Cameron H.

I’m waiting for HDTGM to finally release Swordfish. A movie that has been available on Netflix for months that will undoubtedly be taken down as soon as the ep is announced.

100%

Something I still can’t work out is why the crooked cops need to bring William H Macy, a man recently wounded in a gunfight, with them to the pier. Ostensibly, he’s there to help them identify Evans, but once they get there, they don’t really need or use him. At best, he’s just going to get in the way; at worst, he’s going to just be another loose end they’ll need to “clean up.” Furthermore, having already dealt with Evans before, corroborated his kidnapping claims, and already witnessed police corruption firsthand, in all of Los Angeles, he’s probably the one person most likely to listen and to believe anything Evans has to say. Maybe it would be better for them to just let Macy retire peacefully to his day spa than go through the hassle of having to explain how the suspect he helped ID at the beach mysteriously “disappeared.” Then again, this is a plan cooked up by the same people who think it’s okay to loudly coordinate a murder over an open walki-talkie channel while the one honest cop among them is clearly still within earshot.

Um...what the fuck, Grudlian? What in the ever loving, fuck?

Yes, she was on the ground tapping wires together just prior to the call connecting to Evans. But, like I said before, if she had the wherewithal to do that, then there's absolutely no reason to believe she couldn't have just called 911 or any other familiar number. Basically, she possessed the know-how to manipulate a pulse-style phone to dial out, but not the common sense to not call a random stranger.

That's a great point as we're now talking about the difference between pulse (rotary ) and touch tone telephones. I might need to more research, but my gut tells you're correct as the means to generate and send tone would be pretty much impossible without a working modern telephone. So, yes, if the movie gave her anything other than a rotary phone, she would have been all but screwed. Of course, there's always the possibility that a phone technician on a repair job to that house might have accidentally left his butt set in the attic - which, provided there was sufficient voltage, would be capable of generating it's own tone. In which case, she could have simply connected the alligator clips to the IW (internal wiring) and placed a call to wherever she wanted, but....that might have been a bit too far-fetched.

I don’t really have an issue with the attic and its attic phone, but smashing the phone (obviously) doesn’t do anything to prevent making and receiving phone calls. It would have been far more effective to either sever or disconnect the POTS (“plain old telephone service”) line from the NID (“Network Interface Device”). Typically, this is a grayish box on the side of the house that serves as the DMARC (“demarcation”) that connects the phone provider’s loop to house - thus providing the DT (dial tone). Of course, we’re shown that the house has multiple lines which might suggest - although doesn’t necessarily guarantee - the presence of a PBX (“private branch exchange”) phone system. If that’s the case, depending on the system (“Mitel, Nortel, Allworx, etc) it might just be a simple matter of removing or deactivating the copper pair that connects that line to that particular phone. My point is: destroying that phone was wasteful and an ineffective way to prevent phone calls being made as it did nothing to disrupt the actual dial tone. This has been Telephony 101

The most ludicrous thing about this entire movie isn’t that Basinger was somehow able to place an outbound call from a demolished telephone, but that after all her random futzing, almost right off the bat, she somehow managed to connect to a local number. I mean, damn. That sure is lucky. And the truly insane thing is that it had to be random. If her character possessed the deftness and alacrity required to manipulate the phone’s copper lines so that she was only placing local calls, then there would have been absolutely nothing stopping her from calling the police herself, or at the very least, a family friend or relative. But, no, out of the 250 million plus active telephone numbers in America, she somehow managed to reach a the one dude currently traveling within her local pizza parlor’s delivery radius.

Paul mentioned it a bit on the show, but the biggest parenting “win” in Cellular has to be when Ricky Martin Sr. tells Junior to “look at him” so Basinger can choke a motherfucker to death. It was a brilliant, unspoken moment between partners that underscored the rich intimacy these two individuals obviously shared. Clearly, they knew each other inside and out. I think the biggest parenting “fail” is when Basinger has successfully liberated her child and is getting away when she gets herself and her son recaptured because Statham stands in front of her getaway car with a gun to her husband’s head. I’m sorry, if it’s ever a choice between my life and my kid’s, 100% you better mow my ass down and get my kid the fuck out of there.

Paul seemed confused by why the school’s security guard had his car parked out front of the school. The reason for that is simple: parents were parked out front to pick up their kids. The security guard was parked where he was to keep the parents to one lane and prevent people in the back of queue from cutting ahead if they picked up their child first. As a group, parents can be a bunch of self-centered jack offs with little concern for the safety and concern of other people’s children, and if left to their capricious whims, will 100% create confusion and delay (and danger) in an effort to shave two extra minutes off their commute. What you were witnessing in Cellular, Paul, was an orderly car line! And trust me, it’s something you’ll appreciate when your kids are ready for elementary school.

I’m still super unclear about the role, Bayback, Jason Statham’s female accomplice, was playing at Kim Basinger’s house. I get cleaning up evidence. I get searching the house for additional tapes. And I get being there in case the husband came home or something. What I don’t get is why she was cosplaying as Mrs Ricky Martin Sr. I mean, when Bill Macy knocks on the door, she really has no idea who he is. For all she knows, he could be a neighbor, a relative, or a friend of the family. And I get that he initiates the conversation by asking her if she’s Mrs Martin, thereby tipping his hand that he doesn’t know who she is, but why take the risk and open the door at all? If it’s nobody, they’ll just leave. And, being a cop herself, she should know that if the plain clothes gentleman at the door is a police officer, he won’t be able to enter without a search warrant. Answering the door just puts the whole operation at risk. I mean, had Macy been someone who could identify her as a fraud, what was her plan? Shoot him on the stoop in broad daylight? However, the dumbest part of the scene is after Macy leaves, Bayback tells Statham that a cop was asking questions, but she’s “taken care of it.” What she neglects to tell prominent Angeleno Jason Statham is that the cop told her that a woman named Jess Martin called the cops and said she was kidnapped!!!! If you were the leader of a band of rogue cop/kidnappers, I think knowing that the person you kidnapped has made a successful outbound call to the police might be a tiny detail you’d want to investigate.

You’re just amped for Cellular

This is why I’m not on Facebook, and I am seriously thinking of dropping Twitter altogether. It’s all so toxic. I like my Earwolf forums where the only people who sign up (or at least stick around) are chill, intelligent, non-racist/sexist/bigoted/etc people. @DanEngler and @Shannon make this the best place on the Internet.

Yes, but he’s less than vanilla. He’s just, like, an ice cube.

Maybe everyone had sex with Ta but no one remembers because it was so goddamn boring?

Yeah, but sex with Ta would be like eating flavorless ice cream. She’s better off without him. Besides, like Paul Simon in Kodachrome, having sex with Ta would never match her sweet imagination.

I’m not going lie: I was crushing pretty hard on Helen. Ta doesn’t deserve her.

I want to say Wang Ta sang on “Chop Suey.”

I haven’t voted yet, because...I really don’t know. I mean, I really enjoyed watching this movie - possibly more than other movies that I feel should definitely be on the list. I guess my problem is, there are a lot of “good” movies that I don’t necessarily think deserves to be considered “the best.” I really like Cast Away and Good Will Hunting, too, but I don’t necessarily think they’re the “best” movies either. I would call it “recency bias,” but there are movies that came later that I absolutely feel are deserving without reservation. I’m not sure what my issue is exactly, but like Ned, I’m having difficulty pulling the trigger.

Motion pictures can be called many things - movies, films, flicks - but how many can be truly called “Art?” We watched:

I’m so psyched about these upcoming shows!

I’m very much looking forward to this

Tom, do you want to ahead and give us your pick so we can talk about it next week?

Did anyone else find it odd that being a “Rockula” had no real bearing on the plot? Like, I think the band pretty much disappears altogether after the rap (not that I blame them). I think it would have been more interesting if somehow the band was more instrumental (nailed it) to breaking the curse.