sycasey 2.0

They're also young. By the time you're an older actor, you have more of a "bag of tricks" you can pull from to avoid embarrassing yourself, even in a bad movie.

Soft no for me, though I do enjoy this movie and think it has more interesting themes to it than most 80s kid fantasy (certainly more than Goonies). My relationship to it has been interesting. I had vague memories of seeing it as a child, but it wasn't a formative experience for me or anything. I saw it again in my late 20s after some friends talked about how much they loved it, and found myself taken with the creative visual spectacle and the drama of the final scenes, with the Empress turning to the audience as she implores Bastian to use his imagination and save Fantasia. Its dark, grim nature also struck me as something unusual. It's very obviously German, about as nihilistic as you can get while remaining marketable to American family audiences. After this week's rewatch I thought it fell a bit short of Canon status, for many of the reasons Dave laid out in the podcast episode: the arcs don't carry from scene to scene, and a lot of the individual challenges feel arbitrary, like they were just placed down in front of the hero at random, not to test a specific part of his character. That said, the visual creativity is still well on display, and the themes about the importance of imagination still hold up, so it's not exactly a failure either. It's just . . . not quite Canon. Sorry, Amy.

Sound of Music already lost, I think.

No, so do I. But I am surprised by the "blah" feelings most voters seem to have about Ashby. Perhaps he's more niche than I thought.

If I'm picking the best Ashby movie, it's probably The Last Detail. But that one lacks the same cultural cache of the two we're voting on.

At minimum, the theme song should be inducted.

This seemed to be taken as a given by both of the podcast hosts, but I completely disagree. I think the supposed "discord" between the Cat Stevens music and the underlying scene works as invigorating counterpoint. It's a bouncy soundtrack used to counteract a story about depression and suicide, intended to remind the audience of Maude's primary message that you can find beauty if you look for it. I think it absolutely works as intended.

Both movies are "flawed," yes, but I don't find that description terribly useful for films like this, where so much of their charm and effectiveness comes from their shagginess. Harold and Maude is clearly responsible for annoying Manic Pixie Dream Girl tropes, but the MPDG only exists because of people misunderstanding why the Ashby film works: the "MPDG" in question does not exist solely for the lead male character's development, she has a history and inner life entirely her own. This is demonstrated by the fact that she absolutely carries out her intention to die after turning 80, regardless of what Harold wants. This also shows where Harold and Maude can be differentiated from its imitators: the lead male character has to experience actual pain and loss to grow as a person, not the kind that only exists within his own mind. Unlike so many of its rom-com successors, this movie doesn't pull any punches. (I'd argue that out of the group of filmmakers mentioned as Ashby's successors and H&M fans in particular, Wes Anderson is clearly the best. The tweeness of his movies is largely a surface-level thing. He doesn't get enough credit for being a solid dramatist underneath that.) I also think Being There works because the premise remains shaggy. Ashby's focus is on the individuals, the characters that populate his movies, not on world-building. Similarly, Being There is about how Chance's presence impacts the individuals he meets, and it's left to the audience to extrapolate about society at large. This personal-focus approach of Ashby's probably felt more of-the-moment in the 70s and now feels like more of an anachronism. But he commits to it, which makes his best work feel personal and, on some level, timeless. It's been a while, but finally we have an episode where I completely disagree with Amy's take on everything! Both of these movies are great and both are Canon-worthy for their impact on popular culture and future filmmakers. Which do I choose? I vote for Harold & Maude, largely for personal reasons. This movie has a lot of locations in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, which is where I was born and raised. For Bay Area people, it also serves as an amazing time capsule for what the region used to be like: full of quirky individualists pursuing their own dreams and not the super-wealthy tech paradise it's since become. On a personal note: the scene where Maude talks about the seagulls takes place in the "junk flats" near Emeryville, which used to be a place where driftwood washed up ashore, and local artists would go and assemble them into sculptures (this isn't something built for the movie, it was already there). You could see these from the freeway as you drove into San Francisco, and I vividly remember looking forward to seeing them from the car window as a kid, to see what new things had been built. Those sculptures aren't there anymore; the whole beach has been cleaned up. But having this juxtaposed with Maude's talk about appreciating simple things (like seagulls) while they last takes on extra power when you consider this context. The specificity of Ashby's work really shines through the more you know about his personal history and his process. It feels honest and lived-in, not like an affectation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArggCK63gU8

I gotta say I'm also surprised about the negative reaction to Tig Notaro. Perhaps some of it is not understanding that it's part of her comedy act to be deadpan and nonplussed about everything. It's not that she's not "into" HDTGM, it's that this is her on-stage persona. She's certainly not the first guest to have not seen the entire movie. I didn't see this much complaining about Hannibal Buress.

"Young Jimmy Smits" is Judd Omen, perhaps most memorable in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure as Mickey, the escaped convict that Pee-Wee hitches a ride with. I watched this movie religiously as a kid, and for some time thought that this was an early role for Jimmy Smits. Alas, no.

I usually say something about the movie pretty quickly after the episode drops, but I haven't had much to add this week. I enjoyed the movie a lot, it's clearly well-made, and the podcast did a great job of laying out why it's Canon worthy (iconic Newman role, an outline for future sports movies). It's a yes!

You can rent it on Vudu. I signed up for an account just to rent this movie, and found that for your first rental, Vudu gives you a 99¢ special rate. Score!

I suspect Get Out would also win a ranked-choice vote, possibly even easier than it's winning this vote. I also suspect Last Jedi would be doing better and mother! would be doing worse.

Don't worry, that one is still good.

The voting thus far would indicate that we can, in fact, NOT all agree on that.

Maybe she gained notoriety by coming in and teaching everyone how to sing R&B songs?

Something that bugged me about the movie was the sports betting that Wills and Preston's wife get into. It seems like the writers just thought, "This takes place in Boston in the summer, so they bet on . . . baseball!" And then they all went home for the day. But baseball betting tends to be more complicated, compared to the football and basketball betting most Americans like to focus on. http://www.oddsshark...ow-bet-baseball For football, you get a "point spread," meaning if you bet on the favorite they have to win by more than a certain number of points for you to win your bet. If they cover that spread, then you double your money upon return. Fairly simple. Baseball is such a low-scoring sport with a lot of games and a lot of random factors (different pitchers, players taking rest days, etc.) that casinos don't apply a "spread" as the primary method, they assign a "moneyline," where you have to bet a certain amount to buy a bet on the favorite and it pays less than if you bet the underdog. Then they also have a "runline" where you can assign a kind of point spread on top of the moneyline to change the odds and the payout, i.e. if the Yankees win by more than 2 runs you get paid out more on your bet. All of this is preface to the idea that it generally wouldn't be so simple for Wills to just pick up the phone and say, "I'll take the Dodgers and the A's," and expect the guy on the other end to know exactly what he wants. They'd want to know if it was the moneyline or the runline and exactly how much he's betting. Now, maybe it's possible that this is a local bookie that Wills is very familiar with and knows his common asks, but if that's the case then it seems like it would be pretty easy for that bookie to learn about who Wills is and know he's working for a psychic detective agency, and then get suspicious if he or anyone connected to the agency is making too much money on sports gambling. This agency seems moderately famous and trusted by law enforcement, given that in the first scene the cops immediately arrest a man based on Balki's recommendation and little else, so I don't think they can expect to hide behind anonymity. The plot had some holes in it, is what I'm saying.

This was a great episode and I regret not calling in! It was also unexpectedly great to hear Devin's voice. His comments were insightful (as usual), and he seems, I dunno . . . happier? More pleasant? I hope his personal-improvement work is going well. Anyway, coming in to this episode I expected to vote for Get Out because it felt like the best and most representative movie for the present moment, regardless of whether or not it's my personal favorite (though I do like it a lot). But the podcast arguments were very cogent and convinced me that ALL of these movies speak in some important way to the present cultural moment, so I'm not sure I need to elevate one over the others just based on that. So instead, I'll go with my heart: I vote for Lady Bird. All of these movies have things going for them. Get Out is smart and super-entertaining. The Last Jedi is the most interesting big-budget blockbuster I've seen in years and has sparked the most passionate debates in my circles. The Florida Project is beautiful and an amazing accomplishment for its budget. And while I am personally "mixed" about my feelings on mother!, I also want to encourage Aronofsky to keep doing his thing and cannot deny that the movie has provoked a lot of reactions in a lot of different ways, and that is also a worthy accomplishment. But ultimately it comes down to this on Lady Bird: I'm a man in his late 30s, and this damn movie made me cry about a teenage girl's relationship with her mother. I cry at very few movies, but this one got me. It gets my vote.

I think you are right about that, though that still leaves open the question of what the skyward light source is. And also, no, that dog is not in this movie.

I've probably seen almost every episode of Night Court in syndication at some time or another. I used to watch the reruns religiously after school. There were many, many episode plots with Dan Fielding trying to get laid. At least 90% of them ended with him failing to achieve that goal. The joke was that all of the characters kind of hated him but tolerated him anyway.

Or maybe this one is better? Can't decide!

The version of this song from Second Sight doesn't seem to exist anywhere on the Internet, so here's another bubblegum cover to stand in its place.

Probably just the end song.

I think you can get a lot of discussion out of what the heck Balki's powers are supposed to be.