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I think I heard that they usually tend to wait ten plus years before adapting to film (See: Wicked which still hasn’t been released) I think that gives the live shows longer legs. As for Hamilton, even 2021 seems soon. My guess is that it was released early because of a) the pandemic, b ) Miranda’s relationship with Disney, and c) it’s a huge election year and Hamilton gets people pumped about politics.

You’re in luck. They’re working on an In the Heights movie.

I think it just kept growing? Like I think he did cut it

I think the characters in Jaws feel like actual people. The characters in Jurassic Park feel like characters. There's an authentic feeling with Jaws that I don't think it appreciated enough. I also think Brody is a really unsung everyman hero. He's overshadowed by Quint and Hooper to an extent, but he's a great character and his qualities are built up so well over time and so subtly. Like him throwing the tank into the shark's mouth. He knows about the tank's explosiveness thanks to Hooper, but he has the idea planted into his mind earlier when looking through the books. He's shown to be able to learn and pick up things quickly. Quint teaches him how to tie knots and after a couple failures, he gets it soon after. Even his fear of the water is slowly erased. When Alex Kitner is attacked, Brody won't even stick his feet into the surf to yell for everyone to get out of the water. Then Hooper gets him drunk enough to go out onto a boat, then for the 4th of July, Brody runs almost waist deep into the water to pull his son back onto shore. Then he spends the rest of the movie out on the open ocean. Even his clothes on the boat change. He starts out in a full slicker, then just in the pants and then he's finally just wearing his regular clothes. It's not called attention to either. He just changes naturally. I also want to add in something about the Indianapolis scene and Brody lifting his shirt to reveal his scar. I think he's clearly envious at Hooper and Quint bonding over their shared stories and battle wounds and Brody has none to contribute. Hooper and Quint are together in one shot and Brody is off in his own shot on the other side of the cabin. He feels still distant from the others, which is interesting to me because Both Hooper and Quint do seem to like or at least respect Brody, but he still feels inferior to them, but then the laughs and the story finally bring them together until they are all singing together in one shot.

What do you have for us?

We might get a Rent situation then, with some of the actors too old to play their characters? Idina Menzel gets a pass though. She HAS to be in the movie!

No, sorry. They’ve been talking about doing Wicked as a movie forever, but they were waiting until it was out of theaters.

You're saying Wicked has already been filmed, just not released? I agree about the longer legs. You're right that 2021 seemed short. I was surprised a little as well. Was considering trying to get tickets for Baltimore next summer and I kept trying the Broadway lottery.

If you wanna wrangle my dangle, you better play me the Bangles.

Why were they originally going to release the movie in October, 2021? Was that the end of the current tours? I assume they moved up the release, and to Disney Plus, because of the pandemic.

I think I might try to watch it in 1/2 hour chunks. I’ll freely admit that musicals where people sing non-stop (or rap, in this case) are not my jam. I’ve seen Tommy and Rent and CATS—among others—and I wasn’t a fan. i know Hamilton is universally beloved, I Know it great reviews, I was somewhat excited to see it. I sat down with my parents to watch it, made it to the 45 minute mark (the wedding scene) and realized I couldn’t handle two more hours of it. For this reason, I’m glad I didn’t see it as a full production (not that we could have gotten tickets anyway). I just need SOME dialogue to break things up. Also, I’m not that well-read about Hamilton, so just trying to take everything in was overwhelming. I liked In the Heights better. Glad you enjoyed it!

As soon he stepped up and sang, “Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton” I was like “I’m in big, big trouble” lol In other news, my wife finally witnessed Hamilton (she would not listen to the soundtrack and has made fun of me for years) to which she gave a hearty, “Yeah, I can see why people like this.”

I FUCKING KNEW IT LOL

I’ll go on record as perhaps being one of the few people from the USA who saw this in elementary school (or perhaps sixth grade). From what I vaguely remember, we thought it was weird but funny. Then again, our teachers often showed us random, weird shit. we also watched Troll. i thought all the kids in this were great and everyone gave solid performances. I actually generally enjoyed it until the slave-labor part, which—as weird as the first two-thirds of the movie were—seemed to come from a COMPLETELY different movie. The most disturbing part of the movie that no one has talked about: Michael’s nightmare where the dog attacked his long hair. Also, I saw the female “wino” (whose name was Mary, I think, but I’ve already forgotten) as being mean and only begrudgingly helping Michael. My interpretation of the “fright” was that she was the one who scared him and made his hair fall off, because she tries to do it again at the end and he brushes her off. It’s not clearly explained, but that’s my take on it.

Man, I love Jurassic Park, but IMO the dopey "It's a UNIX system!" scene alone drops it below Jaws. I'll agree that it does have better effects and better-choreographed action, but in terms of story/character/dialogue I don't think it's close, Jaws wins hands down. I would keep every Spielberg on the list except Saving Private Ryan. Good movie, but there are enough war movies and this isn't so clearly better than the other ones.

Being born in 1981 in a French-Canadian town in the province of Quebec, the Tales for All series was an integral part of my childhood. These movies were a huge deal in the '80s and early '90s where I grew up. Over a dozen of them were made during that period, and a lot of people my age have seen most more than once. About half of the movies were filmed in English then dubbed in French (The Peanut Butter Solution, for example). The other half were filmed in French then dubbed in English. I don't know if they had the same impact in English Canada, though. My husband, who grew up in Toronto and is only a couple of years older than me, has only a vague knowledge of some of them, and the DVD box sets released in the 2000s were in French only. The tone varied widely from one movie to the next and, although they all had some quirkiness to them, not all of them had a fantastical element or were scary. The first and perhaps most memorable film of the series, The Dog Who Stopped The War, is about a battle between two groups of kids over a huge snow fort. It's full of '80s winter clothing, bad child acting, and cheesy lines that people of my generation still quote. Also - SPOILER ALERT - the dog dies at the end. Because of this, it's remembered as the saddest children's movie of all time around these parts. Another iconic movie in the series is Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller. In it, kids are given the ability to shrink and travel around the world on stamps in pursuit of the titular Tommy Tricker, a boy who steals an invaluable collector's stamp. It features a teen Rufus Wainwright singing on a mall stage during a chase scene. The two Tales for All movies I remember as being the weirdest are, by far, The Peanut Butter Solution and The Great Land of Small. Looking into it after listening to the podcast, I found out that both involved Czech filmmaker Vojtěch Jasný. He co-wrote the former and directed the latter. I should probably watch them again as an adult to see how they compare today. To me, they fall into the same category as other fantastical movies that I saw when I was very young, like Willow or three of my favourites at the time, Labyrinth, The Never-Ending Story and Goonies... It's amazing to look back on movies that were considered appropriate for children back then. I may be the exception, but I was not scarred by them. I actually enjoyed the strange atmosphere and nonsensical plots, Peanut Butter Solution included.

I noticed the director is the grandson to an artist/art teacher named Antonio Dattilo Rubbo… and what a character the elder Rubbo must have been. Wikipedia notes that he "encouraged his students to experiment with styles" and "was a flamboyant character." Often going above and beyond the confines of the classroom, such as "challenging a committee member of the Royal Art Society to a duel because he had refused to hang a Post-Impressionist landscape by his pupil." I'm not saying that Grandpa Rubbo was a true-life villain in any way, but if "Write What You Know" has any truth, it's clear where the inspiration for the Signor comes from. Since Michael Rubbo went on to be an artist as well as a filmmaker, and his sister an artist and gallery owner, it's clear Grandpa Rubbo was quite an influence.

Jurassic Park is plainly Michael Crichton revisiting his Westworld premise to greater success. The simplicity of Jaws elevates it above Jurassic Park in my book, though JP is a fine movie.

I was genuinely terrified that there was going to a scene where they made magic paint brushes from magic growing pubes. I truly had the fear of God in me.

This movie started me on a deep research dive, because I overcome being deeply disturbed by trying to understand. And it finally made me break down and get an account. Things I learned during my google binge: This godawful abomination started as a bedtime story the director Michael Rubbo would tell his son (shades of Geostorm, anyone?). The producer Rock Demers started his production company and the "signature children's series" Tales for All as a response to learning about child suicide rates in the '80s because he wanted to "give [kids] an appetite for life, in spite of everything." Said production company/Demers is trying to make a remake: "Our goal in tackling a remake was to connect the dots between these ideas and give audiences satisfying conclusions to the unanswered questions asked in the original. What does Micheal see during the great scare? Who sends the ghostly intruders? Why does Micheal’s hair grow out of control? And most importantly, once he learns that he can paint his way into another reality, what will his quest be? As we tackled all these elements, the full potential of the story unfolded and we began looking at a tremendously powerful story of grief and the importance in believing in that we do not see." Also according to IMDB trivia "Producer Rock Demers has said when he and director Michael Rubbo began the film, their goal was to create a "gentle, frightening film." He felt the theme was "If something frightens you, find out why. In most cases you'll discover it wasn't so frightening after all." This movie was syndicated on both Canadian and US television. In Canada, because Canadian children's films were few and far between, and in the US because Disney/Eisner bought it and just...played it. All the time. Skippy peanut butter paid for product placement (what a weird message to send to consumers. Use our peanut butter and grow 6 ft long pubic hair, kids!). The best thing I found is this article by Courtney Fathom Sells. An excerpt: "I even became unable to wear striped jersey shirts to school because Michael sported one in the film and I felt almost definite that I would soon see a similar fate if I continued to mock his costume design. When I noticed one of my pals wearing such garb at church one Sunday, I prayed to God to forgive him, for he had clearly not seen The Peanut Butter Solution." Sells is a maker of short documentaries, and even made a film called The Fright about how this movie traumatized the kids who watched it. Unfortunately, I can't find the film online anywhere despite my librarian sleuthing skills. If anyone wants to reach out to Sells via his website to see if he'll re-release it, I would love to watch. Oof. What a movie.

While we were first watching this movie, we were wondering why the kids didn't go to the cops. We were positing that there were no cops in the world of the movie, and then....

Yeah there was a wired article about a decade ago where a guy was buying up those cartridges because Nintendo Power would actually list full names and hometowns of participants, which is insane in of itself, who had received the cartridges as a consolation prize to not winning the top prize of a savings bond. 1990 Geo Metro (which was odd since the majority of competitors were under the age of 16), 40" TV, and gold Mario trophy. Most of the people he bought them off of had no idea how valuable the item was and were surely pissed when they saw how much profit he was making with them. There is a rare gold cartridge being sold on Ebay at the moment for a reasonable million dollars or a grey version for 150k, both sealed and rated so they are legit. Also if you wanna see the nutty documentary about the lengths some people go to for the ultimate collection of video games, watch Nintendo Quest. It's about a guy who sets a mission to basically buy a copy of every single game released for the NES in the United States, just under 700 games, in under 30 days. It's an interesting look at retro collectors and their fandom but when you crunch the numbers you realize the amount of money this guy had to be spending to do such a task, especially as he can't make any game purchases online, which isn't covered in the film which I felt was its biggest issue. It's free on Prime and is a must watch for lovers of the 8-bit era and Nintendo in general.

At one point the kid uses a warp whistle and that somehow boosts his score, but warps don't actually add points in the game.

Maybe Space Jam has opened the door for more animated fare? Try these on for HDTGM size...