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grudlian.

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Posts posted by grudlian.

  1. Posted

    17 minutes ago, taylorannephoto said:

    That's the main question I wanted to ask this week. Does a movie that in and of itself is pretty meh deserve to be on the Greatest list simply because of the achievement it made? Not that I'm cutting down how spectacular this was in 1937 but we're now well over 80 years out from it and we've all seen better more spectacular animated films.

    My answer to this question is no.

    I get that this movie has a lot of greatness by being the "first" but I can pick a handful of Disney movies from the same era that are better/more enjoyable.

    • Like 2

  2. Posted

    I hadn't seen this since the theatrical re-release in 1987 and I get the reason why it's on the list. It's the first and a huge step forward from what animation was doing even in 1936. I'm not super into the movie.

    I like the first 40 minutes or so but I find the stuff with the dwarves not as interesting. The songs are good but ehhh, I don't really care about what's going on.

    • Like 3

  3. Posted

    1 hour ago, taylorannephoto said:

    Dude, trust me, with this you can.

    Actually just watch Breaking Dawn Part 1 and you'll literally get everything from the first 3, because they still harp on the same shit and you'll get to see a grown man fall in love with a CGI baby.

    I watched the first four this month and at the start of every one, I thought "Did I accidentally start the wrong one?" They all start so confusingly different from the previous that it was plausible. I don't know if this is how the books are of they just assume the audience has read the whole series. So, I'm not saying you should skip the movies, but I really don't think it hurts much if you don't watch them all. 

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    4 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

    This month, I’m going to let Grudlian dictate which Friday we do this since I know he watched all the other Twilights in preparation for this, and I would hate for him to have gone through all that effort just to miss out.

    Grud, which Friday is better for you: the 5th or the 12th?

    Aww shucks! I'm going to have to say the 12th since I can't do it on the 5th.

  6. Posted

    13 minutes ago, taylorannephoto said:

    In my opinion I think that scene where she breaks out of the Supreme Intelligence was an unspoken way of her presenting who she is, because she's also become more quippy and way more full of sass. So for me at the end if she had said that I think it would've just been too on the nose and felt too orchestrated by writers. Cause I think this whole time that's exactly what Jude Law was wanting from her, she was supposed to prove herself worthy to him over and over and was deemed too emotional each time. From a female perspective that all rang sooo true and I believe the point is that emotional reactions are also conscious decisions but when a woman does them they are seen as emotional and wrong. No matter what Carol said in that moment it was her decision to end that at that moment because she wasn't going to fight by his ridiculous rules anymore. He was scared of her true power plain and simple and wanted to show that in a fist fight she wouldn't win against him. Once again he wanted her to prove that she was actually strong.

    It was a perfect moment.

    Would it have been more or less on the nose than playing "Just A Girl" during her big fight? Because that felt way over the top to me.

  7. Posted

    12 hours ago, WatchOutForSnakes said:

    I'm going to go on record saying this movie was more feminist than Wonder Woman.

    For sure this. I felt like Captain Marvel actually talked about being a strong female presence and how that affects future generations of young girls. And she did so as a regular person without superpowers. Her biggest hindrance were guys telling her to be less emotional and literally stopping her from using her inate abilities.

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    So, I just saw this and feel like her final line to Jude Law was off. He's saying "here's your chance to beat me as you are" or something similar. She responds with "I don't need to prove myself to you" I thought it would work better just saying something like "this is who I am"

    The whole movie is her being lied to that they created her when they were restricting her powers. I think it makes a little bit of a stronger statement to be herself instead of holding back. She does that by blasting him but her actually saying it proves it wasn't just an emotional reaction; it was a conscious decision.

    Also, cats are the best.

  10. Posted

    2 hours ago, joel_rosenbaum said:

    Seems like a reasonable list, Cameron.

    I would probably go with a "category list"

    1) A movie starring the Coreys

    2) One of the father-son body switching movies

    3) A jingoistic Reagan-era military action film

    4) Blank Check

    5) North

    Dream A Little Dream 2 covers the Coreys and body switching. The first one is old man and child but the second one is way worse.

    • Like 4

  12. Posted

    1 hour ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

    I haven't read Romeo & Juliet since I was in high school, maybe middle school, but reading this thread, I realized I'm unclear how people view Romeo & Juliet - i.e. are they actually in love.  Somewhere along the way I transitioned from thinking it's a love story (plus other stuff) to thinking, "oh, those two were never in love, they were just really highly, emotional, melodramatic teenagers."  And coincidentally at the time, I was reading other people's posts, basically saying, "yeah, and Shakespeare dropped cues in the play to convey that."  Googling, I noticed people often cite the parts about Romeo professing to be so madly in love with Rosaline, that he would die without her, right before he meets the next love of his life that he would also die without, Juliet.  This both portrays him both as someone who loves being in love, and one astute take I saw, playing up the Italian stereotype of being overly passionate, setting the stage that he would be someone who could kill himself later, mostly on an impulse.

    I also haven't seen WSS since middle school or high school, and don't think I'll be able to make time for revisiting it now, but I don't remember any situations that might have been commentary on the silliness (or I guess stupidity) of the impetuousness of the drama of youth romance, since, no literal suicides.  But I also haven't seen it since an age when I probably would have missed it if it was there.

     

    I've definitely read theories that Romeo and Juliet was meant to be one of Shakespeare's comedies. I don't know that I'd go that far, but it could be played as one without much changing it as I recall.

  13. Posted

    1 hour ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    I dunno but number one has to be Rockula

    Also wouldn't mind if they dove into some old Lifetime Movie Network ones, like the classic cheese ones from the '90s like Mother May I Sleep With Danger or Friends 'Til The End 

    Oh I once watched a Spanish Fast and the Furious ripoff called Combustion which was pretty terrible if they want to branch out into foreign films. that would be a good one

    Rockula is definitely in my top 5. My number 1 is No Retreat, No Surrender.

    I waver on Heartbeeps. It definitely is terrible enough and would be a good episode but watching it is awful. So awful it made me kind of physically uncomfortable watching it.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    13 hours ago, RyanSz said:

    The release date makes more sense now. As for other release dates throughout the year, I love how now apparently April is in the summer movie season, when only a decade ago the season started in June. This though is also do to so many attempts at tentpole movies being released the same time as one another. There were a number of articles a few years ago that discussed how 2017 and 18 were going to be huge moments of big movies cannibalizing each other's box offices, which happened in some instances, leading to some more visible spreading out. And speaking of Jordan Peele, if you haven't seen Us yet, do so because it is FUCKING AMAZING.

     

    To an extent, I like the idea that tentpole or blockbusters are coming out in wider timeframes throughout the year. I am kind of against movie seasons outside of things like Christmas movies at Christmas or scary movies at Halloween or whatever.  Marvel movies, Jordan Peele movies, 50 Shades movies, etc. keep proving that people will see a movie any month of the year. Studios are finally unlearning the lesson they learned from Jaws.

    As a former theater employee, it's probably just easier on everyone's lives to not have a weekend or month where you get killed because multiple blockbusters came out one Friday then have February through April and late August through early October be dead.

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    One movie I'm mildly surprised didn't make the list is Spinal Tap. I know you're limited to 10 and the list is filled with critically loved, audience loved classics. This Is Spinal Tap is adored and maybe more influential to modern comedy than quite a few of those. It didn't create the mockumentary but I'd say it popularized it. It was so big that almost every moderately successful mockumentary for decades was about a musical group or a Christopher Guest movie. I definitely don't think we have The Office, Parks And Recreation, Arrested Development without it.

    I'd definitely kick MASH off the list for it. Partly because I hate that movie but also because it's bigger influence was as a show in my mind.

    • Like 3

  17. Posted

    1 hour ago, Cameron H. said:

    I definitely think Mel Brooks should be represented although I prefer Young Frankenstein to Blazing Saddles.

    Agree 100%. Blazing Saddles is a movie I like a lot more on paper than I like as a movie. Young Frankenstein just makes me laugh like crazy.

    I'd also be fine with Airplane being on the list.

    • Like 3

  18. Posted

    16 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

    I'm looking through the list of 1998 films on letterboxd and I'm just thinking, "I think 1998 may just have been not a good year for film."

    Granted, I'm less taken with Rushmore and Lebowski than just about everyone else I've encountered talked to with movies over the years. So that might be skewing my take on the year.

    From the nominees, I'd probably take The Thin Red Line, but Mallick isn't for everyone, particularly later-Mallick (sometimes including me), and it doesn't seem like the type of movie that would win.

     

    That's what I was thinking after a quick look. I'd put After Life and Run Lola Run with what Almostaghost said. Then Saving Private Ryan and Thin Red Line would still be in my top 10.

    At the very least, Shakespeare In Love (and definitely not Life Is Beautiful) would not be.

  20. Posted

    26 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    For me, I think I’m on the same page with Amy in the sense that I think the jokes landed better for me in A Night At The Opera than they they did in Duck Soup. Still, I think, of the two, Duck Soup has more cultural relevance so I’d pick that one to stay.

    On a personal note, one of my favorite bits in the movie was this one between Groucho and Chico:

    -Groucho: Here are the contracts. You just put his name at the top and you sign at the bottom. There's no need of you reading that because these are duplicates. 
    - Chico: Yes, duplicates. Duplicates, eh?
    - Groucho: I say, they're duplicates. 
    - Chico: Oh, sure, it's a duplicate. Certainly. 
    - Groucho: Don't you know what duplicates are?
    - Chico: Sure. Those five kids up in Canada

    I loved this joke because it reminds me of my father - who just passed away in December. While we were arranging his funeral, people would share personal stories about my father, many of which I had never heard. One of which had to do with the Dionne quintuplets. Born near Callander, Canada in 1934, the Dionne children were the first known quintuplets to all survive infancy. It was a huge deal at the time. So much so that it managed to get a reference in A Night At The Opera. (Chico is mistaking “duplicate” with “quintuplet.”) How this relates to my father is my that father was born in the town of North Bay, Ontario which is just south of Callander. When he was a kid, apparently the idea of quintuplets was still a major oddity and their existence attracted a bunch of tourists who would drive up there hoping to catch a glimpse of where they lived. Evidently, these tourists would often stop my father and his pals and ask them for directions to the quintuplets. As polite as can be, my father would give them careful and detailed directions - in the completely opposite direction! When I heard this story, I asked if it was to protect the quintuplets from gawkers, and I was told, “No, your father and his friends just liked messing with them.” Lol

    I really love this story about my father as a kid, and I like the idea that my father shared a bit of the same anarchic spirit of the Marx Brothers. It was nice to be reminded of that story as I was watching the film.

    I also want to say he eventually met Groucho, but I might be misremembering. He worked in advertising for most of his life and I know he had contact with Jerry Lewis (annoying), William “Bill” Shatner (class act), and Gilbert Godfried (...). However, I have a distinct memory of him telling me about Groucho and saying that he liked him.

    I definitely did not get this joke. So, I appreciate this explanation.

    If we limit ourselves to one Marx Brothers movie, I'd push for Duck Soup no question. I think it's a more pure look at what they did best that no one else can quite do. No one else does that insanity. A Night At The Opera is maybe more influential but I think at the expense of feeling a bit more watered down for lack of a better phrase. This is still good but more "conventional" to me. 

    • Like 2

  21. Posted

    3 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    Rushmore, The Big Lebowski, The Truman Show were all 1998

     

    I don't think any of those had a remote chance of ever getting nominated for Best Picture but they are certainly worthy of consideration.

  22. Posted

    This is discussed in the next episode for A Night At The Opera, but Amy mentions the conventional wisdom of "the wrong movie won" might be wrong because of Saving Private Ryan's faults.

    Does anyone think the right movie won? Of the nominated movies, I'd still put Saving Private Ryan as the best. Is there some other 1998 movie that didn't get nominated and should have won?

  25. Posted

    3 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

    The hosts seemed surprised that three of Best Picture nominees for 1999 were World War II fims (Saving Private Ryan, Life is Beautiful, and The Thin Red Line), but honestly, I don’t think it’s all that strange. The fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II was in 1995, and I’m sure that it was very much on people’s minds that year. When you consider just how long it takes to make a movie, from idea stage to finished product, the timeline makes sense, and I think that explains WWII’s higher than normal representation that year.

    These kind of rhyming movies happen every so often when an event occurs that inspires different people to tell similar stories. According to an episode of the Cracked Podcast from a few years ago, that’s the reason 1998 saw the release of both Deep Impact and Armageddon. Both were inspired by the same story of a near-miss the Earth had with an asteroid that had occurred a few years earlier.

    Two years ago, we had Dunkirk and Darkest Hour. It's not three movies but it's two WWII movies covering (in part) Dunkirk.

    • Like 1
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