sycasey 2.0

I'm working on a theory as to how these elements fit together and cohere into a statement for the movie. Singin' in the Rain is above all a celebration of artistry and TALENT. If a person has talent (Kathy), they are celebrated. If they don't (Lena), they are mocked. The movie business is shown as a cutthroat business (and a lot of jokes are made about this aspect), one where "talent" is not always recognized, but the movie sides with the belief that it should be. It's not about your worth as a person, it's about your worth as an artist and performer. And why shouldn't that be celebrated? Donald O'Connor runs up a damn wall and does a backflip for your amusement! He and Gene Kelly do synchronized tap dancing on a damn desk! Debbie Reynolds bloodied her damn feet just so that "Good Morning" number would look good! These numbers wouldn't work at all without people pushing their talents to the limit. Given all of that, it's not hard to see why people, especially people in the movie business, revere this movie.

Sometimes the staging, choreography, and performance of song-and-dance numbers are all just perfect, for every number in the movie. It can be exhilarating. Singin' in the Rain is like that. It's like a juggler who keeps throwing more balls in the air and never drops them. Pure entertainment. Make 'em laugh!

I would actually argue that this is a strength of the movie. As colorful and joyous as the musical numbers are, there's also a sardonic edge to it, in depicting some aspects of the "classic" era of movies (for the time this was made) as not so great. Demonstrating that people could be just as selfish and backbiting as ever.

Sometimes it's clear that we're listening to an episode that is more than a month old. And yeah, I think that's about scheduling. They have a couple of free weeks, so they schedule four live episodes within that time, which has them covered for two months. I suspect there will be some studio episodes still peppered in here and there, but live episodes are clearly the new normal.

Sure, I kind of enjoy the inversion in that one scene. But still . . . the device never comes back? No other uses for the gum?

I agree that this is unusually respectful, given that we are in the era of Short Round and Long Duck Dong. But I will also point out that when you boil this movie down, it's still about some extremely skilled and competent non-white characters (Cliff and Danja) who get shunted to the side so that the clueless, inexperienced young white guy is able to inexplicably save the day.

Let's also note that the payoff for this chewing-gum bug is that it does absolutely nothing to help our heroes stop the bad guy. Stamos leaves it with Gene Simmons, who discovers it immediately and flushes it down the toilet, and that's the end of that. At least in the first Mission: Impossible they introduce exploding gum and then have it actually blow up a damn helicopter.

I was also left wondering why they were so sure that blowing up the laptop was going to stop the poisoning of the water supply. As far as I could tell, the code in question had already been executed and the screen was now just displaying a countdown. You don't stop a time bomb by just smashing the digital screen. You actually have to de-wire it or send a new command if there's some kind of control system. If Cliff had been in charge of this operation, I'm sure he would have brought this up. There's a non-zero chance that the town got poisoned anyway.

The historical record would seem to indicate that it was. https://www.gradesaver.com/double-indemnity/study-guide/innovating-a-film-noir-cinematography

Pretty sure there was talk about the new lighting ideas introduced for this movie (like having the window blinds cast shadows over the scene). I heartily disagree that this film doesn't have anything going on in those departments. It's done subtly, but I definitely sensed careful decision-making with shot selection and editing (it's Billy Wilder, fer crissake!). The Third Man was on the original 1998 version of the list. I think it was taken off for being seen as not sufficiently American (the production company was British).

The first time I saw this movie, I laughed like hell at "Shut up, baby."

I'm not sure they talked about this in the episode, but I particularly love the subtleties in the final scene. Neff can't light his own cigarette, so Keyes does it for him (using the same trick Neff always used to light matches for him), then Neff says "I love you too," only not in the sarcastic way he did earlier. A small gesture of pure kindness/mercy, followed by maybe the most sincere thing Neff ever says to anyone else. Some folks on the Facebook group were annoyed about all the times Neff says "Baby," but to me this pretty clearly indicates how shallow he is and is wholly intentional. He repeats a supposed term of endearment so often that it becomes meaningless. Tells you his motivation is not really love, it's massaging his own ego.

All right, I finally went ahead and did this. https://boxd.it/1YEKo

Might be tough to do, since "bad comedy" is often not in HDTGM's wheelhouse, but I would say this has a bonkers enough plot and tonal whiplash (is it a comedy? is it really?) for it to be a good candidate. Plus, it's REALLY bad. Boy is it bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbbell_Indemnity

Didn't mean it to come off that way, I just quoted the last post in the discussion. I'll make clear, though, that it was re-reading the whole thread (your posts included) that made me realize I wasn't in disagreement as much as I thought.

I seem to have offended, so I offer my apologies. Sometimes I can get on a track of arguing a point just to argue it. Taking a day or so to reevaluate the full context helped.

Agreed, totally bizarre. I feel like I must have seen other movies from this period that had no issue with shooting dialogue scenes outside.

That's true. I've been looking at Margo's speech kind of in a vacuum, but with full context it's probably best read this way.

I can only say that this wasn't something that I came up with myself, rather my wife loudly commented during the scene, "Because a woman has to get married, right?" So I don't think you're wildly out of bounds in bringing it up. But yes, the movie brings more complexity to the characters and their relationships, so I agree with the argument that it's not as cut-and-dried as that. I'll stand my my suggestion that the scene would be re-worked a bit in a modern context though. Not a lot, just a little bit.

I mean, you'd have to smooth it out better than I did. I just think that in a modern movie this would likely be addressed more head-on, while in a movie from 1950 there's no assumption that the audience would question Margo's desire to "settle down" with marriage.

Yeah, there's certainly more complexity to the writing here, so I also wouldn't say it's JUST about "being a woman" meaning "getting married." That said, if this move were made today you'd probably have to add some lines for Margo or someone else to clarify that getting married and scaling back her career is her choice, etc.

Maybe that was meant to be a comment on the movie itself?

Yeah, I had this discussion with my wife. It's hard to detach the movie making a "statement" about women's roles in society from how much it's simply reflecting society's attitude towards women at the time. Not sure we can expect a movie from 1950 to account for the same progressive feminist ideas we have today.