Jump to content
🔒 The Earwolf Forums are closed Read more... ×

Philly Cheesesteak

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    141

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Philly Cheesesteak

  3. Posted

    I, uh... wrote a thing about Faraci and the Canon. Just needed to express my personal feelings about all this, and I thought I could share them with you guys.

     

     

    I apologize for the length.

    • Like 5

  4. Posted

    This is rough. It's devastating because I know how important the show is to me, and I know how important Devin's perspective has been in shaping the perspective of a young person who wants to understand film. If what happened is true to the degree that Devin is unable to continue, I'll still listen to the show, assuming Amy and another continue. Would it be the same? No. And the circumstances under which personnel was changed would loom over the show forever. So, I don't know. It's really difficult to consider.

     

    That's not even taking into consideration the careers of anyone who's worked on Birth.Movies.Death, or Devin's own career. Even if he's innocent, the accusation has already had a tangible effect; leaving a solid taint on his reputation. By proxy, the whole site will suffer for it.

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    I'm impressed with the level of maturity on this thread overall. This post especially:

     

     

     

    At present this makes me uneasy, and I will put off listening to the new episode for now.

     

    Certainly Devin's bullying style is often a turn-off. There is a line between good-natured sparring and bullying, and Devin crosses that line on a fairly regular basis. When he does so he degrades himself and the show. If the allegations are true, I feel that any contrition would be incomplete without reflecting on and working to change those bullying tendencies. From the standpoint of a listener, I would find it even harder to overlook that behavior when it happens on the show.

     

    All this aside, I really like Devin on the show, I think he and Amy do have great chemistry and I enjoy their disagreements (when Devin is not being nasty) as well as episodes when they harmoniously agree. They're well balanced for me in that I never know which one I'll agree with. They're both insightful but often in different ways, and that's interesting.

     

    Hypothetically, if Devin left the show, I would be interested in a continuation with Amy and a different co-host.

     

    ... Who else could fill Devin's shoes? And would Amy herself even want to replace him to keep the show going?

  6. Posted

    I will certainly await more information and statements from the involved parties.

     

    I believe in empathy and understanding for victims, and I also believe in forgiveness and rehabilitation for perpetrators. Sometimes it can be difficult reconciling these two things when there is strong emotion involved (on both sides), but I'm troubled by both the silencing of victims ("It's in the past, let it go, it was such-and-such years ago, she's lying" etc.) as well as moral grandstanding against people who committed a crime ("What a hypocrite, once a bad person always a bad person, I knew all along he was a piece of shit, I told you so" etc.).

     

    I can't speak to anything more than my general feelings on the treatment of others based on my own experiences. I just hope those who have been sexaully assaulted can continue to feel safe to talk about their experience and heal, and that those who have committed assault can confront the vileness of their actions, do whatever they can to offer amends, and change.

     

    I hope The Canon will continue.

     

    Probably the best take on this whole thing so far.

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    Now that y'all mention it, I noticed Devin also hasn't tweeted since earlier yesterday (and it looks like he usually tweets a lot). Also it seems Birth.Movies.Death hasn't updated since yesterday as well.

     

    I hear both Devin and the site are offline while this whole thing is investigated.

  8. Posted

    I gotta say... man, this whole thing has bummed me out. I love The Canon. Amy and Devin have great synergy, they have a great dynamic- a Canon without Devin doesn't click with me.

     

    But I'd understand why there wouldn't be one after today. It's understandable and massively depressing, on so many levels.

    • Like 5

  10. Posted

    Personally... I'd like to avoid Pennies from Heaven or Re-Animator. They're indulgence picks and it's their show, they had the right to argue on their behalf and introduce a little personal feeling into the mix. Especially the former. We need more ambitious screw ups with heart and soul, I swear, to serve as humbling reminders of any and all artistic pursuits.

     

    Although, gun to my head, if I had to choose...

     

    Hm.

     

    Again, whatever personal feelings some might have... I kind of want movies like Boyz in the Hood, Working Girl and Chi-Raq in the Canon. We need more diverse voices in our cinema, and like I said with Pennies I'll take the flawed but ambitious and earnest over the fine and dandy and lacking in real soul or perspective.

    • Like 5

  11. Posted

    You know... I feel compelled to root for the underdog here.

     

    I'm with Devin and Amy on this: The Bad Seed might not necessarily be the greatest movie of its kind, but I'll be damned if it isn't a perfect avatar of the pre-self aware, irony-free camp. It's a camp we're sorely missing nowadays, and we need more of its kind. The ending is jarring, sure, but it's the kind of jarring that could only have come from the strange and weirdly one-track mindsets of 50's filmmaking.

     

    Besides, you have to give Patty McCormack so many props. It's difficult enough for child actors to affect a cool and creepy performance like this, and she pulls it off so well she sort of set the bar for creepy children in fiction in general. Well, at least before the twins from The Shining or Damien from The Omen came along- but it still counts for something.

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    I'm also Team Blanca, though I think the vote would be more split than you guys do. Casablanca's a real boys' club, for instance, and I wonder if women might identify more with GWTW's perspective. Or people who prefer historical epics to snappy comebacks.

     

    Implying a movie famous for its witty comebacks and pithy sayings somehow lacks either.

     

    "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

     

    For the common person today, literally the one thing the movie is known for.

  14. Posted

    I'd kick about a fourth of the movies out, but I realize that I don't share the same taste as other people. I try to remember that it's about having an interesting hour-long podcast, not about whether the movies are worthy. :D

     

    Animal House is particularly galling for me. Versus episodes need a "neither" option.

     

    That might be "sliiiightly" disingenuous. Devin and Amy would certainly protest the notion the Canon is less about qualifying films as "worthy" and more about having an "interesting hour-long podcast." It's a midge condescending there, Susan, regardless of your own taste in cinema.

  15. Posted

    There is very little to defend with regards to the Friday the 13th films. Halloween would walk it in virtually every horror match up.

     

    Halloween vs. Psycho would be very interesting though. The original slasher film vs. what many consider the definitive slasher film.

     

    Both are iconic, vastly influential and transcend their own genre.

     

    It's more the prototype versus the codifier, really.

  17. Posted

    Casablanca wouldn't just win because of the politics. It's a well-paced film chock-full of great lines, that doesn't exhaust the viewer.

     

    Gone With the Wind is very, very impressive from a production standpoint. From a modern-day viewing standpoint, EEEEEEEEESH!!! Just end already! You're not Lawrence, y'know. Scarlet is not a very likeable character. It's really, really hard to feel for anybody, not the simpleton Melanie and Ashley, not the smarmy Rhett, not the self-absorbed Scarlet. Even Prissy is annoying as hell.

     

    Anytime I think of that film, I just watch Carol Burnett's

    . That does me.

     

    Definitely another point in Casablanca's favour. Even the side characters are more charming.

  19. Posted

    I think Casablanca would win in a landslide. Its stellar performances, themes of self-sacrifice and resistance in the face of tyranny and oppression and general mood and atmosphere still gel so much better with today's audiences...

     

    Than an epic romance that paints the antebellum South in a tragic, noble, heroic light. And, of course, the whole "mammy" character... Malcolm X had once remarked that, as a child, he had found the character so distasteful and offensive he would hide underneath the blankets every time she was onscreen.

     

    Still, on the other hand, the colours and sets and genuine accomplishments of the movie do need to be acknowledged.

  21. Posted

    I hope you're not implying that anyone here is attacking Amy or Devin, especially not by reposting tweets.

     

    Someone accused Amy of "not getting it" but things have been pretty civil. By the way, have you noticed how small Devin's hands are? What's he hiding under that beard, anyways?

     

    There was that one dude who made a "zing" out of calling Devin a fat blowhard. So, aside from that one guy...

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    Incidentally, one thing WoK lacks that was a staple of TOS's identity? The sex. Star Trek was, once upon a time, a sexy series. That's sort of been lacking for awhile, at least until Abrams... Well, he didn't really bring it back, he actually made it worse to the point I prefer the stodginess over what he did, but still.

  23. Posted

    From Amy's arguments, I have concluded that she is not a science fiction fan. She wants her space movies to be about space people doing space things in space rockets, which is Star Wars, which is action/fantasy more than Sci-Fi. True Sci-Fi is about the human condition, and how it is affected by extreme situations (traveling the galaxy, facing the unknown, etc). That's what makes Trek, especially the smaller stories (Balance of Terror, WOK) so great. And I get her point that Trek works best on television, but this is a great film, and don't great films deserve to be in the Canon?

     

    I think it's more charitable to say she has certain expectations of sci-fi, and she's loved plenty of them in the past.

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    For the curious:

     

    7UbeKLzl.jpg

     

    He's probably talking about the comments on BirthMoviesDeath; we all know the Earwolf commenters have well reasoned, articulate opinions which make perfect sense.

     

    Somehow, I doubt that. I checked. Most of them are on Devin's side. Here, it's more an even split. He's looking at these opinions about WoK - Galactiac's view, your's, etc - with a sad shake of the head.

×