sycasey 2.0

By the by, both the original Richard Donner Superman and Joss Whedon's Avengers have come up on Amy's other podcast The Canon and both were voted in. The Dark Knight never came up for a vote yet, so that would be an interesting one (though I get the feeling Amy isn't interested in doing it).

Yes, possible. But too early for consideration right now.

The Dark Knight is a tough one, since if the AFI were to pick a superhero movie that would probably be the one they'd take. But as good as TDK is, I find that it and the other Christopher Nolan Batman movies kind of run away from the very idea of superheroes and fantastical storytelling, by trying so hard to make everything seem "real" and believable and super-grounded. I think that works for Nolan's conception of Batman, but is basically a dead end for depicting any other superhero (see: Zack Snyder's failure with Superman). As such, the movie is not terribly representative of the genre that has become so popular. But even so, there's no way they are going with one of the MCU movies or Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, so I dunno.

He'd won a lot of the precursor awards, which are usually predictive. I'm not sure Rylance had won any.

As I recall, the big surprise was that Stallone didn't win for Creed. Personally, though I'd love to see Ruffalo win an acting Oscar (for anything), I really liked Rylance in Bridge of Spies, so I didn't mind that surprise win.

The argument against IMDb is that there's no control for expertise. It's not a poll of people who work in the industry, or who have careers dedicated to studying film. So the vote of a person who has seen 10 movies counts the same as that of a person who has seen 10,000. I think intuitively we all know that those opinions probably do not carry equal weight. That said, yes, a movie that has managed to maintain popular support for as long as this movie has is clearly doing something right.

This reminds me of a great argument I've read in favor of It's a Wonderful Life (which we'll also get to discuss eventually). It's remembered as a heartwarming Christmas classic, and that ending is indeed heartwarming as hell . . . but it's only so heartwarming because the main character has literally tried to kill himself midway through the movie, and you in the audience understand exactly why he wants to. You can't earn the heartwarming ending without going to some dark places first. Shawshank gets that.

I don't think he's bad in it though. I never watched Normal, Ohio. Actually I didn't even remember what it was until looking it up just now.

Literally always good. I don't know if I can think of a bad John Goodman performance.

I would argue for The Social Network.

And even with that . . . I liked Joe Morton's singing. And John Goodman is legitimately great at it. (Who has seen True Stories?)

Having listened to the full pod, I don't think they really spent much time trashing the music. There are some intimations of such early on, but by the end the hosts have basically agreed that the celebrity musicians who appear in the movie are good. They spend most of their time trashing the plot (which is indeed nonsense). I think this movie suffers from the same problem that many comedy sequels do: they are caught between two competing impulses. On the one hand, you want to give people more of what they liked from the first movie. On the other hand, you have to do SOMETHING different, otherwise why are you even making a new movie? This very often results in: do the same jokes, but bigger and with more characters/plot/locations. The audience then responds with a yawn. But hey, at least this movie has some lively musical numbers to break up the tedium, so I didn't mind it too much.

I ultimately voted for Zodiac. As many have noted, there is a good Canon case to be made for all three of these. I don't personally find that any of them are their director's BEST movie, but I can't definitely say anyone else is wrong for saying it is. But a rewatch of Zodiac confirms for me that it just keeps getting better with every rewatch. The attention to detail is off the charts, even for the notoriously exacting Fincher. One thing I love (as someone who grew up in the city) is how well he captures the "feel" of old school San Francisco, from before high tech took over and made it too expensive for anyone else to live there. The Zodiac Killer saga predates my birth, but even during my own youth in the 80s and 90s the same "grungy" feel still persisted in much of the city. Some of my favorite details include the inclusion of the old Embarcadero Freeway in an establishing shot of the S.F. skyline (long time locals remember this being torn down after the 1989 earthquake), and the building of the Transamerica Pyramid to show how much time has passed in the Zodiac case. So this movie gets my highly subjective and biased vote for its portrayal of my hometown. Kudos to David Fincher for demonstrating his bona fides as a Bay Area guy.

So would people say this was the first action movie? The first movie following that basic template, of one man trying to get to someone or something and a bunch of dangerous obstacles are placed in his way (and not played strictly for laughs)? It might be. That's what I was thinking during the long train chase sequence in the second half, that this was setting the template for Indiana Jones, Fast & Furious, Die Hard, and all kinds of action franchises to follow. I did find some of the setup a bit dull, but once the movie went into this segment I was hooked. I do agree with others that this isn't my favorite Keaton film. Most of the shorts I find more enjoyable. And yes, I was bothered by the invocation of the Confederacy as the plucky underdog we are meant to root for. Most of the movies that get away with this do so by conveniently leaving out what the Confederacy was fighting for. Keaton isn't personally responsible for this trope (indeed, it appears he only did so because of what the popular sentiment was at the time), but still this element ages poorly.

Leaning Zodiac, but need some time to do a rewatch of these (especially Magnolia, which I haven't seen in a looooong time). Maybe the poll should remain up until the new season begins?

I think there are some moments where Berenger is framed as a devil. Look at the way Stone cuts to his eyes at the end of the final battle scene, as he's about to cut down Charlie Sheen (around 2:45): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V0gv0SASjg His pupils are highlighted in red, with the fire of the air strike behind him. Definitely a devil image here. I liked how the podcast mentioned that ordinarily Berenger played the good guy in movies, while Dafoe usually played the weird/creepy guy. It's worth mentioning that while Dafoe does tend to get typecast as "creepy" in screen roles, in his theater work he usually did play the virtuous nice guy. He does seem to give a memorable performance when he's given the nice guy part (like in The Florida Project).

I'd name JFK as my personal favorite Oliver Stone movie. I think it's his best-made film and the best single representation of Stone's unique brand of political paranoia. (You just have to watch it with the understanding that it's not all factually accurate.) That said, Platoon is probably the most broadly liked and about even with JFK in terms of being an iconic Stone film so I understand why it was chosen.

Simpsons reference at 1:08. Though honestly, I thought there would be more. Seems like their Vietnam references draw more from Apocalypse Now.

Hmm, I thought that if anything Platoon is too obvious* about its central metaphor (I think Sheen's narration speaks it out loud at the end of the movie). The two commanding officers (Berenger and Dafoe) represent the good and bad impulses in the lead character's soul. That extends to America's handling of Vietnam and war in general: the humanitarian impulse versus the impulse to blow shit up. The conflict is not resolved because it's inherently unresolvable. *Certainly not the only time Oliver Stone would make a metaphor too obvious!

I'd say that Scream and Cabin in the Woods take almost inverse approaches to deconstructing the genre (which is not to say that I think either approach is superior or evidencing of a greater "love" for horror). In Cabin, the plot itself is the commentary and the characters behave mostly normally within it. In Scream, the plot mostly works as a normal slasher film, but the characters are self-aware and comment upon it.

It's shot in semi-documentary style where characters speak at the camera about the story that's happening. Some of them are actors (obviously -- one is Matthew McConaughey), but some are also just local townspeople. There's a hilarious bit where one older man lays out the various regions and sub-cultures of Texas (People's Republic of Austin, Houston's Carcinogenic Coast, etc.). I loved that part. And now . . . back to Bonnie and Clyde.

Whoa. I never made this connection before.

I think this is why some Texas folks were so interested in Bernie: Linklater actually shot it in East Texas and called out the specifics of where it was set.

Amen! As I was listening to that, I was immediately thinking: "What a bad take on Cabin in the Woods." Also, seriously? Guys like Whedon and Goddard who ran a popular show about vampires for seven years are haters of horror? Please. This almost biased me to vote against Scream, but no, the cultural impact of the movie is clear. Watching it again this week (I honestly didn't remember much from having seen it in the 90s) also revealed to me how well it works as a pure slasher movie unto itself. You almost don't need the Williamson dialogue to put a button on the references and deconstruction, because it comes through pretty clearly in the story and Craven's handling of it. So it's a yes vote from me.