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Just a reminder that the trolly ride to the worlds fair site leave at 9pm EST. Don’t forget your ribbons and high button boots.

I'm a Venom fan. I'm a Tom Hardy fan. I had high hopes. Then I saw Sony was in charge and knew this would be doomed. Also, they should have gone for an R rating like Logan and Deadpool. I've seen this movie called pretty good, a complete disaster, and unintentionally funny. It sounds like madness. The caliber of people involved with this film is astounding...Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Ruben Fleischer (director), Scott Rosenberg (writer). One of my favorite quotes I've seen about the film: "Matt Patches pointed out that Hardy might be the only person in the movie who knows it's a comedy and responds accordingly." Unintentionally hilarious: https://www.thedailybeast.com/tom-hardys-venom-is-an-unintentionally-hilarious-disaster "An absurdly sloppy comic-book extravaganza about a noggin-chomping villain who becomes something of a hero, Venom is like its title character: so unbelievably bad it’s almost good. Almost." "Despite Hardy’s over-the-top tour de force, Venom can’t keep from embarrassing itself at every turn." Tom Hardy performance: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/10/venom-movie-review-tom-hardy "His accent is all over the place, and you fear for his physical well-being at times. I suppose that tracks; he’s got an alien entity wriggling around inside him, after all. The character, I mean. Hardy the actor doesn’t have some otherworldly being tugging on his brain. At least, I don’t think so." "For several weird stretches, though, Venom is a bouncy good time. The movie doesn’t seem to care if you’re laughing with it, at it, or whatever." A total mess: https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/venom-movie-review-tom-hardy-729583/ "In the first scene of Marvel’s utterly unmarvelous Venom, an alien space ship crashes and burns on earth leaving behind a slithering mass of defanged, digitalized slop. That’s also a fair description of this puddle of simplistic, sanitized PG-13 drivel that Marvel has released instead of the scary, dark-night-of-the-soul thunderbolt fans had the right to expect." "What went wrong? Everything, actually. Crudely directed by Ruben Fleischer (remember the bliss of Zombieland?) from an aggressively blockheaded script by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel, this super–antihero tale seems to take a twisted pride in missing the point." Future cult classic? https://www.wired.com/story/venom-movie-review/ "THIS IS A list of things that happen in the new movie Venom: Riz Ahmed, personifying every rich supervillain trope at once, utters the words "God has abandoned us … I will not"; Tom Hardy hops in a restaurant's lobster tank and eats a crustacean raw; the movie's titular character says "on my planet, I was kind of a loser"; and an alien turns into Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams. These are the kinds of moments that turn a movie into a cult favorite, or into a total disaster. Venom could be either—if it had any idea what it was at all."

Chevin (Chef Kevin)

I don't know why this show works as well as it does, but it's great. My job is pretty dull and requires very little cerebral activity, so I spend most of my day listening to podcasts while I work. This is one of my favorites. It makes me laugh and helps me to not think about the vortex of pointless entropy that is my life for a little while. thanks Paul, Lauren, Scott and Shevin! (Shevan?)

I'm in!

So... I've got people coming over next weekend and I need to spend time cleaning up the place. So I'll be pretty busy for the next week. But initial notes: BFI Critic's poll, by my count, 97 of the top 250 are American. BFI Director's poll, by my count, 42 of the top 100 are American. TSFDT poll: Still trying to tally it up since they only list one country per movie and a number of the UK movies on that list are on the AFI poll results, I need to go through the UK films listed and flag them as counting as Is US in terms of the AFI. WRT the director's poll, the listing of foreign films isn't directly why it ranks so low though; it got zero votes. No matter how many non-US films I take out of that list, it won't be on there. However, where foreign films hurts it more is just the ballots for the BFI and the AFI are structured differently. Also who's casting the votes. I mean, even comparing the BFI's critic's poll and director's poll, you see a lot of variation. e.g. comparing The Searchers to Once Upon a Time in the West (which, slipped my mind before - and also one of the few spaghetti westerns that get US listed as one of the funding countries). The latter, is AFAICT pure movie making and people's love for Spaghetti Westerns. In terms of content and meaning, it's pretty vacuous. I don't know how many films on the BFI list would fall into that category though). but, the example The Searchers: Critics - 7th, Directors - 48th OUaTitW: Critics - 78th, Directors - 44th So, who's voting matters. But the ballot - the BFI just asks its participants to submit their 10 best films, unranked. Whatever they want, apparently. The AFI, if I skimmed the ballot correctly, asks participants to basically list 100 films, all but 5 must come from their list of 400, and this is unranked. They have a ranking for the voter's top 5 on the ballot to break tie breakers. If LotR movies is in a lot of people's top 75 movies, but almost no one's top 10 movies, it'll do well on the AFI, but receive no votes on the BFI list. Obvious downside of the AFI list, it doesn't appear to be distinguishing between top 10 movies someone's 100th greatest movie in many ways (i.e. Movies on the BFI list are there because someone loves them or think they are at the very least, "truly great." At 100 slots, with the AFI, there's going to be votes of, "well, it's good, I guess."). TSFDT's list is an aggregate of other lists, and I don't really have thoughts on that. (In this sense though, that's where the listing of international movies would probably hurt LotR more than just having having international films on the list). But again, no list is going to be definitive, so mostly look at lists and see if they appear to produce results that appear interesting to you, and if so, then maybe use that as reference for further movies to check out. In college I knew people who used the box office as a reference point for movies they'd probably like. Me, that wouldn't be a good idea. And with that said, if the Oscar's almost always pick movies you feel are wrong for BP, then would making any pick really be embarrassing or just be par for the course? I list the winners of BP because people, in general, for some reason put stock in them (even though they never seem to agree with the results). And I guess it's yet one more way of putting together a list of "best movies ever made." Though if we're more generous and think the AFI and the Oscar voters have similar tastes, then maybe it's more of an example of the folly of trying to assess the best picture with the myopia of recency; which seems to be a problem for any organization trying to do this, regardless of their tastes/voting habits. Which might be a piece of evidence why people shouldn't complain as much about recent movies not being more prevalent on these all time lists. Though, the imdb list (which is yet another means of getting a listing - everyone who's on imdb votes for every movie they've ever seen and the site just averages (mean) out the ratings), often swings the other way and ranks recent movies very high. Or at least that's my recollection. It doesn't produce results that interest me, so I haven't really paid much attention to it. Just some thoughts.

I should be there tonight.

I’m sorry I won’t be there. I’m about halfway through, though. I’m looking forward to tomorrow

I can't make it tonight, but I did just finish the movie! Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts

Sleepaway Camp 2 is available on Amazon Prime

Yes exactly! One of my best friends is literally head first dived in to this fandom so she could probably quote the whole trilogy extended from start to finish and has given me lessons on the series multiple times and I love her to death but all of it literally goes in one ear and then out the other lol! I almost texted her when this got announced that I was finally gonna be in for a marathon since she's been telling me she wants to rewatch them but who knows when I'll ever have time for that lol.

Thank you for this! I think this is going to be an amazing movie because my (ironically skittish) cat Godric heard one second of the opening music and ran the fuck out my room like the devil was chasing him. He's clearly a film critic with delicate sensibilities. Only AFI's top 100 and Unspooled for him! That or he just hates synthy digital sounding music. Either way my cat has better taste than I do and he literally only wants to eat dry cat food.

Psycho - Shudder Raiders - Amazon Prime African Queen - Netflix

That’s funny. I met a woman today who said she had eight kids. Jesus, I have two, but I swear to God sometimes I feel like I have thirty kids living in my house...

So inspired by Taylor Anne's devotion to one of the greatest music videos of our time Queen of the Damned I tried to find a listical from syfy.com's Fangrrls on it and I just discovered that there was a tv movie on the motherfucking FURBIES!! It's called Furby Island and it looks like the stuff of nightmares. You can get it on YouTube for free and I think I might have found what I'm doing this weekend should I want to scar myself for life. I distinctly remember having one as a kid and needing to lock it in my closet because it wouldn't shut up and then being so scared of my now possessed closet I had to sleep with my mom in her room. This movie looks scarier than what being alone in the dark and hearing a weird robot chirping to itself from my closet felt like to an already terrified 8 year old. Would anyone else be interested in watching this monstrosity?

Hell yeah this movie is terribly awesomely terrible.

Me too?

Although The Shop Around the Corner is indeed a fantastic movie, I think It's a Wonderful Life is my favorite Jimmy Stewart movie and my favorite Jimmy Stewart performance. It really hits my Golden Ratio of being a 90% dark parade of human misery with a 10% juicy center of hope and optimism. At least I would never say I like any Stewart movie of performance better than It's A Wonderful Life. ANYWAY, Meet Me in St. Louis is one of those Landmark Films that I have never seen, so I am excited for this one!

OK - so I think it's time we did one of my favorite movies of all time. It's Judy's best movie besides Wizard of Oz, it has crazy famous music, and a fantastic Halloween sequence. You guys will have to rent it, but I am totally willing to rent it and Rabbit it with anyone who doesn't want to pay for it. Maybe Sunday night?

...Five stars.

At 10? What did they think they were taking you to see? A romantic comedy about the fear of being alone?!

I forgot about “The Skulls”. What a stupid movie. That movie deserves to get ripped apart.