ol' eddy wrecks

Plot point, I think Taylor's news machine that he controlled was only controlling the state level. Smith's side of the story was getting out on the national press, but it wasn't being distributed to people within his own state. The newspaper they ran could have been just on their town level, which since this was a small midwestern state, could have been, like, I don't know, 1/3rd of the state's population.

If Mr. Smith Goes to Washington took place in the Star Wars universe, the ending filibuster scene would have Taylor have had a special visitor seat right by Paine's desk, and for some reason there would have been a really, really deep well in the middle of the Senate floor. And the ewolks, I mean boy rangers, would have found a way to defeat Paine state-wide news machine.

Darn. That makes sense, but I thought we were about to get some amusing personal anecdotes there. I think my knowledge of GS history was just that one brief exchange with a friend where they went, "oh, the GS aren't actually affiliated with the BS." The Church of LDS-Boy Scout relation was just something I had known at some point as an adult, though I was never clear exactly how the association worked. I suspect it affected national policies (such as gay or trans scout leader, possibly their national Jamboree). But I also know it had to have been a decentralized system, because at some point in the 00's I remember a news story being shared about how a BS troop in, I want to say the south, wouldn't allow either Mormons or Mormon scout leaders (can't remember which) because they felt they weren't Christians. I'm forgetting the details, just that there was irony in it. Anyhow, those ties have been cut officially. I chose the wrong week/movie to quit talking about politics. I think Saunders being the smartest person in the room probably helped.

Don't forget Psycho in October! There aren't a lot of horror movies on the AFI's list. That said, Citizen Kane, Ben-Hur, and 2001 weren't determined by a die roll. That "sometime in December" makes me think there's a reasonable chance they just went, "It's December, we're going to see it anyway, let's just discuss it now." But we'll see!

I'm also getting the suspicion @WatchOutForSnakes may have been a girl scout.

My understanding is the girl scouts were in response to, but are not in association with the Boy Scouts. The friend who informed me of this brought this up with the topic the GS are generally progressive (though I suspect that's always a very decentralized thing/depends on chapter). But it hasn't had associations with the LDS church at a national level that prevented them from having gay scout leaders (friend informing me of this is gay, so of general concern to them in a broader sense).

Well TCM/core-filmstruck + criterion is going to be better than just criterion. I think that is just simple set theory. And I think we're paying as much for just that as TCM + criterion, but I kept Hulu around for probably a year just for when it had criterion, and when it left for the launch of filmstruck, I signed up for filmstruck since day one. So, you know I'll be signing up for this.

I think it's abundantly clear that I have a lump of pitch-black coal where my heart should be. It was required to get that necessary vote from the representative of West Virginia. I'm sure there are light-hearted fun movies I enjoy. I'm sure there are sentimental movies that get to me. I just don't know if they are any on this list though... I mean, besides Duck Soup. Fwiw, I do like The Hudsucker Proxy. There's a hoola-hoop around that lump coal, I guess. Like a ring of Saturn. On the latter part, does it though? The "certain corrupt actions can work toward the ultimate public good, like other achievements of Payne", I feel like that's presented more as a rationalization as a warning of the slippery slope of compromise. When talking about it, Payne's choice of words I think were, "you have to do grafts to get any of your legislation passed." Well, going back to the road to nowhere, I remember years after that whole fiasco, I remember reading an article where they interviewed people who lived in nowheresville, Alaska, and you know, for them, they could have really benefited from that road. It also would have brought money into the state for the people who had to work on the road and would have improved the lives of those people, who presumably lived there. Was this graft and probably a poor use of public funds even though it didn't necessarily enrich the personal life of the senator who wanted it (I can't remember if it did or didn't enrich their lives or had a Payne-like donor enrichment. But let's say it didn't) - the answer was probably still yes. Given the country's poorly maintained infrastructure system, the funds probably could have been better spent on that (not that not funding the road to nowhere meant those funds would go towards that); the money was just being appropriated to get a vote. Sometimes the graft is self-serving graft, sometimes the graft is constituency-serving graft (sometimes gratuitously bribing, sometimes just poor prioritization of funds), and sometimes it's just the compromise of funding someone else's also valid project (who might also be looking at your cause as also being graft or an ineffective use of funds). And I don't think the movie really conveyed the deal-making as anything other than a whittling away of one's morals to bleak corruption. I think there's something in the over-simplicity of the fable of the movie that really rubs me the wrong way. I find I don't like Spielberg movies, so I never watched Lincoln, but from what I heard, that movie did portray the deal-making as an actual instrument of getting good, necessary legislation passed. I do wonder if I were to re-watch Being There (it's been a decade), if I'd now see issues with it. But I think it's a lot more removed from the sausage making.

I think if we dropped this whole Taylor/Payne corruption plot and just focused and the realities of passing Senator Smith's bill and how his good intentions had consequences that, which may have been justified, would have made his wholesome, simple Americana idea actually more complex that have to be figured out and reckoned with - I think I would have liked this movie more.

Criterion channel is coming back spring 2019. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6044-new-independent-criterion-channel-to-launch-spring-2019 Probably not as good for the AFI list as the TCM/core-filmstruck part. Criterion had the rights to Spartacus at one point and has Dr Strangelove. And I think a good chunk of the silents. I think.

Then his whole line of, "it'll pay for itself, America already has enough on its plate to worry about"... Why, that may not have been gee-gosh-golly truthful, if not with others, then at least with himself. Both now and it's ability to stay within budget in the future.

Thinking through the core issue(s) I'm having with the movie, I'm coming back to a question I had, if the boy scout event isn't going to require funding, then why does he need to pass a bill? Why does it need to be state sanctioned? I'm guessing because of the corruption smear they were running against him, did he need the Senate to reserve the land for this? Which would require the government to buy or reimburse the owner of the land, right? Which would cost the taxpayers money. It would also divert a lot of the children of the country towards his state during the summer. This would presumably be akin to tourist money being diverted into his state (probably not large amounts, since they aren't supposed to be in commercially active parts of the state for large portions, but realistically, they are going to need supplies). What I'm saying is, yeah Payne and Taylor were engaged a legitimate scandal, but Smith's own gosh-good-feeling bill isn't removed from a lot of the pork that people demonize the government from engaging in (just on a smaller scale). But I'm not joking on the part about, "why did he need a bill for this?" Apart from the Senate bill that was about to destroy the campsite, which he didn't know about, why did he need a bill?

So I still don't really have an answer for the year question, but ordering TSPDT top 1000 by year and just scanning to see if any years stood out to me, in terms of famous movies, 1960... Breathless Psycho La Dolce Vita L'Avventura There's others to help the argument for 1960 (The Apartment, Spartacus - which I'm not the biggest fan of, Peeping Tom, Shoot the Piano Player), but just seeing those four together in the same year just seemed kind of crazy. Though now that I'm looking closer, 1959 also had a slew pretty great movies...

I think Lovett's comparison was based more on the idea of the outsider shaking things up, which is what Stewart's character does. And then candidates campaign on that outsider myth. I will point out, that the insider vs. outsider campaign strategy is nothing new.

If a movie is charming and wins you over, then isn't charm a valid merit of the film? I say as someone who has only watched this for the first time now, and am not sure if I even liked the movie. I am not entirely sure why. I think the cartoonish character types were just something I couldn't emotionally get on board with. Maybe because I listened to the podcast first and instead of being swept away by it, I found myself more seeing Lovett's criticisms. Saunders and Dez (Diz?) were definitely the strong point of the movie for me. Or all the random violence against boy rangers at the end. That was just so random and wacky, though it didn't feel that was intentional. Since it was the first time I saw it, I might be able to get more organized thoughts on it, but right now, I don't know if I have much more in terms of organized thoughts. It might just ultimately be, it's a simple story, somewhat archetypal, and I just wasn't on board with it.

Wouldn't it be, Jacob's Ladder is just one big Mr. Smith's Yield (of the floor)? ETA: that doesn't work as well as I wanted to, since he doesn't yield. Or technically, does he? Does collapsing during a filibuster technically end it?

So, thinking about it, maybe the solution would be scale/stretch out everybody's current rankings out to a scale of 100 (and there will just be numeric gaps). That way as more movies get filled in, one can also more closely compare if tastes start converging or diverging as they get to the 50th and 75th episode. And then take the square root and divide by number of entries. I should double-check the formula for standard deviation or variance to see how stats handles something vaguely similar to this. I'll admit this is all overthinking what's basically trying to come up with a heuristic on just seeing who has similar/different tastes to who, that ignores the details of why we like what we do. And it'd take more than five minutes, but if your spreadsheet is in Google sheets, you can always write custom functions in javascript. That is, if you deem it worth the effort, which I'd get that unless one got an itch of curiosity, it probably isn't.

Well, it was all getting to the root challenge of why it's hard to use partial lists.

And I said, ""! Also, my mind just glazed over when you said, "essentially." Unfortunately I haven't taken a stat (non-calc based) since high school. I think I figured out what I was having trouble with. Trying to conceptualize it as a vector space gives it weird properties that make common things we do with vector spaces (in this case, projections)... wonky. So to back up, when I said what are the dimensions, that was more focused on what the values were (the, use the ratings as our dimensions, still had each movie serving as what each dimension was, just the value in each dimension was the star rating for the movie) and it was getting conflated with the assigned metric/inner product. But to get to the wonky example, if we flip the values around, make the top rated movie of 25, value of 24, and the lowest rated movie, value of 0 (we could also do 25 and 1), while it shouldn't change anyone's computed squared-distance, it's just easier for me to think about for thought experiment purposes because of associating higher values with better movies for these things. Let's hypothetical ranker Kevin loves Citizen Kane and ranking it number 1, hates Titanic (always ranking it last), and let's say those were the first two movies reviewed. Also let's say there's a hypothetical ranker, Nivek, who's the reverse - loves Titanic, hates Citizen Kane, but for every other movie they have the same opinion and rank. So after week three, Kevin's vector is <2, 0, 1> and Nivek's vector is <0, 2, 1>. After 25 weeks, Kevin's vector is <24, 0, a, b, c...> and Nivek's vector is <0, 24, a, b, c...>. The squared-distance between them at week 3 is 8. At week 25, it is 2*24^2, even though all of the new dimensions are contributing 0 to this increased distance. Similarly, let's say users Ke and Ni come around, but they've both only seen the first three movies. And their vectors are, respectively, <2, 0, 1> and <0, 2, 1>. We want to project Kevin and Nivek's vectors down to 3-dimensional space from 25 dimensional space. Instead of projecting <24, 0, a, b, c...> and <0, 24, a, b, c....> down to <24, 0, a> and <0, 24, a>, it seems like we should project them down to <2, 0, 1> and <0, 2, 1>. And maybe that's the best way to compare for subsets, though simply taking the average squared-distance by dimension would be misleading, as above demonstrates, the squared distances increases at a rate of n^2 (where n = number of dimensions). That's what I mean by, that is wonky in terms of what I normally expect for a vector space/inner product space. And I focused on a projection because, well, trying to compare those of us with fewer rankings, it should be useful, even if it's incomplete data, to calculate what the distance is when projecting your rating vector point down into a lower dimensional space. Granted, I say that as someone who's only ever completed an undergraduate degree (which I guess I should say, linear projection, because as I type that out, an inverse stereographic projection would be one way to go from a subset of 3 dimensions to 2 dimensions which doesn't uphold the 'typical' linear projection behavior; though my gut reaction the inverse of a stereographic projection isn't an isometry, so talking about distances might not be the best idea. Not that I've seen talk about stereographic projections in a linear algebra class).

I think you mean square of the euclidean distance. Though I'm trying to interpret it in my brain what the dimensions would be in a way that could be extractable. If we all actually rated the movies, you could have worked as the difference of ratings as each dimension of distance (and then divided for the average for incomplete lists). If each dimension is the distance in the movie rankings... then that would mean the value of each dimension would also be dependent upon the other dimensions. Abstractly speaking I am finding that thing a bit difficult to conceptualize at the moment. Oh well.

Seems appropriate since a numberof people have peppered posts with "Vote" comments.

Another message board I post on that's a lot more political than this one has someone from Wisconsin, so I've been hearing him complain about Walker for the past 8+ years. His hatred ran deep (and it also sounded like him and Reince Priebus either made Wisconsin ground zero or one of the most extreme cases of gerrymandering from the past census/decade). On that last part, throw in we have a new census coming up in two years (and thus new redistricting), that's a big deal. The structural problems in the math in the representative system is a big issue in my mind. This in turn, well, at least Florida is getting a recount. I don't know if I should get my hopes up on that or get prepared to get my hopes stomped on that one again. At least the number of voter enfranchisement laws and a few anti-gerrymandering (i.e. redistricting by non-partisan commission) bills passed in a number of purple states (more than I was aware of when I heard someone start to list them off). That said, I should probably go back to refrain talking politics. I frequent a small corner of the internet that has a long streak of despair in it and I'd probably just start parroting points and topics that other people there say (e.g. Yay! Scott Walker is gone.... and now Wisconsin state legislators are working to gut the amount of power the governorship has before the Democrat can take office, like North Carolina). And that's not what I came to these forums for. At least Walker is gone.

I would advise not answering all of those questions in one sitting. That took long enough that it started to become unenjoyable.

I guess I'll go first How did you two first meet? Origin story of show? What made you think of doing this podcast? Changing this to how I first heard about this podcast, why I started listening to it - from listening to HDTGM. How much time do you spend researching the movie you're watching? I put together that post of how a movie does in other lists for comparison. When we hit movies that I'm not sure why it's considered good, I'll try googling something, but recently I've taken to the habit to waiting until after the episode is over before watching so I know what topics of conversation are going to come up. That way I can keep an eye out for them. Also, sometimes the episode does the legwork for answering, "why do people think this is a good movie." The two that swayed me the most was Paul arguing for Shawshank made me realize it's really not out of the conversation compared to Cool Hand Luke, which I wouldn't have thought twice about being on the movie. And the other was E.T. which I still feel only has one good scene, but I literally didn't get a sense of what the character/thematic arc was of the movie while watching it. These movies are hard to find? Where do you go? Amazon, filmstruck, netflix, (hulu if needed), iTunes, personal collection If you could get everyone to watch one movie what would it be? My tastes aren't everyone's tastes, so I don't know if I have an answer to this question. Is there a movie that is important to see if you don't even enjoy it? Shoah? The Act of Killing? 2001 is my favorite movie, but it's not for everyone, and if you don't like it, it'll be a painful watch. I think 8 1/2 is a fun movie, but I'm sure I'd meet people who'd hate it. I guess for movies that I feel are underseen gems I'd like more people to see: Funeral Parade of Roses, The Trial, and I guess since we were talking about movies made by women, Girlfriends. If you could appear in any movie on the list, which one would you? I took this question to mean, as an actor (since Paul is an actor), but they answered it as being in that world. I'm not a Raiders-person, but Nazis are a lot less scary in that world and they ended up dying. I haven't seen the Wizard of Oz, but I guess I'll choose that one. I wish Japanese movies were allowed so My Neighbor Totoro was on the list. That way I could get a fantastic world in which I was not in danger of dying. Will you ever do an episode comparing the 97 list? I can't interpret this question to be relevant for us, other than, I'd like a Fargo episode. Why haven't they updated it yet? This question didn't seem relevant to Amy & Paul either. I do wonder if the Me-Too movement actually disrupted things enough to delay the list (e.g. did it potentially affect who should be receiving ballots to vote). How many of the films are film capsule entries? I don't know. I am interested in the mentality of why some of these movies were voted for (but even then, who's voting for a movie isn't a monolithic constituency). If directors could only have one movie on the list, which one (for each director) would you choose? Robert Altman - MASH, Nashville My favorite Altman, McCabe & Mrs. Miller isn't on the list, and MASH has its problems. I just think Nashville is the better film. Frank Capra - It's a Wonderful Life, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night I haven't seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I'll go for the movie that starts off with the guy contemplating suicide. Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times, City Lights, The Gold Rush I've seen one, maybe two of these and am unopinionated Francis Ford Coppola - The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now I just like it as a movie more Michael Curtiz - Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy I know I've seen YDD, but can't remember it. Outside of this podcast, I'd assume I would never be revisiting it. I also enjoy noir movies. Victor Flemming - Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz I haven't seen either! John Ford - The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath The Searchers. The ending has the subvert the typical western narrative quality and scenes of the vistas as legitimately impressive. It still suffers from tropes and racist depictions that were common for the era though. I haven't seen GoW since high school. We'll see if I change my mind. Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window, North by Northwest If I'm going with the one I like best, Psycho. Most representative, Vertigo, I guess. John Huston - The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre I think I've only seen The African Queen Elia Kazan - On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire It's been a while. I could have gone either way. Stanley Kubrick - 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, Spartacus Too many words. David Lean - Bridge of the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia Not picking until I see BotRK and rewatch LoA. George Lucas - Star Wars, America Graffiti One like best: American Graffiti. Most representative/makes most sense to be on the list: Star Wars Sidney Lumet - 12 Angry Men, Network Mike Nichols - The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I need to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Alan J. Pakula - Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men I need to see both of these Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull Taxi Driver for now. I need to rewatch Raging Bull. I never got the love for Goodfellas. Stephen Spielberg - Jaws, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan Favorite: Jaws. Best representative: E.T. Haven't seen SPR, but Jaws is the only Spielberg movie on the list I like. George Stevens - Swing Time, Shane Haven't seen either. Billy Wilder - The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard Loved Sunset. Really like The Apartment. Double Indemnity next level down. I enjoyed SLiH, but don't feel the love for it. William Wyler - Ben-Hur, The Best Years of Our Lives Haven't seen either How do you think we should be viewing this list? eg Historical, Innovations, fun, etc As a list of movies that people, who are members of the AFI, when asked to select 100 movies from a curated list of 400 that they think are the greatest American movies of all time, these were the most common selections. I am very literal on this. The result, a list that includes enough classic-era (1950s and before) Hollywood movies that I haven't seen that I should probably watch those to fill in some gap of knowledge and viewing. Which movie are you most looking forward to and why? Do the Right Thing. Spike Lee is an embarrassing blind-spot for me, so it'll give me a chance to correct that at least a little. There's a lack of female directors and movies from directors of people of color. A lot have been made recently, but they wouldn't have been eligible for the 2007 list because they've come out since then. Are there films that would be eligible for the list you are doing now that you would put on? We talked about this last week. I guess Killer of Sheep was the answer that I've seen. I need to see Wanda. A comedy isn't really represented in the AFI top 100. What are some of your favorite comedies? (Not necessarily for the AFI top 100) Again, a topic we talked about recently. Arguably, my favorite comedy, Dr Strangelove, is on there. After that, I might say, Monty Python's Life of Brian (but that isn't considered American, is it?). I like dark comedies, and it's crossing my mind, Brazil (again, not American, right?), Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn't There are ones I really enjoy. Looking at other people's answers, I keep forgetting Christopher Guest on these type of questions (This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show). Related, what animated or documentary films would you want on the list? For Errol Morris, I feel like people would gravitate towards The Thin Blue Line. I haven't seen Hoop Dreams, but people talk about it a lot. One of my documentary choices, Shoah, isn't American and still wouldn't be eligible for this list. When thinking of American animated films, I draw a blank on well known ones that I love. Trying to think of one, The Plague Dogs, comes to mind, it's not iconic, well-seen (I guess Watership Down would be the more appropriate film for those categories and even then), or particularly something I'd think of as a general best-of list. If we could include international movies, it could turn into a Studio Ghibli-discussion, but we aren't. It'd be funny if the animated version of The Hobbit was on the list right next to The Fellowship of the Ring. Edited (again!): Alice in Wonderland seems like an answer I could live with and appreciate the oddness of its world. What HDTGM movie would you place on this list? I think Paul's answer is the correct one. Will you just own up and admit that you think Scorsese is tremendously overrated? Since I like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, I wouldn't think so, but everything of his outside of that that I've seen, I've been less enthralled by (namely Goodfellas). I guess I'll point out, as others have, he did a lot more than toxic masculinity movies with Robert DeNiro. He just did that genre amazingly well and it's stuck in our minds. I still need to see Silence and that's one that I might really like. Might. Would you agree that 1939 was the greatest year for films? If not, which year? I haven't given this one that much thought and this Q&A is longer than I had originally hoped when started. I'll come back to this later. What are your favorite books about movies? I haven't read any. I'm curious to read Hitchcock-Truffaut and there is a book that's a compilation of interviews with Kubrick I'd like to read. Amy and Paul what is the best theater food snack food or drink? I don't know about best, but I hate the smell of popcorn, so I'll say that's the worst. I usually just need soda/caffeine while watching a movie and not much else. 100 years from now, someone on a ghost tour says you are haunting a location. What location would you want them to say you're haunting? Probably a hotel. I'd hate to get lonely for eternity. If it weren't for that, a university building could be cool. That way, as things change, you could still just sit there and keep learning. Though if you keep getting an intro math/science course year after year, the repetition of the same material/knowledge would get old fast. ETA: Updated animated and comedies answers because re-reading my post, I realized, I stopped writing out them out mid-thought.

Thanks, updated the post. You missed Spartacus for Kubrick - though probably not a common choice for most people.