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EvRobert

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Posts posted by EvRobert

  1. Posted

    I liked the Just A Girl needle drop but back in 1995, working as a college radio DJ and stupid into Ska, I loved me some No doubt (but ya'll Spiderwebs is No Doubt's best song), so it was just like "yeah" total nostalgic moment. Like I knew WHY they were using that song but I also didn't care. 

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    4 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

    Does The Rescue fit? It’s like reverse Red Dawn. Instead of Russians invading America, it’s a bunch of American teens invading North Korea.

    the-rescue-movie-poster-1988-1010561148.

    oh god I had the novelzation of this movie AND Navy SEALS. I read them till they fell apart. Thank you Scholastic Book Club

    • Like 4

  4. Posted

    11 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

    My Shakespeare reading was mostly limited to high school (I'm sure I saw film adaptations as an adult, but really not that many), but did he have any other comedies where the main characters died at the end?  To get to evRoberts comment about the absurdity of the situation, I would also use that language, and say, this play reads more like a dark comedy to me.  But I think that's more of my personal take from modern sensibilities.  I don't think that's how it was intended and am not sure if the notion of dark comedies existed back then (at least, like they do today).

     

    The closest is Troilus and Cressida which is considered one of Shakespeare's "problem plays" (plays that swing wildly from dark tragedy and dark comedy)

  5. Posted

    5 minutes ago, taylorannephoto said:

    Okay I was convinced I wasn't making up her age. Jane Austen does the same when stating Elizabeth's age in Pride & Prejudice. At one point Lady Catherine asks her age and she says, "I am not yet One and Twenty," so you are then led to believe she is 20 but is obviously within the year experiencing her 21st birthday.

    Yeah it's one of those turns of phrases I had to look up and double check on

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    1 hour ago, taylorannephoto said:

    I could have sworn they mention that with Juliet but now I'm not positive because it's been so long since I've read it.

    Also, I looked this up, a specific age isn't given for Juliet but The Nurse mentions that Juliet hasn't reached 14 years of age

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    4 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    Right. I just wanted to clarify. :) When I read “not upper class” it sounded (to me) like you were implying they were somehow low class rather than relatively lower class, but still wealthy.

    They were in the "gentry" class, which is the bottom of the three tier of the "upper class"

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    1 minute ago, Cameron H. said:

    When you say “not upper class” you mean in the literal sense, as in “not royalty,” as opposed to “not wealthy,” right? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard them described as anything but being wealthy, high ranking families. Juliet is to be wed to a Count after all, which implies their rank would be right around that - although, admittedly, probably a little below. 

    Yes, they aren't royalty but they aren't poor either. They are in the upper middle class.

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    This isn't a knock on the podcast, because it is very well done and edited (and probably better than I could do) but as someone with a background in radio and audio editing, I can "hear" where the edits come from and how it is probably done. Like I said, this isn't a knock on the podcast and exactly how I would do it too. Some of the edits are obvious (the interviews in particular) and some aren't as obvious (the intros can sometimes be seamless and sometimes not quite) but they are well edited but edited nevertheless

  11. Posted

    Just now, taylorannephoto said:

    Do you view R+J as more of a comedy yourself?

    I don't. Honestly, I would classify it as one of the "problem plays" if it wasn't universally taught as a tragedy. The characters of R&J (not from the upper class) are presented as the young lovers, Merctiuo is the "fool" but  comes from the upper class, the Nurse and the Friar are complicate in helping (traditionally in a Shakespearean comedy the young lovers come from the upper class and the fools from the lower and the lower class usually have a lower view of "true love"). so in a lot of ways Shakespeare is taking his own troupes and inverting them.  

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    17 minutes ago, taylorannephoto said:

    That's very interesting! I will admit that I know next to nothing about the actuality of those times, but there are a lot of media that portrays young teen girls as being women once they get their first period, and I could have sworn they mention that with Juliet but now I'm not positive because it's been so long since I've read it.

    If it's true that marriages skewed older than the ages of R+J then it makes me wonder why he had them so young. Maybe he was trying to highlight the ridiculousness in their love, or maybe he was trying to highlight the societies ridiculousness towards marriage and feuds and then make it slightly out of reach by having them be younger and set in Italy rather than England. So many things to ponder.

    What I do think I really like about West Side Story's adaptation is that they take the bs that is this pointless feud and translate it to the pointlessness of racism. It's still gang related and painted as being Sharks v Jets, but it really comes down to races hating each other and in the height of the 60s during the Civil Rights Era that seems especially poignant.

    Well, if you look at the lens of Shakespeare's comedies, I think he found "love" as a notion a bit ridiculous. The "young lover" troupe in his comedies is usually played up for a laugh and are presented as kind of stupid 

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    I think you are onto a point here Taylor that the story may not translate as well to a modern setting or sensibilities, but not for the reason you stated. In Victorian England the average age of marriage was 28 for men and 26 for women (https://www.history.com/news/5-things-victorian-women-didnt-do-much) but courtship was a big deal. So what R&J were doing was "rebellious" skirting the societal norms. The whole ballroom/dance sequence is basically R&J rebelling against the traditional courtship rituals (which were often done at a ball). 

     

    I'm going to do a C/O on myself here, I was linking to info on Victorian Era not Elizabethan so basically ignore what I was saying here or apply it to a later time. Although I did find that boys did not marry until they were usally 21 (the "age of consent") but earlier marriage could be done with parental blessing. According to this the average age was late teens to early 20s although it could be a little older

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    I listen to two "bad film" podcasts (sometimes I get confused which ones covered what LOL) but the one I've always wanted to see covered is 1989's Sonny Boy. I saw it ONCE on TCM when they used to do Friday Night "Midnight Movies" and it's basically a grindhouse film but it's cast puts it in a weird space. It's also bonkers. This is the summary from Wikipedia

    Quote

    In 1970, Harmony, a small town in New Mexico, is run by a small-time crime boss named Slue, who accepts the delivery of a Lincoln Continental car stolen by his henchmen Weasel, who brings it after killing a couple who was travelling with their child. When the crime boss finds the couple's baby in the backseat he wants to kill him, but he is stopped by his transvestite “wife”, Pearl. Slue decides to keep the baby - which Pearl names “Sonny Boy” - but he cuts out the boy’s tongue and raises him as a mute accomplice in their crimes, training and treating him like a wild dog, and sending Sonny Boy to kill anyone who wants to steal from or opposes Slue's grip over the town. When the grown Sonny Boy (now an 18 years old man), escapes from his "lair" and tries to make contact with the outside world, the attention he draws to his warped family results in darkly-humored mayhem.

    The cast though?

    David Carradine as Pearl, Paul L Smith (Bluto in Altman's Popeye) as Slue, Brad Dourif as Weasel, Conrad Janis (Mindy's dad on Mork and Mindy) as the doctor, Sydney Lassick (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), and Alexandra Powers (Mask, Dead Poets Society). This movie is insane and looks like it came out of like 1979 not 1989. I've always thought it was ripe for a remake from Rob Zombie 

  15. Posted

    5 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    This was around the time I started fast forwarding through the songs 😬 

    I’m sorry, maybe by that time they had become relevant, but there were so many numbers that did nothing. “Old Bamboo” and “Toot Sweet” were just spinning their wheels numbers. You could have cut them right out and saved us ten minutes of runtime. And what’s worse, they weren’t even that good. In fact, aside from the title song and “Hushabye Mountain” none of the music was all that memorable. Like, I’m glad I finally watched it, but it was hard to sit through. There’s no way I would have had the patience to watch the thing straight through on Rabbit. You guys are the real heroes!

    Man Old Bamboo is probably one of my favorite numbers from this. And the Baron and Baroness song isn't a bop the way Old Bamboo or toot Sweet is, but it's bonkers level of comedy

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    That was so weird for me. I’m fine with whirlwind romances. They happen all the time in fiction. What was strange was how how DvD tries to force an issue of their class difference when it’s not a problem for her. Then he waits to sign a contract to talk to her and I’m thinking, “Oh, he’s going to check to see if she’s truly (heh) interested in him even though he’s poor,” but instead he’s like, “I’m rich now, baby! Let’s get married!” She never cared about that you dunderhead!

    Yeah that was a whole part of their romance I didn't like since it came like almost out of no where

    • Like 2

  17. Posted

    I really did enjoy this movie but DvD is right, there are SO many plot holes, it's lacking something that Mary Poppins had, and I can totally see Cubby Brocolli throwing a fit. But DvD is so damn good. I love that it's a romance (even if it's a whirlwind romance that makes Romeo and Juliet [since we've been talking about that on Unspooled] look like they took their time and is based on DvD's fortunes rather than anything else), it's not so much about the kids as it is about Potts and Truly falling in love. The kids are just their to kind of help move the mcguffin along. The car in incidental and until the Grease esque ending is just a car when it's not being used as a prop in DvD's story. I think if you look at the song Hushabye Mountain and then the story in the car, it is essentially a bedtime story, which means I can forgive a lot of the plot holes I think that is the main difference between this and Mary Poppins (and even Bedknobs and Broomsticks). MP and B&B are bordering on magical realism where is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a straight up bedtime story. 

    As for DvD's dancing, I think he underplays his skills as a dancer because he was never formally trained but I think a physical comedian such as himself is closer to a dancer then he probably realizes. 

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    Everyone but Mercutio, that is. He’s neither Montague nor Capulet and the only person to see how ridiculous everyone is acting - and then is killed over their absurdity.

    Yeah Mercutio is the real tragedy of R&J

    • Like 3

  19. Posted

    I think that a lot of the misconceptions about R&J come from a very basic, surface level reading of the play. Most people have only ever read the play when they were in Grade 9/Freshman year of High School. It is usually a week or two long and is taught not by someone trained in theater but in English (this isn't to dog on English teachers--I HAVE a degree in English Education in addition to a degree in theater). It is taught as basic lit i.e. "you need to have a basic understanding of Shakespeare" and the language is a big barrier for a lot of people. 

    If they have seen a production, it is Baz's Romeo + Juliet, which is good but you believe that they are in love. I don't think I've seen a production that plays up the absurdity of the situation. If we removed the names "Romeo" and "Juliet", if we removed the classical setting, if we cast appropriately, people would say that this is a joke. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet isn't that two young lovers died (although it is tragic) but that EVERYONE was so stupid. The Prince's speech at the end is the crux of that.

    • Like 1

  21. Posted

    This movie is so good, so weird, so bonkers insane while somehow being less bonkers insane then the book (which I haven't read but skimmed on Wiki). Which means I loved it. It's so damn utterly charming. DvD learned not to do a bad accent and just let himself shine through amidst all these great British actors. 

    is it to long? Probably. The car doesn't show up for like an hour into the film (after the opening race and the kids playing in it). And talk about some free range parenting. But man this film is just so damn good.

    • Like 3

  25. Posted

    I also got a bit tired of Paul (and lots of people) kind of slagging off on Oklahoma! as a musical. The movie is NOT very good but I love the music, the dance, how it was a revolutionary musical, and a lot of the deeper themes that are involved. I think it is a shame that it is so popular in high schools because it garners a reputation of not being very good or deep when it has a lot of great, pertinent themes. 

     

    Paul, check out the 1999 Live on Broadway version directed by acclaimed British director Trevor Nunn and starring Hugh Jackman

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