Cakebug Tranch

If the consensus is Old Dogs, so be it. I have somehow seen it twice now, and it is a movie version of the emotion of hate. It's putrid. But watching it as a group can only make it better. Should we nominate a list of 3-5 that we haven't seen? Are we going right back to the start or can we hop around?

Does it qualify as Stockholm Syndrome if I say that this is starting to sound like a good idea?

ME TOO! "Because it was BAD..." Here comes your football twins!

Holy shit, I for real got the vapors until the second spoiler click. ETA: I watched that movie in the damn cinema. I could have spent that fourteen bucks on ANYTHING.

Uh... go Bengals? Oh. Oh right.

The policewoman having sex with Golden's tail is a prime example of a scene that was dumped in there with no narrative purpose - she knows she killed the guy, she has sex with her, so unless it's to illustrate corruption and the abuse of the outsider, it sticks out. Similarly the random scene with the blonde nurse hooking everyone up to IVs. There were enough disconnected scenes that it muddied the water, so to speak. Late in the film there were similarly plot points that were adopted and abandoned, but by that point I was tuning in and out so my examples aren't as cogent as I'd like.

So the point is to watch old movies from the HDTGM canon that we can pair with the old episodes? Okay, cool. I hadn't realised the episodes were also going to come in to play.

This was such an incredible debut ep that I listened for the first 40 mins and then started over with a group of people because it needed to be shared. And even better on the second time through. God bless you, Paul F. Tompkins. And amazing show, Jess and Zach!

Actually, if it's the 11th I'm in regardless. My wife is in Las Vegas for her 40th so I'm home alone and that will be a good distraction. Would like to start agitating now to not do Old Dogs. Or is the plan to go through chronologically? If so, the next one is Season of the Witch, but I'm not sure if that episode is available. Or, are we only watching old ones that we can then re-listen to the episode of? Is a vote a good plan? I like the idea of Monster Trucks but that seems a little off-message for only our second 'classic'...

I'm totally in for Monster Trucks. Out for Old Dogs though. Life's too short to see that thing three times.

YESSSSS

Yeah, I figured it was a comment on how dumb guys are about menstrual blood. Or maybe just post-surgery sex. Either way, ease up on her you asshole.

To be fair, he did say that he could never have sex with her because he couldn't see her as anything but an animal or a fish. So maybe she thought that her tail was the last thing standing between them and their happiness. In any case, dude got married SUPER fast. If he hadn't have been de-throated by a vengeful sister mermaid, I would have given that marriage, like, six months.

Maybe they turn into Mermaids when they eat hearts and shit Wait, no, they eat those other guys and keep their legs, and when Golden eats blonde dude at the end she has legs until she gets in the water. One thing I really dug was how animalistic they were - they weren't women at all, they were monsters in this attractive outer form. Their whale-like noises and growling was pretty good. Their communication by sonar was a nice touch, and when they grew their fangs and their eyes clouded they really looked the part. I liked that.

In the spirit of SaraK's 'stupid question' (sic): WHY DON'T THE MERMAIDS GROW THEIR TAILS WHEN IT RAINS? It's raining in, like, 60% of scenes in this movie and Silver runs around in it laughing. Those raincoats must be hella good.

Heck yes it is. Even 'this season is a mess' is a damn spoiler! I'll catch up soon but have pity on those of us without HBO!

It is an excellent question, given that there don't seem to be any other evolutionary modification to their bodies aside from their tails. They don't have webbed fingers, or gills, although a great deal of time is taken to explain that when they're in human forms they don't have vaginas, but when they have their tails they have a vagina on the tail. So I would say that while the pruney fingers would appear to be a human trait, they also have human form (on the top) the entire time we see them.

I only heard Warsaw mentioned once (when Golden ate the guy in the car and it's on the news), but I assume it's the Vistula River (thanks, Wikipedia) - http://www.warszawaguide.info/Langs%20flodenEng/index.htm - so I assume they came up the river from the Baltic Sea. But then again they said they were in Bulgaria, which is on the Black Sea, way far away from Warsaw. How do they plan to swim to America from there? It isn't at all convenient... https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Vistula+River/@44.9579657,15.2443443,4.64z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x46fd6a4ea9bad70f:0xad87815e023035d!8m2!3d51.9893695!4d20.059103 When they report about dude being eaten in the car, they say: - his neck and heart were removed. - It wasn't foxes or dogs (!) - there were human prints - there were the tracks of a large serpent to the water But in this world everyone cheers when they see the girls' tails, so it's known that mermaids exist. And when the lady cop arrests Golden, she says that she knows she ate that dude. Why doesn't anyone say 'oh, it's probably one of those man-eating mermaids who are around in the river'?

This is the most important question asked yet.

Yeah, the second half had really interesting potential with the introduction of Triton and Golden's moving over to sing with his band, only to be told that she needs practice, which then demotes Triton to plot-point guy (you need to eat him or you'll turn into foam) rather than exploring this interesting world of land-based merpeople. G+S (not Gilbert and Sullivan) also say they'll stick in Warsaw for a bit until they swim to America. What's their plan there? And how did they learn Polish on the beaches in Bulgaria? Is that some reference to the Polish diaspora that we don't get?

Well, I'm all caught up with GoT to the end of last season, so PLEASE spoilertag discussion. I keep meaning to catch up, but I have found myself in need of watching strange mermaid gore musicals instead.

JESUS FUCKING MERCY YOU ANIMALS USE SPOILER TAGS

Okay, I gotta say, this was an unexpected pick, Fister. From the trailer I thought I had a sense of what was going to happen (Polish Splash the Musical maybe?) and it ended in sort of the way that I had expected (or as warned), but the route it took to get there was curious, to say the least. I thought it was a really good looking movie, well shot and visually arresting - at least as much as a movie set in a sleazy, grimy environment could be - but the storytelling was the weakness. The screenplay was all over the place, often with scenes inserted for the sake of inserting them. And while I wanted the music to carry us through, it was a curious mix of narrative/choreographical music (the shopping song, for example) as well as the nightclub stuff. The lyrics were so abstract so often that it lent an otherworldliness to the music. I think the idea of a modern movie about Sirens would definitely include music, although in this case the mermaids are actually beautiful young women-like creatures (not hideous monsters who trick sailors into thinking they're beautiful through their songs), and I loved that no one seemed particularly surprised that mermaids existed: I totally thought the tail reveal was going to be a climactic moment (see: Splash), but no, five minutes in, and tails! I'll stop here. I'm sure there are plenty of things we can all discuss rather than me writing an essay. Fister, give us your take on it!

100% and fully support these suggestions - both utterly insane yet incredibly watchable movies. I saw The Lure last night and it's refused to exit my brain all day, as though it's some kind of monstrous befanged Polish naked mermaid stripper singer. Phantom is particularly ripe for HDTGM. Pop in to the Musical Mondays threads from time to time - we'd love to have you!

*turns off television* *sits in silence a bit* *opens laptop* *raises hand* Yeah, me too. Me too.