sycasey 2.0

Even with these Hoopster Heroies, it seems like the only basketball players released were Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Patrick Ewing. No Barkley! Interesting that it seems only the NBA players go their actual team logos included. Everyone else just has a jersey with a number on it.

On the comparison to Gatsby, it seems to me that in that story there is more of an edge to Nick the narrator. He views these events sardonically and is critical of the people he's telling a story about. Stingo's narration feels more wistful and romantic to me and I'm not sure what that adds, given the underlying story. Of course this movie has tropes; every story does. The mere existence of such is not bad, it's more in how they're used. I found the "First Person Peripheral Narrator" trope a bit awkwardly applied here.

That's also kind of how I feel about it. I certainly don't think it stinks or anything. Meryl Streep's performance is brilliant and unassailable, and the most effective scenes (which I found to be the flashbacks to Sophie's past) do indeed carry a lot of power. But to me the movie feels unbalanced, with everything in Sophie's flashbacks carrying a ton of stakes and everything in the "modern" story with Stingo feeling comparatively weightless and unimportant. The modern relationship stuff could carry its own movie, but the juxtaposition with Sophie's Holocaust story feels awkward to me. It really comes to a head when the scene revealing the nature of the titular "choice" is immediately followed by a scene of Stingo and Sophie going to bed and Stingo's syrupy voice-over describing it. To me it feels a bit like they are trying to equate or compare the climaxes of these stories, and it feels like the wrong choice. Again, not terrible. Better than the average movie. But I would personally not vote for it to stay on the list.

My understanding is that there's also a decent amount of disagreement even within the "Incel" community on what qualifies someone as an incel. Maybe you could call Singo a potential incel recruit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma's_Choice https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2107523/quotes

One interesting thing here is that they never say what Smith's state is (just like The Simpsons!). Though if you had to name it, the state is Montana. The screenplay was based on an unpublished novel called "The Gentleman from Montana." https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/opinion/07mcnamer.html

I liked that Paul and Amy focused on how dark this movie is, and how much it offended real Senators at the time. The popular imagination of "Capra-corn" doesn't quite track when you actually sit down and watch some of these movies. He earns the happy fantasy ending by first depicting a dark, corrupt world. As I've often mentioned before, until that last sequence, It's a Wonderful Life is about why a decent man with a wife and young children would want to commit suicide. Personally, I think Lovett's comments are maybe missing the point a little bit, in that he's asking this movie to better resemble the real world. It's not trying to do that; it's trying to depict an ideal we as Americans ought to aspire to. That ideal comes into sharper focus because of the darker side of our politics that it does acknowledge. I think it belongs on the list because of its distillation of this idea, which seems quintessentially American.

(That one also has a little High Noon reference, with the badge toss at the end.)

I am aware. I remember the heated online debates about it at the time, though I feel like sentiment has moved in its favor over the years.

Regardless, it's a memorable film from that year.

Maybe Paul and I can be honorary Cams.

Sure, but the Dem Congress can just rev up their own investigations once they take power.

I really agreed with Amy's suggestion of 1999 as the best film year. That was the one that probably made me a real "movie buff." I was in college and so many interesting movies were coming out all at once, it was incredible. She didn't even mention Eyes Wide Shut!

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey 2. Citizen Kane 3. Taxi Driver 4. E.T. the Extra Terrestrial 5. Raiders of the Lost Ark 6. Psycho 7. Double Indemnity 8. Apocalypse Now 9. All About Eve 10. Singin' in the Rain 11. The Wizard of Oz 12. King Kong 13. Lord of the Rings 14. Duck Soup 15. Platoon 16. Bonnie and Clyde 17. High Noon 18. The French Connection 19. Titanic 20. The Shawshank Redemption 21. The African Queen 22. The Sixth Sense 23. The General 24. Ben-Hur 25. Swing Time

Amen to that. If Trump really wanted to obstruct justice he probably should have done it before there was a Democratic House to make his life hell.

Beto's coattails had a lot of impact. I don't think Democrats flip those two House seats (almost three) without him driving turnout. They gained ground in the state legislature too. But the biggest thing was that because of him there is now an actual electoral infrastructure for Democrats. They aren't going to be non-competitive like before.

Well, we didn't fuck it up! (Not quite.)

We'll do this movie later, but I remember seeing Rear Window in a film class and some of the students were tittering at the dated aspects of it (Grace Kelly sneaking around in her bright sundress). But then it reached that moment where Raymond Burr looks right up at Jimmy Stewart's camera, and the whole class was suddenly hushed in dread. That Hitchcock guy was pretty good.

Vote! Don't fuck this up!

Yeah, a bunch of us posted our Letterboxd lists over here. I've been updating mine as we go along: https://boxd.it/1YEKo

I'd say Annie Hall is definitely a romantic comedy, but one with some dramatic elements to it. It also probably gained some of its reputation for being the obvious move for Woody Allen into a more "serious" tone. But it's still a comedy.

I don't recall specifically what comedies my dad introduced me to, though I know my parents introduced my sister and I to Marx Brothers movies as kids, and we loved them, particularly A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. I voted yes in the poll because I feel like Duck Soup is probably the most influential of the Marx movies, but when Opera comes up I may reconsider if it seems like the better choice. I haven't seen it in a long time.

I'm just a stickler for details.

Well . . . mostly (Spike Lee and M. Night Shyamalan are on there).