Quasar Sniffer

Me personally, no, but two of my good friends from high school married their respective sweethearts and are still together. One is a teacher and is still married to the girl he went to prom with. She is a lawyer and they have two kids (at least she was a lawyer. I know she passed the bar and was working in a law firm but took some time off to spend with her kids. I'm not sure if she is practicing at this very second). The other guy actually got his high school sweetheart pregnant the summer after senior year and they remain happily married, now with three kids. Both couples are more well-adjusted than I will ever be and their kids are great. As for me? No time for kids, I gotta make room in my schedule to watch Rock Star so I can listen to a podcast about it!

Great googly moogly, I have so many thoughts on this subject, but I will try and save them for the actual episode thread. For now, I will address this particular comment from Dave Mustaine, the bonehead of eternal irascibility and immeasurable musical talent and ability. The comment is emblematic of the problem Metal has had for decades, that is, a tinge of toxic masculinity in its response to anything it terms "feminine," yet those things it is criticizing are indeed formulaic copycat examples of the form, homogenized by record executives to make a splash on (at the time) mainstream radio and MTV. So it just encourages the toxic masculinity, which makes it more unapproachable to outsiders, no matter how fucking awful so much of that hair metal was. It would have been more constructive to avoid calling glam metal "gay" or "for girls" and just criticized it for being the musical version of hairspray-soaked rice cakes that it was. I mean, it's not like "Grunge" or "Alternative" music in the 1990s didn't degrade into the same limited number of fashion tropes. Glum dudes with scraggly hair, sunglasses on indoors, and flannel shirts in all environs became the uniform as much as big hair and nut-hugger jeans were a decade earlier.

Like Smigg, I don't consider hair metal "Metal" either, but that doesn't change the fact that Talking Heads are one of my all time favorite bands, so the use of "Once in a Lifetime" in this movie is fucking GARBAGE. Not only that, but the sort of Motley Crue/Judas Priest amalgam Steel Dragon is in the movie is... odd to me as a metalhead. Because, you know, Judas Priest is amazing and I love them. They've been making awesome music since the 1970s and Rob Halford is nicknamed "The Metal God" for a damn reason. What's even more discombobulating is that "Stand Up and Shout" is an original song by the great and powerful Dio, which makes the music in this movie both more insulting and more confusing.

Every time this god damn movie uses a previously existing song, from downright luminescent performers from Dio to Talking Heads, I'm thinking, "how fucking DARE you?!?!" Fuck this movie.

I think you get to something that is ineffable about this movie. Most of the lyrics are simplistic conversational dialog, but set to the music, it becomes actually profound when presented cinematically. Maybe that's because it's in a language I don't understand, that I am projecting profundity onto it? Who knows. But that ineffability is also what makes the ending so, as you said, bittersweet. Guy has that white autoshop and a family, and Geneviève has a family and a secure life, but it's not with each other. With this quiet, beautiful image of the peaceful falling snow of this white garage, we are reminded that it took broken dreams to build that peaceful setting we are seeing. It's a beautiful realization of a dream nobody wanted, but that is still something heartfelt and genuine, something much more likely to lead to happiness than if Guy had died in Algeria or Geneviève and her mother were driven to destitution. You know, it's life, and it takes work. Holy shit, did I just convince myself that the thesis statement for this movie is "c'est la vie"? This movie is French as a cigarette-flavored croissant.

Oh yeah, I totally thought that, and she certainly came off as neurotic and cloying, but it's not like we can blame her. Her daughter is off fucking some charming and handsome mechanic (and he was at at that!) while she is holding on to the last vestiges of her attempts to move up the social ladder. Owning a shop was a stepping stone to the upper middle class in post-WWII France, so her having money troubles and agreeing to sell her jewelry is basically acquiescing to never achieving that dream and spending the rest of her days in the same lower-class social run she was born into. Her daughter being impregnated by Guy, a gentleman but a man decidedly of the lower classes, was just another symbol of her family being further anchored to the lower rungs of society. A diamond merchant in love with her daughter must have seemed like a godsend.

OK, so let's talk about this movie! I loved it. One of the things that I did love about it that, even though it came about at the same time the French New Wave way happening, it was decidedly NOT New Wave in almost every way. It was full of color and life and unironic sentimentality. I honestly can't stand Breathless, I just find every element of that film that is not Jean Seberg insufferable. And while like Breathless, this film is really thin on plot (it's almost like a fable of young love, or at best, a screenplay outline), Umbrellas is charming and engaging from start to finish. The tragic ending may have been obvious from the beginning, as any story that begins with two beautiful young people in love will probably end with some tears, I was myself in love with the characters from start to finish. Hell, there really isn't even a villain here, which is another element I enjoyed. We're obviously rooting for Guy and Geneviève, but it's not like Roland is a bad guy, he just happens to be the epitome of upper class wealth (a fucking DIAMOND MERCHANT!) and is just around while Guy is at war. Madeline is also around when Guy gets back home, and it's not her fault she is not as ravishing as Catherine fucking Deneuve. It's mostly Guy's fault for not noticing her until Geneviève leaves him for Roland. The forces the characters are struggling against are the arc of history, economic hardship (unless you're a diamond merchant), and the class restrictions of provincial French society.

May I suggest a more regionally appropriate foodstuff? But even with the melancholy, this movie is still extravagantly delightful. If that dichotomy is not French, I don't know what is.

Posting this image of Liza Minnelli and Bob Fosse on the set of Cabaret for no other reason than I found in adorable:

Also, if anyone is interested in the film Roar, briefly discussed on this episode, I HIGHLY recommend the Hellbent for Horror podcast episode on the movie. It's a podcast I had the honor of appearing on a few months back and manages to get to the heart of why horror is worth loving. In the episode on Roar it really digs deep into how utterly insane the behind-the-scenes events were surrounding the film. It has got to be one of the most truly bonkers productions I've ever heard of. If you like movies enough to be posting on this board, this is worth your time: https://hellbentforhorror.com/2017/01/12/episode-029-here-there-be-lions/

I love Bjork forever and always, that includes everything since Volta. I do, however, enjoy albums like Biophilia and Utopia differently than albums like Post or Homogenic. While I can go back to those earlier records again and again and jam to them, I view the more recent ones almost like movies. I listen to them two or three times when they are initially released, am enthralled and fascinated by them, but then put them away until the next Bjork album comes around when I might want to revisit them consciously to re-familiarize myself with them. It's a more... intellectual engagement with art, to be sure, but I also enjoy, for example, Raiders of the Lost Ark differently than I enjoy Schindler's List, and there's certainly room for both on my shelf.

1. Your tastes in comics are GOOD. 2. I'm excited for Bendis taking over Superman. I've really loved Superman since DC did Rebirth a year and a half ago, but I think it's suffered since Gleason stopped doing to art. I think his creative input seems less integrated into the story, so the influx of someone like Bendis can only help the book. I'm an unabashed Bendis fanboy and I've loved his superhero stuff at Marvel, from Jessica Jones to X-Men to Iron Man. He has a knack for getting the the hear of a single character in ways I never thought possible. He made me love Tony Stark more than I ever thought I could.

Sounds like way more fun than talking about Mark Wahlberg!

I thought the Bifrost Bridge was seeing Chris Hemsworth, Cate Blanchett, and Tom Hiddleston all in the same movie makes the viewer cross the bridge to bisexuality?

Considering how much I love Judas Priest, I probably will be too....

And once again, Cameron H puts more thought and intelligence into a film in one message board post than a cadre of filmmakers did for the entire movie we're talking about. Well done!

It's almost as if better movies had thought this through and come up with a more interesting way, both visually and narratively, of utilizing this "jacking" scenario....

Haha, I LOVE The American Astronaut. That is how you do a zero-budget weird as hell indie and still make it good and entertaining. Would probably make a good double feature with 1984's The Brother from Another Planet starring character actor extraordinaire, Joe Morton. Oh, and They Live? Fuck, I will talk about They Live in any context, always and forever.

Great pick! I've been meaning to see this for ages. Since Umbrellas Of Cherbourg had such an influence on La La Land and Damien Chazelle as a filmmaker, this would make an interesting double feature with La La Land. Maybe the next Musical Mondays movie could be that recent almost-Best-Picture-winner? Just a suggestion. I don't want to put any untoward pressure on the next Musical Mondays pick-maker.

This philosophy of measuring Cinematic Shittiness has been in my mind since I first heard Mr. Gourley express it as well. Having Matt Gourley's mellifluous voice in my head, giving me advice AIN'T BAD. It's why I can explain my love for the Bond movies like Moonraker or View to a Kill: they sure do go for it. Not that I needed an overarching philosophy to justify my love for Grace Jones in a Bond movie, it's just a useful perspective to use when trying to be objective about a film's quality. Freejack feels just so... safe, like someone read the synopsis of a Phillip K. Dick story and said, "let's do that, but replace all the imagination with packing peanuts."

Honestly, it would probably be The Rock. As someone who's spent the last ten years at 5'7" and 118 pounds... I just wanna know what it's like to lift a heavy thing. And look down at people. And look good in a suit. Or even a silk shirt and pastel pants... As long as it doesn't result in a Dead The Rock, obviously. I would never want The Rock to die. Maybe a temporary Being John Malkovich type situation?

This is my favorite Pink Floyd cover because HAHA YES! HEAVY METAL! Seriously though, it's great. I love Kylesa.

So who's on board with my (dumb) theory that Altered Carbon is just a remake of Freejack? I've only watched the first ten minutes of Freejack and I kind of don't want to finish it but I am up for declaring it so...

And about the Nazi imagery, in response to Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party policies in England during the 1980s, there was a lot of art and music that re-imagined England has a neo-fascist state. There was, of course, a lot of punk music doing that, but there was also the 1984 film starring John Hurt and Richard Burton, and one of my favorite dystopian future narratives evarrrrrr, Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, which balances the nightmare of a fascist England with being so desperate that you would turn to an insane terrorist for salvation. It's a story that always disturbed me because it makes you want V to be the hero to cheer for, but he's also a monster... but a monster the state he's fighting against created. It's a story with no winners, one where the decent people (like Evey Hammond) are brutalized by all sides of the conflict. GEE I AM SURE GLAD WE HAVE MOVED PAST THAT STUFF, HUH?! And also in The Wall, I think there is a definite theme of "Is this what my daddy died for?" in the country turning to hammer-marching fascism. It renders Pink's, and the nation's, suffering meaningless. If the Nazis took over, but just 40 years later, then what was the whole fucking point? Why did all those people have to die if we're just gonna be nazis anyway? Another theme ON MY MIND as of late.