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Philly Cheesesteak

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Posts posted by Philly Cheesesteak

  1. Posted

    I think it deserves a discussion. Haven't seen it in years. I was just thinking about this the other day while visiting NYC and really wishing I had the time to retrace their trip home from the Bronx to Coney Island. There are a ton more obviously Canon-worthy films about NYC, but this is the only one on my mind while traveling through the city.

     

    What about Taxi Driver?

  2. Posted

     

    I forgot about Excalibur, I didn't consider that part of the genre because Arthur is a little less "fantasy" to me. There's a lot of excellent stuff in that film, just visually it's pretty amazing. I'm surprised we don't see too many takes on that legend these days; I can't say that I'm enthusiastic about Guy Ritchie's upcoming film.

     

    Willow is pretty great, although it doesn't hold up as well as I'd hoped. Still a great film for kids with wonderful FX.

     

    I guess I'd still rank Conan above all those, for the seriousness and relatively realistic tone it takes. There's hardly a tongue in cheek moment, and no unintentional laughs -- hard to accomplish in a swords and sorcery film. It never feels pulpy or cheap, in the way that Beastmaster or Dragonslayer do.

     

    I kind of miss the fantasy boom of the 1980s, which also gave us films like Ladyhawke, Flesh+Blood, and cheesy indulgences like Legend or Krull.

     

    Don't forget Highlander and The Princess Bride! Oh, and Time Bandits and Baron Munchausen!

  4. Posted

    Oh, stop it you!!

     

    When it comes to Canon debates, I like seeing a wide berth of opinions. The better articulated, the brighter the light it shines on the subject matter. It might lead to some interesting ideas or viewpoints I'd never have considered prior and I value moments like that. You, HeadSpin, you guys brought valid arguments to the table.

     

    Now, at the end of the day I don't think Harry Potter as a film franchise is strong enough on its own merits to qualify for the Canon, I am glad to see good arguments for its inclusion at all. That's the important thing for me.

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    I do... but I don't think it's Canon worthy. When you think about it, it's like two-thirds of a good movie and one-third padding and needless romantic subplots. It deserves its status as a cult classic, but I don't think there's enough polish to give it the Canon treatment.

  6. Posted

     

    I honestly get sad at the lack of a Dragonslayer Bluray. I saw it several times in the theater when it was released, and you're right about the heavy themes and overall darkness of the film. Very strange at the time for a Disney release. And Vermithrax Perjorative? What a fucking incredible name for the Dragon.

     

    just for fun

     

    Rancor07_zpskxz3bmsg.png

     

    That pic just made my day.

  7. Posted

     

    I'll put out there that there's simply a lack of respect for the genre that has kept low fantasy from getting out of the kids movie and b movie buckets. I will disagree though that Conan is the only good low fantasy movie ever made. Off the top of my head I would add into that list:

     

    Good to Excellent:

    Dragonslayer

    Excalibur

    Willow

    Black Death

     

     

    Passable or at least entertaining.

    The Sword and the Sorcerer

    The Beastmaster

    Solomon Kane <--- one I really like. I don't recall it getting good reviews though.

     

    I'm sure I could add more, but I'm sticking with a pretty narrow "Swords and Boards + Wizards and Monsters but no Elves and Dwarves and other silliness" definition.

     

    Dragonslayer is amazing. First off, it's an underrated gem. Secondly, best practical dragon effects ever. Thirdly, it handles fairly heavy thematic subject matter such as the erasure of native culture and histories, represented by Christianity dominating "pagan Europe" as best represented by the dragon and the wizard.

     

    And fun fact, the design for the dragon influenced del Toro's kaiju designs in Pacific Rim. It needs more respect.

     

    Excalibur, likewise, needs more respect. Willow I haven't seen in years, so no comment, and Black Death? If you cut some of the filler getting to the village with the dark secret, it'd go from good to great in a second.

  8. Posted

    Mongol General: What is best in The Canon?

    Conan: To crush your vs episode opponent, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their supporters!

     

    Devin repeats this in the mirror ten times before recording a vs episode with Amy.

  9. Posted

    I personally admire and respect Head Spin or Joseph Daley have to say, and I think I see where they're coming from. The movies are a part of a franchise. A major part, though certainly not the focus. That said, Harry Potter was so meteoric to the culture. As far as film goes, you've launched at least Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson--who are slowly, but surely rising as some of our most exciting actors. Not that this is a serious argument, but one of the best episodes Extras is easily Daniel Radcliffe's, and we don't get things like that without the Harry Potter films, specifically. Also, I look at it the same way we look at including films emblematic of other things--like inducting Cannibal Holocaust because of what it represents for exploitation films and found footage. I think for better or (mostly) worse, Harry Potter is sort of the reason YA franchises exist the way they do. Maybe that means Twilight, or The Maze Runner, or The 5th Wave, or whatever, but it also means The Hunger Games and A Series of Unfortunate Events--which I think gets better as time passes. One could also make the argument that properties like Harry Potter, as well as The Lord of the Rings made things like Game of Thrones possible. I think it helped prove that these kinds of films could make money. The first one came out a few months before The Fellowship of the Ring, and still made more money--just shy of a $1 billion worldwide, years before that was the standard. I don't think that box office is necessarily indicative of quality, but these films consistently made hundreds of millions of dollars. Seriously. When your eight film franchise sustains momentum so consistently that your lowest grossing entry is just short of $800 million, you can't ignore that. Hell, you can be sure that we're gonna tackle Marvel at some point, and you have to acknowledge that the comics come first in the same way the books come first with Harry Potter. We have Superman in the canon. We're gonna get something for Marvel. We should have something from Harry Potter. Franchise films are important. I'd love to talk about Ozu and Malle as much as the next guy. Prisoner of Azkaban is not even in the same league as any of those directors' films, but it's still a really artful franchise film that we typically don't get. I think that, whatever place it has in the hierarchy of its core franchise, Prisoner of Azkaban is among the best that type of filmmaking has to offer.

     

    Damn, might just be the best argument in its favour yet. Thanks!

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    Maybe

    Prisoner of Azkaban Vs The Harry Potter Series?

    Akin to Godfather 1&2 Vs all of the Godfather trilogy?

     

    Like how Casino Royale is the one James Bond film representing the rest of their impact.

     

    I fuckn love Prisoner of Azkaban. More stylish and impressive than anything before or after in the series.

     

    So you'd definitely argue Prisoner of Azkaban, in of itself, is a worthy Canon contender?

  12. Posted

    I actually think that the third one is terrific. It has this really icy, foreboding tone that is able to manage moments of quirkiness, tenderness, and tension with equal grace. The direction is solid--which, of course it is--and the cinematography is so nimble, capable of grandiosity, intimacy, and often great visual jokes and storytelling. I honestly think you could watch Prisoner of Azkaban without any dialogue, and still know what is happening--even the time travel stuff. Thematically, it's a bit harder to peg, but I see it being largely about the nature of perception, one's understanding of the past, and making up for lost time. We also see Harry grow as a character, or at least into a real character. In the first two films, he's proactive enough to service the plot, and he's sort of being guided through this crazy world. In Prisoner of Azkaban, we see Harry actually making mistakes, being impulsive, and trying to carve his own path. He's trying to be his own person, but he's caught in the middle of a legacy that he didn't choose, and is being pulled into situations for which he's predestined. Daniel Radcliffe allows Harry to struggle without being overly angsty or insufferable. I think it stands alone as its own film--though, I think they maybe should have kept the Firebolt subplot as was in the books, if I had any serious complaints; otherwise, it feels like a tag that doesn't quite work as well as it could. Do I love this film? No. I think Deathly Hallows Pt. I is more cinematic, and has a stunning performance from Emma Watson--not to mention "The Tale of Three Brothers," which should have gotten an animated short Oscar nomination--but if I were to pick one that encapsulates this world, and where these characters get to do their thing in even doses, I'd go with Prisoner of Azkaban.

     

    Sure, but what do you think of the arguments made against HP in this thread?

  13. Posted

    I love Blood Simple, but it's No Country no question for me. No Country for Old Men is Top 5 Coen Brothers as far as I'm concerned. Blood Simple was a hell of an introduction to a new creative voice, but No Country is those creatives at the top of their game.

     

    I'm with him on this. Blood Simple's a raw first entry, while No Country shows off how far they've come as filmmakers.

  14. Posted

    The best thing Oliver Stone ever co-wrote!

     

    Basil Poledouris' score is surely one of the most influential ever, and is still reused today in movies, games, and trailers. Incredibly evocative, stirring music.

     

    Fun fact: this was the last major studio film recorded and released to theaters in mono sound.

     

    Really? Damn, that's all kinds of neat!

  16. Posted

     

    Others disagree about that quality. That's why they voted those in. And my argument is that the "value" is minor; the real value is in the rest of the media franchise.

     

     

     

    Are you making that argument? Because "capturing the totality of a time and place" is a stretch, and I don't think it can be made. Just because it was based on something that was massively popular and meant a lot to people doesn't mean that it all carries over arbitrarily to its films.

     

    Sorry to go all "line-by-line." That always comes off as aggressive, and I mean it all with respect. But I disagree, and I stand by everything in my longer post that went unchallenged.

     

    S'all good, man, no harm done and no need to apologize. Even I don't think the films deserve to be in the Canon, and I say this as a legit fan of the books/franchise. But it's always interesting to play devil's advocate. Their arguments should never be dismissed out of hand.

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    See, I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan but my experience jibes with what Joseph Daley said: The Harry Potters fans I know range from "really like" to "dislike" on the films, but the bottom line is that the movies aren't a major enough part of the media franchise to get this huge historical importance cachet that I"m hearing on this thread.

     

    They were very popular and successful, but that's because Harry Potter is easily Canon-worthy in the category of "media franchises" and "YA book series;" I wouldn't credit any film in the series much less the series as a whole for being such a big deal that it gets significant credit for its impact on the culture.

     

    "Popularity/Success," "Quality," and "Historical Importance" are three separate axes. It's the book series that earns the the latter two, not the films. The films are fine, and Azkaban is very good and easily the only candidate for the Canon among them all.

     

    So my argument is twofold: Like I said in the Breakfast At Tiffany's thread, I think historical impact should always be secondary to quality. If a movie cant stand on its own, then I don't really care how important it was; this isn't a film history podcast. I've always taken it as one where people vote on their judgments of the art, and take the history in context afterwards. And I don't think any of them are great or exceptional to a Canon level, with the possible outside exception of Azkaban, which might be arguable - however, this thread has mainly been about the importance of the whole series.

     

    Secondly, I don't think that the Potter films deserve any historical importance rub. They're one successful branch of the Harry Potter tree, but not particularly influential or even all that major, I think, within the Harry Potter fandom, much less the public at large (and I think you'd need to have the scope set at "public-at-large" to make the importance argument here).

     

    They're fine. Enjoy them, love them, but they aren't Canon-worthy. They were a pleasant afternoon to thousands of people, but not all-time-greats.

     

    Mind you, The Canon has inducted a fair few films of questionable quality based solely on historical value (I.e. Forest Gump). There is an argument to be made that to omit something of that value is to fail to capture the totality of a time and place.

  20. Posted

    And there is no film without Birth of a Nation, yet They Live is in the canon. There's room for both, just as there's room for the films and books as pillars of modern pop culture. Also, who cares if "normals" like Harry Potter for the movies? That's such a condescending, hipster bullshit argument, no matter who made it. Populism is totally valid. Movies are for everyone, not just those who put the work in to understand every facet of art and media. If the films helped popularize these huge stories, just as Casino Royale and the 007 films popularized the Ian Fleming novels, then why can't we indulge them? This is a podcast about film, and Pottermaina was clearly so huge. Why can't we represent that through inducting one of the movies? One question that we should ask ourselves: Should the canon represent solely the medium, or should it represent our culture as well? We've inducted films on cultural significance before. Harry Potter is culturally significant. We should 100% consider one of the films for the canon.

     

    That said, what do you think of the arguments laid here about the actual quality of the films, even PoA, in of themselves? You can make the argument, for instance, that Casino Royale is not only more polished but possesses a technical flourish the HP movies might have lacked.

     

    This is me taking the Amy side of the argument.

  23. Posted

    There is no world that I want to live in where the Harry Potter film's make it into The Canon. I'm a diehard when it comes to Harry Potter, so my opinion is heavily biased towards the books, but the film's are so slight by comparison, hit or miss doesn't even begin to describe how pockmarked the disparity of quality among them really is. Prisoner of Azkaban is easily the best of the bunch, and the only one that I think could be considered Canon worthy, but Pottermania belongs to the books, and its impact on our culture belongs solely to those books. If this were a Canon of the most important touchstones of Pop Culture period, then the books (and films by extension) merit inclusion as a guarantee. But this is strictly film, and none of the Harry Potter films deserve to be included.

     

    In closing: the *books* inspired the podcasts, the conventions, the Wizard Rock, the Midnight Book releases, and Pottermania. The movies just let in the normals, as Devin called them.

     

    Yeah, I can get behind this 100%. Come to think of it, Kiki's Delivery Service alone is rather better than most of the movies.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    Fairly confident this is the half of your list that could be called indulgence picks; Treasure of the Sierra Madre is AFI Top 100 royalty, and Seven Samurai makes most global top ten lists! Truthfully, I think the only one of these that isn't almost a gimme eventual episode is Quadrophenia, just because Tommy and The Wall have become more popular classic rock, "rock opera" movies. I also kind wish it were John Waters' The Wall and not Roger Waters; Divine as Mother could be spectacular!

     

    Whoops! Misread the idea of the indulgence pick like a drunk blind man, my bad.

     

    And double whoops, I meant Roger, not John. Heh heh, egg on my face.

     

    In which case, slight revision:

     

    The Wall, Tommy, The Crow, Indepedence Day, Phantom of the Paradise, Ghost Dog, Melancholia, Frozen, Quadrophenia and.... I wanna say The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Ralph Bakshi's Heavy Traffic?

     

    How's this, better?

  25. Posted

    The first film to launch Arnold Schwarzenegger into the pop culture zeitgeist, this loose adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age epic of short stories became the model of the stock archetype Ahnuld would come to embody throughout his career: the stoic, rated M for Manly, catchphrase-spewing ubermensch who occasionally screams at you in a thick Austrian accent.

     

    The movie itself? Booming orchestral soundtrack, gorgeous set design, an awesome opening narration delivered by Mako Iwamatsu,the stylized graphic violence of 80's genre cinema and James Earl Jones hamming it up as a snake-themed supervillain.

     

    Oh, and who can forget one of the best movie prayers of all time?

     

     

    I remember someone once calling the movie "what would happen if they shot and filmed some guy's D&D campaign." Well, if that's true, they sure as hell gave it top notch production design.

     

    What do you guys think, does Conan the Barbarian have any qualities that deem it worthy for a Canon candidacy? Or is it just a geeky gen. X property we've given, perhaps, a little too much credit? As Amy has opined in the past, is the Canon truly in danger of becoming swamped by gen X nerdbro nostalgia properties? Does that alone disqualify Conan from the Canon?

     

    Would love to hear some thoughts on this.

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