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joshg

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Posts posted by joshg


  1. 22 minutes ago, Omaxem said:

     

    - The Taotei life cycle is very insect like. Ants, wasps, bees and termites all have social hierarchies, and each has a different body type ( maybe the ones around the Queen were drones ). Cicadas have a very long larval development stage, as a reproductive strategy to minimize the number of predators that they face when they eventually emerge. The Taotei life cycle seems to be 60 years, which would definitely make it longer than the average human life expectancy in the middle ages. Unfortunately for them, humans have developed the concept of time, so they knew when they were coming. Guys, maybe the Taotei were REAL, and Matt Damon helped make them extinct.

     

     

    The Taotei reproduce upon being fed by their own offspring. From a certain point of view, they are basically inseminated by their own kids.

    Is that insect-like? Is there any example of a living creature that is that incestuous, fictional or otherwise?

    • Like 3

  2. Another loose Star Wars connection:

    In the penultimate episode of the 2nd season of Felicity (a.k.a. the best show of all time), written by J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves, Felicity and Ben watch The Gold Rush.  Ben had previously stood Felicity up, so he makes amends by finding the movie (and, one assumes, a projector). They set it up on their rooftop and watch the film (at least until after the dinner roll scene) and make out and it's all so beautiful you just want to die.

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    Felicity.jpg.b9836e0d02e8307053532c6a484d7924.jpg

    felicity_rooftop_kiss.gif

     

     

    • Like 1

  3. 15 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

    Hold on to your butts because here's my theory, this whole movie is a lie and it is all an elaborate ruse orchestrated by his family to trick him into an arranged marriage!

    Let's look at the facts. First, his grandfather shows up immediately after the parents go missing. How'd he know if he'd been out of contact with the family? Then he takes Pistachio under his tutelage and gives him the family book. Their family is an ancient Italian family and their guide book is written all in English. Now his family has some American ties true but at the time this book was supposedly written America wasn't a thing and they would have written it in Italian. Also the book is oddly specific to everything his grandfather said and exactly what's going on. You can say it's just a coincidence or everything is following a script concocted by his father and grandfather. Why was Jennifer hired as his assistant? They interviewed many more qualified people who literally not given a chance. Then she magically happens to show up that moment and gets the job despite not knowing anything about it. If though they both object to her they hire her. They even start laying the seeds in about not falling in love with a big old wink.

    Why would they do all this? Simple, they need an heir! Pistachio is the last in the long line of this great family and is clearly a little soft in the head. His parents are aware of this, and realize that this man child is never going to attract a stable girlfriend so the family line will die with him. James Brolin contacts his father and they work out this plan. They find a willing woman, Jennifer, and either manipulate her or pay her a large sum to marry their son. However, they realize that with his obsession with large posteriors  he'd never willingly go after Jennifer. It's at this point they start working on a way to get him to fall for her. This is where letting him in on the family secret with the book that basically forces him to fall in love with her comes into play. Think about it. Why else was the mystery so simple to solve? They had it all worked out that even he could solve it and he couldn't even do that! She has to tell Pistachio what to do at all times. When all is done their son is a little bit more mature and now they can have a future heir. If that fails she already has a son to past done the Disguisy name down on to. Also why would a young boy befriend a man with a dog in a day and age in which stranger danger is taught all the time? He was in on it too. I bet he wasn't even that clumsy.

    DwW_qptWsAACbm5.jpg.a656881e5c95036a489404095c05a277.jpg

    • Like 1

  4. 36 minutes ago, starri said:

    This was the first movie that I've watched for this show that I legitimately found painful to sit through.

    I was at the theater that night.  I'm relieved that they cut some of the more obnoxious stuff from the audience out.

    Yes, I was at a Boston show for an episode that hasn't dropped yet. If other audiences are anything like the audience from that night, then some angel is editing these podcasts to an extent that I hadn't appreciated until now. Is it just me or are audiences more obnoxious these days? It didn't seem so long ago when people would behave respectfully at a show.

    • Like 2

  5. 5 hours ago, TrueBreenius said:

    This movie was at least on the short side which made it relatively painless to watch. I didn't find it funny but there've been plenty of other movies for this podcast that were more of a chore to get through.

    I've been hung up on one particular detail in the film, which I noticed during the film's master of disguise training montage. Pistachio is seen reading "The Master of Disguise for Dummies." Of course, the For Dummies series is very well-known and widely available, which raises the question of why such a book would exist if being a master of disguise is supposedly a hereditary secret. Presumably, the intention of such a book would be to allow anyone who read it to be able to become a master of disguise, regardless of lineage, and it would mean that the Disguiseys' talent really isn't that special or unique to them, which would undermine the film's premise. In this universe, this book shouldn't exist, and the only justification consistent with the film's plot for such a book existing would be that someone in the Disguisey family made their own "for dummies" book and infringed upon that trademark (oh dear.)

    1340627795_ScreenShot2020-01-17at10_14_37AM.png.1cf0a95b176d3092c374b9f9eabeec3c.png

    Or....this is a meta commentary on the inscrutability of this movie. The book is intended for viewers of Master of Disguise, the film we are watching. This movie happened to us, we are the "dummies". Half the book deals with the Magic vs. Acting? debate, and there is an entire chapter devoted to Bo Derek entitled "James Brolin's Vagina".

    • Like 3

  6. Hi everyone! Paul wondered where the $16 million budget came from.

    Might I suggest the soundtrack? 

    Consider these songs:

    Walking on Sunshine; Papa Don't Preach; Whip It; Eye of the Tiger; Conga (Miami Sound Machine); U Can't Touch This (M.C. Hammer); Happy Face (Destiny's Child); and the themes from Jaws and Chariots of Fire, just to name a few.

    This is the soundtrack to a major blockbuster film, not this movie. Perhaps the director said to the music director, "use a song like this" (names the most obvious placeholder song he can think of)....and then they were too lazy to find a cheaper version, so they just used those exact songs.

     

    • Like 2

  7. 18 minutes ago, gigi-tastic said:

    I want to know what makes the strings instruments so special. Do they do wind instruments and dance competitions as well? Like just a bunch of competitions with each musical instrument section giving away millions in cash and scholarships? Because I am *almost* here for that nonsense! I'm dying to see a hand bell performer and a tap dancer take to the stage ! 

    God can you imagine how pissed off other musical students would be to be denied the chance for that money and scholarship?

    It's almost as if the filmmakers retro-fitted a script to give their two leads something to do together.


  8. At the risk of stating the obvious, I just want to point out that "Strings and Dance" competitions are not a thing. Sure, there are dance competitions. But they dance to something called MUSIC, not any one particular instrument.  Why distinguish strings from, say, woodwinds or percussion? Are they judging the playing or are they judging the dancing?  If they're supposed to be judging the overall symbiosis between the two art forms, then who gives a shit what kind of instruments are playing the music? What happens if Group B had the best dancing but Group C had the best violinist? There were 3 judges on that panel.  We would assume that at least one was a dance expert and another was a violin expert. How would they be expected to agree on anything? it's like speaking different languages. There very much do exist string competitions...there are competitions for every instrument.  But the judges are experts on that instrument, and aren't going to be distracted by another discipline which they know nothing about. On America's Got Talent the 4 judges have different backgrounds or areas of expertise, but the point is they are judging based on commercial appeal across the board, not artistic merit as they would do in a conservatory.

    Add to these complications the fact that the three groups were performing completely different styles. In fact, the only thing they had in common was that there was a dancer and a string player.  One had ballet and a back-up orchestra. The other was faux-hip-hop with an urban dance crew. With all those variables (and only three entrants) it's a miracle they picked anyone.

     

    Finally, if Johnny was so against formal classical training, why did he have "sforzando" tattooed on his arm, an Italian term only used in formal classical score-reading?

     

    • Like 5

  9. On 12/8/2019 at 9:48 PM, Cameron H. said:

    I get that the whole city is their campus, but I have to imagine that the community at large must be sick to death of all of these clowns. Everywhere these kids go, they’re trying to one-up the townies. If you live in that neighborhood, you must have to be constantly prepared to be shuffled off to the side so the conservatory kids can cut loose. Thinking of having a fun night at the club? Forget about it. A bunch of calorie deprived ballerinas have just cleared the dance floor to engage in some over-choreographed nonsense. Maybe you want to just go to the neighborhood pub and listen to some live music and watch some traditional dancing instead. Well, fuck you because the Madame Oksana’s contemporary dance class has just pushed the tables together and the nerdy, bad boy violinist with the serial killer smile just stole Angus’ instrument to play Swan Lake remixes. April even threatens one of the ladies dancing “You’re going down!” These people are just trying have a fun night out on the town for fucks sake, and they don’t need your hyper-competitive, rich kid bullshit bringing them down!

    I take it you're not looking forward to the sequel, "High Cs", where a bunch of young opera singers cut loose by crashing neighborhood Karaoke bars?

    • Like 3

  10. On 12/8/2019 at 8:07 PM, grudlian. said:

    I would assume an arts college probably has some classes for younger people. Not necessarily beginners but people with talent/promise/rich parents. I want to say some of my art/music professors in college taught lessons on the side but I can't remember if they used the college itself.

     

    On 12/8/2019 at 7:44 PM, Cam Bert said:

    Also I want to ask one more question, what's the age range?

    It seems on one hand post-secondary because they are going out drinking, but yet they have kids their practicing music. Do those kids have tutors their for their regular schooling? 

    I believe this was a conservatory, modeled after Juilliard, as opposed to a performing arts high school a la Fame.

    Schools like Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, your state university School Music or Dance, etc. are standard 4-year college programs with a Bachelor's degree (they also offer Masters and Doctorates). Almost all of the courses are arts-related (private lessons, group classes, rehearsals, ensemble, theory, music history, ear training, etc.) but you may have to take one humanities per semester. 

    The little Asian kid was probably a pre-college student. Most of these schools offer lessons to students younger than college age to help pay the bills and recruit for their degree programs.  At a prestigious school like Juilliard the pre-college program is widely seen as a foot-in-the-door for acceptance through the highly competitive admissions process.

    • Like 2

  11. On 12/7/2019 at 1:43 PM, gigi-tastic said:

    Did anyone else get upset when the Bad Boys of Violin began dueling with their bows?  I always thought those were fragile! So I googled and apparently BOWS ARE FUCKING EXPENSIVE . At the cheapest you can get one for $50 to under $100 for a fiberglass bow. Carbon fiber is $50- $300. But our Bad Boys look like they have wood bows. That's gonna set you back $50 for a cheap brazilwood into the $1,000s. You can apparently go well over $5,000 for a bow. A violin bow should cost 20-25% of your violin.   Something tells me Bad Boy Violinists don't buy cheap bows.

    https://orchestracentral.com/ufaqs/much-violin-bow-cost/

    Don't forget that jerky violin boi  was borrowing the school's bow. The lender guy literally said, "You break it, you buy it."  You would think that, after he broke his own bow merely by playing Bartok, he would choose to avoid other violent bow-related activities such as, I don't know, whacking someone else's bow in a game of Fiddle Fencing.

    • Like 2

  12. On 12/7/2019 at 6:01 AM, grudlian. said:

    It is definitely not progressive at all. A ton of dance movies are specifically about classical dance clashing with contemporary street dance before ultimately coming together for a dance finale. It's the plot for the original Breakin'.

    It also seems especially weird at a contest put on by a school where dancers are simultaneously listening ballet and contemporary. Wouldn't you expect them to blend styles on occasion?

    It's all very lazy and confusing because there is contemporary dance, and then there is contemporary ballet.  As a ballet dancer, one would assume that "contemporary" in Ruby's case meant she had to learn contemporary ballet, where you're still on pointe but not limited to the classic French moves. So maybe, giving this movie more credit than it deserves, the judges were shocked to see straight-out urban hip-hop style dancing, where the Crew weren't even on pointe.

    • Like 1

  13. Amy marveled at how the audience applauded for 90 seconds when Chaplin received his honorary Oscar. But that clip on Youtube, posted on the Oscars Youtube channel, is highly edited. The ovation in real life lasted TWELVE MINUTES! The longest in Academy history....that is crazy.

    It was great that they got a true Chaplin expert like Dan Kamin; I hope they can bring him back for the remaining films.

    • Like 1

  14. He talks in his later films, including Monsieur Verdoux and Limelight (both good films, though departures from his Little Tramp silent films). I believe Great Dictator was the only time he talked as some variation of the Little Tramp character.


  15. On 2/1/2019 at 12:25 PM, taylorannephoto said:

    So not being Italian, nor Indian, I didn't have a great barometer for what was really just beyond the line of stereotype (obviously I can still see the stink of problematic characterizations from a mile away lol), but as a queer girl I was heavily bothered by the fact that once Luigi meets the one other gay man in this whole movie, who's also just flamboyant af, they immediately fall in love. Because apparently no other gay, bi, or pan men exist in this entire area so Luigi just hears his voice and is like OMG A GAY DUDE and that's it they're both kissing at that wedding in the final scene.

    Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool no doubt no doubt.

    I believe they did the same thing at the end of Sweet Home Alabama. Because apparently being out in Toronto in 2018 is still as much of a novelty as it was in the deep south in 2002.

    • Like 2

  16. 6 hours ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

    I'll say this: if we're looking for movies that explore the African-American experience in America and how white racism and police violence figures into it . . . then Do the Right Thing should be WAY higher on the list than In the Heat of the Night.

    Well that film got notoriously ignored by the Oscars in its year. Moral of the story: bringing the Academy Awards into the discussion is an exercise in frustration.


  17. Paul talked about how this was a perfect "bridge movie" for the Academy Awards, smack in the middle of The Music Man and the subversive Bonnie and Clyde.

    First of all, it wasn't The Music Man, it was Dr. Doolittle (the Music Man was 5 years earlier). But Paul and Amy gave major short shrift to how epic that year's Oscars race was. You guys HAVE to read what must be one of the best books written about Hollywood: "Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood" by Mark Harris. (for what it's worth, Quentin Tarantino calls it "one of the best books I've read in my life", as quoted on Amazon) 

    When I read it I didn't know which film had won for Best Picture, and it was riveting to see how the race played out, and what those five films said about Hollywood and America at the time. Looking back, 1967 was the pivotal moment when Hollywood started to shed the old-fashioned Biblical epics and movie musicals and moving toward socially relevant, auteurist fare.

    So in 1967 you had two revolutionary films, still considered classics, that captured the Vietnam-era American malaise: Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate

    two films starring Sidney Poitier that tackled contemporary issues of race and prejudice, albeit in different ways: In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

    and a film that "old Hollywood" shoved down that Academy's throat, just because they wasted so much money on it and wanted to at least reap some critical self-acclaim even if no one paid to see it in theaters: Dr. Doolittle

    From what I remember of the book - in addition to incredible stories about Stanley Kramer, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, etc. -  was that it was wide open season for Best Picture in 1967. It could have gone to any of those films (except for Dr. Doolittle). It turned out to be a perfect triangulation between the ballsy, forward-looking The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde and - not the musical, but the more audience-friendly depiction of idyllic race relations, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? And so In the Heat of the Night won.

    I don't know which AFI list this is, or how it differs from the list Unspooled is using...but here you've got 3 of the Oscar nominated movies from '67 on the Top 100 list and In the Heat of the Night, the Best Picture winner, ISN'T INCLUDED. 

    https://www.afi.com/100years/movies.aspx

    I don't know if Guess Who's Coming? is on Paul and Amy's list. I'm assuming The Graduate is.  But with 3 or 4 Oscar-nominated films,  1967 might be the winningest year for movies on the list, at least tied with 1939.

    • Like 2

  18. A couple personal stories to add, in keeping with the theme of Schindler's List as an entry point into not only the Holocaust for the uninitiated, but also Jewishness. The first two stories tangentially have to do with me liking nice non-Jewish girls in college in the nineties.

    Undergrad: I asked a girl to join me to hear Elie Wiesel (author, Nobel peace prize winner, Holocaust survivor) speak on campus.  He gave a profound talk on the nature of evil and how to confront it. After the talk, students lined up to ask questions. My female friend got in line, but once someone else stepped up to the mike and asked "What did you think of Schindler's List?" she sat down.  "That was going to be my question," she said.

    Grad school: I asked a freshman girl out, who I didn't realize was Mormon.  She somewhat naively didn't realize I was Jewish, despite certain facial features and my last (and first) name. Once I explained that I was Jewish, literally her first reaction was to ask, "What did you think of Schindler'sList?"

    As for context in which to watch this movie, it probably wasn't the best timing when I returned back to the dorm after seeing it for a second time in theaters, this time with several non-Jewish friends who were shocked to their core.  SNL was playing in the student lounge, and it happened to be this skit with Heather Locklear as host, during this exact moment:

     

     

    Needless to say, I wasn't in the mood to find it quite funny at the time.  I've since come around and can appreciate it within the context of an absurd SNL skit...but in 2018 it sadly doesn't feel quite so much like a comedy bit any more.

     

     

    • Like 1

  19. 16 hours ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

    2. The audience for this film is not just Jewish people. If Amy's statistic about Holocaust denial is to be believed, then it seems another important task for this film is to get people who might have doubted the existence of the Holocaust to believe it. Schindler is a non-Jew who is led down the path to full understanding of how terrible his government's treatment of Jews really was. The movie is leading its modern audience down the same path. This is part of what makes it effective as drama.

     I've got more thoughts (boy, this movie was way more emotionally effective than I expected it to be on this rewatch), but will need to return later.

    I don't think that is a realistic "task" of this film. A film can't convince you of a historical event if it doesn't fully describe what that event is. The film can add detail, realism, empathy, and insight to our understanding of the event. But I'm not sure that Schindler's List conveys the essential, stipulated facts about the Holocaust to the novice or skeptic. Without any context, one might think that the Holocaust was a series of random violent acts and perhaps a concentration camp here or there. Only when I visited these camp sites did I fully realize how  this was a state-sponsored death industry, as efficient as steel or automotive factories.  By the same token, "Twelve Years a Slave" is not the ultimate "slavery story" that can be appreciated without knowing about America's history of endemic racism and institutionalized human trafficking.  "Schindler's List" might be treated as the ultimate telling of the Holocaust because of the movie's ambitious scope and pedigree, but it is still just one story. 

    This theme of context (the context in which we watch a movie) is brought up in this excellent story from This American Life about "Schindler's List". I highly, highly recommend it.

    https://www.thisamericanlife.org/644/random-acts-of-history/act-one-5

    • Like 4

  20. The thing that jumped out at me was why Halle Berry would leave her cell phone in her coat when she went to the bathroom.

    We've already established that she's super devious, able to entrap a senator and catch him on tape. And gain entry into a job as a covert employee with a fake identity. And, as we learn at the end, elaborately frame the wealthiest and most powerful man in the city with a murder that she committed.

    So why is she so dumb as to get her ass drunk on a crucial sting operation and leave her phone in the pocket of her coat at the restaurant table?

    These days, no one ever leaves their cell phone outside of their possession. You go to the bathroom, you take your phone with you. Wasn't that always a thing? Especially if you're trying to frame your boss for murder? 

    • Like 3
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