sycasey 2.0

Yeah, I think it's a fair point to keep it off a lofty perch like this due to a particularly objectionable element (especially if there is another similar example without that problem).

Well, that's part of my point. I think you CAN celebrate the movie even with the blackface in it. There's stuff in it worth celebrating. I think sometimes (not here yet), people do make all-or-nothing pronouncements that the whole thing should be thrown out due to an objectionable element. I usually can't go that far. I agree that it doesn't belong on the Top 100, because that's a very high bar to clear. (Actually I think we all largely agree on that.)

Perhaps, like June, he doesn't actually remember the movies he watched for HDTGM.

This movie was kind of fun. It's ridiculous nonsense, of course, but at least it's lean and fast-moving.

This is also my attitude towards blackface (and other kinds of casual racism) in old movies. It's a thing that happened. It doesn't mean we "excuse" it, but sometimes you need to acknowledge that two things can be true at the same time. A movie could have (1) some truly outstanding elements, like the Fred-Ginger dance scenes, and (2) also some bad stuff that has played even more poorly over time. As to whether Swing Time belongs on the Top 100, probably not (the story isn't any great shakes either). But some things about it are worth preserving.

Stars are also unreachable points of light in the sky. Metaphor for the nature of chasing your dreams, and the things you can't have while doing so?

At this point the only thing that bothers me at karaoke is when someone who isn't a strong singer insists on picking a song that a majority of people in the crowd are likely to have never heard of. That's an automatic bathroom break for me. Karaoke is supposed to be fun! Let people join in. Sometimes that means picking something obvious; so be it.

I think this is the point they are trying to make, but also where the movie fails a little bit as compared to its obvious inspiration, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. That movie shows you much more of the "other woman" who the leading man winds up building a comfortable family life with, so you understand why he might be content with that choice. La La Land rushes it a little bit and gives you very little of Shades. I can intellectually extrapolate from this situation and conclude that Mia could be happy/content with her current partner, but what's shown on screen is still heavily devoted to the Mia-Seb stuff.

Yes! As noted earlier, it's still one of my favorites of that year (like, top five), even as I recognize the flaws.

Adam seemed very focused on the idea that Hairspray is camp. I'll agree with him that the movie is campy, at least in parts. But what didn't get discussed is that the campiness is applied with (IMO) more surgical precision than you saw in earlier Waters films: in this movie he is ONLY campy about the elements of the 1950s and/or early 60s that he found ridiculous. He is genuine about the things he loved. So the racism is camped up to the extreme (Divine plays the racist TV station owner way campier than Tracy's mom). So are some of the other sillier aspects, like hypno-therapy (Waters' personal on-screen appearance), beatniks, and big hairdos. But I would argue that the core characters you are supposed to like (Tracy, Penny, Seaweed, etc.) are treated with care and respect. So is the music and dancing. The movie is making a complex argument about looking at the past and mocking what should be left behind, but keeping what was worth celebrating. Grease might have been attempting that kind of approach in its original conception, but I agree that by the time the movie makes it to screen it starts to feel watered-down. As we've gotten more distance from the movie, any satirical intent seems to have faded as people take it more and more at face value. I don't dislike the film; I disagree with Amy that the songs are "bad" -- the big, hard-working musical numbers are the whole point here, very well done, and you can't expect a pure musical to have the same intent as the diegetic music in Hairspray -- but I also have never been able to get past the idea that the movie encourages you to "change" for your teenage love, and without Waters' more precise authorial gaze it becomes a bit of a muddle thematically. I suppose Grease has had more cultural impact, but with Hairspray having been revived as a popular musical itself I think this piece is a closer call than originally assumed. I'll vote for Hairspray just because I like it more and think it's a more interesting film.

Agreed. He's not the bad guy. He's an actual friend to Seb who offers him a job with a successful touring band and calls him out when he's being a jerk about things. The movie has Seb as the lead character (or co-lead), but it's not necessarily saying he's always right. (Again, I think Chazelle's Whiplash provides some good context here.)

Looks like we might need to take a poll on keeping the opening number or not. I also vote to keep it. Here's the thing I suspect is true about Damien Chazelle: the title of his previous movie (Whiplash) is a big signpost for his artistic method. He wants you to feel that emotional whiplash. So we start with a big, cheery opening number that is actually about being stuck in traffic. All of the film's visual splendor is spent trying to get you excited about a romantic relationship that was never destined to work out. The whole movie tilts on these contradictions. So for me most of the criticisms of La La Land are countered quite effectively by how the story turns out: Seb and Mia do NOT get together in the end. Their relationship actually WAS just a stepping-stone for each of them. So if you don't buy their romance or you think Seb "sucks" or whatever, the movie has actually answered that. It's just that even with those stepping-stone relationships, in the moment they feel like the most important thing in the world, and La La Land communicates that as well. People try to hang on to relationships that aren't working all the time. Now, that said, while I like this movie a lot, it carries similar themes to something like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but doesn't quite have the same emotional maturity. Cherbourg's ending more perfectly lands exactly on the side of the coin: it plays both as melancholy remembrance of lost love and the comfort of knowing that both of our leads have done reasonably well. La La Land lands more heavily on the former (with the whole Gene Kelly-esque flashback sequence dominating the final scene) and doesn't do as much work to convince you of the latter (Guy's relationship with Madeleine in the French film feels much more natural and lived-in than that of Mia and dude from That Thing You Do). It feels like more of a young person's take on the subject. And all of THAT said, I also think Chazelle is an exciting filmmaker and this movie does nothing to lessen my interest in his future career. It was still among my favorites of that year.

Haha, I was trying to remember where I first heard the phrase "Friend of Dorothy," and this is definitely it.

I'm pretty down on the movie, but I largely agree with these points. For Hopkins, I found the introduction of his character's stroke another bit of unnecessary plotting that served little purpose other than to make him talk funny for the rest of the movie. But Hopkins certainly commits to the bit.

HDTGM fans should also appreciate the ultimate Wizard of Oz reference.

One thing that fascinates me about The Wizard of Oz is its prominent place in gay male culture . . . which surely has something to do with Judy Garland and her popularity with that community, but it seems like the stories and the movie itself have also had massive resonance. http://www.epgn.com/news/local/11176-the-wizard-of-oz-in-the-lgbt-community http://www.gaytimes.co.uk/culture/8905/camp-sites-wizard-oz/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland_as_gay_icon I will say the last time I saw it on a big screen I came away thinking, "Wow, this is the gayest children's entertainment ever!" (not in a bad way, I loved noticing the subtext). I will grant that some of this might be because I was literally seeing it at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, but still: The Lion calls himself a "dandy lion." The Scarecrow talks about having a "pole up his . . . back" and that "some people do go both ways." Glenda repeats, "Come out, come out, wherever you are." Dorothy travels with three male companions who show no romantic or sexual interest in her at all. And of course there is the theme song: "Over the Rainbow." Even with this reading, the ending does kind of leave something to be desired, with Dorothy happily returning to her sepia-toned existence. But perhaps this was also just a realistic portrayal of what life was like at the time -- this is a Depression-era movie, after all. Most people weren't living in a fairy tale.

Ah, for live audiences, yeah. Could go to certain "extra-legal" means and then pay for a rental later.

Wait until Tuesday, then you can rent it.

Might be time to head to the Dark Web.

I did, of course, see the movie as a kid. But I've generally been very willing to accept that something I liked as a kid was actually crap (for example, almost anything Transformers related). The Wizard of Oz has never fallen apart upon rewatch. Still a great entertainment. The story has some hiccups for me, but the songs are basically unimpeachable, as are the performers. And of course it's beautifully designed. I'm also impressed by how great-looking the effects are for a movie made in 1939.

It's okay, we can make the whole thing about The Simpsons.

I also have to say that while the first shot of Brad Pitt riding triumphantly to the house in slow motion was indeed tremendous, by the fourth time it happened it had started to lose some impact.

It was before my time, so I assume that maybe teenagers all just looked older in the 70s.

As a teenage boy in 1994, I also never had much interest in seeing Legends of the Fall. It was certainly advertised as something primarily "for women," fairly or not, and I obliged by avoiding it. So I do appreciate the show giving me the opportunity to catch something that was pretty popular at the time but that I'd never seen. I wanted to see if the impressions I'd gotten from advertising and the general pop-culture conversation about this film were mistaken. Perhaps it had something more interesting going on than the ads suggested? Nope. This was the soapiest soap opera that ever soaped. It's not even a soft no for me. This movie isn't within a mile of the Canon. Sure, it's melodrama. It's not great melodrama. As others have mentioned, the best of Sirk easily outstrips this. So does Todd Haynes. Zwick himself has made better movies. The difference is that in the best of these, the melodrama isn't just there to tear at your emotions, it's all built towards a particular message or theme the filmmaker wants to get across. Far From Heaven is a melodrama, but it is very clearly about how a sheltered 1950s housewife is left unable to understand complex issues like racism and homophobia, and how said inability amounts to a personal tragedy for her and those around her. Legends of the Fall is a muddle. It could be about the nature of the American West and how/why it faded, but then it wants to be a World War I film about brothers protecting each other, and then it wants to be about a love triangle featuring two brothers and one woman (and their other dead brother, kind of?), and then it wants to be about Native Americans and whites living together, and then it wants to be about Prohibition (?!) and government overreach . . . I think. Maybe the best you can say for it is that it's about the importance of "family," but even that is contradicted by the lead character (Tristan) spending most of the movie trying his damndest to get away from his family. I'd like to think I took this movie seriously and didn't dismiss it based on its chosen format . . . it just doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. It's very prettied-up nonsense that never settles on a theme. Also, I have to say that I can't believe there was a conversation about how World War I had never been adequately depicted on screen and Paths of Glory never came up (though The Thin Red Line did, even though that's clearly a WW2 movie). Paths of Glory is also a movie with plenty of melodramatic aspects, but it doesn't feel cheap, because all of the drama is built towards making a point about how war is a meat grinder that robs men of their humanity -- that's the perfect thematic statement about the horrific trench warfare of WW1, suffusing every part of the narrative. Surely that's a better cinematic treatment of this war than the 20 minutes or so that Legends of the Fall devotes to it, before Henry Thomas is finally knocked off like we all knew he would be. Cinematic history didn't begin in the 90s!