DanEngler

I gotchu my dude.

This movie is both good enough and groundbreaking enough to merit its spot on the AFI Top 100, no question. As controversial as the sex and violence were in 1967, I was genuinely surprised that they didn't go full exploitation film and play up the "HE can ONLY get it UP when he MURDERS" aspect, and Clyde's impotence instead humanizes him as someone who relies as much on false bravado as he does skill. I was also surprised by how much of the film turned out to be historically accurate, erections notwithstanding. Amy, your interview with Robert Benton was fantastic!

Yes! I took a screengrab every time a sign appeared so that I could read the text later. Typeset in The Future seems to be the de facto resource for most other transcriptions.

I find it fascinating that, rather than explain his intentions, Kubrick intended 2001's message to be conveyed directly to the viewer's subconscious, yet so many critics had a violent negative reaction after seeing it. The first time I tried to watch 2001 (in actual 2001), I bailed 45 minutes in because it was "slow" and "boring". My excuse is that I was a stupid kid whose brain hadn't evolved enough to receive the signal and oh shiiiiiiiiiit 17 years later, I am a different person and I love a pensive, open-ended visual experience. The Twin Peaks revival is one of my favorite things in recent memory, and Part 8 "explains" the creation mythos of the Twin Peaks universe (to the extent that David Lynch ever explains anything.) I've lost track of how many time I've watched it. It obviously owes a great debt to Kubrick. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IKUeIEdRMY

There's nothing wrong with constructive criticism, but there wasn't much constructive about the review I posted to Letterboxd and then deleted in shame shortly thereafter. Everything's fine, though. I felt relief when I was able to five-star next week's film.

I've been reluctant to join the conversation for two reasons: 1. I try to never broadcast negativity about other people's work on the Internet. There's already more than enough of that in the world. 2. Following the French Connection thread, I'm worried about becoming the resident contrarian dick who rains on everyone's parade week after week. So, suffice it to say: I watched Titanic.

My disconnect stems from the fact that the film establishes a palpably grimy setting and then makes its protagonists almost (but not quite) comically inept. The Santa Claus chase and the subway tail and Popeye's morning-after handcuffed-to-the-bed scene and the train driver's heart attack were juuust shy of being Fletch, but the rest of the movie features stroller-pushing mothers gunned down by snipers and murdered transit cops and car crash corpses. One click in either direction and it could be Beverly Hills Cop or Die Hard, but instead its tone careens between extremes, and the whole movie feels aimless as a result. Is this indicative of filmmaking in the 70s? All of my points of reference are obviously from the 80s, so I'm willing to accept the possibility that I am at fault here.

Rather than continually update a forum post, I finally caved in and signed up for Letterboxd.

I've never been on the NYC subway but, if it's anything like Seattle's transit tunnel, every arriving vehicle kicks up a hot swirling cloud of filth. Imagine standing on the platform and going for a lick, only to find your ice cream cone covered in rat fur. Aside: Jesus Christ, Titanic is 3h15m?!

It was an oyster, commonly found lying in piles in French puddles. Also, the key to any stakeout is to make a big production out of dumping a cup of soup onto the sidewalk while standing in your suspect's eyeline. Only a brilliant criminal mind like Charnier could detect such cunning!

Going into this film (and 80% of AFI's Top 100) knowing very little in advance, I had no idea that: 1. The French Connection was largely based on a true story. 2. The car chase scene was considered groundbreaking for its time. 3. It cleaned up at the Oscars. Absent any of that context, I found the movie tedious and anticlimactic, and I echoed a lot of the sentiments Amy expressed. Is this supposed to represent skilled police work? Are we supposed to be rooting for the detectives? Are we expected to sign off on brutality and racism and incidental murder because that's what it takes to get (read: stumble backwards into) justice out in these Mean Streets™? And, since it is based on a true story, is Friedkin trying to excuse those excesses in the real world? Between The French Connection and the widespread opinion that Swing Time isn't even the best Fred & Ginger film, I'm starting to question the AFI's bona fides. Also, after you've watched the real single-take , even the car chase in The French Connection seems anticlimactic.

by Kinobe.

In case you aren't following @Unspooled on Twitter:

Please do a "Debbie Downer" column for every episode of Unspooled, akin to taylor anne's "This Week in Feminism" in the HDTGM forum. It'll save me the work of having to look up all of the horrific abuses that surely occurred on the set of all 100 films.

I had to pause Ben-Hur and consult its plot summary on Wikipedia at one point, because the film abruptly cuts from a scene where the Emperor "frees" Judah to another where he's a five-time chariot champion with an apparent love interest and an adoptive father. I thought something was wrong with my copy of the film, but I guess I was supposed to infer that passage of time from a crossfade? I disagree with suggestions that Jesus be cut in the interest of time. As an ex-Catholic raised on a steady diet of The Ten Commandments, the idea of The Bible happening just off-screen is hilarious (hence, Life of Brian.) There should have been more scenes of Jesus as a peripheral character; Judah walking past the Last Supper, Judas hanging himself in the background of an unrelated scene, etc. Instead, cut all of the leper material. Miriam and Tirzah actually die in prison, Judah stumbles out into the empty chariot arena after Messala's death and realizes how hollow his vengeance is, so he chooses to embrace Christ's teachings rather than foment uprising against Rome. Same message without the additional 90 minutes of cruft. Ultimately, I can't tell if Heston is any good because whenever he speaks I only hear Phil Hartman's impression of him from Saturday Night Live. "All we had was bananas, bananas, bananas."

Prior to watching Citizen Kane, I'd only seen 20 of AFI's Top 100. I listened to the oldies station when I was young, and love You Must Remember This, so this glaring cinematic blind spot can only be explained by having prioritized other media (TV as a kid, video games in my 20s, podcasts in my 30s.) I plan to remedy this by watching along with Unspooled. I went into the film with the assumption that its legendary status was earned via writing and performances, so I was surprised to find I was most riveted by the cinematography. The long camera movements, the way the actors played between light and shadow, and the sense of "heft" in the environments felt remarkable even by today's standards. (The sometimes claustrophobic darkness/post-Art Deco New York/themes about the downfall of Great Men felt very , though, so maybe I was predisposed to enjoy it.)

I have some good news for you… …and some bad news, in that this episode is behind the paywall and available on Stitcher Premium. Use offer code HDTGM for a free one-month trial. …and some good news, in that someone uploaded the whole episode to YouTube.

Try deleting it from iTunes and re-subscribing. If you've been listening for a long time, you may still be subscribed to the very old Feedburner RSS feed which was recently deleted.

I was going to point to Matt's Letterboxd list for theme songs but it hasn't been updated in nearly a year. It's the from Return of The Jedi.

According to Colin, these episodes and the new season of The Andy Daly Podcast Pilot Project will be published on regular (free) Earwolf feeds six months after their initial release.

Nope.

They've been quietly posting the songs to Superego's Soundcloud account. You can grab them via the RSS feed.

I believe the episode you're talking about was considered part of the 2016 CBB Tour, and there's a thread for it in the Howl section of the forum.

From the Earwolf Forum Rules:

Nah, it's real. After someone posted about it on the Earwolf subreddit a couple weeks ago, its name was briefly changed to "Wolf Den 3" before disappearing altogether.