Cam Bert

I hope after watching this we will all be a little bit more polite with our drive through orders

Yes. I think he said on Conan or somewhere that they were allowed to improvise to a degree and that conversation was pretty much just them riffing.

I'll jump in because I think, based on Letterboxd anyway, I probably enjoyed the movie the least. I still enjoyed it and would rate it positive overall I just really didn't like the last 15 minutes or so. Nat's turn just felt more forced because he's suppose to have changed than actually motivated by actual character changing. He just goes a little too hard in too fast and then after initiating the stealing back of the stuff and leading the breaking in, but then go back to unsure to jumping in the fight into the fight just seemed a bit much to me. I could buy it a bit more if his character had slowly been changing over the course of the film, but it just seemed to all come on a bit to quick and convenient for me. Yes he was robbed at gunpoint and a kind lady shared her world view but he shouldn't have been that changed or charged to where he was out Jason-ing Richard.

Sad to say Human Highway was less of a musical and more of a weird art house comedy thing. A very mixed bag and somehow much weirder than True Stories but not really in a good way. Here is the highlight which is Neil Young and DEVO performing Hey Hey My My

I just want to thank everybody for watching this movie. I think it's an interesting film that was a bit ahead of its time. At least we can all agree the music is great! Also, I found out on the weekend Neil Young wrote, directed and starred in a similar odd movie in the earlier 80s called Human Highway that stars and has music by, personal favourites, DEVO. Am I going to watch this tonight? Yes!

I bought the soundtrack to A Star is Born immediately after watching the movie. I've also been pushing it on people I know.

I was going to ask you for some translations of the song

Also, I should point as another case of interesting trivia the band Radiohead did indeed get their name from the song in True Stories.

Well we see the priest guy visiting her before she sees Louis performing. Wonder if he had anything to do with it.

They don't really seem to have that much in common. Louis seems like a very active panda and now he's married to a woman that doesn't leave her bed? How will he dance? Will he soon learn there is more to life than just matrimony?

David Byrne in this looks like Esteban Colberto

Yes. All the little interstitial and background music is very lovely. Again all David Byrne. For me this is a movie that works well on repeat viewings. Once I saw it the first time I kinda got the feel and tone and knew what to expect and the second time could notice little things that I missed or small lines that are great that I missed the first time. However, I was feeling it the first time I watched it, so if you weren't I don't suspect repeat viewings would improve much.

Fun weird connection for this movie. Spalding Gray who played the civic leader is a famous monologist and is probably most famous for his one man show Swimming to Cambodia. Swimming to Cambodia was made into a concert film and was directed by Jonathan Demme. Aside from directing Silence of the Lambs Jonathan Demme also directed another very famous concert film, Stop Making Sense, which was a The Talking Heads concert.

I go with option C and that Louis is very sad. We know he likes sad songs because they make him feel like laying of the floor. If you look at his quest not for love but for marriage and just wanting to be heard, I think he's just very sad. He's looking for these normal things that will validate him or make him feel better about himself. When he goes to get the blessing he says it's to find love but when the priest talks about it he says happiness or what he wants.

I have described myself in almost the exact same words. For me my biggest laugh always comes from David Byrne's fake driving.

I will echo a bit of what my fellow Cameron said. I love this movie and I think it is because of its voice. Many directors will just make a movie and unless you read the credits there is nothing in there that screams that there was a person behind it making all the decisions. The view point or voice is muddled or just not there in some cases. Then you have film makers who after just seeing five minutes of their movies you know who did it. Even if the movie isn't good I appreciate and like that a film has a voice and not just some generic time suck. To me that's where this movie really excels. It has a strong and unique voice. The dialogue is so specific and odd. Yet even the odd wording when you stop and think about it says so much. The fashion choices are all on purpose. They are unique and odd but say so much about these characters without having to directly say anything. Their houses and and the decorations within also are all specifically chosen. Every little throwaway thing tells or shows something.

I know we've talked about this before but as a non-American here is my knowledge of these cookies. There are thin mints which are the most beloved, then you have a Filipino language cookie that has peanut butter, a small pacific island cookie which has coconut and is very controversial over liking and tri-foils which are boring and plain and nobody really likes or cares about. Am I just bitter and jealous I cannot eat them? Yes.

I thought it was about what an awful boyfriend Spike Jonez was? Yes, Bill Murray is selling whiskey in Japan.

Thank you for making us watch this! I really did love it. I meant Passing Strange not the movie that shall not be named...

I loved these commercials and every so often a new one will pop up. What's weird is in Japan a celebrity appearing in a commercial is not a bad or uncommon thing. Scarlet Johanson was the spokesperson for Lux cosmetics, George Clooney was for Nescafe, Brad Pitt hocked Levis I believe at some point. A large majority of Japanese commercials feature Japanese celebrities. From A list actors and actresses to pop stars to comedians, famous people appear in commercials all the time. I would hazard to say they appear in a majority of them. It is not seen as odd here as it is in the west. It's like Super Bowl spots year round. You're not selling out by doing the commercial. In fact a lot of companies insist on getting big names for the ads because it creates a level of trust and belief in the product. "Hey if this famous person is willing to talk about it, it must be good" type attitude.

It is very David Byrne. I can see how this will be polarizing.

The kid is a bit of a MacGuffin. He admits that hunting down the kid was merely an excuse to enter China and the silk road. At least that's what I recall.

Sorry all, fell asleep a little early last night. I was a bit torn as what to pick this time around. It was between something classic and traditional and something a bit more off the beaten path. Looking at my previous choices I decided that maybe it was my time to do something less traditional musical and just something that spoke to me. We like musicals. We like the music of Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. These are classics of musical theater. In recent years a new trend of musicals started, and that was the juke box musical. Take a band or singer you like and write a story around some of their songs and bingo, you have a musical. What if there was a singer that decided to make his own musical though. He'd write the film and all the music but kept it very himself. Well in the mid 80's The Talking Head's David Byrne decided that he wanted to make a movie. He wanted to make a comedy. However he was David Byrne so it'd include lots of music numbers in it as well. I present my pick for Musical Monday... True Stories Best I can tell this is not streaming anywhere but is a pretty cheap rental from Amazon, iTunes, etc.

I think the biggest problem with this movie is simply not understanding what the Silk Road was. The history of the silk road is hundreds of year long and this movie take place about 200 years into it. A quick and dirty summary of the whole thing is China was kinda closed off until the Han Dynasty. They sent out people to deal with nomads, they started encountering other nations who had horses that were better than Chinese horses, the Han Dynasty opened trading up with the west in an exchange of good, culture and knowledge. In fact the "silk road" was not a singular road but rather a series of routes of trade from Turkey all the way to Korea. It was loved by everyone. It brought silk to the west and horses to the east along with a bunch of other goods and religion. It ended hundred of years later because the Ottoman empire in Turkey closed their boarders and maritime trade took over. In Dragon Blade Adrien Brody's character reveals he didn't want the child emperor but rather to seek control of the silk road. This makes no sense. It is thousands of miles long. If he gain control of one point of it he'd upset China and the Roman empire. He could collect a tax from traders going through his "city" but that's about it. There was no way to control it and if he did it'd be a small section for a short time. If he took over the route and caused problems it would just end the route like it had in the past. It was a no win scenario for him.