paultab

Also! "It has no caffeine, no artificial flavors, no calories." "We had something like that in our day, called 'water.'" (not exact quotes) How does Jessie know what caffeine, artificial flavors and calories are?

I thought of that, but didn't say it, because I didn't think about the idea that he might be diabolical enough to wait that long before seeking a new mate. Also, if that is true, then eww, because that would mean that Jessie and Jason were related.

I'll also add that we do NOT, unless I'm mistaken, get to see the rain curse lift itself. Why would we see the modern queen of H-K without seeing H-K's resolution? I think we need a director's cut.... Maybe this is the land of Nanny Nanny Boo Boo-style curses, where it's open play on curses. Like, if someone says "I'm rubber and you're glue," that person becomes rubber, and you become glue. Blake Shelton, confirm/deny, please!

So, I had a long bus ride from NYC to Pittsburgh this weekend and double-featured both Mannequin movies. Because of this, I have many observations. 1. Hollywood is not the only carry-over from Mannequin to On The Move (OTM). At the end of Mannequin, a janitor keenly observes the mannequin's arms becoming Kim Cattrall's arms, and stops the spinning jaws of mannequin death. In OTM, he has been promoted to chief of security. His opening line in OTM: "Andy Ackerman, Chief of Security: I don't miss much." 2. This is definitely supposed to be the same store. In Mannequin, Prince & Co was going under, and was in constant danger of being bought out by Illustra. Unless the arc of their success is such that they were able to go from "nearly bankrupt" to "adding a location" in four years, the presence of Hollywood and Andy both is explained by the fact that it's supposed to be the same store (although I guess it isn't Woolworth's this time -- good correction below by Dad Has ADD. I'd chalk that up to the embezzling/Phila being cheaper. 3. It is then feasible that this store would have a theatre. If you consider that the thing that brought Prince & Co. back from the brink of bankruptcy was the spectacular windows and displays, it could follow that Estelle Getty would then allocate an area of the store for fashion presentations and such. Sell the sizzle. 4. The mother totally met Jessi before she saw the mannequin. When Jason comes into the bedroom, Jessi is watching a tape of dating profiles. "Look," she says, "Your mother gave me all of these people's lives!" This being true, the mother should have been on board from the jump that the mannequin comes to life from time to time -- she met the actual girl [EDIT: I listened to the episode for the second time yesterday, and Scheer totally caught this. I had listened to it in the morning on my way back into NYC, so I was pretty tired.] 5. True love loses before true love wins. Jessie wakes up and sees Jason, and immediately starts calling him "my prince." Fair enough, he looks exactly like Prince William -- but that's (diagetically) only because he's of direct descent from Prince William, because Prince William totally gave up on her and made babies with somebody else. 6. The curse (and therefore the central conflict) makes total sense. "Frozen forever" is revised for pity of Prince William to, "1,000 years or until she meets a true love from another land. Only then can the cursed necklace be removed." I'm not certain why she's able to change the curse on the fly when it's the Count's curse, but Prince William is also able to curse the kingdom of Hauptmann-Koenig to eternal rain, so whatever: This sets the game afoot. Prince William, bent on his lineage and hers mixing, starts bonezoning his way into having descendants overseas in secret. The Count, however, continues his lineage at status quo, with each generation mentoring the next to wait for the 1,000 years benchmark, then remove the necklace and be the one that saves her. The Philadelphia Gambit is to ensure that in the last part of this passage of time, he is both away from the Queen of Hauptmann-Koenig (who is against mixed marriage, so is that an anti-German thing?) with her crown jewels, and out of reach (he thinks) of the lineage of Prince William. Nothing can go wrong! Therefore, when Jason Williamson (William's Son) shows up, he figures out right away that the jig is up. Perhaps the logical ending of this: Jason and Jessie return to Hauptmann-Koenig as heirs to the crown. 7. The necklace is fair game. Once Jason removes the necklace for the first time, the moratorium on necklace-removing is over. That doesn't make the necklace uncharmed -- it just means that anyone can remove or replace it on anyone and the effect is the suspension. Without a curse on top of that, you just have your standard-issue mannequin-making necklace. I'm exhausted. Love the show!

The crab that stayed on her shelf and gave her powers was one of a bucket-full, right? She used the other crabs to make the Crab Napolean. I'm thinking that's the same crab that tried to run away at the beginning of the movie. I'm also thinking that crab had the right idea: RUN AWAY FROM THIS MOVIE.

...unless the knife hits the power cable feeding into the outlet that the TVs are plugged into, inside the wall. That could happen. And now this whole movie makes sense.

Thank you, ChunkStyle for pointing out that D'Angelo Barksdale is the sous chef in this movie. Also, Christopher Durang, who they pointed out was in this movie, was who they kept referring to as Dan Aykroyd. Vanilla Frog Theory: "Frog" is a derogatory term for French people, SMG is cooking French food under the spell of the crab (A Crab Neapolitan for Powder, while Peet asks for "a simple Chicken Paillard.") I can't link it with any logic to Vanilla Sky, because it came out two years later, but maybe someone else has something for the Vanilla?

Frequently, people make the mistake of thinking that "wherefore art thou Romeo" means "where are you Romeo," when it in fact means "why are you Romeo," as in "why is your name Romeo Montague," but this is not that kind of mistake. "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York" is a complete thought ("The winter of our discontent has now been changed into glorious summer by this guy") -- but if you lift "Now is the winter of our discontent" out of that, you have a different thought entirely ("It is, at present time, the winter of our discontent.") I'm splitting hairs -- the screenwriter either knew the context and was making a lyrical pun by removing the latter half, or didn't know the context and was being an idiot -- but without the second half of the sentence, the first part means what it means.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/time-i-opened-tower-records-early-so-prince-could-shop-n560896 This article shows that there are people who do this job! Tower Records used to employ people (namely my friend Crystal) to make larger paintings of album covers! Sure, she was using a machine, but I mean there it is.

My first is coming in August!

Omission: When Steve Guttenberg shows her the track, Valerie Perrine says, "I can't hear the song for the singing," which launches into them getting a different vocalist. But when he's showing her the track, he's also SCATTING OVER IT like a freakin' lunatic -- no lyrics, no melody, just that insane "Ba baaa da da TAAA boom tch tch" that he does when he's songwriting. By the way, as a songwriter with lots of songwriting friends: NOBODY I know composes the way Guttenberg does. Can somebody make a supercut of Steve Guttenberg songwriting? Every time he does it I think about Bob Odenkirk writing marches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW-g3D2uE3w ALSO: I googled "Steve Guttenberg Composing" to see if I could find a video snippet of him doing it, and I found a page of "Steve Guttenberg Facts," which includes this tidbit: "Steve Guttenberg has tried composing music in the past but they always sound too much like pre-existing works. Fearing legal action, he only plays them at small informal social gatherings."

THEY TRIED TO MAKE A MUSICAL.

That reminds me -- have we not touched on the fact that that doll is dressed PRECISELY like the teacher, down to the underwear? How did she KNOW?!? Unless.... Did she invoke the doll then dress it, causing the teacher to pick the matching outfit?

YES. I don't remember them addressing this part, how there's a Tiffany Gibson figure in this movie that gives Luis the lucky jacket off of her back at her concert, where she sings the song from the opening credits. "This is my lucky jacket, I've had it since the first album" was the point where I thought, Nope, that's a yard too far. In a movie where talismans are a thing, taking someone's lucky jacket means that artist loses her entire mojo! If her next album sucks, it is on Luis' head.

Since the internet is probably yelling at you guys right now:

This movie is totally on Netflix.

One thing we haven't addressed, although it gets indirectly addressed during the podcast: Throughout the course of the movie, there are some characters who say BoogaLOW and some that say BoogaLOO, in the same conversation. It's almost like the actors are arguing while the cameras are rolling. (I love this movie.)

I loved the hammerhanded opening, particularly for the use of BIM as a back-and-forth chant that opened up the theme of individuality against the machine: SINGER: B! AUDIENCE: I M! SINGER: B! (Be!) AUDIENCE: I M! (I am!) (also, I loved that Jason noticed that they rhymed good/bad with happiness/tears, because I was CERTAIN they stepped around that rhyme to avoid being too obvious.)

Oh, and one more thing: Don't fables have morals?

Two notes about the music that I don't think I've read yet: "Countdown to Love" was the best part of this movie. Hands down. I found myself thoroughly entertained by that scene. Best possible way to prove you're a good band: whip out those harmonies. Did anybody else think they were having a stroke when "I Can Dream About You" happened? That's a song that makes its first appearance IN THIS MOVIE, with the guys from the band lip syncing to Dan Hartman's performance (why? You have a perfectly good group up there! Get them in the studio and re-do the vocals!) Also, the series of denoument dialogue exchanges involved here required lengthening the song, such that you hear the "moving sidewalks" verse an insane amount of times. Great episode -- I am way too excited for the Apple!

Paul will call you out by name and correct you in a minisode. I have experience in this regard. Just finished watching Streets of Fire, and I streamed the Apple on Prime a month ago (which prompted me to suggest it on the subreddit, which I'm hoping got the movie on the queue). Both of these movies are MUST. SEE. The Apple is exceptionally bananapants -- they're airing Streets first for good reason, because... just see it. The dialogue in Streets is hilarious. Drink every time someone plants a foot verbally ("Lemme get something straight for you" "cut the crap and listen" "I'll tell you how it's gonna be") and you will be well-sauced by the end of the first act.

Re: People Making Cars For People -- I grew up in Michigan in the 80s, so a lot of the scuttlebutt I heard from adults was about (in Michigan) robots replacing humans on the assembly line at the auto plants. Those commercials were targeted towards people that wanted to make sure they were buying a quality product that had the care of human hands (and the conscientiousness factor of ensuring that autoworkers kept their jobs.) It sounds ridiculous out of context, but as opposed to Robots Making Cars For People.... (This was also touched on by Mr. Show early on, in the PitPat sketch: John Ennis' character's great-great-grandfather had a slaving business whose slogan was "People Selling People To People.")

Not sure if this was addressed earlier in the thread but: We've heard about how it can be a bad portent when there's more than two or three production slates at the beginning of a movie (meaning too many funding entities or studios), but did anybody notice that there are NONE on Death Spa? Nobody takes credit -- it just fucking starts.

I have seen Death Spa, and:

Just a quick weigh-in for the renter/purchasers: I was about to rent this on iTunes, when I noticed it was encoded in '02 in Fullscreen format. I hate pan-and-scan, so instead of taking a chance on it, I went to Amazon and rented it there, where I got the full 1:1.85 experience. (people who watch the Fullscreen version might actually enjoy it more, because this movie suffers from chronic static frame, so it probably pans constantly.)