GrahamS.

Have no clue what Roped is but sounds good!

I’d also ad that Hoskins must have been right for the role because he originated it in the miniseries.

Not arguing with you at all. While I like The Shining, I agree with you 100%. To me, it’s a three-star art house B-movie that’s fun and stylish, but also cold and not very engaging on an emotional level, which I feel more and more any time I rewatch it. I thought Doctor Sleep-while not perfect-was a much better film in terms of being character driven and I actually prefer that movie. I wasn’t arguing that Jack should have been cast, just wanted to point out that this oroject was already in the works before Steve Martin got involved.

I like this tidbit in particular: When asked in Rolling Stone about the film's box-office failure, Steve Martin said: "I'm disappointed that it didn't open as a blockbuster and I don't know what's to blame, other than it's me and not a comedy. I must say that the people who get the movie, in general, have been wise and intelligent; the people who don't get it are ignorant scum."

Here’s a link to some interesting trivia: Steve Martin was not the initial star the film was offered to— it was Jack Nicholson. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082894/trivia

This film cost $25 million in 1980 dollars! Don’t know what that is with inflation, but that is A LOT of money for what is essentially a dark independent film.

We were posting at the same time I agree with your points about the material being interesting 1000%. I liked how it subverted the traditional musical. That’s why I’m interested in the TV show. But I can’t stress enough how badly misc ast I felt Steve Martin was in this. Christopher Walken would have been the better lead.

Holy shit, if EVER there was a musical that should have been directed by David Lynch, this was it. All of the sexual humiliation/kinks felt very Blue Velvet-y to me, except performed in a painfully monotonous way. I will admit that the musical numbers were amazing—I loved the bank number, the school number and the bar room number where Steve Martin briefly plays the banjo in particular—but I started fast-forwarding through the movie proper after the lipstick-on-the-nipples scene. As Cinco referenced above, this was apparently an adaptation of another Dennis Potter BBC show (like The Singing Detective) and THAT SHOW sounds interesting,was critically acclaimed, and I would like to watch. At least the first episode is available for free on YouTube. Bob Hoskins plays Steve Martin’s role in that version and this role—as much as I LOVE Steve Martin—should have remained on Bob Hoskins’ hands for the screen version. This character is such an asshole that he needs an actor with Hoskins’ brute force charisma to make him watchable. Steve (although he’s great in the musical scenes) was too green as a dramatic actor to make this guy compelling and is often upstaged acting-wise by his cast mates. It’s not a terrible perfomance, but I read Roger Ebert’s two-Star review (which is dead-on, in my opinion) and it said Martin’s performance was “technically perfect” but empty because you couldn’t see the character inside. I agree 100% with this. The way he plays his character, he is a cold fish from scene one. The film is beautifully shot and dazzling to look at, I’ve always been interested I watching it but never got the chance. Now I’m interested in watching the original show, because the movie had the weird effect of having not much going on while also having the character beats feel truncated. It was an interesting pick and I’m glad I watched (sone of) it, it just wasn’t successful at what it was trying to do.

Thanks! I’m not totally sure that I’ll be available tomorrow, so don’t wait on my account.

I won’t be able to make it tonight because it’s my Mom’s birthday (we’ll probably watch the final two hours of The Queen’s Gambit....and we’ve been quarantining together for months, so we’re not breaking any rules ). Also wanted to remind you that you’ll be competing with the virtual HDTGM show if you Kast!

I might, but it’s a family birthday tomorrow, so I won’t watch it live. I’ll focus on next week. Cats was a lot of fun to watch (the HDTGM show, not the movie). RE:Shakespeare...In this episode, the gang talked about how it takes a few minutes of listening to Shakespeare and then they’re able to follow along easily. i’ve never been able to do that. I think I’m Shakespeare illiterate, even though I had to study him a fair amount as a writing major. It has always felt like being able to understand half of a foreign language and then struggling to get a grasp on the second half for the entire runtime. It’s put a bit of a chip on my shoulder towards his plays since it can feel like being babbled at for multiple hours. Perhaps this makes me anti-intellectual, an ignoramus, if you will, but I prefer my Shakespearean story arcs to be served up in shows like Succession, by actors with Shakespearean training, over actual Shakespeare. Gimme more Logan Roy is what I’m saying

I hate to break it to YOU, but...

RDJ will probably be endlessly grateful for Iron Man.

Yeah, I heard about that movie. I liked the miniseries, wasn’t sure how they could cut 6 hours down to 2 successfully.

I’ve never seen it, should be interesting! I think it’s a quirky drama. The guy who wrote it—Dennis Potter, I think —was responsible for the 80s BBC miniseries The Singing Detective with Michael Gannon, which was definitely unique.

It sounds like a logical progression to me. Happy birthday!

I think my main issue with this new version of Unspooled is that Paul and Amy are talking about films that they both like—as opposed to having to watch because it’s on a list—and then making their own list. It would be more interesting to me if they let the listeners choose the movies (as opposed to one choice out of every 4 or 8). Right now, it feels like Paul and Amy don’t have anyone to dissent with, and as a result (unless you really love/want to know more about the movie)it seems a little flat.

I’m entertained by Unspooled, but the whole concept of “the essential movie list” is pretty tired to me. I agree with Unspooled’s outlook that the AFI list was/is dated, but I wish they weren’t so focused on replacing it with ANOTHER list because lists are essentially bullshit. Just find good movies in all genres to discuss. Trying to rank them in terms of cultural relevance has always seemed weird to me, because film is too subjective to work that way. that’s my opinion at least!

As the person who was your Guest watch partner, I didn’t mind that you hadn’t seen it because I hadn’t watched it in a couple years, so I was happy to comment occasionally but also just watch it. If the movie is goofy enough, comments will come and that’s fine.if the movie is terrible and I hadn’t seen it before, I doubt that I would want to watch it again, so watching on Kast could be fun in that way,,too.

I would think the Anthony Hopkins/Julie Taylor version would be the most HDTGM-worthy Shakespeare adaptation. Certainly it’s the most over-the-top (except for the Baz Luhrman R+J).

Has anyone seen the Christian Bale Swing Kids? I haven't, but it sounds like a terrible idea. @tomspanks I also wanted to say thanks for suggesting.an aggressively off beat movie. I'm always down for those and the trailer for this had me intrigued. I'm glad I saw part of it, I just didn't need 133 minutes of it. Is it weird that its energy kinda reminded me of Kung Fu Hustle?

I'm not a fan of the "use real-life trauma/tragedy and make it the setting/background for a musical"-style of filmmaking. It would take a filmmaker with significant mastery of tonal changes to pull it off. A surprising number of those have come from Korea (Bong Joon-ho and Chan-wook Park amongst them) and Swing Kids has an interesting setting/idea for this type of musical. In my opinion, the director just can't pull it off. There are parts that work--I do like seeing the war from the Korean POV--but it's so stylized in a " look-at-this" kind of way that it feels like the director is just using a wartime setting to make flashy MTV-style dance-offs and comedy sequences (which really seems manipulative to me). The film had a weird Baz Luhrman over-the-topness to it. The point seems to be the style more than the subject matter, which was disappointing because there are good story elements here. Full disclosure: I didn't finish watching the movie. I made it past the sequence where the hero has the dance-off with the racist military dude and then the military dude frames the dance instructor. Somehow that sequence broke my eye-rolling:enjoyment ratio and enjoyment lost, so I called it a night.

Turkey Jerky. Or maybe the Jerky Turkeys? happy Thanksgiving!

Just have no clue what The Princess Switch is. Glad you’re excited!

Ummm...what?