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Cakebug Tranch

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Posts posted by Cakebug Tranch

  1. Posted

    I didn't get to rewatch yet but I'll get to it soon. Just wanted to pipe in and say that I played Barnaby in a high school production when I was 16! I wish I had photos to show.

     

    ETA: I just checked my photo albums and sadly there are none to be found. I found pictures of me in Guys and Dolls and Fiddler on the Roof, but no Barnaby pictures. I wore round glasses and a tartan tam, by the way.

    • Like 3

  2. Posted

    This is crazy to hear about the script. Not that the movie wasn't expected to be a hit but that it was written on the fly. It's such a tight script. There's hardly a line that doesn't develop character, lead to a plot point, or payoff some previous line. Maybe you don't need every line or every scene, but you can't remove one without needing to remove another somewhere.

     

    Every time I watch Die Hard, I think about the script and try to find scenes that aren't necessary. I think the last time I was thinking "you know, all this stuff with the newscaster is nice, but is it necessary?" Then comes the scene where Holly sees her kids on tv which lets Hans know she's John McLane's wife. So, yes, we needed the scene with the reporter arguing with the anchor to make him go out the interview the kids.

     

    I'd strongly recommend the 'I Was There Too' episode: it's really informative. Things like the scene where Hans speaks to McLane in his American accent - that was an improv moment from the writer to cover a continuity issue that was going to come with being able to identify the terrorists by their wristwatches, something that fell between the cracks in shooting. Apparently it's a film that really came together in the edit.

    • Like 2

  3. Posted

    I think this is exactly why Die Hard isn't on the list. I think a lot of institutes/critics/awards shows don't want to include popular movies because it makes them seem less important.

     

    Also, 'Die Hard' was never expected to become the classic it's now seen as - it was based on a little-known novel, starring a TV actor and an English stage performer (and the dad from Family Matters), and was written on the fly. The amazing 'I Was There Too' episode with the screenwriter shows just how slapdash the writing and filming process was - major plot points we see as integral now were made up on the spur of the moment. 'Die Hard' was supposed to be a down and dirty, forgettable cop thriller. They just managed to catch lightning in a bottle and came up with something that became beloved. For that reason, I don't think it would be considered prestige at all.

     

    Of course, with ALL of that said, the studios also thought that 'Casablanca' stunk too. So maybe the theory is flawed.

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    I’ve had Rad on my Letterboxd Watchlist since CakeBug, Tom, and Cam Bert watched BMX Bandits last year. I’m looking forward to finally getting it out of there ;)

    I must admit, I got an electric thrill of anticipation when Paul said it was a BMX movie: I thought maybe it might be 'BMX Bandits' (featuring an extremely young Nicole Kidman as a BMX rider who helps foil a robbery), but no such luck.

    • Like 4

  5. Posted

    So with Rad we'll have our BMX movie, Airborne had roller blades, so when it comes time to complete the 80s/early 90s trifecta of cool sports, may I suggest Thrashin' for the skateboarding option.

    Or Gleaming the Cube? I can't remember if that's HDTGM-worthy or is actually good.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

     

    I just finished the episode today, and consequently, just read all the posts here. As someone who is taking a temporary (permanent?) hiatus from Twitter, I feel you. However, here on the forums we tend to be...verbose. HDTGM is a good model, but it also has the benefit of having mini-episodes (that people are free to skip if they don’t want to listen to our in-depth dissections into Streets of Fire or whatever). Unspooled is a weekly, 60 minute show. Tweets are, by design, brief. Therefore, Amy and Paul get listener interaction without slowing down the flow. Unfortunately, that means - outside some “the people on the forums are saying” - I wouldn’t expect too many forum shout outs. I’m not saying it will never happen, but not on a HDTGM mini-episode level.

     

    That being said, didn’t they talk about maybe doing recap or review episodes every so often? Maybe those would be a good time to bring up any of the great insights you guys bring up on here.

     

    Regardless, I’m just psyched to talk to you guys about movies ;)

     

    On another note, if Amy and Paul are reading this, I just want you guys to know that you two are absolutely killing it!

    Yeah, I totally get why the forum isn't front and centre the way it is in minisodes, but I would have loved the chance to be polled about the question of the week, and hoped that we might hear about things here. I guess it just comes down to checking Twitter a bit more often, no biggie.

     

    Cam's opinion about Paul and Amy killing it is officially co-signed here. Such a great podcast.

    • Like 3

  7. Posted

    I was supposed to read it in high school and did not. I tried reading it after college since I still had my copy. I made it maybe one chapter in.

     

    I might try the podcast but, depending on how often Michael Ian Black comments, that might be a very dry podcast.

    I've listened to the first couple of episodes. The production side - the music and the soothing nature of Michael's voice makes it a very calming podcast, almost ASMR in nature. I've never read Jude either but I'm excited for this one.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    Also, the key to any stakeout is to make a big production out of dumping a cup of soup onto the sidewalk while standing in your suspect's eyeline. Only a brilliant criminal mind like Charnier could detect such cunning!

     

    The awesome getting-off-the-subway-then-back-on-again dance was so much fun. What on earth did Popeye think Charnier would think? By that point Popeye might as well walk up to him and say 'I'm following you now, bud'. I loved the walking stick stopping the door opening, and best of all the little wave Charnier gives as he rolls out. So badass.

     

    Of course, the main question I have is: who is buying Custard on a train platform in New York City? How much are you selling that it becomes your stand's main selling point?

     

    13941026709_95ef07372a_o.jpg

    • Like 4

  10. Posted

    One other thing: I was a little sad that the observations and contributions from this forum on 'Swing Time' weren't mentioned, but polls on Twitter were a big part of the conversation. As someone who doesn't use Twitter, I missed that completely! Is the plan that Twitter is going to be the place to post about Unspooled, or will this forum also be incorporated sometimes? After seeing both Paul and Amy drop in last week I thought that there might be some interaction (and I know it's tough with a 60 minute podcast to fit everything in), but I would like to think that if Twitter poll questions were asked in this forum, you'd get plenty of feedback and contributions! Many of us in here are used to the HDTGM model so you know there'll be material worth using. If nothing else, if anyone sees a Twitter poll, link it in here, maybe.

    • Like 3

  11. Posted

    I hadn't seen a moment of this film before this week, so thanks to Unspooled for the motivation to watch. I knew about Popeye and his porkpie hat (the only WORSE undercover headgear might be a silk top-hat, I mean honestly) and knew there was a big car chase scene but for some reason in my mind I thought it was the hill jumping chase from 'Bullitt'. I'm glad it wasn't - the subway chase was thrilling and a wonderful surprise for me. What I loved about this was that it was so unfocused in terms of dialogue. So much of this film would be trimmed and edited for redundancies today, but there is so much that happens that isn't necessary to the plot - and the tailing scenes are way longer than you'd ever see now - that it feels like the real slog of policing. Following a hunch but having no idea if it will work out. Nowadays buddy cop movies are all about the miracle policing where they jump from clue to clue without a chance to pause. I loved that the jubilation they express after getting a lead from the wiretap felt earned. I also seriously love movies that show us the grime and state of New York City in the '70s. As someone who never visited NYC until 1999, I have never personally seen the seedy side of things, so I lap up movies like 'The Taking of Pelham 123', 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Taxi Driver', and the like. There's a brilliant comparison site that I enjoyed looking through, that showed the locations then and now: http://www.scoutingny.com/french-connection-filming-locations/

    • Like 4

  14. Posted

    When you look up zigamorph it brings up zygamorph on urban dictionary as "someone who looks up words they find on the internet" which basically means the scriptwriter trolled... me... because I looked up the word.

     

     

    The technobabble line I looked up was "This ZBC stuff is so crufty." Crufty is an actual word meaning hastily thrown together. I felt really stupid looking up the only word that actually exists.

     

    Pens down, everyone. Polly and Grudlian win this week. It'll be a serious shame if Paul doesn't read these ones on the mini. Awesome observations!

    • Like 8

  15. Posted

    The part that I found craziest was at the end when Breeze and Maggie are trying to get out of the truck and to safety, they're driving alongside Will's truck, with the Evening Wear Hackers in the back of the truck. Maggie tells Breeze to hold the truck steady so she can jump over to the truck, which she does. Then Breeze needs to jump over, so he asks the Lady Hacker to take the wheel so he can jump, which he kind of does, nearly dying yet again. Then they try to help the Evening Wear Hackers jump over, reaching out and trying to save them, disregarding their past deeds and coming together as human beings united for a cause. But if Lady Hacker makes it over to the truck, how will Gentleman Hacker survive? This is a terrible plan that can't possibly work out for them. And indeed, after trying to save the Evening Wear Hackers from the Hurricane, the Hurricane eats them and Maggie, Will and Breeze all shrug and go, 'meh, we tried'. Why do the Evening Wear Hackers sacrifice themselves for these chuckleheads to jump to safety? Why does no one remember the noble price these two paid?

    • Like 4

  16. Posted

    Time to talk about the other movie that has clearly influenced the action in this awful movie: the all-time classic, Die Hard.

     

    There are obviously quick parallels - classy international thieves in nice suits, hacking of computers to enter vaults, undercover and well organized entry into the building, a suave leader (although Perkins is no Hans Gruber). But then of course we get to the more overt connections: when Will and Maggie are on the roof of the mall after somehow climbing down from being ragdolled up in the air by the Hurricane, they run away from a tidal wave of water and jump off the edge of the mall, swinging in and landing:

     

    LxV6kzb.png

    That exactly mimics the famous scene from Die Hard where John McClane ties a fire hose to his waist and jumps off the exploding roof of the Nakatomi Tower, to swing down, hit a window, and land.

     

    diehard16.jpg

     

    More conspicuously, in both films we have a pair of unhinged terrorist brothers, and after the younger one is killed in wacky ways ("Now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho"/Flying hubcaps) the elder one goes into a psychotic rage and swears to kill the guy who did it (although in this one he's convinced it's Maggie).

    • Like 2

  17. Posted

    When Casey and Will are concocting the car bomb idea, Casey says that they can pack a car full of kerosene and fertilizer, "just like Timothy McVeigh did."

     

    Thanks, Tim. Your methods were sound and your legacy is intact.

    Yes! I couldn't believe that they were using real-life tragedies as plot points - starting out with Hurricane Andrew (real-life death toll: 65) and then name-checking the Oklahoma City Bombing (real-life death toll: 168) without considering that people in their audiences might have been affected by those events. And to name-check the now-executed murderer who set that bomb off is really tone-deaf. And then naming the hurricane "Tammy" when an actual storm called Tammy (a tropical storm) actually happened, and killed ten people in 2005? They went to the trouble of fictionalizing the town they live in, why not fictionalize these other elements that remind us of such terrible things?

    • Like 5

  18. Posted

    I loved that moment when Mabel says that she used to come to the upstate cabin "before the war", to which Pop replies "which war?" But of course in pre WW2 times, she means before the Great War of 1918, and he's suggesting that it's a war prior to that, perhaps the Spanish-American war? Or the Crimean War? The Civil War? Point is, to us, it's strange to hear someone mention the previous war and mean WW1: the same line a decade later would have very different meaning. My immediate reaction was that she was saying 'before WW2' and Pop was saying 'or was it WW1?', but of course the movie predates WW2, so Pop is calling Mabel even older that he appears to be.

    • Like 2

  19. Posted

    Along those lines... I always listen to HDTGM and love it, but I'm not compelled to post/discuss -- b/c I'm really not usually compelled to watch the movie beforehand. (I'm just not SO into movies that I like watching bad ones. If a movie done on HDTGM is easily streamable for me, I may watch it but mostly I just don't bother.)

     

    On the other hand, now Paul is talking "good" movies, I want to keep up and educate myself on these films as well... so I'm glad to have this forum to come and discuss them with you all.

    The movies we do in the Musical Mondays thread over in HDTGM are usually pretty good - there's the occasional HDTGM-worthy one but usually we have a good time discussing great musicals. You're welcome to join us!

    • Like 3

  20. Posted

    Great observations, Max! Plenty of excellent things there that we didn't get to yet!

     

    I really like the idea that the original version of this opening number featured Mia and Seb (although Boulder City doesn't fit into the lyrics as nicely as Santa Fe), but I think it's the right call to remove them from it. Whenever I watch this number I'm always distracted by knowing that every single person dancing on those cars are all living their dream trying to break in to being in the movies, and are another inch closer, but are still anonymous. In ten years we'll talk knowingly about how the next big star was one of the car dancing people, way in the background. The stories about dropping everything and coming to LA with a dream and not a dime in their pockets are probably incredibly familiar to most of those extras. Anyone notice the old dude awkwardly clapping (in the blue shirt on the left in the gif below) in the part where they open the back of the truck? I want to know HIS deal!

     

    giphy.gif

    • Like 5

  21. Posted

     

    *On the other hand, I don't necessarily think we should be erasing black face from history. People of the time fucking lived with it. It's really shitty but pretending it didn't exist for the rest of time is minimizing the struggle people of color had at the time. Presenting stuff like Swing Time with the proper context and acknowledging how difficult it was for black dancers and actors who could have been as big as Fred Astaire is important.

    Agreed, I found it such an interesting moment where Fred and Ginger have their first kiss behind the door, then they giddily say goodbye to each other, and then he happily runs to his dressing table and starts smearing the black makeup on his face, humming the 'Bojangles' song, entirely untroubled by the image he's about to portray. It's easy for us today to see how terrible it is, but part of the point behind minstrel shows was not just the makeup, but it was the double effect of seeing that the performer has transformed themselves. By showing him beginning to put the black makeup on, we get to see that transition before we see him in full makeup in the next scene. This allows the audience not only to enjoy the dancing, but to note the transition of the actor, which is the whole reason white actors would perform in blackface, rather than just having an African-American performer do the dance. It's those layers that were interesting to audiences then, and his carefree use of the makeup shows that it's no big deal back then.

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    I haven't listened to the episode yet, it wasn't ready for download when I left this morning, but I watched the movie and left with one question: why is it in the top 100 films?

     

    Paul and Amy hypothesize it's because of the film's position in the Library of Congress, and the final stair-dancing scene, which was considered the greatest dancing achievement ever at the time. They also suggest laziness on the part of the AFI!

    • Like 3

  23. Posted

    I loved so much of this film but, rightfully so, was really knocked sideways by the 'Bojangles of Harlem' scene (not 'Mr Bojangles') - the things that were great effects, like the shadow dancing and the uncrossing of the giant legs, weren't enough to forgive the blackface and 'face-on-shoes' image (and the casual retention of his blackface in his next scene backstage). That's why I was so happy to hear in today's podcast such a brilliant use of Earwolf crossover, with Tawny and Andrew from 'YITR' giving their perspective on this really problematic element. As a white guy I found this scene really uncomfortable and clueless, but it's terrific to get an expert opinion on the details of the scene.

     

    The thing that I found most striking about this segment was not that Astaire was 'paying tribute' to Bill Robinson, but that his tribute was inaccurate and heightened, wearing costumes that weren't associated with Bojangles, and, as this New York Times article notes, he's not moving in the same way as Bojangles either. So what's the point of the tribute?

    • Like 3
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