NathanGordon

This is apparently a dad movie, because that's who I saw this with. He rarely took me to movies or even watched them with me, so he must have really enjoyed the first one or something. The robot clown stuck with me and years later I could not remember the name of the goddamn film. Back in early internet days (yahoo/altavista/lycos, when "google" wasn't a verb) I remember trying to find this film using every possible keywords I could think of. Of course it turned out to have one of the most search engine unfriendly titles ever. Brian Dennehy is on the shortlist of guys who nearly became Gary Busey, along with Bruce Dern and Stacy Keach.

Both Bill & Ted movies hold a special place in my heart; I remember enjoying the hell out of them with my brothers and making "No way, Ted!" remarks well into my college years. They're so much fun and in hindsight seem innocent in a way that is rarely possible in our ironic modern age. I find that naivety incredibly charming. Plus they had some cool people involved -- George Carlin, of course, but also Pam Grier, Primus, one of the GoGos (Joan of Arc), blues guitarist Taj Mahal, Steve Vai, etc. For better or worse, Ted "Theodore" Logan defined Keanu Reeves and gave him the line he is most well-known for today: "Whoa".

There are several parts of the Earwolf forums and website that are broken and have been that way for a while. I'm fairly sure that officially Earwolf cares way more about Howl and Facebook than this site, which exists mostly out of the goodwill of interns and a dedicated Dan Engler. Something that has annoyed me since Howl rolled out is the broken download links on the main page for every single podcast here. I understand it's a SoundCloud issue, but I don't use iTunes or Howl and used to just download everything from here.

I think I understand your intention with this statement, but I hope that you can also see how this is a very, very poor argument. This is like saying "Well, historically, most CEOs of our company have been men. There are bad reasons for this, but that's just how it is. We understand there are qualified women candidates, but we're going to hire a man. Internally. From the board of directors." Just because there's been a pattern of lame sexism in film financing, production, distribution, and criticism, doesn't mean we have to continue on that path. This is casual discrimination, and it enables wider, more severe institutional discrimination.

That film has been through a reckoning/reconsideration in recent years that escapes me. It's a great film, for sure, but it seems to have been elevated to Lynch's best (which it is not). I've heard more people speak with reverence about Mulholland Drive in the last year than any time since its release. Numerical rankings are dumb, of course. Still an excellent list and I'm happy to see Amy and Devin's contributions. I lean much more towards Amy's taste and totally agree with her top pick of Synecdoche, New York.

Genuinely one of my favorite films, not only for its crazy imagination and surreal imagery but for the sheer audacity of it. I can barely believe that the things depicted in this film actually took place, were acted and filmed, and assembled into a finished product. Along with Herzog's Fitzcaraldo, The Holy Mountain is one of the great feats of filmmaking -- a perfect storm of youthful energy, primal abandon, single-minded work ethic, and ideas that any sane person (or cast, or crew) would laugh at, then run away screaming from. I paid like $40 for a bootleg VHS of this from eBay back in 1998 or so -- I still have it somewhere -- The Holy Mountain was the rare cult film that lived up to the video store rental guy saying "holy shit, have you ever heard of this crazy movie called...". In fact, I remember the place I first rented this from in Seattle had a small "cult/rare movie" shelf with videos that actually required a cash deposit in order to rent; The Holy Mountain was one of them. I love the ending to this film. I find it less mind blowing than I did back in the 90s, but to me it's the perfect finale -- the Alchemist, the director himself, revealing the ultimate secret. In a lesser film it'd be a joke (and indeed it is, in Monty Python's The Holy Grail) but here it truly feels earned, relevant, and cathartic. "Prisoners! We shall break the illusion!" To me it is a canon film, without a doubt. A canon without The Holy Mountain is a canon without impossible dreamers like Herzog, Pasolini, Zulawski, or even the Coppola of Apocalypse Now.

There's some cool ideas in it, and Grace Jones is awesome to watch in anything. But the new director and writer just didn't nail that mix of barbarian nihilism and primitive spirituality that the first Conan did so well. The scale of Conan the Barbarian is done really well; you get just enough backstory to drive the rest of the plot. In Destroyer, Conan is basically just a mercenary, and the stakes just aren't as interesting as the first film's revenge for his family, lover, and years of slavery. It's also pretty crazy that what was, back then, a hard R-rated film received a PG sequel -- Conan the Barbarian was successful because of it's bloody violence and nudity, not in spite of it. I'm not sure if that was the decision from the beginning or happened some time in post production. Maybe an unrated cut is out there? I never even bothered seeing the Jason Momoa film from a few years ago. From all accounts it sounds like a regular bad/bad movie, which is disappointing. I still think Conan is a rich character with potential for another amazing film, but it would need to get that brutal existentialist mood right -- I think a director like Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room, Blue Ruin) or Ben Wheatley (Kill List, High Rise) could manage it, without making it into a PG-13 CGI clusterfuck.

I think it's a genius adaptation and really shows Cronenberg as someone who had now mastered the craft of filmmaking. His sense of mood here is so appropriate to the material and he got some very finely calibrated performances. Even more than Videodrome and The Fly, Crash has a fascination with the meeting of the sexual/physical and the technological. His earlier films seem to say that our love for technology will inevitably destroy us, while in Crash the very literal intersection of biology and technology is sexually liberating, even spiritually liberating. You could even say this is a transhumanist film that bends towards optimism (at least, I choose to see it that way). I don't know if it's canon but it's a great film and a truly great adaptation of a notoriously difficult to adapt author.

The Dark Crystal is obviously the superior Jim Henson Workshop film, although I know that has its detractors as well. Labyrinth doesn't hold up completely, but it's still a wonderful family film that hits that sweet spot of being a little dark and not too saccharine. It tells a relatable story about family tension in a way that felt very modern, sort of a latchkey divorced kid perspective. Plus we have a young girl protagonist who becomes a little more self-reliant and learns to value her family in a positive way, while acknowledging the difficulty. As we talked about with Kiki, these kind of female leading characters are rare. Also one of the only non-Muppets movies to successfully integrate puppets and live actors to such a degree. Lastly, the Goblin King's crotch is surely responsible for arousing the curiosity and imagination of a generation of kids.

Also, the writer/director of SLC Punk made a sequel last year that misses the mark in such a totally bizarre way, it must be seen to be believed.

I remember this film feeling only superficially punk, even in its depiction of suburban teenage rebellion. The character has a mohawk and poorly thought out politics, but nothing about the film itself felt very punk. Compare to something like Repo Man, Mod Fuck Explosion, Suburbia (1983), The Fabulous Stains, Smithereens, or Dogs in Space, which all have an authenticity that SLC Punk lacks completely. To me, a punk rock film isn't just about having the Sex Pistols on the soundtrack; it's about a DIY ethos, a transgessive spirit, and a willingness for your art to be vulnerable and confrontational. The early films of John Waters are punk rock. Tetsuo: Iron Man is punk as fuck. Liquid Sky is so punk it's probably from another dimension. SLC Punk just doesn't have that, although it does tell a good story about what it feels like to be trapped in Utah. Not a great film by any measure though.

Jean Claude Van Johnson is great. My mother even watched it (I think because it was on the home page of her Fire tablet) and she declared it was "a hoot". Definitely check it out if you're a JCVD fan or enjoy 90s action star irony. This confused the hell out of me, I thought it turned into a stained glass window and had to rewind it. Like everything in this film, you're not supposed to think too hard about it.

Classic Happy Madison, they make these on the cheap to ensure their investors will see dividends. $40 million is a paltry sum in modern Hollywood and this film was barely marketed at all. I have to wonder if Sandler and Barrymore get base + percentage or a typical salary? I have to think it's the former; even a small percent of Blended's $250M worldwide box office has to be much more than a regular paycheck. Despite some online cynicism, audiences still seem to have a lot of goodwill towards Sandler. Drew Barrymore's presence certainly didn't hurt.

I don't think you've ever seen a DW Griffith film. Maybe you meant a different director. Michael Caine is a well respected actor but also the 70s/early 80s equivalent of Samuel Jackson, a guy who will lend his onscreen charisma to literally any movie with a decent paycheck. Let's not forget what he said about HDTGM's own Jaws 4: "I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific!" There were so many wild scifi/occult/horror thrillers that came out the tail end of the 70s and well into the following decade. The whole era has the mark of genre novelists like Peter Benchley, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton, etc. It was a great time for genre fiction, and these books were insanely popular in the way that stuff like Gone Girl or Stieg Larsson are today. I'll have to check this out; never seen it, but it sounds like the kind of film classic MST3K used to cover.

The Lives of Others is a very good film, definitely worth seeing. I think the East/West German perspective is not well known to many Americans and I found it fascinating. It's hard to tell if that movie was a fluke or not, because his second film was The Tourist and that totally killed his career -- he apparently hasn't worked since. I'm sure any young director would leap at the chance to direct two of the biggest movie stars of all time in a big budget Hollywood project; it would be very interesting to hear a post-mortem on his experience.

What are you referring to? *Does anyone have an honest take on what that guy meant -- I'm curious now.

I don't think concert films would make for a good discussion on this podcast, but I'd be interested in hearing them try. To me, the problem is that the format isn't compelling or interesting unless you have a degree of investment in the music. The Last Waltz is technically well made, for sure, but I find nothing to connect with personally in the music of The Band. This is a problem when it is almost everything the film has to offer. In a regular film, even if the central story/plot doesn't resonate with me, there's several other ways to engage with it. In addition, the cinematic vocabulary in a concert film is fairly limited by the content; certain techniques are just off limits completely. You rarely get much experimentation because it's important that the music be preserved -- songs have to be played in full, the concert needs to be presented from beginning to end. Even in a versimilitude-rich documentary, you're afforded a huge amount of freedom in editing to create interesting juxtapositions and build a narrative. This isn't the case with the concert film.

Gods are powered by mortal faith, a point addressed in Clash of Titans and other films/books/etc I forget. It makes no sense for Freya to have anything to do with Maori tribes, or Buddha giving blessings to Vikings. Horus can't do shit in Japan because nobody believes in him there, and he can't interact with gods from other cultures because neither he nor his followers acknowledge them. Gods can't will their own existence into being through their faith in themselves; their power is directly related to how many followers they have. *Also, this would explain the flat Earth in the movie; that is simply the scope of the world as the mortals and therefore their gods see it. (I actually thought that was a neat detail.)

Also, a dumb life hack: Red Box's customer support chat is a bot. If you tell them you had a defective movie (and the kiosk location), they'll give you two free rental codes. I haven't paid for a Red Box rental in the last couple of years. I'm also surprised that guy went to the trouble of peeling off the barcoded sticker, because you can also just photocopy it and return the piece of paper in the case instead of the disc. ... Taylor Anne, I'm so upset with you. I believed that MANnequin poster was real for a second and got way too excited.

Cameron, I worry for your family.

It's not for the fans, it's for the $$$. Of course we don't "need" Suicide Squad, any more than we need Thor 3 or Doctor Strange (I mean who really needs movies anyways, maaan). Squad has already turned a profit domestically; worldwide it's at $500 million. Not a money maker on the level of Civil War, but enough to ensure a sequel and/or further spinoffs. This is only my opinion, but I feel like cape comics are really not that rich or nuanced. There's lofty stuff out there in the indies, especially non-superhero stuff, but DC & Marvel cape comics have always been pretty simple and rarely appeal to the reader's intelligence. The literate stories that do leak through are the exception (people always love to champion Grant Morrison and Alan Moore). I'm not a comics reader, not since I was a kid, so maybe I don't have the personal connection some people do. At the end of the day, it's just a movie. For what its worth, I thought Suicide Squad was a solid C-. It had all the marks of a panicked studio unable to commit to a single vision. When the BD is released, there will be some neat fan edits, I'm sure.

Ryan, I don't know if you knew but that first painting is a riff on a pretty famous piece by American painter Andrew Wyeth, called "Christina's World". It's actually a favorite of mine, though I've never seen it at MoMA. It creeps me out, it reminds me of a PG-13 horror film called Paper House that gave me nightmares as a kid. I mean, $5 to me is a drink plus tip, so not too much of a big deal. I thought Gods of Egypt was beyond dumb but fairly entertaining.

As a Portland resident myself, I'm gonna have to ask you to explain yourself. I see a girl in a white t-shirt. No tattoos, no facial piercings, no hair dye, no vegan leather purse, no vintage eyeglass frames, no bags of New Seasons produce, no fixed gear bicycle, no PBR tallboy, no gluten-free pizza slice from an anarchist food cart, etc etc.

Great point, I totally overlooked that. You are almost certainly correct. Squarespace? Meundies? Naturebox? I can only navigate the online world through podcast sponsors. Most online t-shirt places charge way too much and use poor quality shirts. I looked into this a couple of years ago and decided it made more sense to silkscreen my own stuff if I wanted a shirt. That said, Zazzle is a good site with a decent interface, and they let you choose from different fabrics, from cheap scratchy cotton to nice American Apperal tees.

Re: Clowns -- I believe Stephen King used a clown because that relies on a fundamental horror subversion; taking something intrinsically innocent or harmless and making it evil is an easy way to disarm your audience. It's a classic technique from old fairy tales, a literal wolf in sheep's clothing. The reason the It miniseries worked was of course because of Tim Curry's terrific work (some of the other performances have not aged as well). Since then, the idea of coulrophobia (fear of clowns!) has permeated pop culture and become a trope itself. I'm not sure I find anything more horrifying than the prospect of being stranded at a Juggalo festival in rural Illinois. But it's important to remember that the clown wasn't the "natural" state of the Pennywise demon, and he appeared in several other forms throughout the novel. The new series (or is it a movie?) will probably fail if it relies solely on a scary clown to generate fear. That said, the real problem here is the necessity in contemporary film and television for months and years of hype machinery. Characters are slowly teased out, pre-prerelease trailers are shown at ComicCon, on-set photos are leaked to websites, etc. Regardless of what you think about Jared Leto's actual performance in Suicide Squad, everyone had already made up their mind when the first tattooed picture came out last year. I think this kind of overpromotion is bad for the medium, period. It robs the audience of the ability to be suprised, shocked, or horrified -- releasing full page photos of Pennywise in Entertainment Weekly does nobody any favors. p.s., Taylor Anne, whenever I need to debrief at work, I watch this video. It always works.