Cam Bert

Half way through and very entertaining! I give it a CBB rating of C+!

Welcome back Triple Lindy! You were missed! Glad to see you back.

While we are shouting into the wind tunnel that is inaccuracies in Greek mythology his name is Heracles not Hercules. Hercules is his Romanized name.

Did anybody else think Steve Harvey also ran the funeral parlor as it was the only ads he ever read?

Who seemed to know about his credit card fraud and all that but helped anyway. Maybe they were an item.

Also maybe I missed this. Who is Rosa and why is she helping him?

Maybe I missed this but does Cuba not realize that Beyonce and her son are in the exact same position that he and his mom were? I was expecting him to finally open up to Beyonce and explain this or for that to come back in some big way but from what I recall he never mentions it. In fact he's such a liar I'm not even sure if his mom is really dead or not.

I'm find with that. I really loved Passing Strange we did not so long ago and that was a filmed Broadway show. Only thing I will add is I might (I'll speak for all non-US people) have a hard time getting some of them. If it's on YouTube or Vimeo or something like that, but streaming here isn't always the same.

I wish to apologize to Max and for not participating. I just was not able to find this movie and that turns out Japan does not get it until next month.

First off, a big thank you to Cameron for most weeks kicking off the threads and a big thank you to the rest of you for jumping in to do so when need be. Second, thank you all that have watched and participated past and present. There are lots of movie I probably would have never watched if not for this. So good or bad thanks everyone for expanding my movie-verse. Like you said people come and go and life gets in the way at times, I know I've been there, but I really enjoy this and more than happy to continue with whomever wants to stick around and participate as well. For some of us we're coming up on our 5th picks, so maybe a change every now and again could be nice. I know a lot of like documentaries, so maybe we could have a round of docs at some point.

The 5th circle of Hell is high school prom

See I thought it had more to do with if she doesn't win officially her spirit can't move on, but yes murder makes more sense.

So Mary Lou has many interesting powers. Paul and the gang talked about how weird it was she was able to kill not-Real Genius via electricity via the computer. However this glosses over the even more incredible power she has in that scene. Half a school away not-Real Genius is changing the results on the computer and she can sense it! She literally feels it the moment it is changed and then proceeds to grab an outlet to electrocute him. Does being a evil spirit also give you a Spider Sense that is tuned into prom king and queen status? In addition even though he types it into the computer she somehow uses her powers to change it back to herself anyway. If Mary Lou could change the results at any time why would she even need to try to get not-Real Genius to pick her anyway?

Here's my take on this because Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a film I love and Chinatown was a film I appreciated but not loved. I think the bleakness of Sierra Madre is a universal and more biblical bleakness. In Sierra Madre the "evil" are punished while the "good" are rewarded. Howard, while also a gold chaser, is the moral compass. He imparts wisdom and lessons that should be learned while Dobbs ignores them. The movie is bleak and says that man has many problems and vices and is prone to temptation and violence and a whole host of ills BUT it doesn't have to be that way. There is that hope or at least that silver lining that makes the audience member go "I would be like Howard not Dobbs... I hope." Meanwhile Chinatown is about how everybody and everything is terrible. The "evil" are rewarded and the "good" well... are there any? I guess Faye Dunaway is the closest and she is shot in the head. So the "good" get nothing. This is the far bleaker message for sure, but the message for the viewer is more along the lines of "you're a cog in a machine, and what you do doesn't matter." There is no moral center to guide us. Not to be confused with Gittes who seems to grow a moral conscious by the end of the film but given that he's a selfish character guided by self interest who's to say that his outrage is at the injustice of it all or because it wasn't his way? To compare Gittes to Dodds, you have these two similar in sense characters, except Dodds knows who he is and is that way to the end. The story is about the bleakness of man and how if we change there is hope for us. Chinatown is bleak and even if we do change it's for our own self interest and doesn't really matter anyway. It's giving you your medicine without the sugar, so that's why the one kind of bleakest is easier to swallow.

I'll most likely be away this upcoming weekend so the tenth if possible please.

They talked about the license plate at the end but I think there is much more to it than a knowing wink and "Mary Lou" powers at work. See the car they drive away in is that of Principal Nordham who accidentally killed Mary Lou at prom all those years ago and has gotten away with it since. In a case like this you think they would have caught him sooner given that Mary Lou was cheating on him and they had a confrontation at prom that night. Now, graduating high school kids would be right around the age to start driving and getting their first cars. So when Billy gets his first car he also gets a the custom plate of "MARYLOU2" as a tribute to his lost love. "I loved her officer," he tells the police, "so much that I didn't want to be without her so I named my car after her." He sells it and the police buy it, but the other kids who know what Mary was really like are still suspicious. So he keeps his license plate. Even when he gets a new car he transfers it over. He brings it up at parties "I lost Mary Lou, you better believe I'm not losing Mary Lou 2" he tells people and pretends to cry a little. People start to believe that he really loved her and maybe he didn't know about her indiscretions. He just keeps selling it and selling it. Eventually at university while studying education he meets a girl and falls in love. She asks about the plates and he goes into his sob alibi story. She falls for it and their son in conceived in the back of that car. This also explains his Titanic themed nightmare vision. Eventually people stop questioning or caring but Priniciapl Nordham gets lazy and never changes the license plate to something more normal. That is his license plate and it will always be.

It is and it is

In a certain way I think you have to give a pass to some of the goofier aspects of the Moore Bond films. I mean they never tried to be as serious or as fun. So as much as I'd like to pick Octopussy as the worst it almost becomes enjoyable in its badness. I think Thunderball is the worst because it is just so boring. On a similar note I hate Die Another Day with a great passion as well.

The Wicker Man is one of my all time favourite horror films. To me what makes a good horror film a great one is not the amount of death or kills or gore or even how many scares if gives you. A great horror film is one that creates an atmosphere. One that doesn't need to rely on cheap shock or gore to get you to feel uncomfortable or uneasy. The best way to do that is create characters that you are interested in and have something to say. We've been blessed in the last few years to have films like The VVitch, Susperia, Hereditary, etc. that get this concept. So expanding upon this the whole religious angle and the question of one's faith and beliefs is so integral to what makes Sgt. Howie and the story work, that the Nic Cage version always confused me a little. The bedroom scene and the other odd scenes are earned because we know who the character is. We get the bigger picture and higher concepts. We understand the crisis of faith or beliefs being tested. This things push the character and therefore us with them. Just being odd or having unearned weirdness is what separates a good film from a HDTGM film. That said this time rewatching it I really focused on the music and like was said it is hard to imagine the film without it. It is such a part of the film and creating a tone and atmosphere even more so than I realized.

I didn't realize the Child's Play reboot was out already.

This is the thing I found most puzzling about the movie. She was in a near fatal car crash and did "die" but all hear friends and school staff treat it as if she wasn't in the hospital or wasn't even close to dying but rather "on your mom died." At the same time she died but yet her injuries aren't so severe that she couldn't just jump out of her hospital bed upon realizing the truth.

You're right. I forgot that this was an older movie, I was thinking it was 2017 for some reason. Once again I bow to the powers of the other Cameron.

I'm sure public perception would be a little ruff at first, but people would soon get on board.