joshg

I assumed those were from a self-timer. It's already established that journalists are expert hackers, so to show they are also gifted at self-portrait photography isn't too much of a stretch.

I'm feeling an old-man, get-off-my-lawn rant coming on...so apologies, disclaimers, and thanks-for-indulging me in advance. But...I really lost my patience with this episode. I suppose it's fun to rank our favorite things. The premise of this podcast is based on a ranking. But then, do we have to obsess about ranking within that ranking? Which movies could be pushed out, which should be pushed in, your ranking of an arbitrarily 25 movies selected from someone else's equally arbitrary top 100 list, how it compares with my top 25... Is anyone else just a little tired of all the constant ranking? Not from this podcast per se, but in general. I feel like it has become magnified through the internet, like so many things. If there is a new Coen Brothers movie review, people will comment on the review by ranking every Coen Bros. movie. Every time a new Bond, Star Wars, Pixar or Marvel movie comes out there has to be a new click-bait list so we know where the new one falls within the existing pantheon. There are entire Youtube channels like WatchMojo that just publish Top 10 lists. Buzzfeed is all about Top 10 lists. People have such short attention spans that they can't read a full analysis, but they can quickly skim through a ranking. They're short and provide a distilled opinion that can be easily digested and then argued about online. Every Youtube video of a cover song or anything else that exists in multiple versions is immediately deemed superior or inferior to an alternate version. It's all harmless fun, fine. But personally I've hit my threshold with all this constant comparison. It's just gotten old for me. There's a Top 100 list...can't we just watch these films, enjoy them, argue about them, and appreciate them on their own terms? Nothing can just be. Obviously this podcast does go deeper, to discuss historical context, themes, significance, etc. It's just a little dispiriting that the conversation will inevitably lead to assigning a number, as if that was ultimate point. And comparing Duck Soup to Titanic to The Sixth Sense is apples and oranges, anyway. Thus endeth the mini-rant.

And just in time for the 200th episode, we FINALLY answered the question How Did This Get Made?!

I would love it if this movie was the result of a long-gestating attempt to make a live-action movie version of the Mego action figures. Sorta like how it took over two decades to adapt G.I. Joe into a theatrical release. But with years of script edits and studio interference, the team of scuba diver, Aussie marine (is that what he said?), karate expert, etc. was whittled down to "demoted Detroit cop with superhuman physical abilities" and the only thing that remained was the title.

It's really true that June doesn't remember the movies she's watched. This was the 3rd Vanity movie (after Last Dragon and Never Too Young To Die) they've covered with her, not the 2nd.

Did anyone else recognize Dellaplane's mansion as "Stately Wayne Manor" from the '66 Batman TV show?? Digging a little online, it is quite the celebrity home (the home itself, not because celebrities live there). In addition to Action Jackson and Batman, it has been featured in Dead Again, Rush Hour, Bowfinger, Scary Movie 2, The X Files, and Stand By Me. http://www.iamnotastalker.com/2010/04/06/wayne-manor-from-the-batman-television-series/ Apparently Paul McCartney bought the property in 2005. Here's the Zillow report. Anyone looking to drop $9 mil on a 10-bedroom? https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/380-S-San-Rafael-Ave-Pasadena-CA-91105/20858675_zpid/

If this movie had any balls, it would have been Mr. Scarlet in the skiff with the gun.

Also, when Rick's mom meets Faye, they are clearly holding hands. The mom is willfully ignoring this, looking only at Rick's face after walking right up to both of them. When they are introduced, she is surprised to meet her son's teacher but not because they were just canoodling. When also considering the trailer park scene, there seems to be a running theme here...

Here's the thing about that speech. It wasn't that Rick wasn't being serious or really didn't have anything to say. That entire speech was just a build-up to making a joke about decomposing composers! The classmate's question was exactly the point: there was no way that the archaeologists would actually know about the occupation of an ancient tribal corpse (and a "true story from central Florida"...come on!). The archaeologist's name was "R.F.Goodrich", as in B.F.Goodrich tires. It's not just that he was making an offhand wisecrack, or that his speech wasn't serious enough. The entire story was BULLSHIT. In the immediately preceding scene he says "honesty is all I know". Obviously we're meant to take him as a bullshitter, which is reinforced in the classroom scene (and sets up a character arc that is never paid off). Which makes it even crazier that he had a visual presentation to go with it. He took the trouble of making a collage and brought in those artifacts just to make the joke even more elaborate. I took a speech class in college, and like the audience members said, the only point of the class is speaking well. However, it's not just about dumping some information on your audience. You're supposed to persuade; state a hypothesis or opinion, and then back it up with arguments. The speech that Rick made wasn't really a rhetorical speech, especially compared with the exemplars pictured behind him (FDR and MLK). This was just regurgitating information from an encyclopedia. And the poster is something that would have been more appropriate for social studies class, where the class is more concerned about the actual content.

Were they? I thought one of the guests was just quoting the lyric, just to underscore the husband's loving relationship with his bike.

Don't forget middle-age man's existential fear of emasculation. Is it purely because the crew had access to a space station that they spent the entire opening credits filming our third-billed main character riding a recumbent bike past a recumbent rocket? No, clearly this deeply layered work of cinema wants to say something early on about male fears concerning non-vertical phallic objects. The husband, after all, is the beta-male, the scientist who does the indoors work so the astronauts can launch their rocket into space and claim the glory. The main competition for his wife's affection? A virile young man literally named ROCKET who dons a space suit at work. Not to mention Lesley Ann Warren's reaction when she reaches into his pants; we're obviously meant to think that this rocket is superior to what she's got to work with at home.

I find the Gus Van Sant remake to be even more pointless because Psycho was remade in 1980 by Brian De Palma - it's called Dressed to Kill. I know most people say Dressed to Kill references Psycho, or that De Palma is generally influenced by Hitchcock, but I'm convinced that this is actually a variation of the same movie. Basically, it's a successful version of the experiment that Van Sant failed at. Consider the similarities (spoilers for a 38-year old movie): each character has a parallel version. Michael Caine=Norman Bates. Angie Dickinson=Marion Crane. Nancy Allen=Vera Miles. Guy from Back to School and Christine=Sam Loomis/Arbogast. The first act focuses on a red herring that resulted from an affair (in Psycho it's the stolen money, in Dressed to Kill it's the results of a venereal disease test). The "main character" is killed after 30 minutes in an enclosed space by a transvestite (1960:shower::1980:elevator). Although Angie Dickenson also dreams of getting murdered in the shower. In the middle of the film there is a misdirect scene that convinces you that the murderer and the main suspect are two different people. In Psycho, it's the overhead shot of Norman carrying his mother down the stairs. In DTK, it's Michael Caine listening to the message on his voicemail left by the killer. I'm sure there are other comparisons, but that's what I remember from just one viewing a while ago.

I love when directors don't just do a cameo for the sake of doing a cameo, but decide that they are going to play the most sadistic fuck in their own movie. The other classic example is Roman Polanski in Chinatown, who slices Jack Nicholson's nose. And not exactly sadistic, but it's disturbing when Spike Lee himself (as Mookie) throws the trash can through the window that sets off the riot in Do The Right Thing.

To try to dissect your argument, I'm reading two complaints: an unsympathetic protagonist, and a narrative that doesn't serve him a just fate. People might have different views about how "unsympathetic" Bickle is. He is definitely a pathetic/tragic/unlikeable figure, but as to whether we can relate to his mindset at all (as the Uber driver could) depends on whether we detest/criticize society even more than we detest/criticize the protagonist. Are we like Bickle, looking out from behind glass, throwing spitballs at the world from a distant remove, or are we an active part of that dirty, pornographic, politically phony society? The first complaint is answered by not how much we like Bickle, but how interesting we find him. Raskolnikoff, Macbeth, Holden Caulfield, were all S.O.B.s. None of us would want to hang out with any of them, but we are fascinated by them. Patrick Bateman from "American Psycho" is kind of an 80's Travis Bickle. He is also completely absolved at the end, which is a critique of 80s Reaganism as much as Taxi Driver was a critique of its own era. So the "happy ending" is really anything but. I wanted to respond to this because I actually felt the same way about Raging Bull upon first viewing. I did not give a shit about Jake LaMotta, and didn't care for the film as a result. I must have seen something relatable, if not sympathetic, about Bickle that I couldn't about LaMotta.

Still haven't seen The Exorcist. And still haven't seen Rocky. But that's a whole different discussion from the other different discussion we're not having.

This film was featured on Red Letter Media's first episode of "Best of the Worst". They read that description from the VHS box, and also pointed out the misleading press quote from the L.A. Times: "...explosions, one-against-a-hundred-bazooka battles, and chases..." Misleading for a couple reasons. First, what bazooka battles? This would imply that there are at least 101 bazookas. Second, have a look at the original review for comparison. The full context of that line is: "You want James Bond? You want high-tech teens? You want gymnastics? You want drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll? You want car chases and chopper wrecks? You want vanity in a bikini? (And out of it?) You want explosions, one-against-a-hundred bazooka battles, and chases in the sewers? Hang on a while. If it moves, and it's sleazy or violent, producer-writer Steven Paul's team will try to grab it." So it's not "chases"...it's "chases in the sewers"...if that's the kind of crap you're into. You have to admit, the marketing team who designed that VHS cover has cojones. They took a review that called the film "aggressively bad" and pulled a quote to make it sound complimentary. Here's the VHS box: https://www.blogto.com/events/video-vengeance-10-never-too-young-to-die-1986-free-vhs-screening/ And here's the original review: http://articles.latimes.com/1986-06-17/entertainment/ca-11719_1_producer-steven-paul

In case you haven't seen it yet: Laura. I can only assume it's somewhere on the AFI List. Speaking of soundtracks, it has a great one. The theme song ("Laura") has become a jazz standard. Gene Tierney was arguably the most beautiful Hollywood star of the decade. It casts a spell, and there are definite thematic overlaps with both DI and All About Eve. The Big Sleep is also classic, especially if you're into movies with inscrutable plots.

Are you suggesting that this movie isn't as good as Mission: Impossible?

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they were going for something "edgy" by subverting our expectation with the bug. But come on, man...that's one of the reliable pleasures of this genre. When Chekhov's aka Q's gadget is introduced in the first act, we expect it to be put to satisfying use in the second or third act. It's like the money shot of spy movies. The idea of having the gadget blow up in the hero's face, literally or metaphorically, would have been a funny idea in a spoof like Johnny English or Austin Powers, a la Wile. E. Coyote (I don't think they ever tried it, though...). Unfortunately this movie isn't satirical enough for that.

As a lifelong Lynda Carter fan, I'm indebted to this board for bringing this to my attention: The KISS sequence starts at 2:32, but the whole thing is worth a watch. I'm fascinated to know how the dress made it from her closet to his. And did anyone else wear it between 1980 and 1986, in any context whatsoever?

Paul alluded to this, but I can't get over how bonkers the chewing-gum bug was. 1. You can't actually chew the gum with the bug inside it; it's just a thin circle of gum wrapped around a metal device. Even if you could, the way you'd be contorting your mouth to chew around the metal would look so awkward that it would defeat the whole purpose of surreptitiously disguising the device. You're going to be nearly as obvious when you try to extricate the bug from the gum. You're way better off just popping a regular piece of gum and then slipping the bug from your pocket into the chewed-up wad when no one is looking. 2. Since Cliff was just a normal college student, why did the bug have to be disguised in the first place? Designing bazookas, etc. is crazy, but you could say that Cliff was a pyro. Those weapons were out in the open for all to see (and apparently...not suspend him for?) Disguising a listening device is specific to spy gadgetry, a la James Bond. What did Cliff plan to eavesdrop on, so crucially that he'd go through the trouble of disguising it as a piece of gum? If I found out that my roommate planned to eavesdrop on people for fun, I'm not so sure I'd trust him. 3. I hate the wording Cliff uses, "Chew it up." GROSS.

Sacrilege!

Doesn’t someone kill a dog?

Good question. As we learned from Mission Impossible, it's only a 16th note, and the direction is poco allargando, not molto allargando (slow down a little bit, not a lot). So it's at least indulgent, if not against the composer's wishes, to hold that note forever. Then again, the effect is thrilling, and it's one of the most famous and indulgent moments in opera, so if you got, flaunt it...(maybe purists would disagree). An important point about the compilation that some people might not realize is that there are three categories going on here: 1. Trained opera singers who are performing in a concert hall (although we might be hearing a different audio mix as it was recorded, the live audience heard this without amplification) 2. Pop singers who are amplified because it's not an acoustical hall but also because their voices would never carry over an orchestra anyway 3. Trained opera singers who are amplified because they are singing in a huge amphitheater (like the Three Tenors at the end of the video, or Pavarotti in the Boston hatch shell) Because a lot of people don't make it to an actual opera, they take for granted that everything we see on TV is miked and remixed and amplified. But "opera is hard" because what separates opera from musical theater is that your voice needs to carry naturally.

The movie takes pains to make the connection that Giorgio loses his voice because of what happened at the Met. Never mind that this is apparently the first time he ever lost his voice. Apparently he never lost his voice during or since the actual Met incident, but only after his agent receives a phone call seven years later. After he loses his voice the first time, lady doctor "cures" him, and he's back in top form. The Met isn't mentioned again. Then why does he lose his voice again in San Francisco? Could it be that he loses he voice only when the movie needs to conveniently reunite him with lady doctor?