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hornacek

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Posts posted by hornacek

  1. Posted

    "I disagree. As a disabled person I would never be able to get into the building. I struggle with stairs. I have friends with walkers and they couldn't use those steps either. How are we supposed to get inside? This building is not accessible. While the movie takes place before the Americans With Disabilities Act passed"  You shot a hole in your argument right there.  At the time the film was made (and is set), it's before that Act, so this building could get built without having any ramps.  Besides, the evil guy is not talking about disabled access to the building - he's saying the building is unsafe for *everyone*.  So even if you accept that he's basing this argument on lack of ramps, that wouldn't fly.

    "Also given the age of the building I'm going to guess that it was made with asbestos and painted with lead paint. Both things you have to be careful about when remodeling."  Again, at the time this film was mde/set, asbestos or lead paint were not things that building inspectors were demolishing buildings for.

    "Given that the building had sat neglected for years what about water damage or termites?"  How do you know it's been neglected for years?  Based on what we see in the movie, it's been in use by the community for quite awhile.  Nothing is said in the film that this building has only been in use as a community center for a short period of time - in fact, based on what we see, it appears that it's been used for this purpose for years.

  2. Posted

    Regarding the safety of the Miracles building, the only reason the viewer would think it was unsafe is because the evil developer tells the bald inspector that it's unsafe when he's trying to convince him to foreclose on the building.  It's pretty obvious from that conversation that the developer is just making that up because the bald inspector needs a reason to put on the form as to why the building is being foreclosed.  When Ozone is giving Kelly a tour we don't see anything in any of the rooms indicating the building is unsafe - everything looks fine.  June appears to be basing her entire belief that the building is unsafe on the evil developer saying it is, even though he's never been inside of it.

  3. Posted

    Once the film told us that Dylan and Sarah were reincarnations of the 1986 couple, I realized why part of the plot seemed so familiar - because I had seen it already in the (much better) 1991 thriller Dead Again, where Kenneth Branagh is a private eye hired to discover amnesiac Emma Thompson's identity, and eventually learns that they are reincarnations of a couple from the 1940s where one killed the other.

    SPOILER FOR DEAD AGAIN

    So at that point I kept waiting for this film to reveal that the reincarnated souls were gender-swapped and that Dylan was actually the woman in 1986 and Sarah was the guy.  But this film couldn't even get that right.

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    Maybe it was because I watched this on PornHub, but I really thought that Amy (Jim's wife) and Aly (Jim's daughter) were going to hook up in that creepy step-mother/step-daughter way after Jim was killed.  Otherwise why make her a step-daughter at all?

    According to Wikipedia Aly is Amy's daughter and Jim is her step-father, but I got the impression from the film that Aly is Jim's daughter and he married Amy, making Amy the step-mother.  Am I wrong?

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    After Dylan and Leah say good-bye as children, adult Dylan's voiceover says that he never saw Leah again.  But he obviously does, so why say this?  Like Paul suggested during the episode, this made me think the entire film was a Jacob's Ladder scenario, and it was going to be revealed at the end that he died during the car accident and only dreamed that Leah returned as an idealized version of herself:  a doctor that tries to help him, someone that loves him unconditionally, and doesn't have any of the problems his wife has, eventually replacing her.

    • Like 3

  6. Posted

    This film really feels like it was made by someone who watched Twin Peaks and decided "THAT'S what I want to do!"  This film has a lot of David Lynch type of shots right out of Twin Peaks:  unexplainable abilities, an unknown character appearing and disappearing, mirrors shaking, long scenes where nothing happens, scenes dropping us into the middle of a conversation, etc.  That black garbage bag room (inside the stone!) feels like Breen's version of the Black Lodge with strange backgrounds and multiple cuts of characters not moving.

    • Like 2

  9. Posted

    I'm not a boat guy so maybe these aren't mistakes - anyone that knows about boats can correct me.  But ...

    1)  When Tommy is in the boat he pours all the gas into the lake and lights it on fire.  Later he starts the boat motor.  How does the motor start if there is no gas?  The container he dumps into the lake is the gas container for the motor, right?  It's not a spare gas can.

    2)  Once the motor is started, why doesn't the boat move?

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    Maybe it was because I had just watched the movie a month ago, but I got a serious case of deja vu from the endings of Body Rock and Strictly Ballroom. Both movies end with the main character at a musical competition where the villain pulls the plug to turn off the music, but one character in the crowd starts slow clapping and the entire crowd joins in to build up a beat (in Ballroom the main characters continued dancing to this clapping).

     

    Is it possible that Baz Lurhman saw Body Rock in the 80s and was such a fan that he incorporated its ending into his first movie 8 years later?

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    1. This film doesn't take place in 2017. The crawl at the beginning says it's 2017, and then we have the scene where Arnold is on the mission and refuses to kill the rioters. Then we get the "18 months later" title, meaning that the initial scene took place in 2017 and the rest of the movie takes place in 2019. In fact if you look at the movie poster it says "It is the year 2019". So why do they specify 2017 in the opening crawl?

     

    2. After Arnold breaks out of prison, when the rebels ask him to stay and fight with them to overthrow the current political system, he says "I'm not interested in politics". Ironic foreshadowing!

     

    3. As has been mentioned, Paul got the summary of the book wrong. Richards' wife and daughter are killed, but not by Killian or the Stalkers (called Hunters in the book) - it was a random home invasion that happened after he applied but before he got on the show. And Killian was not on the plane at the end - it was Alonso's character and the lead Hunter. Richards is mortally wounded and crashes the plane into the TV studio's headquarters; he is able to see Killian from the cockpit just before the crash and he gives him the finger. Because of the imagery (someone deliberately flying a plane into a building), I think King has said he would not longer publish this story (along with Rage, another Bachman book where the sympathetic protagonist shoots up a school).

     

    4. Wikipedia says that this movie inspired the show American Gladiators, but the future is now. This past year, 2017, CBS aired a reality show called Hunted (based on a British reality show), where pairs of contestants went on the run and had to evade capture from trained professionals for 28 days to win $250,000. No deaths are involved, but it has more in common with The Running Man book instead of the movie.

  12. Posted

    "Do You Love Me" (the song Tanya is dancing to in the movie theater) *is* an old song from 1962, but it was a prominent song in the movie "Dirty Dancing", was included on the 2nd soundtrack, and was a top-20 hit on Billboard's chart in 1988. So even though this is an old song, in the world of Sleepwalkers (in 1992) it is a recent song for young people who LOVED Dirty Dancing and all its music.

    • Like 5

  13. Posted

    A couple of notes:

     

    1) Everyone on the episode seemed to think that when Jason dove into the river after the truck crash he was trying to save a mannequin. But this is not the case. He sees the three Germans hanging out of the truck when it starts to fall off the bridge, and then sees the mannequin fall in. But he thinks it is a woman - he says "I'll save you!" He doesn't realize she's a mannequin until he finds her at the bottom of the river. When he brings her out of the water he says "I could have sworn she was real! She's a ... mannequin!" So he wasn't trying to save a mannequin, he literally thought an alive human woman fell out of the truck.

     

    2) June mentioned the three guys that go into the nightclub all hunched over. When the bouncer lets them in he calls them "the crab dudes". I don't know why they would have to hunch over to be like a crab, but they do shuffle a bit when they walk. Was this a fad in the late 80s/early 90s, to go to nightclubs walking like crabs?

  14. Posted

    On the podcast there seemed to be some confusion about why Tom was acting so weird towards Amanda after he found out that she was a "witch". I thought the film clearly stated that Tom wasn't sure if he was attracted to Amanda because he actually liked her, or because she had used her magic to make him like her. As shown early in the film with his Powerpoint presentation, he is a man who wants to be in control of everything, especially relationships. But now he has feelings for a woman and he doesn't know if those feelings are true or only created by her. Would he feel this strongly about her if she hadn't used magic on him?

     

    This is similar to Teen Witch where Louise wants to use her magic on Brad to make him love her, but then she's not sure if he would love her because of her magic, or if he really felt that way. Except in this film, we see this problem from the other person's perspective.

  15. Posted

    What happened to the plot point of Amanda's restaurant going under? It is established early in the movie that she and her aunt are going to lose the restaurant because the rent has been increased to $3000 (?). First, do they ever check with anyone to see if the landlord is legally allowed to do this?

     

    But assuming it's above-board, is the restaurant saved? Business does improve, but is the increase in customers enough to pay that high a rent? No one ever says if the restaurant is still going to be sold or not. I expected the film to have Tom buy the restaurant for Amanda, or maybe combine it with the one in the store.

     

    And then Amanda agrees to be the chef at Tom's restaurant. Is this a one-time thing or does Dylan Baker assume he's hiring Amanda as the new permanent chef? Why would he hire someone he thinks is a great chef just for one night, and then try to find a new chef (or get the French chef back)? Amanda leaves a sign at her restaurant that says it's closed for one night only, so she thinks this is just a one-time thing. What happens when the opening night crowd tell everyone about this great restaurant with the magical food, and when they show up it's some other chef cooking? Assuming Amanda goes back to her own restaurant, isn't Tom's restaurant now doomed to failure?

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    On the podcast they say that not-Dan Akroyd never reappears again during the movie after the scene at the market. Maybe they mentioned that he was the cabbie that drove Tom and Amanda Peet to Amanda's restaurant, but they totally missed the last scene of the movie, where the two of them are dancing and the screen zooms into a circle, and before it disappears the circle is only showing the conductor of the band, who turns to the camera - it is Not-Dan Akroyd.

     

    This goes back to a previous post about scenes where the magic crab moves his claws as if he is "conducting" Amanda and Tom, like in the scene where they levitate. Not-Dan Akroyd/the magic crab is a musical conductor, conducting the musical instruments of Amanda's and Tom's lives, in order to bring them together into a magical symphony of love.

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

    One thing I noticed. They said the restaurant was opened by her mother 70 years ago. SMG looks to be what, let's be cruel, mid 30's. Even if her mother had her late, again say 35, that would make her mother somewhere between 65 and 70 at the time of the film. Are they saying her mother open and ran a restaurant from infancy? Or was it SMG's grandparents place and her mum took it over? If so why to have her say 'this place's been in my family for three generations' I would certainly add to the magic/cooking in the blood theme. Or is her mum a witch and was much older than 70 a la Bewitched and therefore that was what gave her magic?

     

    Didn't they say that the restaurant had been around for 70 years, not that her mother had opened it 70 years ago?

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    1) Is there any reason that when Mr. Boogalow was shown as the devil he only had one horn? He had a horn on his left temple only. Why wouldn't he have a matching horn on this right temple? Even in scenes where he isn't trying to hide who he really is, he only has the one horn.

     

    2) In The Apple song when they're trying to get Bibi to eat the apple, no one has mentioned that one of the background singers/dancers has two faces. He can be seen at 1:18 of the trailer; he's one of the people that says "Taste it! Taste it!" I know this scene is supposed to be hell, and that guy is only visible for a few seconds, but he freaked me out.

    • Like 6

  20. Posted

    There is a novelization movie tie-in of Kazaam in paperback. It's currently on Amazon for 1 cent used ($2.37 new or $9.00 for a "collectible" version). Its official description is "A high adventure tale of super-fun magic, wonder, and mystery." I know you don't read Amazon reviews of the book adaptations of the films, but there are only 2 reviews and the only 5 star review describes how the reviewer's ex-husband recommended the book for her book club. She thought the book club would save her marriage; it didn't, and he still attends it. She suspects he recommended it as a joke to get back at her, but she loved the book. She didn't know who Shaq was before reading it, but says "if my ex-husband had been 1/1000 of the man Mr. O'Neal is I wouldn't have left him."

    • Like 4

  21. Posted

    * Stephen King is famous for butting heads with Stanley Kubrick, who directed what can arguably be called the greatest adaptation of King's work: The Shining. And, that film is masterfully scary.

     

    I couldn't disagree more. Kubrick's Shining is one of, if not the worst of all King adaptations. I know a movie adaptation can't include everything from the source novel, but there is SO much in the novel that Kubrick throws away. In the movie Jack's alcoholism is almost an afterthought, there is zero chemistry between Jack and Wendy, Jack and Wendy's struggle to keep their relationship together is nowhere in the movie, Jack's struggle with alcoholism and his growing insanity are barely mentioned ... and the main reason he is hired to stay at the hotel is forgotten - to turn the boiler off each night. This is a key plot in the novel and part of the climax and final fate of the hotel. But the movie just ignores it.

     

    I have talked to people over the years about this movie. Those that have never read the book or watched the movie first usually love the movie. But almost all people that read the book first and loved it find the movie a terrible adaptation of the source material. It may be a great movie if it was an original work, but as a King adaptation, it fails on so many levels.

     

    The casting is all wrong, the screenplay is all wrong. Kubrick can direct but if he didn't want to make a movie version of the novel then he should have written his own original haunted house movie.

     

    So here we have Stephen King, given the resources to do Stephen King's writings justice, and what do we get? Maximum Overdrive. I wonder if King looks back on his clashes with Kubrick and feels humbled or ashamed.

     

    He shouldn't. I reread the book and watched the movie within the past year and it still frustrates me how wrong the movie got almost everything from the book.

  22. Posted

    On the podcast everyone was surprised at how Jupiter was suddenly able to quote intergalactic law when she shows up on one of the Abrasax's ships. When she first arrives on the space-police ship she is given a book of laws and rules. I don't think she is shown reading it (maybe when Caine comes to visit her in her quarters?) but in her down-time I guess we are supposed to assume she has spent her time reading this book instead of, oh I don't know, exploring a space ship full of aliens!

     

    This could have been a good opportunity to expand her character if earlier on Earth they had established that she was nerdy and liked to read about rules and regulations because she was trying to learn so that she could better herself so she wouldn't be a maid her whole life. But no, she is given a "Laws of the Universe" book and we're supposed to assume that she reads the whole thing and is able to quote it when meeting one of the Abrasax siblings.

    • Like 1

  23. Posted

    OMISSION:

    I am not surprised any of you missed this as it's a bit obscure for US audiences, but there is a whole series of children's detective novels starring a character named Jupiter Jones. Jupiter is described as looking like a youthful Alfred Hitchcock. The book series, called The Three Investigators, was published for about 20 years right along side Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys from 1964 to 1987. These books, while no longer in print in the United States, are so big in Germany that they continue to add books to the series. As of 2014, there are 180 titles, 73 radio dramas, and 2 feature films. Jupiter is driven in a Rolls Royce, lives in a Salvage Yard, and his parents were ballroom dancers.

     

    You left out the best part - in this series, Alfred Hitchcock appeared as a character. He introduces each story, he is a key character in the first book in the series, and the last chapter of each book is the Three Investigators sitting with Hitchcock and discussing the mystery and going through the entire plot.

     

    Eventually they replaced Hitchcock with a fictional writer (Hector Sebastian) after Hitchcock died in real life.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    Is it just me or is there something weird about Aida Turturro's "Radar" character? It felt to me as if she was not part of the original story and was added after the rest of the movie had been shot. She spends almost the entire movie in her radio office except for the birthday party, and even in those scenes she is not talking or interacting with the rest of the cast. I think that either those scenes were reshoots, or they used CGI to add her in existing scenes so she could shoot birthday flares or dance at the party. When she dies I think only one person mentions her, and it was likely an ADR line anyway. If you removed her scenes from the movie it would not create any holes in the plot.

     

    Lending creedence to my reshoots idea, I think the birthday party was a late addition to the story to do two things: (1) try to make the audience like Saffron Burrows' character more (who doesn't like someone on their birthday?), and (2) Harlin probably realizes that he had a movie with Sam Jackson and LL Cool J but they didn't have any scenes together. It feels like they created the birthday party scenes just so they could have a scene with the two of them together.

  25. Posted

    Corrections and Ommissions:

     

    1) No one talked about this, so I don't know if this was mentioned in the movie at all but according to Wikipedia, Alan's last name is "Mann". So this movie is literally a tale of "man vs. monkey".

     

    2) When you were describing how the monkey were injected with human brain cells, it reminded me of the movie Deep Blue Sea where they did the same thing to sharks. And like in Monkey Shines, the sharks got smarter and tried to kill people. So the lesson seems to be "do not put human brain cells in animals or it will make them try to kill everyone".

    • Like 2
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