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Cinco DeNio

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Posts posted by Cinco DeNio


  1. 4 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

    Oh, I'll chime in with my two cents now that I'm late to the party.

    For my MM choices I would say it's kinda split between things that I have seen and things I have not yet seen. I at first thought that it should be things that mean something to me so I have stuff to talk about. That's why JCSS was my first pick because it is something that is very personal to me and my mother. However, I think the downside to picking something like that is you can't really view it objectively if it does mean a lot to you. After that I started picking things I hadn't seen unless in a pinch and then pick something I had. I think I'm more likely now to go with something new to me and everyone.

    Also, I'm in mostly agreement with everybody here about movies and lists and Unspooled. I think the thing that killed it for me we the Unspooled movies being a bit longer than most movies and them doing like four three hour movies in a row. I just didn't have the time, and then never made it up. It's a shame because there are still a few on the list I haven't seen still. When I heard the new premise of the sure I was unsure. I think another thing that killed the podcast for me was the fact that Paul and Amy for the most part were on the same page. However, doing something like "The AFI Top 100" you are bound to get a majority of good movies which just lends to this. The only difference is when it is something a person is insanely passionate about I could listen to that. Lists are good because it gives you structure and it gives you things you might disagree on, but maybe pick a list that could be more polarizing. The IMDB top 100? A whole lot wrong with how those are picked but might create more discussion as well.

    Speaking of being in a pinch, @Cam Bert, you're up!


  2. 1 minute ago, GrahamS. said:

    I’m entertained by Unspooled, but the whole concept of “the essential movie list” is pretty tired to me. I agree with Unspooled’s outlook that the AFI list was/is dated, but I wish they weren’t so focused on replacing it with ANOTHER list because lists are essentially bullshit. Just find good movies in all genres to discuss. Trying to rank them in terms of cultural relevance has always seemed weird to me, because film is too subjective to work that way.

    that’s my opinion at least!

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    • Like 3

  3. 16 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    The only movie I've picked that I've seen before was Rockula - but that was a special circumstance. Like @AlmostAGhost said, I'm mostly interested in watching new things, and I enjoy discovering them all with you. I don't really think you can have a "bad" pick. The only weeks that I find to be disappointing are the ones where there's not much to talk about (See: Pippin or this week's HDTGM). I like to be surprised by what generates conversation (Like The Guest). But again, I'm not so deliberate about choosing a movie for that purpose either. Sometimes we get an amazing movie, sometimes it's a bad movie that's worth discussing, and sometimes there's just not that much to talk about. It's all a part of why I enjoy doing this with you all. 

    Looks like I've done about 70% already-seen to 30% first-time.  I like the idea of only picking ones I haven't seen and will do that from now on.  Then how about the second question: If a watch party is scheduled do you watch the movie beforehand?

    • Like 3

  4. 9 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    The only movie I've picked that I've seen before was Rockula - but that was a special circumstance. Like @AlmostAGhost said, I'm mostly interested in watching new things, and I enjoy discovering them all with you. I don't really think you can have a "bad" pick. The only weeks that I find to be disappointing are the ones where there's not much to talk about (See: Pippin or this week's HDTGM). I like to be surprised by what generates conversation (Like The Guest). But again, I'm not so deliberate about choosing a movie for that purpose either. Sometimes we get an amazing movie, sometimes it's a bad movie that's worth discussing, and sometimes there's just not that much to talk about. It's all a part of why I enjoy doing this with you all. 

    I love that we "beat" the podcast to LLL.  It seems like we had a decent amount to discuss.  I'll have to find the thread.

    • Like 3

  5. On a related question, if you're going to join a watch party (like Kast or others), do you watch the movie ahead of time so you can discuss it more or do you wait to discover it fresh with others?  With others would be more like a real movie theater.  When The Guest was selected I disappointed (not really, I know) my watch partner because I hadn't seen it.  The partner graciously refrained from commenting so they wouldn't spoil it.  I feel like we could have had a lot of fun if I had seen it before hosting the Kast showing.

    • Like 1

  6. Off-Topic: I found my Playbill from 2000's The Rocky Horrow Show with Joan Jett's autograph in it.  Dick Cavett also autographed it.  (He was The Narrator the night I saw the show.)  I also have Neil Patrick Harris' autograph on an envelope that he signed for me.  (The envelope was my Will Call ticket pick-up. I hadn't expected to meet him so I didn't have anything special to sign.)

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    • Like 2

  7. 16 hours ago, tomspanks said:

    Yeah, Jackson was probably sent to the US, dishonorably discharged, denied any benefits, and never tap danced again 😭

    WHEW! At @Cameron H.'s first comment I thought he was saying Jackson was killed.  Getting sent Stateside would seem to me to be a good thing, dishonorably discharged or not.  Although I suppose he would find sympathy in his community, talking about the events too much would get him prosecuted and jailed.


  8. 8 minutes ago, GrahamS. said:

    I'm not a fan of the "use real-life trauma/tragedy and make it the setting/background for a musical"-style of filmmaking. It would take a filmmaker with significant mastery of tonal changes to pull it off. A surprising number of those have come from Korea (Bong Joon-ho and Chan-wook Park amongst them) and Swing Kids has an interesting setting/idea for this type of musical. In my opinion, the director just can't pull it off. There are parts that work--I do like seeing the war from the Korean POV--but it's so stylized in a " look-at-this" kind of way that it feels like the director is just using a wartime setting to make flashy MTV-style dance-offs and comedy sequences (which really seems manipulative to me). The film had a weird Baz Luhrman over-the-topness to it. The point seems to be the style more than the subject matter, which was disappointing because there are good story elements here.

    Full disclosure: I didn't finish watching the movie. I made it past the sequence where the hero has the dance-off with the racist military dude and then the military dude frames the dance instructor. Somehow that sequence broke my eye-rolling:enjoyment ratio and enjoyment lost, so I called it a night.

     

    This article agrees with you and most others in here.

    The film does for the Korean War what Life Is Beautiful did for the Holocaust — it injects verve and fun into very grim subject matter. But that film is about hope and the endurance of the human spirit, and it has one essential scene piercing Guido’s antics: that discovery of the smoldering wall of corpses in the fog, challenging Guido to face evil, rotten reality.

    Swing Kids couldn’t care less about reality. Even the violence is stylish. The tension between musical and war drama at times overwhelms the picture — but god, even when it’s a failure, Swing Kids is entertaining as hell.

    • Like 1

  9. 10 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    To clarify, I think the ending is meant to be a huge bummer, so if they wanted to give Jackson some kind of a happy ending, they would have. There would have been a picture or a woman with him at the end. The feeling I get from the end of the movie is that this was the first time he had left America since he was discharged.

    I'm confused.  Is he alive at the end?  Where is he going in the helicopter? I thought that was him heading to Okinawa.


  10. Was Ki Su the only one who had to sneak off to dance?  I can't imagine the other POWs being happy about fellow prisoners heading off to form a dance team.  I wish the dad had run like Ki Su told him to.  I felt like Ki Su was going to run at the end when he jumped through the curtain.  Unfortunately he was stopped and the ending happened.  (I don't want to talk about the ending.  That tore me up like few movies have.)

    • Like 2
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