Quasar Sniffer

If we're going to include one superhero movie, I'd much rather include Infinity War, as it does the most superhero movie heavy lifting of any in the genre (most characters, most plotlines, long as hell), but still manages to be entertaining and isn't a slog to get through. It's like a perfectly engineered Rube Goldberg device that cost $300,000,000 (or whatever it cost) and grossed over $2 billion in ticket sales. It's hard to argue for other Big Time Crowd Pleasers and leave that one off. As for the Nolan films, they all have brilliant moments or individual elements, but they all also have glaring flaws (Christian Bale being an incredibly uninteresting Bruce Wayne/Batman being one big one). I also really feel their length more that Infinity War. And honestly, I think I'd rather have any other Nolan film on the list except his Batman films, which are the least interesting movies he's made.

I also think it's the job of critics and Film Nerds to keep artistically fulfilling films in the conversation. If we left it TOTALLY up to popular opinion, Avatar would be among the greatest films ever made based purely on box office numbers. We needs critics and hardcore fans to be around to say, "no idiots, Citizen Kane and Blade Runner are worth remembering and re-watching. This Ingmar Bergman guy? He has a couple good ones."

I definitely agree. Shawshank Redemption is certainly not my favorite movie, but the fact that it reaches so many people, so many enjoy it, such a large number of demographics are moved by it, and how many of those people are willing to watch it repeatedly speaks to its power. I certainly think it's a more well-rounded, enjoyable, and powerful film than Titanic is, which is another ginormous crowd pleaser, but does that in a very different way. One issue I do have with the episode is how Paul and Amy characterized the film as being like a warm embrace where nothing bad happens to the characters, how there are no real challenges. They did mention this in the podcast, but I think it should be emphasized that Andy Dufresne is RAPED. Repeatedly. It does not compute for me to have a main character, whether he actually is a murderer or not, be subjected to the most grievous violation a human being can experience and shrug that off as inconsequential. The rape is not graphic, exploitative, or depicted as a means of titillation. Instead it demonstrates the bifurcation of human extremes: how the lowest of the low can be overcome by the noblest of human endeavors, like art and the spirit within Andy. Obviously, rape in a prison movie is not unique to Shawshank, but that does not mean the film is an altogether easy experience, for the audience or the characters.

Who's down for a Love, Actually and A Prophet double feature? Let's get bipolar!

That's kinda why I haven't listened to it yet. I'm just... not looking forward to hearing my favorite comedians talk shit on musicians I love like Clarence Clemmens or Eric Clapton or Dr. John or BB King.

Sorry everyone, I know this movie has PROBLEMS and I will never voluntarily watch it again, but I cannot dislike a film that has Erykah Badu blow up Russian monsters AND white supremacists with voodoo magic. I have listened to the soundtrack several times.

Because I love a good story and love the unity of a record, I still listen to full albums. Plus, I don't use iTunes. But as I still want to participate, the last album I listened to was Slugdge's Esoteric Malacology. Slugdge is a death metal band that writes technically stellar and enjoyably brutal songs about slugs. It's amazing. A sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeOZh0VOjw

I'm halfway through Blues Brothers 2000 and I... don't hate it? It's not good, certainly, and it's definitely not made in the spirit of the first one, but I think I just really like Dan Aykroyd. That's part of why I found Nothing But Trouble so disturbing; it's like watching your good friend puke and then eat his own vomit. I might talk more about this in the show thread, but as much as I like Eddie Murphy, he was always just too cool for me to connect with him on a personal level. Like, he was the handsome, funny guy who everybody liked, which is an experience I just can't relate to. Does that make sense? Aykroyd was always the Weird Nerd in the background with the insane ideas about ghosts, so the fact that he became a movie star from 1980-1986 or so, I found edifying.

I second this suggestion. Elaine Pagels is a fascinating writer and her arguments are well-researched and compelling.

Yeah, the way I worded that question is pretty boneheaded. A lack of sexual potency never stopped anyone from sexual harassment or assault. Or just being a Big Ol' Creep (I know he was a notorious anti-Semite). However, I am glad you are still able to get meaning and something profound from his art. His paintings were rather gorgeous, and they capture the beauty and innocence of his subjects. It continues to fascinate me that art and artists can capture such beauty and humanity, even when created by monstrous people, from ancient Greeks to modern actors. I can't separate the art from the artists, but the art DOES live on after all the assholes are dead.

Yeah, I have to concur with everyone. I found this really difficult to get into, even as someone who did a lot of... experimental interpretations of Shakespeare in my youth (including 4th-wall-breaking stuff). I was just never invested in anything that was going on. Sure, a lot of Shakespeare comedies, or even the tragedies, take these very stark breaks for "comic relief" and you get some very broad comedic bits, but you can trudge your way through those if need be, or even enjoy them if the performance is done well enough. Here, it seemed like the whole play was played for Benny Hill-level humor, complete with sound effects, just with 30-second songs mixed in. I do, however, commend Cinco DeNio for the adventurous pick. If it wasn't for such risk-taking, we would never have watched films like The Lure (a Polish mermaid musical horror movie!). Hell, it's just as much a shot in the dark when I pick something like Top Hat to discover with all my Internet Buddies!

That first sentence had me all...

Holy Lord, I love this thread. And as long as I keep posting here, I am gonna keep on punning youuuu...

I actually agree with your sentiment, Cam. He's not the most subtle of character going through minute changes, but then again, where are their any subtle 20-year-olds? Certainly not in Vietnam. It was a war of horror and moral ambiguity, so we needed a character like him to find tangible examples of good and evil acts. He found those in the actions of Dafoe and Berenger, even if they themselves we're not pure good or evil (though Dafoe might be). And Cameron, can you make ONE post without making me love you more? The fact that you were so moved by Tolkien's writing that it spurned you to drastic physical action fills me with Pure Nerd Joy.

Great video, thank you for sharing! Being the Comic Book Dork that I am, I am just aware of similar copyright shenanigans that have gone on with superheroes, even Superman. The battle over the name "Captain Marvel" might be the silliest....

Sorry for the late reply taylor anne, but I have been rather frazzled with work, but yes I was referring to the Madonna/Whore dynamic in general and how some artists were more dedicated to representing with honestly and respect in art than others. I'm only going by what Walter Isaacson said in his biography, but Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, seemed utterly fascinated by his portrait subject, almost in love with them (in a platonic way). He frequently turned down or avoided work with more wealthy clients when he wasn't interested in them as people. I know he frequently did gigs for straight cash (especially his design and engineering work) as well, but he was such an enigma in a lot of ways, he remains fascinating. That is very unfortunate about Degas being such a tool. I was talking to him with an art expert coworker of mine, and she relates that Degas was actually impotent and he would sort of get a delayed or vicarious sexual satisfaction from painting ballerinas and sex workers rather than actually engage with them physically. Any truth to that? Or did that come later in life? And yes, Picasso was a fucking monster in his personal life. Fuck that guy.

taylor, I love everything about your post. LET'S GET INTO IT! I've been interested in the ancient fertility goddess/symbol for years, as I am with a lot of older or even proto-mytholgies. I even wrote several issues of a comic book (speaking of that art form) in which the goddess Ishtar comes across a group of Napoleonic-era Navy sailors and the cultural, poltical, and religious convolutions that would result from such a meeting. Ishtar, to me, is an interesting diety because she has some of the life-giving aspects of the fertility goddess, but also some of the romanticized sexuality of a goddess like Aphrodite. And with Aphrodite, you have imagery like the Venus di Milo, in which a physical form is presented in all it's beauty with no baggage of having to be a Madonna or a Whote. As for Ishtar, she's a bridge between the very ancient and the beginnings of what we consider civilization, so my story idea has her encounter the manifestation of civilization run amok; namely militarized colonialism. ANYWAY Did that start with artsts of Degas's era and the other Impressionists? Because it seems like if you look at a lot of the Italian Renaissance painters or even the Dutch Masters, there's this almost veneration of the female form in portraiture, or at least of the face. I know a lot of that was in religious art (so of course you have the Madonna aspect show up there), and there was a lot of batshit crazy stuff along with representations of the Whore persona as well, but it didn't seem to be so bifurcated pre-19th or 18th Century. It's also always struck me as tragically fitting that the Impressionists were supposed to be striking against the old guard schools of strict representation, so of course their subjects would be equally reviled by greater society as their art was. Of course, the women were more vulnerable to the consequence of their lifestyle and the reaction the powers that be might have to them. That insight just makes me hate this movie more, I guess. It's playing into this 3,000 year old power dynamic that it could instead be rebelling against. It could, like Degas, turn a reviled social class like dancers into objects of beauty, something to venerate and hang in a museum. Instead, we get the movie version of a truckstop billboard screaming LIVE NUDES, 30 MINUTE OIL CHANGE off the side of the highway.

Fitting, since, like the characters in The Good Place, I also spend every second I exist in a Sisyphean search for meaning in a universe ruled by faceless entropy. BUT AT LEAST I GOT THIS PODCAST RIGHT?!?! Even so, Cameron, it is you who is the kind one!

Because everyone, from June on the show to taylor anne photo to Ryan Sz. to EvRobert to Cam Bert to Cameron H., have eviscerated this movie on its merits better than I could, I decided to try to take a different tack and tackle how the representation of the human form in art, as a means of simultaneous reverence and titillation, has a long and fascinating history (from classical art to comic books), and how this film utterly fails to meet that in any respect. But then I decided to say "fuck it" because I am not an art historian and I didn't want to make assertions that I am not qualified to make (I mean, I guess I could talk about the sexism/power dynamics in the representation of the female vs. male form in comics, but that is a conversation for another time). So let me just say that this film is an utter failure even based on pure aesthetics because it's a movie about Demi Moore, an astonishingly attractive woman, dancing naked and it remains entirely UNsexy. There is at least twice as much sexiness in the Patrick Swayze/Chris Farley Chippendales SNL sketch than this garbage. Maybe that's because the sketch is not dehumanizing the very dancers we are supposed to find sexy, but rather showing them in their element, doing what they love to do, and doing it well. While this film shows a naked woman being strangled by a snake because, "haha, this bitch is getting choked while she's naked. HILARIOUS." Fuck this movie.

Of course! And EvRobert! Cheers to you and your suburb cinematic taste!

Thanks for watching this with me, everyone! However, I am sorry you all didn't love it as much as CakeBug and I do.

I wish I had found this sooner, but it looks like ol' Ben Grimm was a huge fan of Rad...

People who know how to appreciate a hairy body know a REAL APE when they see one!

I agree 100%, taylor.

Being someone who felt gross just watching this movie, the idea of actually going to a strip club, even as a straight dude, is the least appealing idea imaginable for a night out, at least as far as one that does not involve committing acts of violence or some other criminal act. Just.... ugh. However, I am curious as to how and why this movie made left turns from reality when it did. Just from a filmmaking and storytelling standpoint, why were those changes, in the minds of the filmmakers, necessary? I'm not interested in personal strip club stories, but conceptual or functional topics would be... elucidating. Does that make sense? Of course, I would not want to the C&O thread to become unreadable for people, so if it comes to that, then no, no strip club stuff.