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NRoberson86

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Posts posted by NRoberson86

  1. Posted

    I haven't seen it in a while, but Bowie goes full frontal in The Man Who Fell to Earth. I'm going to do the research when I'm not at work.

     

    Because David Bowie has been my ultimate sexual fantasy since I was about 12?

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    A slam dunk on multiple levels! Kartemquin Films is having their 50th anniversary, and I got to revisit this at a screening recently. I think there's no doubt that it is Canon material, but I would love to hear the discussion on it. Perhaps it is the best documentary of all time?

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    This is a big no. While it's an interesting experiment to behold, the film misfires on so many levels. Devin covered most of them in the episode. Martin not fitting the role is a huge example. I appreciate what it was trying to do, and that gives it some worth, but worthy to be considered among the greatest of all time? Absolutely not. This is an ambitious film that soars into mediocrity.

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    Almost 30-year-old here, and I did not grow up watching this. I saw it for the first time on VHS when I was about 17 or 18, stoned out of my mind. This re-watch was fantastic. I remembered very little of the film from the first time around, and so it was refreshing to see the nuance that Little and Wilder brought to their roles. I completely forgot about the insane ending, which was delightful and inventive. This is an easy yes.

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    Don't know how I'm voting yet (probably a yes, don't worry) but here's some Wikipedia articles on what informs the film's views on the Confederacy:

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_School

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy

     

    If you really want to dig into how memory of the Civil War changed and affected American politics, check out Race and Reunion by David W. Blight. You can also watch his entire course on the Civil War and Reconstruction here:

     

    (Bonus: I find that Blight's voice is a dead ringer for Harrison Ford.)

    • Like 3

  13. Posted

    I find this movie a chore to get through. While Hepburn does what she's supposed to do, I simply don't enjoy the proto-MPDG character. As others have pointed out, that label doesn't exactly fit, but the base elements are there.

     

    Peppard is boring as all get-out. Rooney is painful and unnecessary.

     

    I voted no. I understand peoples' affections for this film, but the negatives outweigh the positives in my book.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    I'm of a similar opinion to many in the thread, and some of Amy's opinion. I like this movie. I find it to be fun, but it is not an all-time classic. If we want more body horror in the canon we should be looking to Cronenberg first. I would recommend Videodrome to someone before this in terms of a great body horror movie. Again, Re-Animator isn't bad, it's as Devin has said before: "It's fine." Fine does not equal greatest of all time.

     

    I think that the episode for this movie was a perfect time to discuss the size of our canon. I'm OK with a large canon, but lately I've been wondering if we haven't been discerning enough. I don't know the answer to that. I voted yes on They Live, a movie some felt undeserving, but I also voted no on Kiki's Delivery Service, which proved to be a divisive choice. Either way, I hope that this debate continues to come up from time to time as it made for a very entertaining debate, and that's in part what I listen to this podcast for.

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    I'm a no on this as well. It's decent, but ultimately it is poorly paced and is not as engaging nor charming as other Miyazaki films. I would probably give a yes to Totoro or Spirited Away, but I don't think a "great" director at the helm necessitates induction into our canon. Would Hitchcock's Lifeboat get the votes? (Maybe that's an episode we need.)

  16. Posted

    Like many are saying here, it's not Carpenter's best, but it is so great. This one resonates more than ever. Hell, an American Civ professor I had at a fancy-schmansy school even showed clips from this to teach all the yougins about Reaganism.

  17. Posted

    As far as I know, Disney still has the rights to most (all?) of the Ghibli catalog. Furthermore, Disney signed an exclusive streaming deal with Netflix three years ago; so far, none of the Ghibli films are not available yet.

     

    The easiest way to watch this, apart from buying it (the BluRay is excellent), is via torrents. It's probably on sites like Putlocker, too.

     

    It's a wonderful film, one of Miyazaki's best works, and an equal to any Disney greats.

     

    Devin's not going to like this response.

  18. Posted

    This is a hard decision, but I ultimately came down on Some Like it Hot. I know some segments of the hard left are into demonizing drag these days, but I find that's usually from a younger set who have enjoyed better public attitudes toward queer issues. Going to drag shows was a liberating experience for me in my late teenage years, and drag owes a lot to both of these films. I love Some Like it Hot's legitimization of gender-bending, but I also recognize that the musical numbers in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes are still a source of inspiration for fun routines. I wish I could vote for both of these, but I think Devin's right in that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' plot gets a little muddled toward the end. When we have our second chance voting this year, I will pull for Blondes. It deserves a place in the canon, because nobody's perfect.

    • Like 3

  19. Posted

    So I've been playing a lot of Doom lately since the release of the new game. Bear with me here. Doom is the game that defined and popularized the FPS genre of video games. Was it the first? No. That was Wolfenstein 3D. However, most admit that Doom is the better made game, with a lot better delivery, polish, innovation, and overall immersion.

     

    This film is the Wolfenstein 3D of its kind. Menace II Society did this so much better only two years later.

     

    I agree that Devin was too heavy-handed, but also I am routinely baffled by Amy's opinions.

  20. Posted

    It should be a yes on influence alone. It also happens to be a great thriller.

     

    Also, the discussion was maddening. I love Amy as a host but this, like the first episode, left me baffled at her reasoning. Let's not forget that the about only thing she had praise for was the blonde woman. This was peak Nicholson.

     

    But I wouldn't have it any other way.

    • Like 2

  21. Posted

    I'm giving it a yes vote. The aforementioned great scenes are incredible, and stick with you forever.

     

    As for Devin's thoughts on "Is it safe?," as a teenager I thought this existed in a vacuum:

     

    Boy, was I wrong.

     

    To those speaking on how clueless Babe is, I'll be receiving a history degree from Columbia next week. Yeah, that's a bit of a brag. However, I want to let people know that most of the people I've had to interact with at that school lack a lot of common sense or ability to trust their gut. They've been so committed to academia for so long that they lose the ability to operate in normal social situations, much less an insane conspiracy plot. Therefore I think Hoffman's portrayal is accurate given the character's background.

    • Like 2

  22. Posted

    Ok, guys, what leads me to say yes to Brokeback Mountain is simple. I'm pretty much a dude, I go skating, surfing, scuba diving, most of my friends are straight, we watch soccer and movies and drink beer, I'm pretty smart most of the times and really dumb sometimes - and I happen to like guys. I struggeled quite a bit. Part of that struggle came from not having any role models, like at all. To be honest, there still aren't many really good gay films with a positive message or strong characters (or, god forbid, with both of it). Brokeback at lest got the characters-part right. It's probably the only shot we really honestly got of a gay love story with the guys living happy together at least for some time.... The only other discussion-worthy film I can think of would be WEEKEND, a British 2011 film - which was such a small event that the only chance of an episode would probably be if a guest came along with this as a suggestion.

     

    Ok, now, with that soul searching stuff out of the way, here are my thoughts on the film making: I've never gotten quite warm with Ang Lee's directing style. I more often than not feel that he's a bit too formulaic for my tastes. This holds true for Life Of Pi, and it also is true to me for this one here, which, had it won best picture, let's be frank, would have probably had a backlash just as much as Dances With Wolves or Chicago. If something makes a film legendary, it's NOT winning these awards. Being the perpetual underdog helped this film to build a reputation that's a bit too large for its own good. I think it's simply a fine small film, based on a really, really well written script with some interesting characters. It is, however, by no means as daring a film as its subject matter. That's certainly a bit of a hard pill to swallow from an artistic point of view, but at the same time I'm pretty sure it's what made the huge success possible in the first place.

     

    So, yes, and it was a fun episode as always. Cheers!

     

    So uh, you like, wanna go fishing some time?

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    And somehow this movie lost Best Picture to Crash. Hell, any of the other nominees that year were preferable to Crash.

     

    That moment and this year's Oscars are strongly linked. Crash was the Academy patting themselves on the back and not worrying about systemic racism for another decade.

  24. Posted

    I was fresh out of high school when this came out, 18 years old. I went to see this with someone I'd never seen a movie with, an on-again/off-again friend dating back to middle school. She was one of the first people I cam out to a few years prior. In the time since I was out to just about all of my friends at school and most importantly, my mom. Living in what I guess we could call the soft South--the suburbs of Orlando, far from the beach with equal numbers of rednecks and Disney transplants--I dealt with homophobia regularly. While I did a great job at concealing my sexuality around strangers, you would still overhear the slurs. Or my personal favorite, the racist/homophobic check that assholes do, where they say something awful to see how you react, to see if you're with them.

     

    This film felt monumental. As mentioned in the podcast, while there were gay characters in some media it was usually niche. Suddenly, at this pivotal time in my life, there was a movie with TV commercials about gay characters who were not caricatures. This was a glimmer of hope in a very dark time. We were a year into the second round of G.W. Bush, when Congress contained even more moralist conservatives than the first time around. In February 2004 Bush announced his support for a constitutional same-sex marriage ban. It really felt like the queer community was losing the battle. But along came this film and its box office success. I will never forget watching a group of blue haired women walk out of the theater after the sex scene. I remember thinking to myself with a smirk, they paid for it.

     

    That does not even begin to touch on the film itself. The acting is incredible, the characterizations are perfect. Devin and Amy had a back and forth on cinematography, and while I agree with Amy that it is more functional than dazzling, there are some absolutely gorgeous shots. In particular, I love the framing of Ledger between the two walls of the alleyway as he has the panic attack. The big open sky behind him turns the shot into something out of a modernist painting.

     

    So of course, this is a hard yes from me. If it were not for the release of this movie, I might not have felt comfortable enough to come out to my father less than a month later while drunk on New Year's Eve. This film did a lot for me personally, but just as much for the queer community as a whole. Decades (if not centuries) from now the critics and the historians will still be revisiting this one.

    • Like 3

  25. Posted

    After seeing the restoration this past December, Pather Panchali might be locked into my top 20 permanently. It's astounding stuff. If you've only seen the pre-Criterion DVD, you owe it to yourself to see the restoration; that DVD was muddily transferred, and the clarity of detail in the film has unbelievable power. Find a way to watch the restoration when you can.

     

    Thanks for the heads up. I'll go with the digital rental over a library DVD copy this week.

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