Cam Bert

10th works for me. It'll be nice to rejoin you guys all again. Green Lantern is not really fun bad, so I say skip.

What can't this new forum do?!?

I would also argue that Titanic is just as manipulative if not worse in terms of trying to force emotion but gets to hide it behind "true events" and effects.

Oh for sure. I think a very valid an argument can be made for public opinion being a greater decider. If it was based of Amazon reviews the number one movie would be based on speediness of delivery if I've learned anything from Second Opinions.

Don't switch to default! I'm still seeing dots from it's blinding whiteness.

Let's talk for a minute about the IMDB Top 250. Saying that Shawshank is the top film on IMDB is a given fact almost like saying water is wet but this wasn't always the case. Do you know what the first number one movie on IMDB was? Star Wars! Shawshank did come in at number two in 1996 which is an incredible feat if you think about it, considering only a few year earlier it was a massive bomb. The power of TV which I'll get back to later. Soon Star Wars was replaced and you know what replaced it? Nope, not that movie that was sitting in at number two but rather The Godfather. Star Wars tumbled into the high single digits while films like Citizen Kane and Casablanca rose to top five status but Shawshank hung in at number two. This is how things would last for a long time. With The Godfather in first, and Shawshank in second, only losing that spot for a brief moment to Return of the King. Then in 2008, after over ten years of fighting, Shawshank over took The Godfather and became number one and has reminded there ever since with The Godfather nipping at its heels. Was this due to a massive internet fan support because the internet making it a thing? Nope, simply math and algorithms. If we think back to the early days of the internet when Shawshank first hit the top of the IMDB charts, it wasn't because the movie had a sudden swelling of popularity or something. There was no social media to get people to go online and vote. No, the movie as mentioned was a bomb and therefor cheap for cable companies which resulted in high TV play time. It had recognizable actors of the time and was on TV a lot so people tuned in and watched it. The movie, for the most part, is TV friendly as well with little editing needing to be done. It's not going to suffer like some other movies from a harmful TV edit. This fact lead to many people watching it. Young and old, man and woman, all quadrants watching it. This is why it had solid early ratings. As time goes on other movies come out but Shawshank stays an evergreen cable classic. Which means as the years go on more people were easily exposed to it, so more people ranked it. It was always the most rated movie even from the earliest days. It's growth was consistent with the growth of the site. There was never a massive influx of votes for it, only slightly spiking when Facebook and IMDB were linked. What happened was the way IMBD did their algorithms. They decided to weight the reviews and take into account the number of reviews. So this movie that as always been the most rated suddenly gets that tiny bump to move it to number one. The Godfather which sits only 0.1 star ranking behind it actually has 600,000 votes less. The only other movie that comes close to number of votes is The Dark Knight which is only about 30,000 behind and comes in at number four. So what does this all mean? Does this make it the greatest movie of all time? No. IMDB is user rated. Ranging from people voting that study film, to those that only watch movies when they have a free Sunday and nothing else is on TV. What it means is there is something to this movie. For this movie to reach and move so many consistently over time speaks volumes for the movie. What it does mean is that the average IMDB user has watched this movie and enjoyed it. I can not understate how impressive it is that after being a failure in theaters the power of TV made this movie an instant and constant chart topper before social media or anything like that telling you it is a hit. If anything in more recent years there has been a push of negativity towards this movie because it is so highly rated online ahead of more technical or artistic films. However, I think simply at the end of the day what it comes down to is this, Shawshank is not technically the best made or innovated movie but it was never trying to be. It was trying to be a movie about hope and redemption and it had a message that spoke through and got to people so it achieved its goals in spades.

They are tears of joy!

I also now have a small amount of dread about posting something and getting a ton of "confused" faces.

So far my new favourite thing is how it saves what you've been typing. At last now giant paragraphs lost to accidentally hitting back and going back and page and losing everything!

That's really cool! Great work!

Ugh, it's like that hot here and I'm doing my best to avoid being outside. Definitely worse that the movie.

John Goodman I think is probably one of the most underrated actors ever. He can sing, he can dance, he can do comedy and drama, he can be the sweetest baby face ever or he can be a menacing heavy. Even when he's in a bad movie he tends to stand out as the lone highlight. Hell, he's part of the Coen Brother's regular players as well. John Goodman is awesome. Also so is True Stories.

Wait, are you calling Christmas Prince garbage? Next thing I know you'll be trash talking The Spirit of Christmas!

This will be my next review of a movie I like.

Never heard of this but look forward to it. Let the Judy vs Ginger debates begin!

I want everybody if you have the time to go back a re-watch Aretha Franklin's Respect number because it has my favourite "what the" moment of the movie. It looks like normal musical number, but try and take you eyes off of main players and look at the people in the background and watch the other employees of the dealership. At first you see two people sitting at desk behind Aretha and Mac and they are just carrying on doing work as normal. No acknowledgement that a song and dance is going on right before them. Then after a while Aretha Franklin move across the room and they start singing in front of a desk with a lone employee who is just grooving and moving along with the song. However, when we see the rest of the dealership in behind the Blues Brothers they all are just working as normal with no acknowledgement. There is only that one guy that seems to be aware or caring that a song is going on. So which is it? Is there a musical number going on and everybody is tired of hearing it but that one guy or what?

You've been missed! I hope you know you always have friends here.

If you think to the original Elwood is the brains and Jake is the mouth. Elwood plays the harp, he doesn't sing. Jake sings, but doesn't play music. It's the perfect match. Now when you expand this out you get Scribbles to do the harp and dance and left with three lead singers. The balance is all wrong. The moment we find out John Goodman can sing, he should have been the singer with Elwood playing the harp and providing back ups. Then when Joe Morton joins you get two leads singers, two harp players and dancers. It's all about the balance. You are 100% right though. The movie should have been just Goodman and Elwood. Hell just Joe Morton and Elwood would have worked. Here's an idea for a better sequel. John Goodman picks up Elwood from prison. He's a big fan and was also raised by the penguin. He wants to be a blues singer like Jake and Elwood were. However, Elwood doesn't want to because without Jake there is no passion or drive anymore. So Goodman slowly gets the band back together to try to get Elwood to loves the blues again. Over the course of the film we see Elwood go from just standing around barely playing and moving to dancing and playing like a maniac with Goodman singing his heart out in the end.

Warning: This is way too long and entirely subjective. I enjoyed the movie very much on a technical level and was really in awe of it that way. But as a comedy I was left a little wanting or feeling flat. I will preface this with the fact that I did laugh a fair bit throughout the movie, but there were some scenes that just felt a little off to me. It has already been discussed this film was trying to be a real story, more so than an action film maybe this was the first dramedy. There are parts of the movie in which the humor is not there because they are trying to move the story. That's fair, but in some of the comedy scenes for me there was something a little off about them. I think what it came down to is a combination of two things. One, this movie is a technical marvel. A lot of the time I felt the joke was undercut a bit by just the sure "Wow, look at what he is doing" or "This was 1926, how did they do that?" This also happens in some of his shorts too. With either his stunts or just visuals that are so well timed, I find myself in more awe than laughter. These are the kind of things that are enhanced on a second viewing because you've seen it so you can focus more on the comedy of it. This being my first time I was more amazed at him sitting on the arm of the wheels than laughing with it for example. The other is sometimes the pacing just felt a bit off. By the pacing I mean more the flow and execution of some of the gags. If you think to the shorts they mostly are a series of gags. They set up the gag, they go through the motions, then the punchline to it all and move on to the next. I've now watched a few more of his shorts now and they are mostly one gag after the other. Like Amy mentioned that's because there probably was a great deal of improvisation when making them. In The General there are certain gags that help further the story or move the story and others that exist for the sole purpose of this is a funny thing we could do. For me anyway as a result this makes certain ones feel oddly paced. The setup will be minimal and you are almost going from set up straight into the punchline. Alternately some of the jokes were all set up, to minimal comedic reward. This created for me a mixed tone that felt uneven in places. It sometimes left me wondering if a moment was suppose to be bigger or not. I'll give an example of one thing that worked for me and one that didn't. The final gag with him wanting to kiss his girlfriend but having to salute worked for me. You have the basic set up, it's the end you're going to go out on this romantic embrace but then it is interrupted by him having to stand and salute. This sets the pattern for what is to follow and when we cut to the soldiers leaving their tents it is in purpose of supporting and furthering the gag. To the point where the final cut away sees the entire camp leaving their tents. You get the set up and a punch line and all the cuts are in service of this. On the other hand the canon on the train gag left me a little meh. I laughed at him loading the canon, but the rest of it a bit of a mixed bag. You have him load the canon and then you cut to the men on the opposing train getting on the roof and cut back to the canon going off and landing next to him. I understand why this needs to be. Getting that canon to go off and land right in the cabin is a ridiculously difficult feat. The cut hides this but at the same time is neither short or long enough to increase tension nor does it really serve to enhance the payoff. The fuse is barely light before the we see the canon go off which is a far cry from the next scene in which it takes a long time. We also have always seen him go back and forth from the cabin to the canon and back. To not see him go back just feels a little off. In addition Buster Keaton is famous for his oners in which he does these impossible gags in one shot. Imagine if we saw him load the canon and go back to the front of the train only to have it fire into the cabin next to him. In my mind this is a better gag but it might not be in better service of the story. Not mention insanely difficult and dangerous to shoot. Now if the canon landing in the cabin made you laugh I can't argue with that. For me though, it just is a little off compared to some of the other gags. Ultimately what it comes down to is I think in The General opposed to some of his shorts, he was more focused on making a movie with a story than a gag parade and sometimes to better tell the story you have to change things. TL;DR I'm not a genius or comedy expert and have no right to criticize Buster Keaton who for very good reasons is considered one of the masters of the genre. However to me, there were a lot of bits and gags that were just a little off for one small reason or another. It didn't take away from the technical brilliance of it all, but it didn't make me laugh as much as it could have or as much as his shorts did.

I'm going to swoop in and steal this from Cameron H but he'll come on later and articulate it a bit better. For me at least I think the biggest thing that makes the original and this different movies is the unoriginality of the sequel. The sequel while a different story hits almost all the same beats, gags and moments as the first but a lot of them to lesser degrees. Just think about how many things are the same? Released from prison to start, go on a quest to put the band together, recruit their former members who are now doing other things, get a mismatched gig and win the audience over, race to get to the big show, big final number the crowd loves. That's not even mentioning the various gags and moments they repeat like James Brown in Church and seeing the light, Aretha Franklin mad at her husband and singing a song to tell him off, making white nationalist mad and have them chase after them, etc. Just so much of this movie repeats the same notes and doesn't really do that much new or different with them. I hate to bring it up but take The Force Awakens for example. It hits so many notes of the original Star Wars and the original films, but the spin they put on it makes it more original and fresher. It is not just a simple rehashing of it. So with the original Blues Brothers the gags and story and fresh and original and therefore have more life to them. In 2000 they are just going through the motions and it doesn't have the same life. And when you've seen that all before it is boring for you, and when the actors and director have done it all before it is just as boring for them which in turn you feel and get more bored. On a side note, 2000 looks terrible. Bad lighting and clearly shot on sound stages while the original was shot in real locations and little things like that really affect the mood and vibe a film gives off too.

I would love it if somewhere right now Meatloaf's manager is on the phone with him explaining that then has been a sudden surge in people searching and talking about him all thanks to this thread.

I have thoughts on The General but not the time right now to talk about them. Instead going back to an early conversation, there was already a movie made about "What if the Confederacy had won?" and it's called C.S.A: The Confederate States of America. Instead on focusing on what the world would like now it's presented more as a news program covering the history of America following the South's victory. It's a mockumentary so it's not intended to be taken seriously but it's out there if you're interested.

Did we ever figure out what "that" was? It was pegging wasn't it?

All right here are my last 10 on iTunes. Apparently I had a real one word title streak going there. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Bonus info time! The albums I'm currently listening to most right now is a toss up between Human After All Remix which was a Daft Punk exclusive to Japan which has other artists covering the album and is a must listen if you love Daft Punk. This is my pick me up or pump me music.The other is by Air which is just so mellow and calming to me. I just put it on and lay back and get lost in thought for an hour.

The other week at work me and two other teachers, both male one early 30s one mid 40s, some how stumbled upon a Hal & Oates song and spent the afternoon listening to best of Hall & Oates. I forgot how many good songs they had. To the majority of the teachers, female in their 20s, we were all "old men" for liking it.