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bonjourjamie

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Posts posted by bonjourjamie

  2. Posted

    Hi everyone! On this, the last day in March, I present to you... the How Did This Get Made March Madness Bracket, or How Did This Get Made-ness for short (for obvious reasons). My husband and I - well, almost entirely my husband - designed this nifty way to help us determine which episodes we hold most dear while also paying tribute to the drama of following American college basketball.

     

    It's not comprehensive; rather, we've selected 64 HDTGM classics divided into 4 categories: Superzeroes, Meet-pukes, Inappropes Kids Movies, and Sly Cage Match. (This last category led to the realization that there are only 14 HDTGM movies starring either Sylvester the Comedian or Nicolas Cage of would-this-be-better-with fame, so we chose two additional movies that were clearly made in homage to these film legends.)

     

    There are two days left to play and determine your winner! Hope you all enjoy. And if you've no idea what this bracket/basketball/whatever business is... well, you should play along anyway. :)

     

    https://brackify.com...is-Get-Mad-ness

    • Like 6

  4. Posted

    I'd like to hazard a guess as to why June wanted to see Batman vs. Superman. Despite her Memento-like recollection of most HDTGM movies, it seems that the ones she truly loves are embedded in her consciousness like Grease 2. It's possible she saw a trailer for Ben Affleck in a superhero movie and was reminded of how much she loved Daredevil. (Speaking of, I hope June wasn't too crushed when Affleck and Jennifer Garner split up!)

     

    As for Escape from L.A., I LOVE IT MORE THAN WORDS CAN ADEQUATELY DESCRIBE. This episode was a struggle for me because of how much I love - NAY, ADORE - this movie. I genuinely can't understand how anyone could watch it and not love how ridiculous it is. Steve Buscemi in a zoot suit. Delightfully godawful special effects. Characters giving emotional rallying speeches who are then immediately shot in the chest. PETER FONDA SURFING THE VIADUCTS OF LOS ANGELES. I know a lot of people are complaining that this is a silly remake of Escape from New York, but look, Force Awakens ripped off Episode IV entirely and managed to make a gabillion dollars. This movie does the same, but I can't see it as anything other than an intentional move by (brilliant, slightly nuts) John Carpenter to make fun of the action movie genre. And if you need more evidence that it's a satire, I'd like to again point out that PETER FONDA SURFS THE VIADUCTS OF LOS ANGELES.

     

    Guys, I love this movie.

    • Like 5

  5. Posted

     

    Nah man, it's a great bad movie, there are so many times I laughed out loud, from his roach-eating (reminding me of when our cats catch and eat a bug), to his Nosferatu-like parade with plastic vampire teeth. That's amazing, and my roommate and I are weighing in on adding it permanently to our bad movie collection.

     

    That said, the stuff with Alva still hits a bit close to home, especially being in a living situation similar to hers, and I think that's the difference for me personally. Yeah, I can separate that it's fiction, so I'm not going to be all "omg how dare you like it!" I enjoyed it too. I don't think anyone is saying that one can't enjoy it, but sexual assault is a touchy and sometimes personal subject, so I understand why people are bothered even if the movie vilifies it.

     

    Also agree 100%. It's a subject that strikes an unpleasant chord with me, too, along with many other viewers - more so than, say, the topic of space vampires or rollerskating Greek muses or sports marketing - and to be confronted with it while in the middle of some good ol' Cage wackiness was... well, it just felt kinda gross.

     

    Actually, had they discussed the rape issue more in the episode, I think I'd have come away from it and the movie feeling less unsettled. Some of my favorite HDTGM moments are debates centered on uncomfortable topics. Abortion in Junior, animal abuse in Monkey Shines, molestation in Gooby ("I could listen to you say that all day") are some examples that come to mind, and I love Paul, June, and Jason all the more for addressing serious issues in this comedic podcast. It would ring as false if the show tried to avoid elements of the movies at hand that bring unpleasant issues to light.

     

    I don't think it's coincidence that the three examples I mentioned are shows taped in-studio. The performance aspect of the live shows and the fact that the hosts and guests are interacting with an audience understandably change the dynamic of the live episodes, and it's my sense at least that the studio episodes are often more in-depth and introspective. I'd guess that had Vampire's Kiss not been a live episode, there would have been more discussion of the movie's many thematic problems and especially its treatment of women, particularly from our resident expert, June.

    • Like 6

  6. Posted

    I love HDTGM, and it's been a great comfort to me this week in particular. When my husband did finally turn off the election coverage Tuesday night - I'd retreated under the covers hours before - it was to play one of our favorite episodes for "some normalcy" as he worded it, and we clung to Paul, June, and Jason's rants and giggles like a life raft. So it was a relief to remember last night that we had a new episode to look forward to and Vampire's Kiss to watch in preparation.

     

    And I enjoyed the craziness and the accents and the terrible overacting and the mimes... until I watched the increasingly cruel treatment of a young Latina turn into brutalization and sexual assault. (I realize the rape scene is ambiguously framed, but Loew does state that he raped her, and I've no reason to thing he would make that assertion if it weren't true.) I was unprepared for it and it plunged me right back into a world I was trying to escape for an hour or two. All the copy I'd seen written about this movie ignored the existence of a rape scene, including the promotions that came from Paul and the HDTGM team. And while other HDTGM movies have danced around the concept of rape – and there’s an episode (maybe No Holds Barred?) where one of the hosts or guests mentions how often movies in the ‘80s and ‘90s involved the threat of sexual violence, an example of the sort of thoughtful analysis mixed with funny commentary that makes me love this show – I think this is the only one that showed it, and in doing so I feel like the podcast crossed a line that I wish it hadn’t. Also, hearing how many people found this movie hilarious without adding a caveat along the lines of “despite the rape scene” is jarring to me. Though to be fair, no one on stage at the podcast taping shied away from discussing the scene, and I respect and appreciate them for it.

     

    Call me oversensitive and I will readily agree with you! I've watched the mistreatment of my sex become a constant topic of media conversation for the past few months only to find that the majority of my nation tacitly condones it. But ultimately I think it's better to call attention to the problem that a movie can be advertised as silly fun even though it includes a woman being beaten and sexually assaulted. Anyway, just some food for thought, and likely some cathartic venting on my part as an American in an America she doesn’t recognize. None of this changes my love for the people who make this podcast and its community so great.

    • Like 9

  8. Posted

    - In the meeting of bears, each bear had a fucking cup in front of them. How are they supposed to drink their beverages through a bear mask with no mouth hole?

     

    Oh my God. That's so beautiful. I imagine them all staring at the cups, parched, so close but yet so far... assuming they had eyeholes, of course. How did they see and/or breath through those suits, exactly? And something I noticed while watching - Sean Connery throws what is essentially a small poisoned lawn dart at two of the bears to kill them. But the bear costumes are so thick that the dart would need to be significantly longer, at least a foot longer, in order to reach the human inside.

    • Like 4

  9. Posted

    Great ep and great movie choice! I was completely lost the whole way through but the bear scene made it all worth it. Two things that drove me a little nuts:

     

    1) On the drive over to meet Sean Connery / de Wynter, Steed tells Peel that the man is so obsessed with weather that he's named his children May, June (Diane???), July, etc. Those aren't weather terms, they're months! No one says it's Octobering outside.

     

    2) What the hell is up with the old-timey portrait of Uma, or possibly Twoma, in de Wynter's castle? It looks like he has a 19th-century oil painting of her on one of his ornate walls. Just how long has he been cloning her, anyways?

    • Like 4

  11. Posted

    About the Mel Brooks connection - IMDb states that the director of Solarbabies was the choreographer on several Mel Brooks films, including Blazing Saddles (so he probably the "I'm Tired" number, one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history) and History of the World. He, um, should not have strayed from choreography.

    • Like 4

  12. Posted

    I wanted to mention that the actor playing the lead sand Nazi - Captain Pleather or whatever his name was - also played Duncan Idaho in Dune, which came out just 2 years before Solarbabies. So you could potentially argue (although you probably shouldn't) that this dry, dystopian future Earth exists in the same realm as Arrakis. Or maybe the actor just really liked sand.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    This movie would be much better backwards. Then it would be the tale of a woman's ghost returning from the afterlife/Heaven to push away a dangerous drifter who lives in the woods away from her surviving family.

     

    Opening: ghost of a wife and mother sees a strange woman swinging on her swing. Who is this woman, and will she be good her kids? Cut to the adulterous blonde drifter woman kissing the ghost's husband next to a corpse, with their young daughter watching, surrounded by the flames of the business the ghost had worked so hard to build with her family.

     

    Then the drifter (and perky destroyer of lives) climbs on top of her dead husband, and using dark magics brings him back to life. Her resurrected husband uses his magic zippo to capture an out of control fire, heroically saving the store and the owner's child. The blonde demon's husband returns to Boston PD, and he's given his gun back, because it turns out he's an okay cop after all.

     

    Around the same time, the adulterous blonde drifter chick is discovered by her lover to be wanted by the FBI, so after he shows her a poster of her as a murder suspect, he goes to the police station like a good citizen and posts it on the bulletin board.

     

    Then they have sex where presumably he calls her the wrong name, and go on a few dates, but gradually grown more and more distant. Finally, the rejected castoff in the woods scrapes paint off the floor of her shack and returns it to her now-estranged lover's store. He refunds her money out of forced politeness, and she buys a bus ticket back to her husband, who's been drinking less and less lately, and seems to be on a good path.

     

    This is an excellent movie. I would watch this many, many times.

  15. Posted

     

    the wisdom of painting the floor

     

    YES. This is my primary gripe about the movie aside from Ghost Mom reveal. I assumed Blondie was renting the place because buying a home when you're on the lamb seems like a bad decision that even she wouldn't make. But then she paints the floor?! You don't.. you don't paint the floor. It's cool that it was magical paint that sealed up the possum hole, but you still end up with yellow paint on your wooden floor.

     

    Only in the kitchen, though. And even then you manage to step in it before it dries.

    • Like 2

  16. Posted

    I'm a huge fan of HDTGM but only just now created an account, my sole motivating factor being the need to discuss this HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE MOVIE. I hate it so much and I'm excited to read about others hating it, too. Solidarity! For the first hour and 45 minutes ('cause this damn thing is 2 hours long) it just seemed like a bland Lifetime movie writ large - annoying meet-cutes, ill-advised floor painting, bad acting by the lead. It even had the requisite abusive male and female insta-friend. But then the last 10 minutes got batshit cray and in my rage I no longer care about the rest of the movie. What did I just watch? Why did someone put me through that? Robin, how could you?!

     

    But what I'm *really* fascinated by is the director's background. First of all, Lasse Hallström is good. He was nominated for an Oscar. Secondly (and my favorite part of this puzzle), he directed almost every ABBA music video as well as the ABBA movie! Some of them were even shot at his home! Those are legit masterpieces. (Please just go with me on this.) So what the hell happened here? The acting is mediocre, the pacing is horrendously slow, the editing is weird, the lighting is strange (why is the sky yellow in the beach scene? I think that's a sign of nuclear fallout)... Maybe this was a cry for help.

    • Like 1
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