sycasey 2.0

Just to get back to this . . . oh boy yes is Citizen Kane hugely Shakespearean. For most of the supporting characters you can draw an obvious analogue to someone from Macbeth or Hamlet. Jed = Banquo Susan = Ophelia Bernstein = Horatio Thatcher = Claudius Fundamentally the story is a Shakespearean tragedy, just updated to a modern setting (or modern to the time it was made) and told in non-linear fashion. Welles certainly had a fascination with that kind of figure, given the Shakespeare movies he made later. It's interesting how he wanted to do "old man" characters even when he was young.

I kind of understand Forrest Gump making the 1998 list, since that was just a few years after it was a big smash hit that won all the Oscars. But by 2007 I thought people had largely figured out that it wasn't quite the modern classic we'd originally assumed. And yeah, nominating Sixth Sense after Shyamalan's career had started to hit the skids also seems weird. Maybe it wouldn't have made it if they'd voted after The Happening.

My experience is that there seems to be a pretty wide disagreement among punk rockers as to what is actually "punk."

They got the singer from Letters to Cleo to sing as "Josie" in the movie, which seems pretty legit to me. I'm sure Ben Wyatt would agree!

76 from the 1998 list. 81 from the Anniversary list! Though on some of these I'm unsure what "counts." I feel like I've seen all of Gone with the Wind, but maybe just in pieces over the years. I'm not sure I've actually sat down to watch it straight through. But I also have vague memories of maybe having to watch it over several days in a classroom or something? Anyway, I'm still not sure why Forrest Gump is on both of these lists.

This movie came out when I was in college and had nothing but time, so I would see literally anything. I'd go down to the local multiplex and see whatever was playing next, then hop over to whatever started soonest after that ended. I didn't expect much after hopping into Josie and the Pussycats, so I was also very surprised to find the movie enjoyable. I dug the music (if you just don't like pop-punk, okay, but I think it's good pop-punk), and the humor was shockingly trenchant for a movie done in this style. I do think a lot of critics were thrown off by the surface style: the "look" of the movie conditions you to think it's going to be something desperately earnest (like Bratz), but functionally it's a straight-up satire of consumerism. Some have brought up the question of whether or not they should have used real company logos. I think it doesn't land as well if the movie has fake ads for fake companies, especially they way they do it here, plastering gigantic logos over everything. They're counting on the "twist" of seeing something familiar in a ridiculous context; if it's not familiar, you don't get the same laugh of recognition.

The Simpsons will provide a lot of material whenever a Kubrick or Hitchcock movie is done too.

For anyone who wants to deep-dive on Citizen Kane, I'd recommend getting a DVD copy with Roger Ebert's audio commentary. He points out all of the interesting camera tricks and shot selection done by Welles and Toland in the movie, while also peppering in some informational nuggets about how the film was received, the Hearst controversy, etc. It's not dry or academic at all, in fact he's very warm and conversational throughout. One of the best commentaries I've heard.

I saw it in theaters and couldn't really tell you anything about the story, so obviously I didn't find it THAT memorable. But I also don't recall it being something obviously HDTGM worthy. Like it was an interesting experiment that turned out just kind of okay-ish.

I'm wondering if there is anyone who voted for the movie they saw second? In other words, you saw Infernal Affairs before you saw The Departed, but voted for the latter anyway? Or vice versa? I'm thinking these movies might be pretty evenly matched, but people have a natural bias for the version of the story they saw first.

I also do not remember this movie being bad. This will be an interesting revisit.

The fact that you posted a Creed gif above this makes me want to sing this speech to the tune of "Higher." You asshole.

Hey, that's a still photo. She strummed that one string real well!

Honestly, if this were just a yes-or-no vote on either movie I'd probably vote no. I think both are good and entertaining, but I'm not sure that either is an all-time great. So I'll go with The Departed, just because I find it better-directed and a smoother watch (despite being much longer). I'm not sure I agree with those above who claim that it's "emptier" than Infernal Affairs. Both are nihilistic films that arrive at a nihilistic point by different means. Both also pretty much state their themes outright. Infernal Affairs has the closing narration, putting a button on the idea of one man remaining in his own personal hell. The Departed has one of Nicholson's early lines (I'll paraphrase): "Cops or criminals . . . when you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?" Scorsese's movie is about how a life spent in these organizations can hollow a man out -- Damon's blankly self-interested performance fits perfectly with that theme, and the only character who makes it out alive is Walhberg's, a guy who resigned and went rogue to track down the mole. Scorsese has certainly addressed this theme plenty of times in his mob movies, but I think this is the first time he's also shown it from the cops' side. The Departed didn't get much defense in the podcast, so I'll make some points in its favor. I think the action sequences are much better-staged and the violence more impactful. In Infernal Affairs, the action often reads like a muddle of slow-motion shots of dudes shooting guns (not exactly on John Woo's level of visual poetry). The Hong Kong directors sometimes have the camera pointlessly moving or swirling around the characters' heads for no reason, while Scorsese's direction is much more considered and purposeful. I like the way the American film fleshes out the supporting characters, so that there is a better sense of the world and what the two "moles" are missing out on by having to constantly hide their true selves. Infernal Affairs, by contrast, has two female characters who don't do anything and not that much time for deepening relationships with the "father" figures. For all the complaints about the music in The Departed, it also does a much better job of communicating time and place than the generic pop music in Infernal Affairs. I do see the argument that Infernal Affairs had a larger impact on Hong Kong cinema (where it's an all-time popular success) than The Departed did on American cinema (where it's one of many good-to-great crime movies and seen as more of a "career" Oscar for Scorsese). So if the former gets voted in, that's fair. But I enjoy watching The Departed more. It's possible I might be racist.

Yes! This retroactively makes me question Cassandra's talent, as it turns out that all of the songs she performs in Wayne's World are covers: "Fire" by Jimi Hendrix (this is actually what she plays when Wayne first sees her) "Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet (the final performance in Wayne's basement that gets her the record deal . . . or burns down Wayne's house, depending on which ending you accept) And this one too?! Did you actually write any songs of your own, Cassandra?

Agreed. I didn't much care for the gratuitous sex scenes in this movie. Not because I was offended by them, but because they seemed to add nothing to THIS story. If anything, it feels like the plot has to take a break for a while so we can get our Troma quotient of sex & nudity. I respect Lloyd Kaufman's enthusiasm and hustle, and as always he's a very entertaining interview, but I think ultimately Cry Uncle demonstrates some of the limitations of Troma's approach: transgressiveness for transgressiveness' sake is not enough. It needs to be tied to something else you're trying to say about the world. I can't discern what Cry Uncle is trying to say about anything; it just seems to float by as a series of disconnected, sometimes individually entertaining scenes, which is maybe not a great approach for a detective story. Maybe there's an argument for canonizing this as an example of Troma's style of cinema, warts and all, but I think we can get a better Troma movie nominated at some point. It's a "no" vote from me.

Nice, I've been meaning to check out the original movie The Departed was based on.

If this were a "vs." episode I would probably take Fast Times over Breakfast Club.

My best non-diegetic examples are from TV.

And again, in that one the parents are fairly sympathetic figures. It's not really the same kind of generational "conflict" you see in Breakfast Club or Rebel Without a Cause.

I wonder about this and if we'll actually see it materialize in this way. As a group, Millennials don't seem to have the same fraught relationships with their parents that Boomers and Gen-Xers did. The most recent film I watched that seemed to address this (granted, not the most highbrow fare) was Spider-Man: Homecoming, but this film features teenagers that seem to have good relationships with their parents (or parental figures, in Spidey's case). The cliques are not nearly so rigidly defined as in Breakfast Club (the popular kids compete in the academic decathlon along with the weirdo outcasts), and while there is modern music we also see the teens perfectly comfortable enjoying music from the 70s and 80s. (Though I'll grant that the John Hughes movies also had some of this last bit, like Ferris Bueller singing "Twist and Shout" or Duckie singing "Try a Little Tenderness," throwbacks to the music of Hughes' own youth.) I looked up this list of movies that shaped Millennial teens, and the ones that are specifically about teenagers feature kids that have pretty good relationships with their parents: Clueless, American Pie, Bring It On, Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, Juno, Twilight, Boyhood. Even though Harry Potter features an orphan as the lead, once he learns about his real parents he idolizes them. Some of them just seem to feature teens largely moving through a parent-free world (Superbad, Napoleon Dynamite, Cruel Intentions) or some dystopian future where the teens have to be the heroes (Hunger Games). Maybe the only one with clear parent-child conflict is American Beauty, but honestly that feels like it's written more with Gen-X teenagers in mind.

Yes, the movie definitely seemed to treat winter in South Carolina as though it were Florida or something. My understanding was that SC is far enough north to be fairly cold in wintertime.

Right, and then they gender-flipped and stuck with their original ending for Some Kind of Wonderful, which I enjoy more on a story level (though it doesn't have as many memorable scenes as PiP).

There are some HDTGMs that I don't think are actually "bad" movies in the strictest sense. TimeCop, Bloodsport, and most of the Fast & Furious movies, for example. They ain't winning any Oscars, but they basically accomplish what they want to accomplish. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow will be a real test, since I remember thinking that movie was pretty good. It has mostly positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I wonder what the reasoning was for picking that, besides the fact that it was a box office failure?

Your comment here makes sense, if (I assume) by "physode" you mean "facade." (I don't mean to be pedantic, but I think some others might also be confused by the spelling.)