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DannytheWall

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Posts posted by DannytheWall

  1. Posted

    I think criticizing this film for how unlike an actual jury room this is would be like criticizing Star Wars for having audible laser fire in the vaccuum of space. It's not really the point. 

    I'd argue too that having such broadly defined characters (and indeed not having any character names) raises this film to a level of archetype, something almost like a Greek tragedy. 

    I wish Paul and Amy would have weighed in a bit more on the ending. Like how the filmmakers felt it so necessary to have Henry Ford's character say his name at the end. What purpose does this ending really serve? I continually wonder about this.  

  2. Posted

    4 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

    But, like I said, it’s not like Blood Wars lit up the forum. It’s not a big deal. We’re barely at two pages and it’s mainly us saying that the other movies (or I, Frankenstein) would have been better picks and Scott Speedman/Stapp conspiracy theories. 😉

    It's also because there's not much left to correct/offer after the show--  I thought it was funny, lively, and covered pretty much everything crazy about it. Not much more to do but laugh and nod in appreciation.    

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

     

    I do remember watching the original in theaters, but I was surprised to find out there were five of these things! Wow. That made me look up Wikipedia for the original movie's release date, and it was 2003?! I'm terrible at math, but that seems like seventeen years ago. That's when I looked up Kate Beckinsale. She was born in 1973?! I think we know who the true vampire is, and yes, June, it seems they do live among us!  

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    Okay, last thing. (Sorry, fell down a rabbit hole.) 

    Prelude to a Kiss in 1992 wasn't only capitalizing on Meg Ryan stardom or the trend for rom-coms at the time. There seemed to be an equal trend of adapting plays into movies in the early/mid 90s.

    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (1990) 
    A Few Good Men by Aaron Sorkin (1992) 
    Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet (1992)
    A Bronx Tale by Chazz Palminteri (1993) 
    Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin (1993)
    Lost in Yonkers by Neil Simon (1993)
    Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare (1993) 
    Bar Girls by Lauran Hoffman (1994)
    The Madness of King George (1994)
    The Browning Version by Terence Rattigan (1994)
    American Buffalo by David Mamet (1996) 
    Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill (1996) 
    The Crucible by Arthur Miller (1996) 

    Plus a SLEW of Shakespeare remakes-- 
    from 10 Things I Hate About You, She's the Man, and even the Lion King 
    to pretty much everything by Branaugh or Kevin Kline   

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    4 hours ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

    I haven't ever seen this play in full, but from this I can see why it would work much better on stage.

    You notice that too huh? :) This movie is a case study for the differences between stage and film as different mediums.  That being said, I'm sure there is a director that could make it work. The movie is often described as a fairty tale or magical realism as you've noted. It would probably have to be with some more expressionistic style or willingness to break out of the traditional objective camera. Michel Gondry comes to mind (Eternal Sunshine/The Science of Sleep). Anyone else come to mind? 

    Revisiting this movie made me dig out my notes of the play script. There's two quotes at the very beginning, before the Act One proper. 

    Quote

    Then the king's daughter began to weep
    and was afraid of the cold frog,
    whom nothing would satisfy
    but he must sleep
    in her pretty clean bed.
    -- The Brothers Grimm,
    The Frog Prince

    Death destroys a man,
    but the idea of death is
    what saves him.
    -- E.M. Forster
    Howard's End

    The way I directed the play was to start with a thematic monologue featuring snippets of dialogue, especially the "who is this woman I married" kind. Leaning in to the flashback/memory structure you mention. Then we started in the Boyle home with the wedding prep and we see Rita and Peter in love, playful. Next, the wedding, the kiss, and the first part of the honeymoon-- the strangeness. Then Peter has another aside, which lets us flashback all the way to the beginning and their first meeting, falling in love, meeting the parents. We return to the second part of the honeymoon as the audience realizes with Peter that something isn't right. It's the height of tension on the beach when he's left alone and that's the end of Act 1. The rest of Act 2 plays out linearly.   

    Another benefit to this was that the audience anticipated the Old Man's return, and there was suspence and surprise heightened accordingly. When we rehearsed, however, we focused first on the Peter and Rita relationships, with the actor for the Old Man sitting in so that he could mimic her movements and etc when swapped. Likewise, we devised scenes for the Old Man so the actor for Rita could observe him and add mannerisms. 

     

  8. Posted

    6 hours ago, Dreamylyfe said:

    I will also weigh in on the Molsons things for two reasons -- One, I'm Canadian and two, I tried to read the play, way back when. 

    And the Molsons thing was part of why I put the play down. 

    Because it's in the play. It's her little affectation, and for some reason it really bugged me.

    But that tracks with Rita's character. She's this bartender with X number of choices before her, but she chooses Molson. Like much of her life, she understands its possibilites and choices but at the same time rejects them. She is scared of life, cynical to the point of giving up, characterized by ennui. There's a fatalism in her that connects her to the Old Man. So I'd argue not Manic Pixie Dream Girl as much as Mopey Pixie Fatalist Girl. 

    Not sure Meg Ryan nailed that. Was there another casting choice that would have been better? In the early 90s would that be Janine Garafalo, or is my sense of timing wrong? Maybe a revival these days would be with Aubrey Plaza?  

  9. Posted

    44 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:
    6 hours ago, grudlian. said:

    The other thing is that there isn't another body swap movie about someone who isn't part of the body swap. Alec Baldwin has, at best, the third most interesting story in this movie but he's the lead. Why are we following him? This is like watching Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead while being unfamiliar with Hamlet.

    I just finished the movie (haven’t listened to the episode yet), but this is 100% correct. It just doesn’t make sense to be told from his perspective. If the movie had fixed that, I think I might have really liked it.

    Yeah, not gonna lie. That does make a good fix. 

    However, knowing more of the context helps understand why we see from Peter's point of view. Most people saw the play as a response to the AIDS crisis, which might have ravaged one's partner into someone unrecognizeable and frail. Makes the scene between Peter and the Old Man Rita trying to live life through board games more poignant.  

    In the play, there's more opportunity to play with the body horror elements and existential threat that intrigued Paul and Jason. Plus, a fim version automatically emphasizes a different connection to the main character. For example, what is "narration/voice over" in a movie is actually a direct address to the audience as an "aside" and really connects the audience to Peter in a way a film simply cannot. 

    That being said, the argument still stands-- why not have those same things with more prominent role for Rita? 

     

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    EVERYONE! I. Am. So. Excited. they did this movie!!! It really is all that terrible and then some. Right off the bat, Paul & Co. nail pretty much every uncomfortable thing about this movie. 

    And yet. 

    The PLAY (NOT the movie) has such a special place in my life. I was lucky enough to direct the play for our community theater group in Shanghai a few years ago. Of course, all the best things about it had to do with the friends involved and fun we had in making the show happen. But I'm also proud that the show really WORKED, although admittedly with a few tweaks. 

    Because, YES, the biggest problem is that the most interesting part happens 45 minutes into the show -- which is the body swap! Solution? Move that scene to the beginning of the play. We opened with the groom's dressing room, wedding scene, and kiss, and just a bit of the honeymoon, giving such a dramatic strangeness to Rita before flashing back all the way to Peter & Rita's first meeting and then jumping back. With apologies to Craig Lucas, this worked out really well, lending suspence to relationship as well as making it a wonderful challenge for the actors to play with the physicality of the performances. 

    But it was also that our production of Prelude to a Kiss was originally meant as a pitch to contribute to Shanghai Pride week. Doing community theatre in Shanghai is, well, problematic to put it euphemistically, and to do shows with queer themes is doubly difficult. Here was a way to have two men share the stage with a romantic relationship, and even kiss. Lucas had written the play at the height of the 80s AIDS crisis, when a young couple might face the very real possibility of waking up to one of them suddenly aged, weak and frail. Even in Shanghai in the 2010s, there's another equally serious parallel with the tremendous social pressure in China to marry, that often traps young people, especially gay men, apart from their true loves. 

    Not that any of these things were in the minds of filmmakers in 1992. As part of our wrap party, the cast and crew watched the movie version at a local beef noodle soup restaurant, alternatively laughing at the show more than was ever intended, and ignoring it to let it run in the background.    

    • Like 4

  12. Posted

    11 hours ago, Quasar Sniffer said:

    I recognize this movie is a commercial, but aren't almost all kids movies, especially animated ones? Artistic merits notwithstanding, a movie like WALL-E presents itself as a cautionary fable, warning us about the dangers of rampant consumerism, cultural complacency, and excess waste, all the while generating thousands of individual products with adorable robots, complete with Disney and Pixar branding, all of which create their own waste. Don't get me wrong, WALL-E is a beautiful film, but at least Space Jam is honest about its blatant consumerism. It's not hiding behind a cute, doughy-eyed Pixar creation. No one is telling you can go "To Infinity And Beyond," as long as you buy this $25 action figure, they're just trying to get you to buy some fucking Gatorade.

    Short answer is no, almost all kids movies, especially animated ones, are not commerical.

    The longer answer would point out that an entertainment company is going to have a filmmaking studio that has completely separate employees from their merchandising division, if they have the latter at all. Yes, it's true that there's likely a corporate executive who is doing as much as possible to ensure that these two separate divisions provide opportunities for each other, but to categorically state that the merchandising one has preemminence over the creative one is grossly oversimplifying things. 

    I've seen many posts like these over the years, and I often feel the urge to tilt at some windmills, repeating that we shouldn't conflate "animated moves" with "Disney" (they're not all from the same studio) Nor should we think "animated" movies are "kids movies" (they're not the same. Animation is a medium, not a genre.)  If you are interested in animated films that might not be as widely marketed as a Disney's fairy tale for kids, I'm happy to make some recommendations.     

     

  13. Posted

    At the time of Space Jam's release, I was entering college but hoping to become a full time animator. I got to do an animation test with Mr Swackhammer when applying to Warner Bros Feature Animation. Spoilers-- I didn't get the job, but somewhere there is an alternate reality where I'm buired in the credits for The Quest for Camelot. Then again, thank god for dodged bullets. :)   

    This was the era of the Disney's Renaissance-- thanks to the trifecta of Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994). Warner Bros. knew that it had what we call these days Prime IP, but had no way to capitalize on it. Part of that was due to the corporate shake-ups that took some time to stablize the studios when it became Time-Warner in 1989. It took an emphasis on fashion and merchandise as well as television (with help of Spielberg/Amblin's vision for Tiny Toon Adventures (1990)) to reinvigorate the Looney Tunes brand. And make it ripe for "corporate synergy" which was all the rage those days.     

    If you want to know a more about the shaky beginnings, difficult production process, and blood sweat and tears along the way of making this film, please check out the 3-part  Oral History of Space Jam from the blog Cartoon Brew 

    https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/oral-history-space-jam-part-1-launching-movie-144935.html 

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    I wondered if Moron Mountain was at some point conceived as some alien planet or universe that worked "opposite" of our world, so it would be full of evil creatures who like dangerous rides? Having Mr Swackhammer interested in corrupting the Looney Tunes to fit his park design would make for something better beyond the basic "evil businessman runs his business evilly." 

    More about Magic Mountain-- it was an amunement park that's had a few owners over the years. Six Flags bought it during a period of rapid expansion, going from opening its own Six Flags Over (insert City) parks around the country and then outright buying existing parks. One of these existing parks was Great America in, yes, CHICAGO, which had a license for Looney Tunes characters to use for development of rides and entertainment. With its purchase, Six Flags now had rights for Looney Tunes, but Warner Bros. also had a reciprocal stake in ownership.

    In some Game of Thrones kind of reversal of fortune, Six Flags bloated, overextended, and headed into bankrupcy. Warners could leverage its stake and buy out Six Flags entirely, gaining overship in this growing "market." Disney, after all, was synergizing like crazy, expanding its media through all kinds of merchandising, resorts, and branding.

    Warners lost no time in bringing more properties into Six Flags, including its recently acquired DC superheroes. So Magic Mountain got its very own Bugs Bunny World.  The story ends with more of a whimper, however. Within just five years, Time Warner sold its theme parks division to Premeir Parks, a decidedly smaller competitor, although really the only other name in town. Premeir took over pretty much everything, including the Time Warner licenses and the Six Flags name, moving in as basically the new owner for a toy that the bigger brother didn't want to play with any more. 

    That brief period within the 90s was a high point for amusement parks in general. After 9/11, travel and resort destinations took a big hit, and by the mid-2000s, many parks were closed/downsized and Six Flags even declared bankrupcy, taking several years to emerge.  

    maybe the real Monstars were US all along .   

    1U9Tmo.gif

    • Like 2

  15. Posted

    16 hours ago, Quasar Sniffer said:

    In all fairness, the sexualizing of Looney Tunes characters has a long and distinguished history. This is classy stuff, people! And for kids!

    IMG_20200215_120936.jpg

    Except that, of course, cartoons were never meant "for kids" as a demographic when they were made as bumper spots between A and B reels when studios owned movie theatres up through the 40s. That stuff only came later with syndication and television and, of course, advertising directly to children. 

    • Like 2

  17. Posted

    7 hours ago, MariahN said:

    ok 3 specific notes in this monstrosity (not just three, these are my best three):

    1. Why does Stella Star's slave outfit have a Dracula collar? What is this accomplishing?

    2. AH! She's got STAR earrings and her NAME is STAR! Brilliant (no, not really)

    4.  Really, a nervous robot is what gets translated from Star Wars to Starcrash?! And why is Elle Southern? 

    I like that number four was among your best three, but number three wasn't. :) 

    • Haha 1

  18. Posted

    Can we give this one a bump? I managed to track this down after many people cited this as one of the many 80s-inspirations for Stranger Things.

    Oh boy. This ... they're just... I don't even know where to start.

    Definitely full of you-can't-do-that-anymore kind of tropes as mentioned above (let's not forget the token black person in the movie being the only one to die, and a very non-Bechdel through-line), But come on, the overacting, the gaping plot holes ... Some goofy fun for sure but the only question to ask is how the hell did this get made? 

     

  19. Posted

    Watching the film in its entirety for the first time, and I realized that it features TWO actors who I constantly mix up with others. The first one: I always forget to distinguish between Tim Curry and Tony Curtis In my head until I watch the film, and remember "oh yeah. it's that guy." Similarly, but perhaps more strangely, the second one: Lawrence Olivier and Sidney Poitier. :)

  20. Posted

    Sorry for the shamelessness.😊 

    I was a second rounder in the Austin Film Festival screenwriting competition with my script "Some Like It K-pop," a gender-flipped reimagining where two girls disguise themselves as men to join a Korean boy band.

    I don't often get a chance to bring it up in conversation, but I never pass up the opportunity :) 

     

    • Like 3
    • Hedgehog 1

  21. Posted

    BUMP this up! I didn't see this one when it came out and saw how everyone agreed how bad it was. 

    I found a plot summary recently and was like, wait, that doesn't sound that bad. (It was listening to the director David Koepp on the podcast ScriptNotes. He mentioned almost off-hand the "M" movie that "must not be talked about," and I thought he was talking about the recent Mummy. Looking over his filmography, I thought immediately. Oh, it was Mortdecai, wasn't it. 

    Yes. Yes it was.

    It was really much more than "that bad." And it can hear Jason's voice in my head "I. Did. Not. Like. This. Movie!"  

     

  23. Posted

    7 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

    Technically they sent the brother to "talk some sense into him." i.e. the carrot of a cushy job. I think the gun meant more to make sure Terry didn't get away and could kept hostage until wherever that address they were going to - presumably there would be people there who would have done the literal knocking off.

     And the reason (given in the movie) would be, Friendly wasn't accused of murdering the brother beforehand.

    Being accused of murder is more serious than corruption. Your accuser getting hit by a car is going to look a lot more suspicious.

    But that means people with the gun were waiting to knock off Terry and he just got out of the car earlier, then just catch up with him later 'round the corner or something. They were already going to kill him, and now they just have to figure out a different location. Instead they kill Charlie and just yell out Terry's name. I know in my head the reasons the movie gives, but it always seemed a weak point of the plot to me. Like, OF COURSE killing Charlie would be the turning point and cause Terry to finally step up. Like when the Emperor just *had* to say that last line to Luke Skywalker about Luke's anger, making Luke finally stop being angry. It always seems more narratively *convenient* than logical to me.   

    I just now realized the whole reluctant-to-actually-do-anything-hero trope parallel to Hamlet. Not sure if this makes the film better or Kazan even more pretentious. 

    6 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

    Well, I wasn't familiar with the backstory, so I might have this wrong, but didn't Any say Kazan was a member of the American communist party?

    Yes, Kazan and many of his college friends and members of the Group Theatre were members of the Communist Party in the 20s/30s,(?) but it was a far cry from the Stalinst and Mao Tse Dongist kind of Communism that arose after WWII. Most Americans who grew out of the Depression saw the abstract ideals of Marxism as very appealing, after all, and HUAC was not about to make that distinction when there was better policitcal opportunity.

    Kazan likely rationalized that they already had his name, and they already had the names of the people he gave them. But the real fallout  wasn't in the names themselves, it was the legitamacy it gave to McCarthyism and HUAC in general. They got any numbers of feathers in their cap by making Hollywood capitulate. 

    I tried to think of an equivalency in our own times, and it might be around gun control. Perhaps in the way someone in their youth would have been a card-carrying member of the NRA, but in recent years deciding to give up their membership, after marrying, having a family and career, etc. Now add to that a hypothetical world where you'd have to testify and risk losing your livelihood because of that card you held in your college days. It's easy in hindsight or hypotheticals to condemn Kazan, and I appreciate the enormity of the decision, but I am like others here, disappointed in him.   

     

     

  24. Posted

    15 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

    confused why Friendly's goons didn't just kill Terry at the end,

    But before that point they certainly could. I mean, they *tried* but they sent the brother to do it. And speaking of that, I'm not sure why it would be necessary to kill Charlie outright, and not, you know, just "lean on 'im" a little instead. But hey, I guess that's why I'm not a 50s gangster. 

  25. Posted

    16 hours ago, bleary said:

    if he had refused to testify to HUAC, it is unlikely that his taking a stand would have galvanized people to end HUAC.  Most likely, if he had refused to testify, he'd have been blacklisted too and wouldn't have gotten to make things

    No one can be sure, but it's likely that Kazan could have continued working, albeit in the theatre as there was no blacklist. He was an award winning theatrical director who "just" entered Hollywood six or seven years prior to HUAC, after all. And that's the route taken by many of his friends in the Group Theatre who faced similar moral dilemmas, notably Arthur Miller.  It's difficult for me to parse this film from the context of its authors (the screenwriter Shulburg also named names in front of HUAC) I came to know and watch this film when learning (and later teaching, and later acting in, and directing) The Crucible, in which John Proctor makes a very different decision than Terry Malloy. 

    Also, yeah... I really don't like the Edie character.   

    Hmm. Mental note: Idea for a short scene 2-woman play, featuring Edie and Elizabeth Proctor meeting for the first time for some reason. 

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