Cameron H.

Oh man, it freaked me out when I was a kid - lol And just so you don’t feel you’re alone, trust me when I say there are other films that we’ve covered that I would definitely kick off before Toy Story. There are a few movies left to go that I would boot too. I love Toy Story, it’s just not the Pixar movie I would choose. If I had my druthers, I’d pick something else, but I don’t really mind it being here either.

And of course, there’s Jim Henson’s The Christmas Toy which came out in 1986. The plot is about a favorite toy that is afraid he’s going to be replaced at Christmas. The egotistical new space toy doesn’t realize she’s a toy...

No, I think we all get that. And if the list was for the most Innovative films, no one would disagree. I think the issue is that the list is one of semantics, specifically with the words “Greatest Films.” I think most people equate the word “great” with “best” or “most enjoyable.” Granted, that’s not necessarily what the word “great” means, but if that isn’t what was meant, then I think we can all agree we could knock off at least 25% of the movies on the list. Do we need two Marx Brothers then? Or three Chaplins? If we’re looking at just being the first, or most innovative, then we need to put The Jazz Singer back on and probably replace Intolerance with Birth of a Nation. Instead of Sophie’s Choice and Shawshank Redemption we should have Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. And we should definitely have more movies from POC and any(!) female filmmakers. I guess what I’m saying is until the AFI is consistent with what exactly they want the list to be, we have to interpret it the best that we can as individuals. Personally, when I think “Greatest” I think “Best.” In which case, if we’re talking about CG animation, I want the most fully realized and most enjoyable movie represented, and not just a lesser quality movie simply because it was made first.

He sings about shrimp in this one - lol

Here’s @JammerLea‘s spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nxEQ2DcPdRarmFhHckyoSxma7D4IE5Nc0a0UlQOQlhw/htmlview

I don’t now if that would be appropriate simply because we’re guests on this thread. Usually, I just search “rotation” to figure out who’s next.

I think JammerLea has a spreadsheet of all the picks on her forum profile. If not, I can link to the thread that has them all in a bit

Oh no! Cam Bert picked this one already!

Director: I have completed my masterpiece! A dance movie that’s nearly 2 1/2 hours long... Screenwriter: But the script was only 8 pages long and two of those just had the words “they dance” written in highlighter. Director: Masterpiece! We watched: NEXT WEEK: Watch Out for Snakes picks

Honestly, that was my first thought too.

Welcome aboard!

At the end of the movie, there’s a news report that identifies him as thirteen and says he goes to high school. Which is a bit young for High School, but he’s supposedly bright so maybe he skipped a grade? I think it’s less that he’s been exposed to certain types of media than he’s been placed in a shitty situation. Like, I don’t believe that his mother cheated on his father, but I think their relationship happened too soon after his father’s death (in his mind anyway) that it felt like a betrayal. Regardless, he only has a single, half-formed memory of his real father yelling about a fish and almost a decade of being with a shitty, abusive, alcoholic. It’s kind of the tragedy that Jason touches on in the episode. Without a healthy role model, the dysfunction gets normalized. He doesn’t have any other frame of reference for how a healthy adult functions and that plays out in his version of adulthood in the game.

June thought it was interesting (I want to say she said “nice”) that the son programmed his decidedly not-Greek father and his mother as being wealthy, but I think it had more to do with the son trying to break the game. Basically, the movie is about predestination versus free will. Dill is programmed to perform certain tasks and only those tasks (i.e. fish for Justice, retrieve cats, and hustle Diane Laine). In order for him to get Dill to perform an action that is not in the game’s initial script, he has to reprogram it. In the movie’s terms, what Dill experiences throughout the course of the film is the figurative reality of what his son is literally rewriting. Ultimately, the son wants Dill the Fisherman to become a Dill the Murderer so he presents a series of “incentives” or “temptations” to do so. Each of these “incentives” can be translated back into the real world as a line of code. So, the ten thousand dollars, the ten million, his partner’s need for money for his granddaughter’s college fund, sex with Anne Hathaway, are all just metaphors for each failed attempt at getting the video game character to do what he wants him to do. When he is finally successful rewriting the code, he gives himself the in-game justification that video game character of “Dad” has just learned his son is being beaten by his step dad; however, that’s not literally what the kid wrote into the game. Like, he didn’t write “stepdad beats me [enter].” That’s just his imagined justification for his video game character doing something that he’s not supposed to be doing. Once he achieves this, not only does it reinforce his own justification to commit murder (i.e. to protect someone he loves) it gives him the courage to break and re-write society’s ethical and moral “codes” for himself.

Honestly, I didn’t feel like at the end the kid was psychically coding a reunion with his father so much as he was writing code in his head. In the same way a novel exists in the mind before it exists on the page, by the end of the movie, Dill’s son has become so immersed in the game that he no longer needs a computer to “interact” with the it. It all begins and ends with him. He’s the Alpha and Omega. This is why the shot of him running on the dock begins with a camera zoom through his pupil. We are entering his subjective reality. It all exists inside of him. Also, did anyone else see any similarities between the scene of the son at the end and Norman Bates at the end of Psycho? Both movies end with murderers, both sons, sitting motionless in jail as the camera slowly zooms in on them as their inner thoughts are revealed to the audience. In Norman’s case, we are made to understand that the “mother” personality has fully taken over (spoiler?) and that he has become completely untethered to reality. Likewise, in Serenity, I believe we are supposed to infer that the act of murdering his stepfather, regardless of whether or not it was justified, has caused him to retreat within himself. Essentially, the more he “reconnects” with his virtual father the more cut off he will become to reality.

Your new avatar freaked me out - lol

Sorry, I don’t. I have restaurant near my house and usually get some from them. I’m glad we could all bond over tzatziki. There’s hope yet in the world.

Tzatziki gets all the people freaky!

Don’t worry, I just stopped eating veggies altogether so there wouldn’t be a conflict of interest. I’m doing great.

This is the only acceptable time to eat Ranch.

I’m just saying, if you prefer Ranch, you’re a monster. There’s no compromise, only war.

Ranchers are a bunch of barfs.

I started with 2! In fact, I didn’t see the first one until relatively recently. It was right around the time 3 came out and I figured I should actually sit down and watch it. And you’re right. I didn’t watch these in order, and I had no trouble jumping right in. Furthermore, it removed me from having any particular nostalgia for the first one. And I felt then as I do now: I like it fine, but it’s not my favorite (I think 3 is). That’s not to diminish its achievements or place in history. And it’s not to say it isn’t effective. It just doesn’t grab me the way the others do or how I feel a “great” movie should. I remember feeling wrecked after seeing the third one, the first just doesn’t stick with me. After watching it, I’m not thinking much of it at all beyond, “That was pretty good.”

Stuff! That! BURRRRRGER!