WatchOutForSnakes

I think it's that the girl can't help not wanting to be a star. She wants to fall in love, get married, cook, and make babies. I buy it because Jayne really sells that her character genuinely wants to do all of that, and she fakes being a bad singer to try to get out of it. Tom says to Fats that he wants to quit because he can't make a star out of someone who doesn't want it. Jerri has the looks, the charisma, and (secretly?) the talent, so she has what it takes to be a star, but her heart isn't in it. Also, you could argue that she can't help that she doesn't love Fats, and falls for Tom instead. I think it's more than just that she can't help being a bombshell. On another note, why would a gangster want to hire a down-and-out failing agent to help Jerri make it? If Tom is so great that he can make Jerri a star, why is he not rolling in business? It would make more sense to me if Tom was super busy and didn't need the money, but that Fats was offering him something so big, Tom would put all his other business on hold just for Jerri.

That close up of Janet Leigh's eye, and the pull back to her lifeless body is my favorite shot of the film. It's so dark. You feel her death.

She is sheer perfection!

I buy the argument that Marion was in young adulthood during her relationship with Indy, and I never saw him nor do I see him as a pedophile, but someone who took advantage of a young girl. As they are in the movie, their age difference isn't a big deal, but I do think there can be a problem with a guy in his mid-late 20's and a girl of 18 or 19. Though, sure, at the time, that would have been totally normal. Why it was "wrong" as Marion claims, is a gray area. This is not a hill I'm willing to die on I also didn't meant to imply that Marion wasn't still a complete kick-ass woman even in a dress, just that it was an unnecessary over-sexualization of her that miffed me. We also didn't need to watch her change into it. I wish Amy would have talked more about the problematic means by which Spielberg found to have Marion wear the dress, and his need to use it at all. All my girly-ness loved the dress growing up, but as an adult, it feels forced and out of place. That all said, I have been wrestling with whether I think Raiders belongs on the AFI list, and I've decided it does. .It's beautiful, beautifully acted, exciting, and undeniably iconic. Despite my main two quibbles with the film, my main disappointment with the episode really comes down to wishing Paul and Amy would have also spent more time discussing the achievements of the movie and what makes it so iconic. That's not to say they didn't mention some of the best scenes like the face melting and head exploding, but I wish they'd gone a little deeper. Maybe, like psycho, this has been talked over to death? But I didn't even know there was a shot-for-shot remake. I wish they'd at least gotten into why so many people love the film enough to try to do that with this of all Spielberg films. Like I said, just some missed opportunities in their discussion.

Fair points, and I don't mean to be 100% down on the episode, and I do love the movie as a whole. I just felt like they glossed over too much, and didn't take a look at the film much outside of nostalgia. Raiders seemed to just get a much more superficial treatment than a lot of the other movies, including ET, in which they at least acknowledged they had a hard time viewing subjectively outside of how omnipresent it was during their childhoods (and mine).

I took Patsy's comment as sarcastic. Like, when LAW says her husband wouldn't approve, Patsy asks, "doesn't he know you drink?" [wink, wink, nudge, nudge] but that she was clearly referencing the strippers.

I'm going to have to be a downer on this episode as well. Amy and Paul seemed to just gush over their fandom of the film through a nostalgic lens versus an actual criticism. I also loved, LOVED, the Indiana Jones movies growing up (though The Last Crusade was my favorite). But, there are some flaws that I really think, especially these days, Amy and Paul just glossed over: 1. Indy and Marion's backstory. Basically that their entire relationship is predicated on him taking advantage of her when she was underage. Amy and Paul just shrug that off as, "well, yeah, that's inappropriate, but he's so much sexier than Tom Selleck!" really bummed me out. Granted, it's given a total pass (even encouragement?) in the movie, and at the time, I think that deserves at least a little discussion, no? 2. Marion and the white dress. Amy mentions that Karen Allen questioned why her character had to wear that dress, and then Spielberg added that into the scene where she gets it as a gift. Her character was a hard-drinking, bar-owning, ass-kicking, pre-war pants-wearing bad ass. I, too, would have questioned that costume choice. Also, that she goes from being the bad ass to damsel in distress, and that Spielberg relies on the trope of violence against women as plot device (was that whole scene to get her in the dress?). I just don't like it. She could've been held captive and not had a rape-y guy force her into a dress. That was just unnecessary. Also, with the fandom rabbit hole they went down, Paul and Amy seemed to totally miss discussing what makes this an actual piece of cinema worthy of AFI other than that it was just "fun." They did mention the sunset, but as Bleary points out, the use of shadow and light, and the cinematography is beautiful. Not to mention the completely iconic opening action sequence. I would have loved to hear more of a discussion about that. Also the score. Also fighting the nazis. Just a lot of missed opportunities in this episode. I'm loathe to say it, but I'm disappointed.

I mentioned it in the Mini thread, but I'm convinced this is also Miss Scarlet's origin story.

This entire conversation was really disconcerting! Patsy's going on and on about how her husband controls her and, if she speaks up, he'll get angry, and LAW is just all, have you worn that dress? wear this perfume? Why would he be upset if you tell him you love him? Such bad advice! Besides, LAW hardly has any moral authority to tell her sister how to communicate with her (clearly) abusive husband. Ugh!

That was an excellent recommendation! I just finished catching up on seasons 1-3 on Netflix.

There's a lot of inappropriate dancing/dance references in this movie. But you best not kiss a boy before you're engaged!

I find pretty much all male stripping to be unsexy. Sorry, Channing Tatum.

It was slightly less terrifying in lower res. Kinda surprised this movie isn't PG, considering the time. It's got some pretty family-friendly morals at the end?

OMG, why isn't Labyrinth on the AFI list? Travesty!

I really did have an issue with those bangs!

Santa clearly came when Tootie was busy demolishing the snowpeople. Her tantrum, single-handedly saving her family from the tenements of NYC, I suppose Santa had her on the "nice" list.

Tootie was hands down the best thing about Meet Me in St. Louis. The songs and Judy Garland were great, but Tootie was such an unexpected joy. Also, I was surprised that, with all the talk about and anticipation of the World Fair, we never really got to see it.

What?! What is that about? Is that so the men in the crowd won't be distracted from the dancers?

I like to think of this as Miss Scarlett's origin story. Or the missing link between Cinderella (my favorite version, btw) and Miss Scarlett. Prince Charming would also make as good a stripper name as Ricky Rocket. I love Lesley Ann Warren.

This is exactly how I feel about the LotR movies. They're definitely well made and enjoyable, but I feel no desire to even re-watch Fellowship for this podcast. I just feel like, meh, okay. I appreciate it, but I'm not in love with it, and I don't have much to say about it beyond that.

I'm also into this idea.

I found myself looking away from the bison killing, but it didn't tug at me as much as the puppy.

Here's where I think Paul and Amy really missed the boat on their analysis of this film. I do not see AN as a "Vietnam movie." The original idea of the movie was to translate "Heart of Darkness" into film. To me, the Vietnam war was a framing device, a setting in which to reinterpret Conrad's themes. Paul and Amy never really discussed whether they think the movie, in that sense, was a success. I think it was. Long post ahead: My takeaway from reading Heart of Darkness was fairly layered and complex. On one hand it was a critique of British colonialism. Given when it was written, it was quite racist, but I think, for its time, it was supposed to be kind of woke in Marlow's ability to see native Africans as humans at a time when many saw them as "savages." Because Marlow is able to see humanity in all people, the book is also about what makes humans "good" or "evil" based on how they treat each other. Are people who treat Africans as sub-human (the people Marlow is working for) more or less evil than Kurtz? What is it that makes Kurtz evil? When Marlow comes across him, he's a sick and dying man. Is he treated like a god because of his savageness and murderous rampages, or is he seen as a god despite that? And who are Marlow's employers to judge? In AN, you see Sheen's character who blindly followed orders starting to question them at the end. The Vietnam war is used as the modern reinterpretation of American colonialism, and how American's saw Vietnamese as "savages." The Americans just come in bombing the shit out of everything and slaughtering Vietnamese people they see as below them and evil without awareness of their own evilness and savagery. That's where I see the dark humor coming in and the acid-trip feeling of it all. As the film progresses, and as they get deeper up the river, they see the increasing chaos and insanity of the American attempt at conquering. You've got the Robert Duval napalm and surfing scene to set it up, and the bridge scene as the final gateway to madness. No one is in charge, the whole scene looks like a circus and you've got the weird music and sound effects. Crossing that bridge, the boat and crew cross the point of no return. Then we have Kurtz and his camp (which, as a side note, reminded me of Bush's hopes of American troops being treated like heroes when invading Iraq). Kurtz seems to have totally given up on the idea of the army and war. His line about dropping bombs but not being able to write "fuck" on your plane is about obscenity. Kurtz sees the irony in bombing the shit out of people and being okay with that, but not being okay with the word "fuck" on a military plane. I see Kurtz as having gone mad from the horror of war, and that he has surrounded himself with horror because it is something he can control. He has "made friends" with horror, so to speak, so that it can no longer torment him. He keeps Sheen's character around because he wants to be killed. Instead of dying as a sick, weak old man, he wants to die in the horror in which he lives, and to just not be judged. To that end, Sheen must delve into his own horror and kills one of his own as a sort of sick favor to Kurtz, but by doing so crosses his own point of no return and succumbs to his own madness. Amy and Paul kept talking about how they thought AN was a Vietnam war movie for people who didn't like war movies, and by people who felt guilty for not having been in Vietnam. But I think they're missing the point. I don't think AN was in any way intended to be any kind of realistic take on what the war was like. It was using the war as an example of the horrors of wars in general, and Vietnam in particular, and the way Americans will attempt to annihilate nations of "others" who they see as sub-human or savage. I don't think AN deals so much with the humanity of the Vietnamese the way that Conrad did, but it did get to the question of who are those to judge the evil of a man like Kurtz when they're capable of genocide, themselves. In sum, I don't see AN as a Vietnam war movie. It's an existential movie set in Vietnam as an example of the evils and horrors of war. *Oh, and on the puppy scene - my takeaway from that is how the crew was able to kill all the people in the boat, but needed to save the puppy. The way that puppy is wrestled away, though, was really upsetting because that wasn't a special effect, that was wrestling a puppy away by the scruff. I did not like it. *Oh, and can we talk about the fact that Sofia Coppola was around all of this?!

The Wizard of Oz has almost become a Christmas movie, too, because it is so often aired on TV during the holidays, but I think that's because it's a great family movie that everyone can enjoy. Otherwise, basically any movie that has Christmas at any time in its plot seems to become a "Christmas movie." BTW, the better of the Jimmy Stewart Christmas Movies is easily The Shop Around the Corner. Love, love, LOVE that one.

I thought the scenes with Rachel about Dap's ancestry and about her pledging the Gamma Rays (sp?) were there to call him out, and that his willingness to accept her pledging a sorority were part of his coming to terms with his own elitism. Also, on Half Pint's pledging - at first I didn't realize he was sincere, but thought the movie was going to have him infiltrate as a favor to Dap.