Cakebug Tranch
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Everything posted by Cakebug Tranch
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Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
OKAY FINE CAMERON I FIXED IT -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
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Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Hooray! Great pick, kate! So glad you piped up and have joined the regulars crew! Stay with us! Forever! -
Strenuously decline to agree that this is a bad movie. There's only one word for it. Wow! Seriously, I loved this movie when i was a kid. It's the best, and the first ever movie of a certain future Oscar winner...
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Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Having had my childhood crush on Helen Reddy rekindled this week, I went back to see the song that made her famous: watching this video, it's slightly head-scratching that two years later she'd be tabbed to play Nora, given the maternal role (not to mention the sea widow role) that she plays in Pete's Dragon. Most of all, watch through to about 2.29 and check out the stunned, bored audience waiting for Helen to get finished. Wake up you idiots! She's amazing! -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
I'm super impressed that Pete's Dragon even popped into your mind when considering musical options, honestly. I considered myself fairly familiar with this movie (which I totally was not, as we've discovered) and the musical element had completely vanished from my brain. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
GUYS. A very important note. I was wondering about the terrible teacher who blamed Pete for leaving Elliott-holes in the wall and ringing the bells with his psychic abilities. For being a filthy liar, Pete is subjected to 'the knuckle cracker', where Pete is whomped on the hand with a ruler (Sleepwalkers callback, yo) and then is threatened with the 'backside breaker' after Pete magically pulls teacher's chair out. This teacher loves beating up kids. But that's fine, you know, since, in 1977, this case was tried: http://caselaw.findl...rt/430/651.html Based on this law, corporal punishment in Maine schools was legalised in 1977. 1977! The year of Pete's Dragon! While belting kids for no reason was illegal in Maine since 1975, the 1977 Supreme Court decision meant that Maine sadists got their outlet. To whit: Given that Pete was a lying, black-magic using urchin, he had it coming. And Maine law stood up to support his teacher. And then this movie was made to celebrate Mainer corporal punishment rights. Way to go, Disney. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Look, all I'm saying is that if we all chipped in fifty bucks each... http://auction.howardlowery.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detail&Auction_uid1=3115985 -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
That's their slogan to this day. Pretty effective, really. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
I'm allergic to Buckley's It has pine needle oil, which messes with my asthma. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
My 100%, no-doubt, ABSOLUTE favourite moment of this movie came when Lampy was with Pete and Pete howled out like he was a little feral dragon boy. And a look flickered across Mickey Rooney's face, ever so briefly. And you knew exactly where his mind went. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlZ5oGibiDc&t=1m12s (the timestamp embedding doesn't work on that link so jump ahead to 1.12) ETA: Now actively advocating for a mash-up called Puck's Dragon. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
I think all four of those men you posted are certifiably TNH. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Cry with BOREDOM -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
This site - http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Pete-Dragon-Movie-Take-Place-71954.html - suggests that the 1977 version was set in the first decade of the 20th century, long after slavery was abolished. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Yeah, great point. I think I just went with the wholesome 1950's picket fence look, but of course the schooling and the dirt streets and quack doctors and horse drawn carriage and really you're right it's much earlier and OMG PETE'S DRAGON IS BASICALLY THERE WILL BE BLOOD -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
I brought this up on letterboxd but it really bothered me. The Gogans are awful stereotypes of hideous garbagepeople. Sure, we've got that. And somehow, in this idyllic 1950's rendition of Maine, alcoholism is rife, women are objects, and slavery is not only legal but normalised. So, in the society that has been established, the Gogans have spent $50.50 on Pete, which a HUGE amount of money relative to the time - ten times more than Dr. Terminus offers Pete to buy Elliott - and they want him to be their servant at their farm. It seems like they're mean and wish to do Pete harm, but maybe they're mostly mean because their high-priced slaveboy has run off with his imaginary friend? They have a legal bill of sale, so it's not like they are illegal slaveowners. So whenever they show up, they're exercising their legal right to hold on to Pete. Now, it's not right, and it's not good, but could it be... just a little bit... that they're hard done by with Elliott's ultimate gesture of setting their contract on fire? If we posit a society where child ownership is not only legal but unremarkable (which this is - so contemporary attitudes towards slavery should be set aside), I would say the Gogans have an excellent case to make in any court for the return of their property. What I would have much preferred would have been to see Nora give them fifty bucks to go away, then they're not out of pocket. Look at them! Can they afford to throw fifty bucks away? And those two boys, do they really look like they'd be useful on the farm? -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
It's not just the teacher, it's the townsfolk in general. Pete gets the blame for wrecking the fence and making dragon prints in the cement as well as knocking down the mayor's staircase. Poor Pete. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
One thing I will definitely applaud is the restraint shown in not letting Elliot speak English. Can you imagine how much more grating this would have been if Elliot was singing too? -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
The way Pete's upset at Elliot for his clumsiness makes me feel like Elliot's a Lenny character, unable to hold the bunnies but unable to understand why people get mad at him. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
When I was a kid I used to put apples in the microwave because it smelled like apple pie but eating the soggy hot apple always tasted gross. -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
No, but when you have TWO-TIME OSCAR WINNING ACTRESS Shelley Winters and a pre-breakout Jeff Conaway (about to find fame in both Taxi and Grease the following year), you don't waste them on a single child-murder song at the top... -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
In the name of due diligence, I watched the new version of 'Pete's Dragon' last night so I could compare and contrast in this thread. It's a fine movie, and looks beautiful, with lots of nice performances, particularly from BDH and Redford. But it's 'Pete's Dragon' in name only - as in, there's a kid called Pete who is friends with a Dragon, but that's about it. Absolutely no connection, no tip of the hat, no signal given to the audience. There's one TINY moment where Redford says... "it was... a dragon. A dragon! I thought I saw a dragon." That must be our sly nod to Lampy but it's delivered so seriously that it limps on by. That's a shame. Pete in the new movie is SUPER serious and broken (given that we see his parents die in the first scene and Pete leaves their bodies to rot in the woods while he goes and makes friends with the Nessie-like woods creature that everyone seems to know about), and there's no one who's trying to take him away for his own good. The person who finds him in the woods becomes his mother immediately, without discussion. There's no lighthouse because it's not in Maine, so as a result, Ranger Mom doesn't have a sweetheart lost at sea. There is also zero point zero percent Dr. Terminuses in the new movie. Real spoiler here in case you care: In short, the remake's not a remake. It's a reimagining based on a title alone. I thought the 1977 version was super charming in the fact that we don't need to explain how Elliott met Pete. How he got his name (that's slavishly covered in the new one). We don't need to ground it in sasquatch mythology. Elliott's just there, and he's good at hiding and picking apples. Good enough! -
Musical Mondays Week 9 Pete's Dragon (1977)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Yes, I'll chip in to agree with Kate's take on it right off the bat. My memory of this film was that it was something I loved as a kid, but I was shocked to see that it was a feature-length film. In my mind it was a short along the lines of Lambert the Sheepish Lion - no idea why I thought that. But, I had ZERO memory of the Gogans or Dr. Terminus, or even Lampy. For me, 100% of my memory was wrapped up in Elliott, a little bit with Pete, and the rest with Nora. Growing up in Australia, the fact that Helen Reddy played Nora was a really big deal, since she's an iconic Australian singer (fun fact: Helen is directly responsible for introducing her buddy Olivia Newton-John to the producer who cast her in Grease, so if it wasn't for Nora there'd be no Xanadu) - the first Aussie woman to win a Grammy. Her 'I Am Woman' made her a global superstar and even though her star was waning by the time Pete's Dragon came along, she was still a big deal back home. So, my entire sense of this movie was wrapped up in Nora, Pete, and Elliott. No memory at all of nearly everything else, and not a single note of any of the songs stuck with me. It's a fairly messed up movie, plot-wise, but we'll get into that, I'm sure. Nice pick, Kate. I'm not sure it makes it to the Across the Tommyverse hall of fame for terrible movies, but it's a contender! -
Musical Mondays--Rotation and Sign Up
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
That's the first time I've heard 'cool kids' and 'discussions of movie musicals' used in the same sentence.- 83 replies
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Musical Mondays Off-Week 8 (Kateacola's Pick)
Cakebug Tranch replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
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