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I want to never stop talking about this movie. My favorite line has to be when the Senator berates the the moonbats for messing up the plan(?) and says: "I think I was perfectly clear on this matter…Wasn’t I not? " Haha…If he was explaining the plan with phrases like “Wasn’t I not”, then no, I don’t imagine he was very clear at all. I also loved the scene where Mark was getting ready to help Gabbi move the dresser and Gabby is frustrated that Mark is taking a long time to remove his jacket. They use a clock wipe to show how long he is taking, however the only thing that occurs during the wipe is that he places his jacket on the bed. How long did that take? Did he do it in slow motion?

Yeah, describing Tokyo Story as "fucked up families" is killing me. Even a very vague synopsis doesn't really fit what I would call fucked up families. "Family dynamics" is a way better description for Tokyo Story and this group of movies. My immediate idea for this theme is Murmur Of The Heart but something a little less on the nose is Rachel Getting Married.

This. I tried watching more than 30 minutes and couldn't because the ADR was almost purposely bad. It was like they were trying to ape an early Godzilla film and ended up just being overly offensive with it. Seriously, Tommy Wiseau has a better understanding of ADR work than this film student.

Yeah, if Reddick was just Stevens's former commanding officer that the military brought in to "decommission" him, it would have saved a lot of plot shoe leather, and maybe more room for developing the other characters.

I agree with this. That stuff made it get into Universal Soldier territory for me, and I would have preferred less explanation.

I'm not sure how, but it was hurting my eyes. I couldn't look at it for very long, much less focus. Something about the way it was filmed also made me feel dizzy, which isn't something I'm prone to. On top of all that, all the ADR crap gave me headache. I've never had such a visceral reaction to a film. At some point I just stopped paying attention altogether while it played in the background.

Sorry for the late reply, but 'The Guest' just really works for me. I have a couple close family members who served in the military, and what the family does in this movie, at least in the first act, doesn't ring false to me. At certain points in my brother's military career, he had a... rough time, so I thanked the heavens for the one or two friends he had in the service and they stayed with us a few times. Granted, my brother was THERE at the time, but if my brother had been killed under shadowy circumstances and one of the people who made his time in the military less burdensome showed up at my door... I might welcome him with open arms. I know, again, 'The Guest' is different because Dan Stevens is a total stranger to the family, but I still bought it. I guess I also get frustrated when movies over-explain things. For me, franchises like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare and Elm Street get worse when we get into the lore and motivations of their respective monsters. I don't want to know that Freddy is "the bastard son of a nun and a hundred madmen" and that you can subdue his spirit if his bones are buried in consecrated ground or whatever. He's just a vengeful, evil ghost who loves Christmas sweaters! So the military super-soldier program stuff is actually the least interesting parts of 'The Guest,' but I think it's worth it for the presence of Lance Reddick, whom I will take being authoritative and intimidating in a Rice Krispies commercial. For me, horror is so much about aesthetics, which is why I enjoy a lot of the anachronisms or weird costume choices.. Dan Stevens being sexy as hell and charming, yeah, sure, I'm down. The 80s music obsession? Yes please. Illogically powerful fog machine? Cool. I also think this movie definitely qualifies for discussion here, as musical moments, especially "Haunted When the Minutes Drag," are integral to that atmosphere and mood for the film, and even character development. I think it's closer to a musical than most horror films because it accomplishes these things with specific songs in the way the 'Halloween' theme or the Friday the 13th "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" noise establish mood. Clearly, it's not 'Anna and the Apocalypse' with song and dance numbers, but characters still discuss and listen to music, and the songs listened to diegetically are then used as score, so it's a film that makes its song choice very prominent. And I was the dude who asked us to do 'Long Dumb Road,' so I guess I'm up for the discussion of any movie if the person proposing the film wants to talk about it. We've been doing these discussions so long (which I am very thankful for!), an occasional change of direction is welcome.

In what way? Genuinely curious. I watched the trailer to see if I could handle a feature length of this and I decided that I could not.

Um... And if you have not watched Year of the Rabbit yet, do so immediately!

I don't know if I misunderstood some news story that I saw yesterday, but is this what happens with the US senate? One of my exes was a baker who went to culinary school. It's considered a specialty, so depending on the school you would all learn a basic kind of foundational course and then if you wanted to pursue baking as a "major" I guess your graduation would include the certification of being a baker, which depending on where you live or work, can be a unionized position with pay bands. Of course, much like other kinds of post-secondary education, the value of culinary school is debatable, as the late Anthony Bourdain and others liked to say. It's perfectly possible to become a great chef or baker without going to culinary school at all, but going there could give you some useful techniques, experiences in cooking situations you might not normally encounter on your own (eg., cooking for large events), and industry contacts.

Absolutely. Didn't do the first because I can't stand the musical Cats, but generally I'd be up for most anything.

Governor Gabbi should be named as Kamala's replacement in the Senate!

Realizing that this movie was made by native English speakers hit harder than the end of The Usual Suspects. @SuppleContours post was great and very informative. Before reading that I actually came here to write that I think this is maybe the first movie that HDTGM has covered that the podcast could buy the distribution rights for the film. I'd love to see what the logo and fanfare they'd add up front would be. Of course in the end it would all be a disaster as everyone complains that they are covering too many HDTGM Films on HDTGM.

YES! I was lucky enough to live close enough to LA that I was present for the Shaq movies, and I saw both Bay Area shows during the recent tours. Now that I'm in another state, I'm hoping they will do this 3 or 4 times a year. I don't want them to do it so often it becomes not special, but I think it's a really beautiful thing right now for all of us to get to connect, even though I didn't bother with the chat. I loved June's lighting talk. For the record, she's breathtaking in either light.

Her page seems to be gone now, but at one point on Gabbi's instagram there was "test footage" for another project that contained the line "I just feel like my emotions are insane, and now you want me to become a werewolf , and I'm kind of freaking out, OK?" This made me want to renounce all possessions and follow the Niebauer's teachings.

While a lot of these movies are centered around family dynamics and drama, a lot (most) of these don't strike me as "fucked up families." (The choices in the letterboxd list matches up with the title a lot more). Seeing Tokyo Story described that way is really jarring for me.

I created my EarWolf account to share a little bit of info I have about this movie. I happen to know how this movie ended up on Amazon. I worked for the company that put it on Amazon. The filmmakers used a company called Distribber to help them self-distribute. Distribber and its parent company sadly went bankrupt and no longer exist but I was still working with the company when this movie was released on Amazon. Distribber ended up getting way behind on paying the residuals out to the filmmakers' who did business with them and incurred a lot of debt. This sadly led to a lot of independent filmmakers losing out on thousands of dollars that was owed to them when the company went bankrupt. The philosophy behind Distribber was to help independent filmmakers have a way to release their movies without going through the traditional distribution model. Distribber could release movies on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Netflix, Hulu, etc., without having to go through a major distribution company. On top of that, the filmmakers took 100% of the profits. They had to pay an upfront fee to cover services that ensured the movie and all its assets (feature, trailer, captions, etc) met the specs of each platform. It all gets very technical and boring as to what all goes into getting a movie into a file that is able to stream on Netflix or Amazon. But every streaming service has different levels of quality that they'll accept and as you all saw with Governor Gabbi, Amazon allows just about anything to be uploaded. Also, Amazon allows anyone to upload a movie. You need to have a specific deal with Netflix or Apple to release on their platforms (Distribber had these deals) but Amazon will take anything from anyone. If you have a home movie of your child taking her first steps, you can upload it to Amazon for people to rent or buy in HD or SD. You do need captions and they have to be in the right format. You also need to come up with some artwork in Photoshop for the thumbnail that the customer sees. But these are the kind of things Distribber could help with. So June was right when she saw this as just an intimate family film project. Those are the kinds of movies Distribber attracted. If you had enough money to throw around upfront, you could put your movie on a wide variety of streaming services in many different countries around the world. But Distribber did not offer any marketing services. So most of the movies released on Distribber didn't make any kind of profit, because no one knew these movies existed. It's quite possible that the HDTGM audience made this one of the top 10 most successful Distribber released movies. I only hope Gabbi got to benefit from that and the residuals aren't still tied up in court.

This was extremely common for Italian movies at the time. Fellini famously had actors say whatever they wanted on set and would finish writing dialogue in post production, to dub in later. I think it was a cost saving thing since cameras and sets were loud. So, it was easier to simply dub audio later than to trying to remove sound during filming. There's a Hitchcock movie, Blackmail, that used live dubbing with a person off screen speaking while the actress mouthed the words on screen. Talkies were just becoming a thing and the refilmed parts of the movie to cash in on the craze of talking pictures. The actress had a really thick, non-English accent which wouldn't make sense for the character. Audio post production was still in its infancy. So, the solution was have an English woman say her lines off screen.

Just to be a nerd. Sorry. ADR doesn't stand for Additional Dialogue Recording (although I definitely thought it was too for years and I work in film/tv) It actually stands for Automated Dialog Replacement. And for a super running ADR gag check out Matt Berry in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. His character's lines are ADRed by himself just to mimic a cheap shitty 80's style. You lot have all seen Garth Marenghi, right?

This movie made me physically ill. (Not joking.)

I also hated this motion picture

So technically it would be legal for Gabby ( Gabbi?) To run for governor as California is one of the few states with an age requirement of only 18. HOWEVER in 2010 Proposition 14 passed which prohibits write in candidates in the general election. According to the Wikipedia " It was a constitutional amendment that effectively transformed California's non-Presidential elections from first-past-the-post to a nonpartisan blanket primary (similar to a two-round system). This had the unforeseen consequence of effectively eliminating third party candidates from the final ballots. " Therefore its my understanding that it would have been impossible for Gabby to have been elected as she was never a part of the primary and had no party. She would be seen as a write in candidate. Regardless wouldn't it just be seen as a typo? Why couldn't they have another emergency election ? I'm sure that could have happened as soon as she was decided the winning candidate.