread, but a quick shout out to underappreciated horror gem Dead & Buried (1981). It's a messy mashup of slasher flicks, giallo, and Hammer horror that somehow works as a meanspirited slow burn deconstruction of small town America.

Gary Sherman (Death Line) was stifled and blocked at several points and wasn't even involved in the final edit, but somehow this movie functions like gangbusters with gorgeous Stan Winston gore effects* and Jack Albertson (Charlie's grandpa in Willy Wonka) giving his final performance as a singular mad scientist that transcends genre. What a (bleep) delight. One of my favorites.

* The second most famous Stan Winston effect in the movie (every spoiler warning):

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PostPosted: Sat Aug 29, 2020 11:16 pm    Post subject:

I get that Larry Clark is cancelled, but I really need Kids, Bully, and Ken Park on Blu-Ray via Criterion.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 30, 2020 2:41 am    Post subject:

Baron Von Humongous wrote:
I get that Larry Clark is cancelled, but I really need Kids, Bully, and Ken Park on Blu-Ray via Criterion.


I can't possibly overstate how much I hated the experience of watching Kids. Needless to say, I didn't watch any of Clark's other work.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 30, 2020 9:52 am    Post subject:

ChickenStu wrote:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
I get that Larry Clark is cancelled, but I really need Kids, Bully, and Ken Park on Blu-Ray via Criterion.


I can't possibly overstate how much I hated the experience of watching Kids. Needless to say, I didn't watch any of Clark's other work.



As a kid younger than the kids in Kids when I watched Kids in the mid-90s it was a formative text that I cannot help but love.

It's also maybe his most tame movie, so probably best that you stayed away.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 30, 2020 4:19 pm    Post subject:

Baron Von Humongous wrote:
John Carpenter is one of America's greatest living filmmakers (and composers): Big Trouble in Little China is Wuxia via Howard Hawks. Masterpiece.


Big Trouble is on a short list of movies I'll watch every time I see it on TV.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2020 10:04 am    Post subject:

jonnybravo wrote:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
John Carpenter is one of America's greatest living filmmakers (and composers): Big Trouble in Little China is Wuxia via Howard Hawks. Masterpiece.


Big Trouble is on a short list of movies I'll watch every time I see it on TV.

Eminently rewatchable! Shout Factory issued a new Blu-Ray of Big Trouble last year and it has a great commentary track of Carpenter and Russell just laughing their assess off every time Jack Burton screwed up or got his ass kicked. I'd recommend buying it if you have a player, but here's a supercut: https://twitter.com/JFrankensteiner/status/1221182338442416129

They get to have fun with 80s action hero tropes, introduce American audiences to some of the crazy stuff going on in Hong Kong, throw in some sweet monsters, and get a little romcom action in? That's cinema.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2020 10:10 am    Post subject:

Maybe it's just me, but that Eurovision movie on Netflix with Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams looks really ugly, right?
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2020 10:11 am    Post subject:

Baron Von Humongous wrote:
Maybe it's just me, but that Eurovision movie on Netflix with Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams looks really ugly, right?


I think I commented on this. I thought it was awful.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2020 10:28 am    Post subject:

ChickenStu wrote:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
Maybe it's just me, but that Eurovision movie on Netflix with Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams looks really ugly, right?


I think I commented on this. I thought it was awful.

Sorry I missed your comment otherwise I could've saved myself some time. I honestly turned it off after 30 minutes.

The Rachel McAdams line delivery about the elves was pretty good, but the "Ja!Ja! Dingdong" song critics seemed to love was a rejected Lonely Island gag and...how do you make Iceland look so blah? It should be a misdemeanor to make Iceland ugly in a movie.

Outside of some of the costumes and songs it looks like there was almost zero interest in production design and the director wouldn't recognize an interesting, well-lit frame if his life depended on it.
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