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grudlian.

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Posts posted by grudlian.

  1. Posted

    7 minutes ago, GrahamS. said:

    Holy shit, if EVER there was a musical that should have been directed by David Lynch, this was it. All of the sexual humiliation/kinks felt very Blue Velvet-y to me, except performed in a painfully monotonous way.

    I will admit that the musical numbers were amazing—I loved the bank number, the school number and the bar room number where Steve Martin briefly plays the banjo in particular—but I started fast-forwarding through the movie proper after the lipstick-on-the-nipples scene.

    As Cinco referenced above, this was apparently an adaptation of another Dennis Potter BBC show (like The Singing Detective) and THAT SHOW sounds interesting,was critically acclaimed, and I would like to watch. At least the first episode is available for free on YouTube. Bob Hoskins plays Steve Martin’s role in that version and this role—as much as I LOVE Steve Martin—should have remained on Bob Hoskins’ hands for the screen version. This character is such an asshole that he needs an actor with Hoskins’ brute force charisma to make him watchable. Steve (although he’s great in the musical scenes) was too green as a dramatic actor to make this guy compelling and is often upstaged acting-wise by his cast mates. It’s not a terrible perfomance, but I read Roger Ebert’s two-Star review (which is dead-on, in my opinion) and it said Martin’s performance was “technically perfect” but empty because you couldn’t see the character inside. I agree 100% with this. The way he plays his character, he is a cold fish from scene one.

    The film is beautifully shot and dazzling to look at, I’ve always been interested I watching it but never got the chance. Now I’m interested in watching the original show, because the movie had the weird effect of having not much going on while also having the character beats feel truncated. It was an interesting pick and I’m glad I watched (sone of) it, it just wasn’t successful at what it was trying to do.

    I was curious if anyone had seen the miniseries. I felt like the movie could be expanded to explain a few things more, but not to seven hours unless they really go into some detail on the other characters.

    • Like 1

  2. Posted

    I agree with Cam Bert but Steve Martin is also just as debased as the society he tries to escape from (or rise above or whatever) in his songs. I can't say lipstick on nipples is an especially debased fetish, but, considering the songs he wants to live in, it's pretty far out there. He also cheats on his wife with a woman he never met. He's as much escaping from himself as society.

    In case anyone was wondering, his $1000 loan is equivalent to $19000 in today's dollars. Given his "nearly 30% of every sheet sold," he would need to sell 33,333 pieces of sheet music at 10 cents a piece to recover that. These people can already order music from the wholesaler. That's already an uphill climb. Illinois' population was 7.72 million in 1934. Chicago was over 3 million and Steve Martin was only covering central Illinois. He'd have to sell sheet music to every 132 people in his area. Not likely.

    • Like 4

  4. Posted

    18 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    To be fair, it hasn’t been done in a while, but there have been times were they would be literally verbatim. I remember one time we came back here and asked someone (I can’t remember who now) if it was actually them calling in their own C&O and they said no.

    Found it. Syncasey definitely had his read word for word by someone.

    https://forum.earwolf.com/topic/61005-episode-213-minisode-213/

     

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    The phone calls would have been welcome if they hadn't clearly stolen board comments. I don't know if the same person who pulls board comments pulls phone calls but some were very clearly verbatim. That isn't just parallel thinking.

    The only time I go to the front page of earwolf is to listen in browser if I have issues with Stitcher. It's something any business in 2020 needs to have but I'm not discovering new podcasts through it. Honestly, the ads in podcasts are about the only way I get new info on earwolf podcasts.

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    50 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    That's kind of my feeling. I've always liked the forums. For me, they're easy to navigate and read the content you're looking for without wading through a sea of disparate threads.

    I also like the fact that it's a bit of a, I don't want to say, challenge to get here. You've kind of have to want to be here to be here. Which is why I think it's always been (relatively) drama free. I think the biggest drama we ever had here was for the Can't Stop the Music episode when a bunch of people created accounts just to bitch. But, other than that, it's always been pretty chill. I wish Earwolf would go back to promoting their forums a little more to get a *little* more traffic in here (It used to be quite robust for all shows), but I guess it's cheaper to outsource that kind of thing. Plus, I don't think a lot of shows are quite as open as HDTGM to listener participation. 

    All this. More traffic would be nice but not a huge jump in traffic.

    I think message boards are largely just old fashioned or seen that way to a lot of people. My guess is hosting one is more expensive than a Discord server and I'm not sure how many other earwolf shows get any message board traffic. As soon as Paul started incorporating phone calls into the minis, I thought that was an indicator, intentional or not, that the days are numbered on some level.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    1 hour ago, Cameron H. said:

    Does anyone here use Discord? If so, what do you think of it? I can say with certainty I don't like Geneva at all. I downloaded the app when Unspooled started a group on it, and I haven't used it once. It just felt crowded, like a bunch of people screaming in a tiny room. There didn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason, and it felt impossible to follow a single conversation.

    Personally, I don't like many social media platforms. I've never been on Facebook, and I'm certainly not going to get an account now. I'm on Twitter, but I kind of hate that too. For my money, the only place I really like to hang out online is the forums. I think the UI is pretty good. Maybe not as good as it was before their big face lift a couple of years ago, but not terrible.

    I use Discord regularly but only one channel that is made up of people I've known for 10+ years. And they are all people I knew from a message board. The way we use it is functionally a group chat with different threads. It sits kind of between a message board and a group text. So, it's not what I assume Twitter is like.

    It is also good for streaming content because, I think, it was made as a platform to watch game streamers. So, you can use it for voice chat, video chat like Zoom, or text based. It could work for HDTGM Classics except I've only streamed stuff and used voice chat; I'm sure a text chat can be done if kast ever stops working. 

    I'm not sure I'd join an HDTGM discord because it could be thousands of people and, at that point, it may as well just be Twitter without character limits (except the mods on Discord can just boot problem people I believe). 

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    4 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    That’s it for me too. Like @GrahamS.was saying, lists are kind of bullshit, but I liked idea of examining those lists. “Why this? Why that? It’s good technically but does it fail on an a pure entertainment level? Why are these mostly agreed upon as being the best?” I’m not really into “let’s just watch random movies and talk.” It really feels like a re-tread of The Canon, and I lost interest in that show for the same reason.

    I think lists serve a purpose. There is something valuable about a group of people reaching a vague consensus of a movie being good/important/whatever. If everyone is saying movie x is great, then maybe it's worth checking out (or avoid if everyone says it's terrible). If there weren't lists, then maybe you'd never hear of some great movie. I don't see them any different than recommendations from friends and if everyone I know is talking about it, I'm more likely to check it out. It's just that major directors' opinions have more weight on an international scale than my friends.

    But we don't need to be beholden to them either. If I see a great movie on the best X movies but I absolutely know it's not for me, I don't need to see it just to check a box.

    • Like 3

  12. Posted

    2 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

    I was actually having trouble keeping up with movie watching for a while. What helped me was when Season 2 of Unspooled began, I stopped trying to watch the movies. It was feeling like too much to keep up with (especially when there were other movies I wanted to see), and the new season didn’t feel as essential as the AFI list. So, while I was bummed they didn’t stick with watching great films lists, it freed up a lot of my own time.

    I woke up one Thursday and realized I forgot to watch the movie for that week. I didn't want to listen without having seen the movie then I just never listened again unless they died a movie I was extremely interested in hearing their opinions on. I'm glad they are expanding the canon of movies but just a (very loosely themed) random collection of movies up for debate doesn't interest me. 

    • Like 3

  13. Posted

    25 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    But generally I'm glad for anything. If I don't watch something, it's not because of the choice of film. So feel free to go wide and far (or even popular and classics) to make picks!

    Yeah, I think I was talking to Cinco about this once. I think seeing what people pick is interesting and I don't want people to feel limited in what they'll pick.

    I skip weeks sometimes and it's not necessarily a reflection on the choice. I just didn't get around to it for whatever reason.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    I have seen most of mine before picking it but it's normally been many years. I don't necessarily mind picking a bad movie but I don't want to pick something that is a chore to sit through. There is one I happened to watch the day before my turn to pick and thought, "well, that's sorted."

    I definitely don't watch before the watch party. Some of those I happened to have seen before but not in preparation (unless we're counting testing our equipment when hosting. Then I'll watch a few minutes).

    • Like 3

  15. Posted

    Does anyone happen to know when black soldiers are eligible for the GI bill? I know it was after WWII, but don't know if it was after the Korean War.

    I can't say what life was like for black Americans in 1950s Japan, but black soldiers certainly weren't given hero's welcome in the US. WWII soldiers were still forced into poor areas to live and denied college education they were promised. While I never thought Jackson had a hope the dance troupe would be welcomed as stars of they were great, I guess I have to imagine he had some idea this was a chance at a better life.

    • Like 2

  16. Posted

    This isn't a criticism of the movie, but of Amazon. I put on subtitles for the movie and they didn't subtitle any of the English. I had real trouble understanding the Koreans when they spoke English. I could get the gist of it but couldn't get 100% of almost any sentence the entire movie. I don't see why they didn't have subs for the entire movie just the spoken Korean.

    • Like 2

  17. Posted

    1 hour ago, Cam Bert said:

    The other thing that got to me, and I get this is a South Korean movie for South Koreans but couldn't they get an American to play the Captain? His accent was not so passible. I mean with the exception of Jackson lots of the accents were big.

    Boy, do I have some bad news for you about non-Americans in American movies!

    • Like 3
    • Haha 2

  18. Posted

    I assumed it had to be fake. I figured any POWs dancing would have been soldiers forcing them to do it at gunpoint for cruel entertainment. Which, I guess the movie is doing in a roundabout way.

    22 minutes ago, tomspanks said:

    I rewatched it for MM and I didn't love it as much as the first time.  Is it just me or are the transitions kind of abrupt between scenes?  Like the Modern Love sequence - it's awesome!  But by the end of that scene I couldn't remember why Ki Su was in the dance hall by himself and it was jarring that it ended with the girl doing a face plant.  And they kind of recycled that from the Chinese guy's audition from the earlier scene - which was one of the highlights tbh.  There were lots of entertaining scenes like that but overall the string of scenes didn't fit together sometimes.  Some of the scenes gave me whiplash.  One minute I'm chuckling at a silly slapstick joke and the next minute I'm horrified by the blood and violence.  But still, there were some fun dance sequences and soundtrack was A+.  

    Pretty much all of this. I really loved a lot of sequences in this. The Modern Love really stuck out but that might be my love of that song already.

    • Like 5

  19. Posted

    I agreed with Cameron's review on Letterboxd. This felt like less than the sum of its parts. There is a lot of great stuff in here. I like hearing about the Korean War from a Korean perspective. I like the dancing. I like the performances. I like the cinematography. But this didn't totally work for me.

    Part of that is a general dislike for movies set in tragic circumstances that start as comedies or light comedy then suddenly turn melodramatic halfway through. It feels manipulative in the wrong way. 

    Does anyone know if there are any stories remotely similar to the story of this movie? I'm certainly no expert on the Korean War but I've never heard about a dance crew in Korea POW camps.

    • Like 3

  22. Posted

    35 minutes ago, Elektra Boogaloo said:

    I might need to leave. I went to this Wikipedia article. It made me sad for penguins. But then I thought, “hey do cats rape (like dolphins do because I never miss a chance to tell people with dumb dolphin tattoos or jewelry that dolphins are known rapists. See Jaws 3) Cats are not listed among the animals, in case you DON’T want to bum yourself out by learning about animal rape. 

    Then the next thing I thought was: if Macavity did rape Grizabella, did he shout “Macavity!” as he came.

    i will show myself out.

    Believe me. It brought me no pleasure to link this article or to already be aware of that study on Capuchin monkeys.

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    11 hours ago, Elektra Boogaloo said:

    What’s weird, and what I have been thinking about it since you brought it up, is that there shouldn’t be prostitution in a Cat world. That is a human vice. So maybe it just says I was never convinced they were actually cats is the problem. But I don’t know, maybe if the world felt more silly and joyful (and I have seen clips of the stage show that seem that way) then my brain wouldn’t have gone there. 

    Prostitution is unknown in cats but not strictly limited to humans. But I think a lot of this is humans interpreting animal behavior in human terms and the study on Capuchin monkeys specifically involves human intervention. So, saying it's natural or how these animals behave isn't necessarily accurate in my mind. 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals?wprov=sfla1

    I never really thought of these as cats either. It's humans writing cats and humans putting personality into cats that aren't there (which is true of all pet owners but that's an entirely different discussion). The cats are wearing clothes, and singing and dancing and a leader cat sends them to heaven for reincarnation. These aren't cats or, at the very least, ascribing human behaviors to them is totally fine for this movie because the writers already did. Not to say I necessarily thought Macavity was her pimp (as I couldn't follow this at all) but I definitely thought it was more than she was just down and out

    • Like 3

  24. Posted

    Yeah. This can make me feel restless as well. I was going to rewatch Tokyo Story this week and couldn't do it. I have to be in a specific mood or really ready to watch an Ozu film to watch one.

    4 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    I'm not in that exact situation, but close. I have seen one of the Trilogy before, and really liked it a lot. But also Tokyo Story does little for me. I haven't listened to the ep yet, but I am curious how its been elevated so high in the pantheon.

    I don't know which one you watched, but I have liked Late Spring more than Tokyo Story. I also liked Good Morning more. It's a lot lighter.

  25. Posted

    I want to point out that The Noriko Trilogy isn't truly a trilogy. Setsuko Hara plays a character named Noriko, but that's it. Noriko has a different last name, her father is different and she's living in different circumstances in all of them. The similarities in the trilogy run through almost all Ozu movies I've seen.

    I'm really interested in what people think about this film if they've never seen an Ozu film before. This was the first I saw and it didn't do much for me. It wasn't until a couple more Ozu movies that he clicked with me.

    Also, I'm pretty sure Paul is right about Jarmusch. I'm almost positive I've seen something where he said he liked Ozu but I don't know where I saw it. I was convinced he directed Tokyo-Ga which is on the Late Spring DVD but that was Wim Wenders.

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