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Galactiac

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Posts posted by Galactiac

  1. Posted

    Love Blue Velvet, and honestly I like watching it more, but I think Eraserhead is probably the more important film.

     

    And when I say I like watching Blue Velvet more I mean I really dread watching Eraserhead. Like catatonic depression hate it.

     

     

    On a different note: I really don't want to be a dick, but I didn't expect to be quite that bored listening to the David Lynch episode of The Canon. Seems like the show might need some kind of steady dynamic to build on rather than a guest every week. I'm not necessarily saying Devin, but I do think the show needs two personalities.

  3. Posted

    I voted no, but I really wanted to vote yes. More than once recently I've had classic film noirs recommended to me that I thought had major problems. Boringly unflappable and inconsistent characters for one thing, yet many of these films still get in the nineties on Rotten Tomatoes. At least Where The Sidewalk Ends has very clear motivations with an arc that makes sense.

  5. Posted

    Look the entire trilogy is incredible. A LOTR movie could have been so awful, and the fact that they pulled off a trilogy that worked so well is a wonderful achievement that we're really lucky to have. It's kind of just a conceit for the podcast to have to pick between two of them, but I do think Fellowship has a lot of the best moments in it.

     

    There's a single story stretched across three four-hour films, and it would be much better, more exciting, and actually watchable if someone cut all three into a single, lean, mean, 2-hour film.

     

    Considering how Netflix has made binge-watching a national passtime I think you're almost definitely wrong.

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    As a side note I kind of subscribe to the theory that The Thin Red Line (which probably never would have won) drew votes away from Saving Private Ryan, which is the only reason Shakespeare In Love won.

     

    Also I find Saving Private Ryan pretty breathtaking regardless of any flaws it may have. The D-day sequence is one of the most beautifully brutal things ever put on film. It should be required viewing for anyone attempting to beat the war drum. Plus it drives home the paper thin mortality that generation had to deal with, and sets such an amazing tone for the rest of the film. Saving Private Ryan is a film that moves me. Shakespeare In Love tests my patience.

     

    Ultimately SPR is irrelevant in this canon discussion, but to me there's no question which movie should have won best picture and which one will live on as a footnote in late twentieth century Oscars history.

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    Look it's a very well crafted movie, but it's too fluffy for me to bother with it in the canon. I never had any strong emotions watching this, just sort of mildly entertained, which is less than I can say about La La Land (which I liked).

     

    Amy should start a La La Land podcast already. Fans of the movie will download it, and then she can shame them for an hour. Good times.

  11. Posted

    I don't know how familiar you are with that part of the country, but having visited there, and lived really close to Preston, ID, it's one of those rural towns where culture just doesn't catch up for a while, which the film captures pretty well. Also, did online dating exist in the 80's? Honest question.

     

     

    The internet definitely existed in the eighties, so I'm sure people tried to date that way. This was over a decade ago so there's a good chance marijuana played a roll in my confusion.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    There's a lot that I like about Juno, but there's also enough twee dialogue throughout the movie that I'm constantly taken out of it. It's a really tough thing for me to ignore. The first 10 minutes is definitely the worst, but every time it pops back up even a little bit it's like the movie hits a massive speed bump for me. There are a lot of reasons I'd like to vote for it, but it's not a great viewing experience for me.

     

    I have to go with Whiplash, but it's a soft yes.

  15. Posted

    I think the set up is a lot more fun than the pay off.

     

    Perhaps, but I do love a lot of what they staged in the third act of this movie even if it could use more polish. I honestly think there's some version of this franchise that could be revived and expanded in a satisfying and successful way, but it's increasingly less likely the further away we get from the eighties, and probably much more so now that 2016 happened. Plus how much more room is there in our culture for sprawling transmedia franchises? I can live with whatever is already out there.

  16. Posted

    That movie gets a lot of flack from people who seem to think that the style of dialogue offered up in the first 10 minutes (the scene with Rainn Wilson) is representative of the entire film, which it is not.

     

    Ha! I tried to watch this 10 years ago and literally turned it off after the first 10 minutes. I'll give it fair consideration this time around, but I kind of already like Whiplash a lot.

  17. Posted

    The only reason Stop Making Sense is winning because none of the voters have seen Sign O Times ..

     

    I went in with a big bias towards Prince but now I'm Stop Making Sense all the way so I'm not sure you're right. I did watch both. There's really no way of knowing what would have happened, but there's definitely no way Sign O The Times was ever going to win this under the current circumstances.

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

     

    This is also a good point. If there is one movie to canonize as representative of Prince's cinematic output, it's Purple Rain.

     

    Personally, I might not canonize any of them, just because I find that Prince as a filmmaker has some key limitations (indulgence, overconfidence in his own abilities as an actor) that prevent his movies from 100% "clicking" with me. But Purple Rain is clearly the big dog among them.

     

    Something about Purple Rain didn't work for me until I saw it in a theater last year with really good sound. The story isn't the greatest, and he really isn't much of an actor, but the stage performances really make up for it and tie it all together. Sound is such an important component to Purple rain. If you're watching it on low volume or with tv speakers then you're not getting that same venue feel.

  19. Posted

    I was much more familiar with Prince going into this. I love the Sign O The Times album but never saw the concert film, but Stop Making Sense made a much bigger impression on me. I couldn't take my eyes off David Byrne (I actually agree with Armond White .. Byrne does have a powerful sexuality on stage).

     

    I watched both of these films twice over the weekend. I almost want to throw Sign a vote just because not everyone got to watch it, but I think Stop Making Sense just made me a huge Talking Heads fan whereas Purple Rain is really the better Prince showcase.

    • Like 4

  21. Posted

    Goonies has always been a mystery to me, but I have friends that will never give up on it. I can definitely see someone being indifferent to Ghostbusters, but some of the vitriol is a little surprising. The Great Ghostbusters War of 2016 probably didn't help. Which, honestly, as someone that voted "yes" I definitely feel like none of the controversy last year was worth it and I didn't totally feel like revisiting anything Ghostbusters this soon.

  22. Posted

    I've spoken before about how this movie hasn't held up perfectly for me as I went from eighties kid to 2017 adult, but unlike a lot of other movies I still really enjoy Ghostbusters. I agree with Paul in that it's way up there in the comedy pantheon, and has such a wonderfully realized world with it's own fictional ghosty rules that to this day people still really want this to take off as a Sci-Fi /horror franchise. I feel like that just won't work with the movies, but I'd love to see The Real Ghostbusters cartoon get some kind of Netflix reboot or something. There was less emphasis on comedy there, and every now and then they'd put out a really fucking creepy episode that almost didn't seem like it belonged in a Saturday morning cartoon.

     

    Honestly I think when people rabidly want Ghostbusters to turn into a bigger franchise they're really thinking about the cartoon which was it's own similar-yet-very-different flavor. The movie was kind of a one-and-done special set of circumstances that didn't even work twice. I was never on board with an original cast Ghostbusters 3, and I'm kind of thankful Billy Murray effectively blocked it.

     

    Anyway, I debated this one a little bit, but it's a yes. There's something about this movie that stuck in the public consciousness and I think it deserves a spot in the canon.

  23. Posted

    I wouldn't go so far as to say that anything about the movie doesn't work, and I don't necessarily think it has to be the absolute best at anything to justify being in the canon. I just think it's a movie that doesn't work as well for the modern mainstream audience. Pacing, editing, and comedy all evolve over time based purely on taste, but you can still enjoy and embrace those movies when you put them in context. Ghostbusters feels unique so it's difficult for me to dismiss it out of hand. It was definitely different and special back then.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

     

    Agreed, while certainly not a bad film Ghostbusters is a movie that feels overrated every time I watch it.

     

    I loved this movie when I was a kid in the eighties, and I hate to say it felt like it was starting to show it's age when I saw it in the theater a couple of years ago. There is a little bit of franchise worship from people my age (mid-thirties) because there was a lot of merchandising and a popular cartoon. I still think it's a good movie, but I have to contextualize it more these days. If you can watch stuff like Animal House or Stripes and realize those were considered insanely funny movies for their time, then it might be easier to understand that Ghostbusters was this crazy special effects version of those movies that made a huge splash. (You may know all of this, but I'm just throwing it out there for anyone who doesn't remember.)

     

    I'm honestly not sure if I think it's canon. I'm leaning towards yes just because it absolutely had an impact.

    • Like 2

  25. Posted

    I'm definitely in the "Ghostbusters II missed the mark" camp, but there are plenty of die hard fans. It drags in a way that only phoned-in sequels can, and some of it was really painful like Tully and Janine's silly cartoon date.

     

    It was the reason I was NEVER big on any kind of Ghostbusters sequel or reboot. They had all of the originals back for the sequel and couldn't even make that work.

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