Spinoza

Listened to this episode again and decided to finally see the movie. It's really one of those disasters that needs to be seen to be believed. As has been said before the audiences in this movie are the fakest ever. And Stallone's performance is just baffling. His singing isn't even the worst of it, his comedic delivery is just so shameful. Although partially that's the script, which just has him going from Jim Carrey-style absurd wacko to playing the straight man. I think some of the lines really could be funny, like the one where he pretends to be doing a 'street satisfaction survey' in the middle of the night. If Bill Murray was in that scene it would work. But the whole concept is just so convoluted, and the depictions of the various subcultures so ludicrously over the top, etc... it's not like any one replacement could have saved this movie. As to the "guy who likes foamy beer" as Paul comments on in both the episode and the minisode, I think he's reading that all wrong. See this guy is served a beer, which has a ludicrous amount of foam on it. So he turns to this random guy next to him and says "I like my beer real foamy". No he doesn't. I don't know if any of you have ever poured a beer, but any rookie bartender will pour beer like that. It's not what anybody wants... it's just how it comes out if you're a bad bartender or not paying much attention to it. So basically he's gotten a lousily poured beer. And how does he respond? With sarcasm! At least, that's what that scene was supposed to be, I'm pretty sure. The delivery is completely off, like almost every line in this movie... but it's supposed to be a joke.

Yes definitely. Though I sometimes also do the opposite, where I assume something is just a movie trope, and then it turns out to actually exist in the US.

So I know there's no Corrections and Ommissions to Mini Episodes... But Goofy is not Mickey's dog! Pluto is Mickey's dog, and he's an actual dog. Goofy is an anthropomorphic dog, and while he is indeed a sidekick, he isn't owned by Mickey. In fact he has his own house. Also funny to be reminded how in the US Mickey is the main guy and Donald the number two, while in most of Europe that's the other way around :-)

Indeed. If at all, they should do it with David Caruso.

I should have searched the title, and want to agree with the recommendation of this really strange film.

"Twin brothers are unknowingly separated at birth; one of them becomes an iconic rock 'n' roll star, while the other struggles to balance his love for music and pleasing his father." IMDB: 4.8. Rotten Tomatoes: 7% Starring Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Seth Green, and Blake Rayne playing both twins because of course. Apparently it's really heavyhandedly Christian, and bizarrely enough while it clearly is about Elvis, it's officially not, Elvis even exists in the film universe! This seems like A Winter's Tale level of crazy and fail. trailer: whole film (not for long I guess):

Yeah so here's the thing. There's plenty of people that don't like rap and aren't racist. You aren't one of them though... cause then you wouldn't complain about it in those terms, as if it represents everything wrong with the world. There's only one reason to believe that. Claiming that you can't tell that there's many different subgenres likewise. Well now that indeed suggests you're quite old... that's so nineties! Oh and as to the remix theme song... I love it. Only the REEEMIIIXXX is a bit too loud, the rest of it is just so funny and really gets me in the mood for the show, more than the original really.

Hah, I didn't even read the "for gen-manipulation" part, but was still quite puzzled because velcro is not the kind of thing you would be likely to receive a Nobel prize for. Not because it's not interesting, but there's simply no specific prize it would fit with. Physics or chemistry are both quite unlikely. But here's an idea, perhaps it's some sort of joke about gene splicing? the two sides of the double helix sort of join together like velcro... it's a stretch but there's plenty of craziness in this movie already. And I do think there are lots of attempts in the script to make this movie mean something. It's interesting to see that it has a super defensive fandom on IMDB. I listened to the podcast first and saw the movie afterwards, I wonder if I would have picked up on how uninterested Kilmer and Brando were in making the movie work otherwise. Still, I actually cursed the movie when it was over... the demise of Balk is just ludicrous. Hanged off-screen? Why? And then there's this raft we never see Douglas build? Why? And only a nice old apeman is present to see him leave? Why? The ambiguous nature of Moreau could actually work IMO. But then some of the other pure humans should be less ambiguous. We do not know anything about Douglas, we have no idea what his frame of reference is. When he picks the lock, it seems both pretty crafty and that he is being rather rash without a follow-up to that first part of his escape. But since we no absolutely nothing about his background, it's hard to judge his actions. Anyway, I'm rambling here. It's hard to be coherent about this movie.

This episode made me very confused. I sort of remembered seeing this movie and kind of liking it. And yet the movie that you guys described seemed positively awful. And now I suddenly realize that I had seen another movie with almost the same premise! The 2002 comedy "The Guru", which is also not a stellar movie, but a whole lot better than Myers' blatant ripoff. Surprisingly so far I haven't found any comments on the similarities between the two movies...

I tend to agree with this. Though the episode might have benefited from a similar setup as what they did with Vanilla Ice, first discussing the movie without the person involved, and then ask the most burning questions and giving him time to talk. But it was frustrating to have the "expert" answer a lot of questions that Greg could easily have answered authoritatively. So a few days I actually saw the Room, and I must say it completely lives up to its reputation. It is amazing. It is possibly the most revealing and yet mysterious piece of art that has ever been created, as it both creates a very revealing image of Tommy Wiseau, and yet opens up a whole lot more questions about him. I think what makes this movie stand apart from other classic bad movies like Troll 2, Plan 9 from outer Space or Manos: the Hands of Fate is that the cause of the movie's badness is very singular. It's really all Tommy. I read some criticism of other actors, but I don't agree with that. The writing is so mindbogglingly inconsistent, it's amazing that people managed to put any kind of emotion into their scenes at all. And in fact most people are acting the crap out of their parts, and often making them sort of make sense, even though the lines they read make zero sense. It's true that people jump from one emotion to another at the drop of a hat, but that's the fault of the script... and credit is due to the actors who actually go along with it. The editing is apparently not all that, but the camerawork, lighting and music are decent, and also the editing really isn't all that bad. Like the establishing shots, they're indeed a bit much but they do sort of work. But, like I said the script is unbelievable. There's two scenes I wanted to highlight, which I think deserve more attention: Already Wiseau has forgotten that Johnny is supposed to be angry... although I suppose there may be some attempt at showing her seductive powers in making him forget his anger. If that was the case it's really executed poorly though. But I seriously have no explanation for the next one: So Lisa feels like a hypocrite and Claudette tells her to be practical. Got it. OK, so Lisa's becoming convinced that her mother's cynical approach to marriage is appropriate. Which would fit with Peter's assessment that she's a "sociopath who can't love anyone". But then this line is next: Seriously, how can anyone blame the actresses for this scene appearing strange? And indeed Wiseau's own acting skills are basically nonexistent. It's indeed obvious that the story he tells about how he met Lisa is autobiographical, because it is the only part in the whole movie where his emotions are suddenly 100% believable, instead of it being impossible to decipher which emotion he's even trying to convey.

Clearly you have not seen Gooby. Everything about Gooby screams addict/alcoholic uncle... that terrible time is already in his past when Gooby opens.

So I decided to already watch the movie before the episode, as I find doing it in reverse sort of spoils the fun of the movie, and this one seemed a dozie based on the trailer. But I'm not sure it's really "so bad it's good", though it is bad. The camerawork is quite good, the film generally looks pretty. And some of the script is alright, though it relies on voiceovers to explain pretty much the whole plot. And the kid is doing fine, as is, I have to admit, Eugene Levy. His role is absurdly cliché, but it did make me chuckle anyway because he is just so good at it. The most spectacular problem with the movie is the titular Gooby though. Gooby is very, very creepy. His face barely moves, except in one scene. His speaking is therefore completely implausible to be his, like it's Howard the Duck. Even though tis is 2009... And even though he supposedly is a teddy bear come to life, he's adult sized. This is never explained, and therefore it's impossible not to think he's that size because they chose to use a live actor to play him. Occasionally he does move like a stuffed bear might, but usually he just seems like a clumsy overweight middle-aged man. And this is a problem for the kind of role he's supposed to play. Gooby and Willie have the sort of relationship Elliot and ET have, but while it's cute with a small alien, it's extremely disturbing with an adult-sized hairy chubby blob of a thing who burps and farts and does very little else. I do think the disturbingness is more than clumsy writing though. The mother and the lazily sketched nanny character (who disappears halfway through the film with no explanation) are completely irrelevant to the emotional core of the story. This is all about the relationships between boys and men... fathers and otherwise. In the eighties you might find a children's film with accidentally no noteworthy female characters, but in 2009? That suggests a particular obsession of the creators. Britta Perry would find this movie a goldmine of male daddy issues. Also I am also seriously disappointed that the blue two-headed aliens only featured in the very beginning of the movie. They're awesome and SO much less scary than Gooby.