NathanGordon

Hot damn! I thought this thread was about a *text* interview with Mel Brooks. Thank you, Blake Harris and the HDTGM crew. What a generous man. "Blake, listen; I'm gonna tell you an incredible story." This is fantastic!

It IS bad, and precisely the thing that irritates me about Tarantino, because criticism will always be dismissed with "it's exploitation/b-movie homage, it's supposed to be like that". A bad line reading is still a bad line reading, even if it's supposed to be ironically bad. We know Thurman can act within her limited range, when directed properly (Pulp Fiction, Henry & June, Gattaca). The problem is poor choices with casting, writing, or directing. I have no doubts she would be a perfectly adequate Emma Peel in a better movie; Ralph Fiennes suffers similarly in The Avengers.

Ooh! Thanks for the correction. I was wrong -- it was Worst Director that Avengers lost to Psycho. *eta: Which is still absurd, Avengers is worse in every conceivable way.

Avengers, pip pip! Stray observations: - The title credit sequence is AWFUL, and it would have been awful in 1998. It looks exactly like a badly designed rave flyer from the late 1990s. - The banter!!! It's literally 90% of the script, and every line reading has the same exact cadence and tone -- that of someone who believes they're delivering an extremely witty bon mot. This is "Raised Eyebrow: The Movie". - The two leads have zero chemistry, and I was half expecting a poisonous gas explosion when they kissed. - Sean Connery is rapey as fuck, in a super creepy way. - These dumb rhyming jokes! Terrible writing. Sean Connery: "Rain or shine, the world is mine!" - Eddie Izzard's totally stupid line of ADR, thrown in to earn that PG-13 rating, I suppose. Surely he could have had something wittier than "oh, fuck", like "oh, bollocks" at least. - They obviously shot a ton of film, and that $60 million is definitely onscreen, but holy shit was this film edited to within an inch of its life. The biggest question for me is: Why was this film set in what I assume is supposed to be 1998? It's an odd choice, because apart from a few computer monitors and a gadget or two, there's nothing in the film that requires it placed in a contemporary time. There's vintage cars, dress, and furnishings. The obvious choice would have been to have this take place in swingin' 60s London, and play up the camp factor -- there's almost no attempt to do this, which seems to be a glaring omission. Most curious of all is the fact that the modern setting is never used for the usual fish out of water jokes; in which case, why not set the story in America? Accents aside, the whole thing never feels authentically English, and I seriously doubt this film played well (or was even intended to) in the UK. So who was it made for? The Americans with fond memories of an obscure British spy show? I think this whole production was a bad idea from the start, and the terrible writing, direction, and editing killed any possibility of it being entertaining or even coherent.

This film lost the Razzie for worst picture to Guy Van Sant's remake of Psycho, which in hindsight, is an unnecessary film but not anywhere near as horrible as The Avengers.

Oh, I know. I didn't mean to sound like "oh, poor June needs a safe space". I just mean that she's clearly a good improvisor and a hell of a comedian, and I wish there was more of her in comedy podcast format. She's got chops I want to hear more of.

Thank you for sharing this! She's so funny -- it makes me wish she had another podcast without Paul and Jason to talk over her jokes. "Both of us being supermodels, we had something to talk about..."

How can you forget his debut in Monaco Forever?

I'm no expert on rap (confession: I am actually an expert on rap), but every time I hear that theme, it makes me smile. "How did Schwarzenegger grow a baby in his belly / rock a rhinestone vest while ripping Justin to Kelly" So cool how they managed to fit in all those movies. Great stuff.

I don't understand how anyone could possibly not enjoy Fury Road. It's pure joy. People in crazy costumes doing crazy stunts, all color corrected to hell. It's even artful at times without needing to be -- the silver paint on the teeth, the guitarist looking like a hood ornament, those dudes on stilts. That's how I like to see big Hollywood budgets spent (compare/contrast Marvel flicks). I mean sure I like Godard more.

FUCK YES You guys who don't listen to The Best Show are in for a treat! In the meantime, listen to Tom Gary the Squirrel's appearance on a vintage Fogelnest Files episode.

...and the audience interaction portion of the show continues to elicit sustained mild amusement from the podcast listeners.

Yeah, he actually received a Tony nomination for his choreography on Broadway, so the guy was no slouch -- which begs the question of why the skating sequences weren't more exciting or interesting! Funny to hear June go negative on lacrosse, she rarely has a negative word to say about anything, especially physicality.

Many people think Indian cinema begins and ends with Bollywood; I was one of those people until a friend introduced me to the wonderful films of Satyajit Ray. Of course this film deserves a place in the canon. On another note, I hope this signals a more international perspective for the future of this series. I know there's a vast cinematic landscape to cover, but I'd rather hear Amy (and Devin, I guess) discuss Herzog or Antonioni instead of a hot take on Superman v Batman.

It's fairly innocuous and forgettable; the post-apocalyptic palette of dull grays and browns has the side effect of inducing boredom and deja vu -- "Wait, didn't they just leave the dusty outlaw city?" This movie is way less fun compared to the Italian takes on Mad Max, like Bronx Warriors or 2019: After The Fall of New York. The PG-13 rating is to blame; Solarbabies is too violent for a young audience, but nowhere near violent enough for this genre.

Solarbabies is one of those VHS tapes I always glanced at, but passed by at the video rental store. The name probably seemed stupid to me, even as a dumb kid. Weird movie with a bizarrely languid pace, for a PG-13 post-apocalyptic rollerskating adventure. Stray observations: - The rollerskating never becomes integral to the story, in the way that you expect it to. In fact, they're wearing skates in situations that would actually be much easier without them, like wandering around in dirt and gravel or pole vaulting over fences. It feels like there was supposed to be more skating action in the second half of this. - I'm confused as to what the Bodhi ball is, or why the bad guys want to destroy it? "Grock" refers to it as the Sphere of Longinus, which is a fairly interesting reference to the *Spear* of Longinus, the weapon used by a Roman soldier to pierce the crucified body of Jesus, in order to make sure he was dead. The lance has since gained a sort of mythical status as a relic in opera and fiction. Anyways, the ball is ostensibly a good guy, but by the end of the movie, it's horrifically murdered a woman (Sarah Douglas, reprising her role from Superman 2 and basically every film she was in) whose only crime was... what exactly? I didn't pay close attention, but the bad guys never seemed to do much beyond act menacing. - Solarbabies is the second and final of director Alan Johnson's two films, the first being a lesser Mel Brooks comedy the year previous (To Be or Not To Be). The rest of his career is all choreography, including a 1989 Tony nomination. One wonders, again, why this film didn't have more dazzling skating sequences. - I assumed this was a PG family film (the word "babies" is in the title, after all), as it stayed fairly light-hearted, until suddenly a teenage boy's arm is gruesomely melting to the bone (cool effect, really). That caught me off guard and was probably the high point of the film, for me.

I just want you to know that I appreciated this joke.

I was dying at "It takes a village, people..." I love it when he congratulates himself after those, like, "That one was a freebie -- you're welcome!" He was in a similar mood on Moshe Kasher's Hound Tall podcast a few months ago. He's still one of the funniest guys around, when he's in his zone.

Smigg, I knew you would reply to that, and I didn't want to implicate you in my bummerpants. I'm not against "not liking things". I think characterizing any of Cameron Esposito's words as "bludgeonjng" is weird, though. The kind of words people use to characterize a gay woman screaming about dicks is pretty interesting, compared to the language used when a male comedian is screaming about dicks. Regardless of how sincere your dislike is (no hard feelings dude), like I said, it allows for the real jerks to fly under the radar with bad intentions, trolling (notice the new accounts), and cross posting to other forums, in the name of voicing fan opinions or whatever. So this isn't directed at you really. And it's hard to not see this reaction as typical for a woman in comedy who dares to talk about sexuality in a way that isn't purely for titillating -- see the shade thrown at Amy Schumer, Nikki Glasser, Whitney Cummings, etc. It just doesn't happen in that way for men, gay or straight. And it's a pattern I've seen on many other podcast forums, like here (especially for CBB), Doug Loves Movies. Harmontown, and more.

Made this account to say how bummed out I am by some of the fan responses here. Whatever you do, don't look at that reddit thread, it's as toxic as they come. This has been my favorite podcast for years now, and I used to be a regular poster here (cat & beard). This kind of entitled fan tempest in a teapot is a big reason why I don't bother with most podcast forums anymore. I mean, it's just so out of line. It's not criticism, it's not really interesting to read, it's redundant, and worst of all it gives sexist homophobes a chance to wax hyperbolic ("she RUINED the show"), decree what is and isn't comedy ("I asked all my internet echo chamber friends and they all agree"), and just be regressive and lame in general ("this is a comedy podcast, it's not for social issues!"). Screw you, you don't get to decide what this podcast is or isn't, you don't speak for the fans, and you don't get to moderate the podcast guests or hosts. The sense of entitlement and presumed ownership on display is unreal, and this sort of thing ONLY happens for women performers on the forums. I've never seen this kind of behavior for any male here (I guess they're just all really really funny and beloved). Sometimes I wish we all had to have our moms screen our Internet posts first.