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nthurkettle

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Posts posted by nthurkettle

  1. Posted

    I haven't seen this movie, but I knew a guy a long time ago who worked at a video store and sold drugs, and when people called in asking "Do you have a copy of Palmetto?" that would be the code phrase for people wanting to know if they could come buy drugs from him. 

  2. Posted

    I just watched this for the first time last night as it's on Amazon Prime now and the only way I can describe it is that it's like if they handed the "Mad Max" franchise over to the makers of "Revenge of the Nerds" because it's this absolutely baffling mix of fun 80's sci-fi design, legitimately great stunts like when E. is holding onto the car as it dangles from the crane, crazy weird humor touches like bad guy Luther getting randomly attacked by bees, and then the appalling sexism woven into the premise because the loser drip of a protagonist is repeatedly IN TEARS about how much he misses his horny robot companion that he treated like sh*t before causing her death with soap suds. 

    According to Wikipedia, it cost $10M to make and grossed *$14,000*. The distributor found it so impossible to market because it's a PG-13 movie about a sex robot with no nudity and it's like WHY DID YOU DO THAT WERE YOU TRYING TO MAKE IT KID-FRIENDLY?, so they basically dumped it directly to VHS in America when nobody was really doing that.

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    1 hour ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

    So why are the dance numbers the whole movie so clearly inspired by classic 1940s/50s musicals, and then suddenly during the masquerade scene it's this very obviously 1970s Bob Fosse inspired number? That was super jarring.

    According to a list of deleted scenes on the UK version of the DVD, in the original cut this number hewed closer to the description in the play. In Shakespeare's original, the men are said to enter disguised as "Moscovites" - aka comedy stereotypes of Russians in big bushy beards, to do a funny, masculine dance for the Princesses while pretending the Princesses don't recognize them (which, of course, they do, because they've been tipped off by their valet Boyet in advance.)

    In the film, you're looking at the back of Boyet's head, and his line has been re-recorded so instead of "Moscovites" he says the men are disguised as "Masked Delights"; I guess to justify them all coming in with their Burt-Ward-as-Robin eye masks; which muddies the whole idea of them attempting a disguise.

    I imagine Branagh was urged to "sex it up" as they re-edited the movie - leading to the out-of-nowhere scene of weird close-ups and groping, possibly done in a re-shoot.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    1 minute ago, Elektra Boogaloo said:

    I am history plays girl. 

    In defense of Branagh (and again I am team Emma Thompson. He cheated on her), he has done commercial blockbuster stuff. Not just Potter, but directing “Thor, “ “Cinderella,” and “Artemis Fowl.” What is interesting is that he didn’t put himself as an actor in those movies, although he does a voice in AVENGERS INFINITY WAR,

    I'm razzing the guy but he is primarily responsible for my becoming a Shakespeare junkie in high school with his "Henry V" and "Much Ado". And his directing "Thor" means he cast Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston and those are gifts that just keep on giving. I even think his "Cinderella" is pretty terrific; but man, when he whiffs, he whiffs HUGE. 

    What's interesting is that, in each of the first three Shakespeare films he directed/starred in, he had played the same role (King Henry, Benedick, Hamlet) previously in a long-running, highly-acclaimed stage production directed by someone else. In essence, he got months to sculpt his own performance with a more experienced director before directing the film himself. 

    • Like 3

  7. Posted

    2 minutes ago, RyanSz said:

    As an English major who is not a fan of the Shakespeare's comedies (I'm a tragedies fan), I've definitely had my fill of the guys plays, but apparently not Branagh who I honestly think wishes he was born in Shakespeare's time just so that he could have had a chance to work with the guy. That's not to say the work he puts out is bad, but he's very much the actor that Alan Rickman was lampooning in Galaxy Quest, who would do a mainstream series like Harry Potter or Jack Ryan, all while bemoaning the fact that he was doing so given that he was a classically trained actor. The fact that he's now apparently moved onto Agatha Christie's bibliography, I can only imagine the ideas he has running through his head in order to keep that mustache and accent going.

    I think this podcast would have a grand time with the version of "Frankenstein" he directed/starred in, where he films himself as a shirtless, glistening, golden-maned SEX GOD. 

     

    • Like 1
    • huh? 1

  8. Posted

    14 minutes ago, Elektra Boogaloo said:

    One thing I think about whenever Kenneth Branagh is mentioned is one of my college professors (English major) said he just played himself in “Harry Potter.” Gilderoy Lockhart steals other people’s work to become famous and is totally full of himself. While I think he does have some good adaptations of Shakespeare, and he is a talented actor. I do think there is an element of hubris to his body of work that is Lockhartian. 

     

    Kenneth Branagh is 100% a talented and multi-faceted artist and also 100% a giant ego with tendencies towards hubris and cheeseball-ness. These qualities can absolutely co-exist. 

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1

  9. Posted

    Okay, I'm a hopeless Shakespeare nerd plus I manage a small Shakespeare troupe, so there is SO much to say about this movie. I love Branagh's three previous Shakespeare films and I think that the play "Love's Labour's Lost" has some wonderful stuff in it; BUT it is one of the hardest plays to even attempt, and it feels as though every choice Branagh made here just made this disaster more inevitable. 

    First, in any Shakespeare script, there is a LOT of wordplay - puns, dirty innuendo, words with double meanings. But as the meaning and the pronunciation of words have changed over 400+ years (for example, the words "good" and "blood" used to rhyme!,) many of the verbal jokes become incomprehensible to modern audiences. Any Shakespeare play is a challenge because of this but ESPECIALLY "Love's Labour's" - it's one of Shakespeare's earliest and much more dependent on wordplay than nearly every other play - there's very little plot, and the principal entertainment is meant to be the flirty banter between the four couples.

    Second - as Tall John mentioned, the play ends on an abrupt, MASSIVE bummer with the death of the King of France, and there is evidence to suggest there was a sequel, referred to as "Love's Labour's Won", in which the lovers reunite and their courtship comes to a happy conclusion. This play might be completely lost, but there is a theory that audiences liked the sequel better on its own, and that Shakespeare kept revising it until it became "Much Ado About Nothing". (This may help explain why Branagh cast himself as Berowne, as the dynamic between Berowne and Rosaline strongly parallels the Benedick/Beatrice romance in "Much Ado".) 

    So the play is difficult enough to even try, but to give such difficult text to Shakespeare novices, then ditch HUGE chunks of plot and dialogue to make room for musical numbers, and then to add an entire WAR that doesn't even exist in the play; just begs the question of why even try this play to begin with?

    I have one final theory - Miramax released this film, and they were notorious for forcing directors to drastically cut the running time of films that they were afraid weren't turning out well. Some of the newsreel footage suggests that some of the funniest scenes and subplots in the play were actually filmed, then cut in the frantic effort to get the movie down to 90 minutes. And I am not trying to start a hashtag-release-the-Branagh-cut campaign, but those smaller roles were being played by actors well-versed in Shakespeare, and may have turned out quite enjoyably even within the incredibly flawed overall idea he had for this adaptation. 

    But clearly, he didn't learn any lessons, because in his next Shakespeare film, "As You Like It", he added ninjas and sumo wrestling.

    • Like 3

  11. Posted

    Every year in L.A., the American Film Marketplace brings together hundreds of filmmakers, film producers, film distributors, and others, to try and close deals for films made outside the studio system. It's where people raise money by pre-selling a movie based on the stars they have, or try and sell finished films to distributors all over the world. Some absolutely crazy projects are there at various stages of development, and as I was perusing some of the catalogs from this year, I came across the attached poster.

    C....I....APE!

    This is 100% a real movie which was filmed in Oklahoma and is now seemingly looking for distribution. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11465692/reference?ref_=tt_mv_close

    The official synopsis from the AFM catalog: "In the world of espionage, some missions require an agent with a unique set of skills, possessing not just bravery but an ability to melt even the most villainous heart. This is a job for C.I.Ape! The 1st ever chimpanzee joining the C.I.A. When a criminal plot is discovered, the C.I.A. turns to him, their most unique operative to foil the plot from the inside. With the Council of Crime’s conspiracy to develop a high-tech weapon thus infiltrated, C.I.Ape and his team fight fire with fire by launching a high-tech plan of their own. Their ingenious act of sabotage brings down the plan and destroys the nefarious weapon, but results in collateral damage in the form of a lonely girl. Rescuing the girl with the simple act of friendship, C.I.Ape proves he’s unparalleled when it comes to espionage of the heart."

    No trailer yet, but I felt like the world of HDTGM needed to know about this movie early ;)

    CIApe.jpg

  12. Posted

    Bumping this because a) we have to wait until next year for John Cena in Fast & Furious 9, b) I still remember the beyond-cringey "molested by rock candy question mark?" running joke, and c) for the amazing bit where Robert Patrick coos to his sexy partner "We got away clean...", and it's like, MY DUDE, you were witnessed by many, many people riddling a police car with bullets in broad daylight. That is the OPPOSITE of getting away clean!"

  14. Posted

    I recently re-watched "Lethal Weapon 2" and realized that if you had re-cut it from the point-of-view of the woman he seduces, it would be a horror movie without having to change his performance; he is an emotionally-unstable cop with a gun and rage issues who repeatedly demonstrates he doesn't respect the law or boundaries and physically restrains her until she agrees to go out with him. And she ends up dead.

    "Conspiracy Theory" is that idea x100. The fact that it is ever treated as a romance instead of a straight-up stalker nightmare story is an indictment of how much we were willing to excuse from Mel back in the day.

    • Like 2

  15. Posted

    The number of scenes just devoted to, like, Kirk Douglas exercising. It's like 10 percent of the movie. That and the number of scenes where Harvey Keitel very slowly assembles a murderbot while our heroes are like "welp, can't worry about the completely normal thing he's doing over there, let's get SEXY AGAIN."

  17. Posted

    Christopher Walken's character of Hal Weidmann is pretty clearly meant to be a very in-joke-y Hollywood spoof on eccentric 70's filmmaker Hal Ashby, who directed movies like Harold and Maude and Shampoo. For the plot to work, you have to believe so many impossible things: a) that someone like this would EVER be hired to direct a giant budget time-travel action film, b) he would be allowed to go all the way to the press junket while never showing anyone a single scrap of footage, and c) he could just torch the whole movie and make an invasive fly-on-the-wall documentary that ruins a movie star's career, and d) not end up sued, thrown in jail, and sued again. 

     

     

    001ASH_Christopher_Walken_005_PB.jpg

    Hal_Ashby_still.jpg

    • Like 4

  19. Posted

    The Netflix "High Score" documentary series has a segment about the 1990 Nintendo World Video Game Championships that included footage of the event - the finals were even at Universal Studios Hollywood just like in this movie. Anyone else watch and get a flashback to The Wizard?

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    True story, per Wikipedia: This movie got made because the Dow Chemical Company had a giant pile of money parked in Yugoslavian banks which they could not transfer out. Legally, though, they could "invest" the money in a film shot within the country, thus laundering it back to America. 

    A landmark answer to the question How Did This Get Made?

  23. Posted

    Bumping this since These Kids Today are super-into binge-watching "Friends" but, since they weren't around when it was new, they are tragically under-educated in how EVERY SINGLE FRIEND got multiple chances to become a movie star; and this is WAY more entertaining to watch than, say, David Schwimmer in "The Pallbearer".

  24. Posted

    It actually used to be an inside joke with a friend of mine that we'd say "You up for the house special?" to each other because of the sequence where:

    a) Lithgow surreptitiously records Denzel Washington flirting with a waitress, then

    b) Drugs Denzel into unconsciousness with heroin, then

    c) Hires a prostitute to have sex with his unconscious body, while

    d) Videotaping, so he can

    e) DUB the dialogue from the waitress flirting over the hooker video so it looks as if Denzel is conscious and participating, then

    f) Publicize the videotape to ruin Denzel's reputation, WHILE

    g) As a bonus (or maybe part of the plan question mark?,) giving Denzel a VENEREAL DISEASE

    And this is just, like, PART of his revenge plan.

    • Like 1
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