Quasar Sniffer

And if we're REALLY gonna get into Marylin Monroe and if you wanna get SUPER DEPRESSED before you watch this movie, You Must Remember This, the definitive podcast on everything depressing about Hollywood, has you covered: http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/2017/3/2/marilyn-monroe-the-beginning-dead-blondes-flashback http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/2017/3/13/marilyn-monroe-the-persona-dead-blondes-episode-7 http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/2017/3/20/marilyn-monroe-the-end-dead-blondes-episode-8 Get those tears prepped!

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

My Greatest Dream for the Marvel Netflix Universe is for Moon Knight's involvement somehow. I think he fits into that "gritty New York superhero" vibe really well with characters like Daredevil and Punisher, plus there is the mystical element that he shares with Iron Fist (granted, in a very different form). I know there are probably a lot of reasons why Marvel might not want to introduce this character (comparisons to Batman, New York is already kinda crowded), but I think there are a lot of interesting angles you could take with the character. He's an out-and-out LUNATIC (c what I did there?) rather than just a functioning psychopath like Punisher or Wilson Fisk, so you could say a lot about vigilantism through his illness and his personality disorder. The way he deals with the guilt from his former life/lives could also mirror Luke Cage's, while playing off of Daredevil's guilt over his (Murdock's) current life. He could also be a foil for Frank Castle's relationship to his own past, as Castle is seeking vengeance for wrongs done to him while Moon Knight is seeking vengeance for wrongs done to others because of the wrongs he himself committed, and is bound to the moon god Khunshu because of them. Even being an Egyptian god-powered insane revenge machine, he's STILL less likely to commit cold-blooded murder than Punisher, which says a lot about Frank Castle. Still being willing to kill, however, he's like a moral balancing act between Daredevil and Punisher... almost like the way an eclipse shadows the Earth from the sun, but does not create total darkness. I JUST PITCHED YOU A MOON KNIGHT SERIES MARVEL YOU ARE WELCOME.

My mom's favorite movie would probably be Laura, a downright classic film noir that I love, starring the tragically luminescent Gene Tierney, the just-the-right-balance-of-masculine-and-naive Dana Andrews, and the epitome of devious intellectual (read: gay) Clifton Webb. AND VINCENT PRINCE in a supporting role. This is a movie that takes the Femme Fatale trope and inverts it and least one-and-a-half times. Did I mention I love this movie? I don't think my father would ever admit it, but one of his favorite movies is Top Gun. We had that on VHS when I was a kid and he would always jump at the chance to watch it if I wanted to, with my mother rolling her eyes in the background. I'm sure an ever-so-slight (read: HUGE) part of my dad's and my own attraction to this movie is that my dad is a very handsome, 5'6", Navy pilot with dark hair and, when he was flying, also had an affinity for aviator sunglasses. In his Navy days, he even had a similar build to Tom Cruise. So yeah, Top Gun is imprinted in my brain. Funny that Cam Bert mentioned Monty Python and the Holy Grail, because both of my parents love that movie as well AND showed it to me when I was very young. I think part of it is that my dad is very Catholic while my mom... manages to not rage at the Catholic church's stance on birth control if she only has to go to mass for holidays and weddings, so I think they both wanted to show me that there are different ways of looking at religion. And shit, I still love that movie as well. Blessed are the cheesemakers. God damn, my parents introduced me to the above films, as well as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. My parents are... really cool?

Not a trailer but REAL LIFE that should be a movie....

As a Big ol' Linguistics Nerd, I love this post. Also, my manager/dear friend might be moving to Japan so she and I have been having this EXACT SAME DISCUSSION about the use of suffixes in Japanese and how there really no analog in English. Nicely done.

"Babes" "I beg your pardon?" "The correct term is 'Garbage Pail Babes,' sir."

Well, I was just made aware of this documentary existing, so if anyone REALLY LOVES THESE GARBAGE KIDS, you can get the inside scoop!

That's basically what I mean. Gigi and her family are cash poor so Gigi needs to marry to make them solvent. In order to marry, she has to make herself appear both as presentable and desirable as possible. This definitely has the appearance of wealth attached to it, as well as the respectability of being part of the Old Aristocracy. The sort of class conflict, at least in my head, comes into play because both sides (Gaston and Gigi) know they are each playing each other, and each side knows the other side knows the game is being played. When there is so much dishonesty and adversarial gamesmanship going on in a courtship, no fucking wonder every marriage is basically a torrent of infidelity and distrust. They start on a stack of lies and die on a stack of affairs.

You succeeded! I mean, this movie won 9 fucking Oscars. It defintely says something about the culture in which it was made and how that culture viewed the society it depicts. (Middle aged men marrying teenage girls! LOL! Family Entertainment Spectacular!)

I did see it as more of an Old Money vs. New Money type of conflict. Gigi's family maybe was part of the old aristocracy, raised to believe in their own superior status, but now have no actual money to spend and have to rely on their traditional status. That's why they put so much stock in manners and etiquette and why they center their plot to land Gigi a husband around "educating" her on social niceties. Gaston, being the product of New Money (being a sugar magnate) is rich as hell, and frequently sings about being bored with the minutia of social performance.

Another thing that really bothered me about the movie is the way the ADR and lip-syncing was done. I know it's a musical and I know this was the way a lot of movies were done at the time, but it seemed like every damn line was ADR'd, spoken or sung. This is fine, but it was SO clumsily done, it was as if entirely different performances were driving the on-set scenes and the spoken dialogue. Again, I know a lot of the performers were French and having to perform in English, my issue is to how poorly the dialogue was synchronized with the visuals. Just very distracting.

This gets at something I did actually like about the film. That is, the movie allows it's characters to say two-faced, hypocritical bullshit and lies and trust that the audience will know the speaker is full of shit. In this case, Gaston is packed to his starched collar full of shit. Of course Gigi's apartment is gorgeous, especially for early 19th Century Paris, but Gaston is so out-of-touch, so in his own ivory tower, and so determined to look at others with disdain, that he's willing to let himself belief Gigi lives in squalor. Sure, maybe her family is cash-poor compared to his tycoon-level wealth, but actual poor, they are not. It's kind of like someone shitting on his girlfriend's Mercedes S-class just because he drives around in a Rolls Royce. What a turd.

If I really went out of my way to defend the... social philosophy of that song, it could be contained in the line, "without [Little Girls], what would little boys do?" Because little boys are the fucking worst so they need women to distract them and prevent them from being assholes 100% of the time. But even that is reaching. And saying that women's role in society is to regulate male bad behavior. ick. It also says that, even well into adulthood, years in physical time ahead of Gigi, Gaston is still a fucking child. Which is true.

As far as age inappropriate movies go, I watched Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies since I was old enough to sit up and watch something, and those movies feature Aunts and Uncles set afire, limb dismemberment, melting Nazis, and egregious disrespect of cultural artifacts. I was just the kind of kid who was comfortable watching anything at home. In the theaters, though, my parents were really reticent. I remember asking my parents OVER AND OVER again to take me to see Robin Hood Men in Tights in theaters (I would have been nine) even though I had seen Spaceballs at home plenty of times. I know Spaceballs is PG and Men in Tights is PG-13, which is why I think the rating system is so flawed. If a kid can laugh and be comfortable with one Mel Brooks movie, is another inappropriate? That's silly. I can't remember the first R movie I saw in theaters, but I also remember my parents grumbling whenever I wanted to see one.... but then again, I watched Top Gun about as early as Star Wars and there is that big ol' love scene in that one, so I guess it got grandfathered in to my viewing purview since my Dad, being a Navy pilot, loved the shit out of it and would just play it in the background. I already exposed and thus contaminated, There was no going back. And hell, the same thing happened with Conan the Barbarian and Monty Python's Life of Brian, as I'm sure my parents thought they were over my head. The point is, viewing is inconsistent and parenting is hard, so who the fuck cares? It's just a movie. Scare you kids with a good movie and they'll fall in love with movies and they will be better people for it.

FROM THE DIRECTOR OF CON AIR, Antonio Banderas chewing scenery, terrible puns, and the amazing Olga Kurylenko continuing to be misused/wasted by Hollywood:

Well.... I agree with everything you said.

Yeah.... I don't quite know what to make of this. I think if you really wanted to make the same impact as the original Death Wish, it might take having your lead be someone like Idris Elba or Denzel Washington (African American male of the appropriate age, fame, handsomeness, and gravitas), then the film begins with the character's famiy being shot by (dirty?) cops. You can extrapolate where the film would go from there, but it would certainly have more resonance than this version of Die Hard 7 Harder Dying Bruce Willis killing random scary-looking criminals then quipping. You'd probably never get that film financed but I think it would be an interesting twist on the Frank Castle masturbatory fantasy (or inspiration for the character) that is the Death Wish franchise.

Was this a movie produced and written by Don Dimello?

To be honest, this thread and your "This Week in Feminism" are examples of why the HDTGM boards are so fantastic. We can all have an enlightening, constructive discussion on topics like feminism and representation in media AND joke about them! ON THE INTERNET! Holy shit, what a concept. It's pretty great. This place follows my most considered, closely held philosophical precept.... As for my feelings on Cameron Esposito and Andrea Savage on the same HDTGM: YES PLEASE!

My thought's exactly!

If any movie could use some direct-to-camera expositional talk-singing, I think it's The Lure. I think I would have enjoyed Golden and Silver telling us how delicious the man-flesh they just ate was. Plus it would clarify their body count for us!

But about Hard Ticket to Hawaii and the women in it... I could not help but genuinely enjoying the friendship between the two women. I think part of it was all the Bond conversation, which I admit I am a sucker for. My Bond fandom does not reach the intellectual potency of a Matt Gourley or the technical specificity of a Matt Mira, but I do my best. Plus, My Best Friend in the Universe is as much of a Bond fan as I am, and the fawning-over-Bond conversations I've had with her are reminiscent of the way the Bond fan (was it Taryn?) talks about Bond here. Maybe in jest, sure, but that immediately made me a fan of her so I was on board with whatever kind of shenanigans they would get into, as long as their banter and friendship remained. I know it's a totally subjective characteristic to get attached to, but it is an ACTUAL CHARACTERISTIC on a character that might otherwise have had none. She had jokes and was allowed to be funny! It made the movie worth watching (other than the rocket launcher to the blow-up doll)

WARNING: CISGENDER WHITE MALE OPINIONS ON FEMINISM AHEAD! The Bechdel Test being the most prominent measure for feminism in media and art (or at least movies) is problematic at best. Sure, it is one useful tool to measure how women are being represented, but it definitely does not tell the whole picture (as other, more intelligent people on this board have already pointed out). It would be like going to a doctor for a physical and getting your blood pressure measured, then the doctor clapping his hands together and saying, "Well, that's all you need to know! My work is done here!" If Hard Ticket to Hawaii passes the Bechdel Test, it is only a function of the film attempting to achieve a Maximum Tits-Per-Minute ratio, thereby necessitating making its leads a pair of, I believe the academic term is, "Chesty Broads." If, say, a romance film doesn't pass the Bechdel test... well, that's probably because a romance film is about relationships so EVERY conversation is going to be about the object of that character's affection. Obviously, a well-rounded character will have more things to talk about than the object of his or her desire. The Bechdel test is definitely useful when, if it were applied to men (do men have conversations with each other that aren't about women?), and it passes muster in that context but fails when traditionally applied, then we have a fucking problem, no matter the genre of movie, action schlock or romance. When applied to something like Fun Home, the work Allison Bechdel herself is most known for... it doesn't really pass. Fun Home is about her childhood and her relationship with her father, how dominating her father was in that ironically named childhood home hers. So of course it doesn't pass the Bechdel Test because her first 18-or-so years were so dominated by her father, so any narrative about that period in her life would be consequently dominated by her father. Even her relationships with other women are shadowed by her father's disapproval of her lifestyle. But if I were to say that Fun Home doesn't have an assured, original feminist voice, I would be FULL OF SHIT. And Hell, Bechdel herself credits a friend of hers with coming up with the test, and she got the idea from an essay by Virginia Wolf. Soooo.... I guess I'm asking America to take a more nuanced and sincere look at the way women are represented in the media, even beyond one simple test? Not a tall order, right dudes and dames?