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EvRobert

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Posts posted by EvRobert

  1. Posted

    One more C&O, again according to Kelly Lynch's 2012 AV Club interview, it was originally written for Mel Gibson then Denzel came on. I do remember Denzel interviews at the time re: his son. My memory (and this may be faulty, I'll concede) is that Denzel said his son wanted him to do an action movie, not this movie specifically.

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    Another C&O (I feel special! I never have corrections and omissions) Taran and Jason say at the beginning that this was Crowe's first film in the United States, which it isn't. His first movie, is another movie I love, from earlier in 1995, Sam Rami's The Quick and The Dead. I'm not sure which one he filmed first, but TQ&TD was released in February of 95 (I know this because I believe I went and saw it around my birthday which is in the middle of February) and Virtuosity was released in late May or early June (a week after Sandra Bullock's The Net. I saw both around their opening weekends).

     

    It's actually interesting to compare Crowe's two 95 performances. He is much more subdued in TQ&TD, probably because Rami was a much more experienced director. Kelly Lynch, in her (IMO weird) 2012 interview with the AV club where she talks about her career, says something to the effect that when there is no captain of the ship, actors can tend to take over. She's talking about Denzel in that situation while praising Crowe for going kind of off the rails. Rami was out to prove himself I think and probably kept a tighter reign on the actors.

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    I was out sick yesterday so I missed all this. I'd like to see The Untouchables done for two specific scenes.

     

    1) Where Al Capone takes a baseball bat to the guy's head. Would be hilarious to see whipped cream come flying out instead of blood.

     

    2) The carriage down the stairs. Have all the actors be kids except have an adult sitting in the carriage. They'd fit badly as if they tried to sit down and fell in.

     

    But isn't Bugsy Malone already kind of a riff on The Untouchables? Or at least Al Capone? I mean Fat Sam is basically an Al Capone pastiche.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    I absolutely loved this movie as an 18 year old in 1995. But I also loved Escape from LA...in 1996. What I'm saying is that I had really, really shitty taste in movies. As I said in the mini-ep thread, I also unashamedly love Ford Fairlane and Hudson Hawke. So anything I'm about to say should be suspect. I also LOVED S.I.D. 6.7's suit. A 1995 EvRobert would have killed for this suit. I also remember freaking out in 1995 paying over a $100 for my first real suit (Double breasted taupe)

     

    This may seem like an anal C&O but isn't S.I.D. 6.7 (which is the correct way to type it) isn't a robot or a computer program, he's an A.I. (that is an artificial intelligence). He's constantly learning.

     

    I feel dirty now.

  7. Posted

    Since tomspanks mentioned car chase sequences, I was thinking Fast and the Furious. You could have a bunch of kids doing one-liners while operating high-tech pieces of destructive machinery. It'd be like a whole movie of the scenes in The Phantom Menace where Jake Lloyd was spouting catchphrases and shouting "woo-hoo!" while piloting his spaceship. It'd be the most God damn infuriating movie ever.

     

    Still the best part of that movie...

  11. Posted

    Okay, so I'm listening to a Doug Loves Movies episode from like a week ago (Samm Levine, Josh Wolf, and Geoff Tate) and one of the answer to the iMDB game is Mickey Dolenz. So I'm curious about some of the stuff on Dolenz's career (namely the 2007 Rob Zombie Halloween remake, that I forgot he was in) and I had never heard of Circus Boy and I'm looking him up on Wikipedia.

     

    The early 80s stage version of Bugsy Malone that starred Catherine Zeta-Jones as Tallulah that I mentioned, Donlez directed it.

     

    A member of the Monkees, directed a feature Oscar winner, in a stage version of a movie that was written by an Oscar winner. This movie has such a weird trajectory and history.

    • Like 6

  12. Posted

    As a side note, I'm honestly shocked at how many positive reviews this movie has. I thought it was mostly gimmick rather than substance, and then I googled it after I gave up watching. Its got 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.5 Stars on Amazon. Imdb says The movie is ranked at the No. #353 rank on Empire Magazine's "500 Greatest Movies of All Time" list compiled in 2008."

    AFI nominated it for it's Top 10 Gangster films (it didn't make that list)

     

     

    Did he ever get to tap dance? I was going to fast forward and try to find it, but I didn't see it passing by. I was rooting for him.

     

    I don't THINK so, like I said I kind of checked out but I don't remember a tap dancing number.

    • Like 4

  13. Posted

    I'll also admit to doing other things (reading the synopsis on Wikipedia, checking Twitter, checking my fantasy football scores, etc) but at the same time, I kept going back to this.

     

    My biggest take away (outside of Foster and Cassani and to a lesser degree Baio) this felt like watching a middle school production that the teacher wrote (and considering it's basedo n the stories Parker told his children, that makes sense).

     

    I do want to add that the "Tomorrow" number with the ballet was particularly powerful, considering it was an African-American (I'm assuming the actor was american) child singing it with another POC dancing to it. That was probably the stand out number to me and didn't really fit with the silliness of the rest of the film, but what a number.

     

    I also want to add that I particularly loved seeing kids of all types in all sorts of roles.

    • Like 6

  14. Posted

    Fat Sam, the only reason I remember this is because in my head canon, he grows up to be Fat Sam in the first Fletch movie.

     

    Yeah the novelty wore off pretty quick, and the story was pretty thin, as a pastiche of gangster films. But the kids were good, and Jodie Foster, which shouldn't be surprisiging coming off of Taxi Driver and The Little girl Who Lives Down The Lane, was certainly the powerhouse "star" of this, even without top billing and what was a supporting role.

     

    Interesting fact I learned on Wikipedia, Parker did a stage version of this that starred Catherine Zeta-Jones as Tallulah.

    • Like 5

  15. Posted

    Not to worry, real life gets ahold of all of us.

     

    I just finished Bugsy Malone myself today and I just have to say, I was not prepared for this. Not at all. This was, the strangest, weirdest, but funnest film I think I've seen. I want the main show to do this movie. I can't wait to hear everyone's thoughts.

     

    ETA: I mean it when I saw this is one of the strangest movies I've seen...and I've seen SONNY BOY, which features David Carridine, in drag raising a mute feral killer boy. And Brad Dourif is in it.

    • Like 4

  18. Posted

    Wow. A hero walks among us.

     

    Excited about Virtuosity! I haven't seen it in a long time but I had a friend who was obsessed with Russell Crowe in that post-Gladiator period. And I was like, "dude this is legit nonsense."

     

    Think this will be a crossover with DENZEL WASHINGTON IS THE GREATEST ACTOR OF ALL TIME PERIOD? They seem to have stopped podcasting though.

     

    I had the some question, but I know Bell and Avery are both really busy with other projects, that's why DWITGAOATP ended.

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

     

    I thought this immediately when the bet happened.

     

    Though I'm not sure if the craps game dance is better or the prom dance.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4mQmoD72tc

    That scene has always bothered me. I've been to a lot of school dances, as a high schooler, and as a DJ. First, where did Usher get that banging new track from Moby on vinyl in 1996? And second, I've never seen a whole group of people do such a complicated line dance. Sure Cha-Cha Slide, Cupid Shuffle, Copperhead Road, and Footloose look complicated but they are in reality only like 4 or 5 moves repeated. That's like 20

    • Like 3

  21. Posted

     

    Just want to say that I think you've nailed it here, why the 1992 Guys and Dolls works so well but the more modern production with Lauren Graham/Tituss Burgess doesn't. It's in the staging: one is static and the other constantly moves. Check out the 1992 version of "A Bushel and a Peck," featuring Faith Prince (the star of this week's HDTGM entry The Last Dragon), who won a Tony for this role:

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_nDTQ9NEzI

     

    Look at how this is staged, how the stage picture always changes by moving the actors around and making use of the feathers and costumes. You feel like you're never looking at the same thing twice; it's electric. Same thing with their version of "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat." It drives me nuts when I see stage shows where the directors just seem to think they can place the actors in front of the set and as long as the performances are good, their job is done. The stage movement also tells the story!

     

    Interestingly, I was at a theater conference this weekend and at one of our round table discussions the idea of "do stars make a show" came up. I mentioned the 2009 version of G&D failing. The moderator at the table worked for the director of that show (if I had known that I might not have mentioned it) and she agreed that it was poorly directed and a disaster. She didn't go into the details as to WHY it was poorly directed.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    Just to compare (and again this all sparked because of the Lauren Graham discussion, but I think the reason she didn't work is because the whole production didn't work from what I've been able to see) and the best way to compare, IMO, is by comparing three different versions

     

    1992 (Tony awards performance) feat. Walter Bobbie as Nicely Nicely and Nathan Lane as Nathan

    • Like 2

  25. Posted

    Hey gang, sorry I haven't been muchon toward the middle and end of the week. I got sick leading up to a playwrights conference in Kansas City. I get to the conference...writers, open bar, BBQ...

     

    Anyways, I LOVE me some Lauren Graham, and I have a weird man crush on Oliver Platt (like at one point I remember arguing on the Aint It Cool "talkbacks" that Platt should be considered for Bilbo Baggins if they ever did The Hobbit). So Platt...Graham...evRoberts man crush in full swing

     

    But Cam nailed it. Changing it to the "hillbilly" farmer just takes a "sexy" number and turns it into a screwball number. It's an idea, I'm GUESSING, they thought would play into the kind of screwball stuff Lauren had done on Gilmore and Bad Santa and combining it with her decent voice. It's an idea that looks good on paper but just doesn't quite fly.

     

    (for those wondering Craig Bierko [Chet on unReal] and Kate Jennings Grant [Diane Sawyer in Frost/Nixon] played Sky and Sister Sarah)

     

    Sometimes actors and directors get like that, they get an idea and it just doesn't work and they refuse to accept it. About 5 years ago, I was doing a production of The Odd Couple and one night one of the Pigeon Sisters decides she needs hillbilly teeth because "British people have bad teeth" and did it without telling anyone. I open the door after the climatic fight with Felix and she's standing there with god damn hillbilly teeth. I don't think I've ever been so legitimately pissed on stage and people could tell (and it kind of spoiled the surprise of our director getting engaged at curtain call) and this actress couldn't figure out why the director and I were mad at her. She thought it was funny. So someone, somewhere thought it would be funny. And it didn't work but it cracked them up to see the stunning Lauren Graham in hillbilly blacked out teeth. (personal note I'm also weirded out by her blonde hair. The 1992 stage version, which is probably the definitive revival version [Nathan Lane, Peter Gallagher, JK Simmons...it's just fantastic)

     

    The Bushel and A Peck number is a fun number, it's got energy but it's also weirdly static. It moves but it doesn't. I will say though that the Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat number from this particular revival with Tituss Burgess as Nicely-Nicely does work but at the same time (at least based on the Tonys performance) suffers this same...stiffeness. Ruyon, the author whose works formed the backbone of G&D, had this weird lyrically quality to his stories. They were lowbrow but lyrical and full of tongue twisterness. I think that's why you need a show with some energy, the bodies should almost contort and be alive as much as the words, one reflecting the other. (This is me talking as a director now).

     

    FWIW, I am curious to see how Rebel Wilson did as Adelide. I may have to scour YouTube...

    • Like 3
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