Star Wars was like, dumb popcorn fun for kids - if there's a positive to me it's that it hopefully nails the coffin shut on the original trilogy as a thing that a certain generation venerates as the birth of such a universally beloved fictional world and convinces that generation that this thing can not sustain that meaning if it is to be an ongoing business concern and media property. I honestly think the old movies were the closest thing to the creation of a new shared mythology on a level of the kinds of things that 300 years later would have become religions in the past. But within the framework of modern intellectual property law and the business structure of the media now, it won't find its wings as a shared culture of fantasy that can include everyone.
And as for the experience itself I'm not one to excuse other big special effects movies as dumb popcorn fun (I hate Marvel movies for example) so I don't really excuse Star Wars either.
jojo rabbit is pretty great - what did others think?
it's a hysterical farce of a syrupy coming-of-age set deep within the heart of nazism/anti-semitism. i thought the story could have be wilder... but it's a tough/taboo subject and i think the film ends up appealing to a wide range of people (awkward laughs gave way to howls in our screening). and if it was wilder, it could come off as a more careless/gonzo take.
and that's not tw's style, anyway - he's a legend of making broadly appealing but weirdly satisfying movies. recently found out that there's a tv series based on "what we do in the shadows" (already in season 2!) and it's the best news the wife and i have had since she got pregnant with our youngest (not greatly exaggerated btw).
I am a big Taika supporter as a veteran of low budget NZ film (which of course means I met him at one point and gave him my homemade cookies) but I don't think Thor was Waititi enough to overcome the juggernaut it was a part of, so I didn't really get into it. I really want to see Jojo Rabbit to make sure he's still got the touch after that, but in a related note to your pregnancy news, our first child literally came the day we had planned to see it. So I might have to stream it with a baby sleeping on my chest. Getting through a lot of movies that way these past weeks. Still gotta see the other current releases I haven't got round to - Parasite, The Irishman, Uncut Gems, that Clint Eastwood one about the '96 Olympics bombing. I welcome further opinions about any of those!!
I saw "Ford vs. Ferrari" last night at the Egyptian Theater. It was two and a half hours well spent and I would recommend it to someone even if he or she is not a car enthusiast. I have cursory knowledge of auto racing, for the most part based on museum collections and simulation video games I used to play, but have trouble remembering all the makes and model numbers associated with the who's-and-when's. So to that end I got a lot out of it. The racing sequences and, like OUATIH, period detail was the main draw for me; buddy comedy and "little guys against the corporate suits" plot being secondary. I wouldn't put it up there with John Frankenheimer's gold standard, pre-CGI "Grand Prix" and I enjoyed Ron Howard's "Rush" more but there was never a dull moment here. I have yet to see "The 24 Hour War" doc, though.
There is a movie called "What Did Jack Do?" on netflix that popped up as a recommendation. So I figured what the hell. Watched it with the wife. It was only 17 minutes. It's a David Lynch film so you already sort of know shit is gonna be weird going in. We laughed. Awkwardly a few times. The next day I had to watch it again and this time I laughed more. There is something about it. It doesn't have "joke" jokes per se - I guess what makes it funny is that the dialog feels like an AI program was written to analyze a bunch of film noir detective interrogation scenes and then try to write one. So it gets close to right... but not right... and get some awkward uncanny valley shit that makes you question what it even means to have human consciousness in the first place that computers can come close to mimicking it and yet so very very far away.
the lighthouse is truly wow. heavy guy maddin vibes but still really watchable somehow. :slow burner: i didn't see the witch - another one i've got to catch up on now for sure.
Looks like this is just hitting the UK now - can't recommend enough if you like weird, difficult movies that pay off.
I saw "Ford vs. Ferrari" [...] I have yet to see "The 24 Hour War" doc, though.
Yeah... is there an established term for Yank-washing yet? I liked both Ford vs Ferrari & the Netflix doc 24hr War, but
and it’s a massive “BUT”
I got U-751 vibes from both. Shelby was approached by Ford and given the brief. Aside from supplying the Ford V8 engine, just about everything was done in England by English engineers. The GT40 car chassis was an English sports car (Lola). The first three models were designed, constructed, and tested in England... I guess I should be thankful they didn’t write out the English driver from the story in favour of an American too.
Shelby had already used this template with the Cobra: sold in America as the Shelby Cobra, this car was designed, engineered, tested and even assembled in England, shipped to California where Shelby’s team would put in the transmission, and HEY PRESTO, you’ve got another Netflix doc about this amazing American sports car that started beating Chevrolets. What a genius Shelby was. Just have everything made in England ;-p
Ford's WRC entry has always been 100% English, hella F1 teams are based there, clearly there's a pedigree. But yeeeeah we do that... I mean, I haven't seen "The Last Samurai", but it sure looked like a movie about Tom Cruise being the last samurai.
I'd actually read a book that detailed stupid shit like that in Hollywood movies. 1001 Ameri-Washed Movies You Must See Before You Die At The Hands Of The Crumbling Nationalistic Police State For Crimes You Did Not Commit
I saw "Ford vs. Ferrari" [...] I have yet to see "The 24 Hour War" doc, though.
Yeah... is there an established term for Yank-washing yet? I liked both Ford vs Ferrari & the Netflix doc 24hr War, but
and it’s a massive “BUT”
I got U-751 vibes from both. Shelby was approached by Ford and given the brief. Aside from supplying the Ford V8 engine, just about everything was done in England by English engineers. The GT40 car chassis was an English sports car (Lola). The first three models were designed, constructed, and tested in England... I guess I should be thankful they didn’t write out the English driver from the story in favour of an American too.
Shelby had already used this template with the Cobra: sold in America as the Shelby Cobra, this car was designed, engineered, tested and even assembled in England, shipped to California where Shelby’s team would put in the transmission, and HEY PRESTO, you’ve got another Netflix doc about this amazing American sports car that started beating Chevrolets. What a genius Shelby was. Just have everything made in England ;-p
I am a big car-nut, this one is deffo on my list. I know the story, but would like to see it done justice. 25 years ago I blagged a drive in a GT40 replica. It was hard work to drive, no power-anything, but the shove in the back was addictive, it got better the faster you went. It was well-sorted (IIRC it was a Ray Mallock build) but required enormous levels of concentration to keep it going where you wanted it to go at any good lick and I would imagine immense talent to be able to explore its limits (massive props to whoever drove kit like this BITD for a living). I just couldn't afford one. I think they were 50K+ back then.
I had illusions of one day having one as a daily driver but after a few laps, you realise:
a) You would never get to stretch it in traffic. It would be like forever taxiing a fighter-jet.
b) It would be hellishly uncomfortable. My arms and left leg were sore afterwards.
I'd recommend karting as a cheaper option, you can drift those all day long in the wet and the speeds (in the cheap ones) are much less threatening to life. Try that in a GT40. You can tell me about it via the Ouija board.
speaking of fast moving objects, I got roped into taking my friend's 3-year-old to see Sonic the Hedgehog. Not even the little kids in the theater were laughing, but then afterwards my friend's daughter said she enjoyed it, so what do I know.
I saw Eternal Sunshine... a year ago and it holds up, although that's more about Gondry... Jim's just being depressed as f*ck the whole time. Man on the Moon and I Love You Phillip Morris are stronger serious acting turns for him.
Does not hold up. So fucking annoying. I was like “we... as a society... found this funny?”
Headline: The Nineties: Not as Dope as You Remember
I remember catching snatches of Ace Ventura, Kingpin, Dumb & Dumber etc. on TV even in the 2000s and feeling like "whoa, 9 out of 10 jokes don't hit anymore". I can't imagine what it's like now to watch those.
But then, I heard an early-20s girl waxing poetic on how funny Caddyshack was. She was talking like she was the first person to discover that movie that was ubiquitous on TV for the entire decade of the 90s. Even back then it felt slow and unfunny and out-of-date to my young tastes. Maybe movie attention-span doesn't just continuously accelerate until everybody's just watching farting butts a la Idiocracy, but things actually go in circles. Or maybe it was just one young weirdo.
Reminds me of what my grandfather said, "everyone has his own favorite flavor of stupid". He was a big Three Stooges fan: slapstick, that sort of thing. Grandma was more into "sophisticated" humor: Cary Grant, WC Fields, etc. Their debates at family gatherings about what is "truly funny" were hilarious. Jim Carrey: his peak was "The Cable Guy". I really liked the dark humor. And there's this too:
Millennial young women just discovering the 90s: I roll my eyes when I see them wearing "Friends" shirts, but then I realize that I am no better as I only recently discovered Monty Python, for example.
Python's another thing that was totally formational to me at like age twelve, and comes up a lot as cultural references, but I'm not sure I'd be laughing anywhere near as much now. Like, I owned the books of the scripts, I repeatedly rented the TV series, all the movies, etc. I was a teenage superfan. Hell I wrote sketch comedy as a teen that was none too far off of straight Python plagiarism. But I think my taste for the style of humor they created has probably transformed enough that I'm not sure it's still the funniest thing ever. Interested what you think as a latecomer to them. Does it seem obviously influential or like an evolutionary dead end?
Friends, though, still not funny to me. God damn. Also (as somebody near to me is rewatching it lately) its gender and sexuality politics have aged BADLY. I'd forgotten how edgy they'd tried to be in that direction. It had always seemed so milquetoast.
Anyway there's probably something to older millenials like myself having less predeliction to 80s shit because we came of age when it was too recent to be retro and was just lame. There must be a measurable number of years old cultural artifacts have to be before 20 year olds get back into it.
Interested what you think as a latecomer to them. Does it seem obviously influential or like an evolutionary dead end?
Not laugh-out-loud hilarious, but situations where the relatable quickly merges into the surreal, dark and ridiculous makes me smile. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more had I discovered it when I was much younger, less mature and still smoked weed. They definitely paved the way for sketch comedy to come afterward, namely anything Lorne Michaels related. The least funny Python gag is probably still better than anything that Saturday Night Live has done in the past two decades, in my opinion.
1917: interesting how it was made to simulate as if it were done in a single shot (cuts hidden with darkness or movement). Roger Deakins deserved yet another cinematography award for this. Requires some suspension of belief (a special mission to save 2,000 men when hundreds of thousands were already thrown into the meat grinder, the well placed plane crash, our hero seems to escape and survive explosions better than everyone else, etc) but entertaining. .
1917 was on my list until the baby kiboshed cinema trips for a while. Sad I don't get to see it on the big screen, but not heartbroken. I love long takes and used to seek out Russian Ark, the first true one-take film, Mike Figgis' Timecode (splitscreen 4 simultaneous one-takes!), Hitchcock's Rope (like 1917, but with less trickery to hide the cuts) and so on. That plus Deakins' photography sways me even though the plot sounds like an excuse.
I did finally stream Uncut Gems. I generally love the other films by the Safdies that I've seen - The Pleasure of Being Robbed, Heaven Knows What and Good Time. I think Uncut Gems fell in the middle of the ranking for me, even with Heaven Knows What, behind Good Time, and ahead of Being Robbed. All are worth watching though. The Safdies know how to ratchet tension and also make movies about convincingly endearing low-lifes, which I like. Sandler was not irritating in his role as a total degenerate check-writer, and the character actors are perfectly cast. You see faces in those movies that you don't see on Hollywood casting call lists, I'll put it that way.
klezmer electro-thug beats said: I did finally stream Uncut Gems. I generally love the other films by the Safdies that I've seen - The Pleasure of Being Robbed, Heaven Knows What and Good Time. I think Uncut Gems fell in the middle of the ranking for me, even with Heaven Knows What, behind Good Time, and ahead of Being Robbed. All are worth watching though. The Safdies know how to ratchet tension and also make movies about convincingly endearing low-lifes, which I like. Sandler was not irritating in his role as a total degenerate check-writer, and the character actors are perfectly cast. You see faces in those movies that you don't see on Hollywood casting call lists, I'll put it that way.
Watched Uncut Gems last night - that's what I would call a very satisfying movie. Entertaining, great acting and dialogue, solid ending. I've missed the entirety of the Safdie's career due to having kids syndrome (my oldest is 8), but I will do my homework.
Looking forward to Kelly Reichardt's new movie First Cow - an actor I know well (have worked on several things he was in) is one of the leads and it is getting really good reviews. Now to figure out how to see the damn thing.
Whoa that was not on my radar and looks cool as hell. It's playing in London but I'm hesitant to hit cinemas at the moment for obvious reasons. Feel bad for venues, pubs, cinemas etc. cause I know I'm not the only one.
Whoa that was not on my radar and looks cool as hell. It's playing in London but I'm hesitant to hit cinemas at the moment for obvious reasons. Feel bad for venues, pubs, cinemas etc. cause I know I'm not the only one.
yeah, I saw when it was playing in Brazil last year, and now I wanted to take some friends to go see it here in Los Angeles but looks like we'll have to postpone that
Comments
And as for the experience itself I'm not one to excuse other big special effects movies as dumb popcorn fun (I hate Marvel movies for example) so I don't really excuse Star Wars either.
it's a hysterical farce of a syrupy coming-of-age set deep within the heart of nazism/anti-semitism. i thought the story could have be wilder... but it's a tough/taboo subject and i think the film ends up appealing to a wide range of people (awkward laughs gave way to howls in our screening). and if it was wilder, it could come off as a more careless/gonzo take.
and that's not tw's style, anyway - he's a legend of making broadly appealing but weirdly satisfying movies. recently found out that there's a tv series based on "what we do in the shadows" (already in season 2!) and it's the best news the wife and i have had since she got pregnant with our youngest (not greatly exaggerated btw).
So I might have to stream it with a baby sleeping on my chest. Getting through a lot of movies that way these past weeks. Still gotta see the other current releases I haven't got round to - Parasite, The Irishman, Uncut Gems, that Clint Eastwood one about the '96 Olympics bombing. I welcome further opinions about any of those!!
Nice one - congrats!
You must be tired right now...
I saw "Ford vs. Ferrari" last night at the Egyptian Theater. It was two and a half hours well spent and I would recommend it to someone even if he or she is not a car enthusiast. I have cursory knowledge of auto racing, for the most part based on museum collections and simulation video games I used to play, but have trouble remembering all the makes and model numbers associated with the who's-and-when's. So to that end I got a lot out of it. The racing sequences and, like OUATIH, period detail was the main draw for me; buddy comedy and "little guys against the corporate suits" plot being secondary. I wouldn't put it up there with John Frankenheimer's gold standard, pre-CGI "Grand Prix" and I enjoyed Ron Howard's "Rush" more but there was never a dull moment here. I have yet to see "The 24 Hour War" doc, though.
Anyways, it's only 17 minutes so check it out.
Looks like this is just hitting the UK now - can't recommend enough if you like weird, difficult movies that pay off.https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/19/the-lighthouse-review-robert-pattinson-shines-in-sublime-maritime-nightmare
Yeah... is there an established term for Yank-washing yet? I liked both Ford vs Ferrari & the Netflix doc 24hr War, but
and it’s a massive “BUT”
I got U-751 vibes from both. Shelby was approached by Ford and given the brief. Aside from supplying the Ford V8 engine, just about everything was done in England by English engineers. The GT40 car chassis was an English sports car (Lola). The first three models were designed, constructed, and tested in England... I guess I should be thankful they didn’t write out the English driver from the story in favour of an American too.
Shelby had already used this template with the Cobra: sold in America as the Shelby Cobra, this car was designed, engineered, tested and even assembled in England, shipped to California where Shelby’s team would put in the transmission, and HEY PRESTO, you’ve got another Netflix doc about this amazing American sports car that started beating Chevrolets. What a genius Shelby was. Just have everything made in England ;-p
I'd actually read a book that detailed stupid shit like that in Hollywood movies. 1001 Ameri-Washed Movies You Must See Before You Die At The Hands Of The Crumbling Nationalistic Police State For Crimes You Did Not Commit
I am a big car-nut, this one is deffo on my list. I know the story, but would like to see it done justice. 25 years ago I blagged a drive in a GT40 replica. It was hard work to drive, no power-anything, but the shove in the back was addictive, it got better the faster you went. It was well-sorted (IIRC it was a Ray Mallock build) but required enormous levels of concentration to keep it going where you wanted it to go at any good lick and I would imagine immense talent to be able to explore its limits (massive props to whoever drove kit like this BITD for a living). I just couldn't afford one. I think they were 50K+ back then.
I had illusions of one day having one as a daily driver but after a few laps, you realise:
a) You would never get to stretch it in traffic. It would be like forever taxiing a fighter-jet.
b) It would be hellishly uncomfortable. My arms and left leg were sore afterwards.
I'd recommend karting as a cheaper option, you can drift those all day long in the wet and the speeds (in the cheap ones) are much less threatening to life. Try that in a GT40. You can tell me about it via the Ouija board.
He was great in "Dumb and Dumber" but that must have been the script.
No wait - Cable Guy.... GOD that was annoying.
Does not hold up. So fucking annoying. I was like “we... as a society... found this funny?”
Headline: The Nineties: Not as Dope as You Remember
I remember catching snatches of Ace Ventura, Kingpin, Dumb & Dumber etc. on TV even in the 2000s and feeling like "whoa, 9 out of 10 jokes don't hit anymore". I can't imagine what it's like now to watch those.
But then, I heard an early-20s girl waxing poetic on how funny Caddyshack was. She was talking like she was the first person to discover that movie that was ubiquitous on TV for the entire decade of the 90s. Even back then it felt slow and unfunny and out-of-date to my young tastes. Maybe movie attention-span doesn't just continuously accelerate until everybody's just watching farting butts a la Idiocracy, but things actually go in circles. Or maybe it was just one young weirdo.
Jim Carrey: his peak was "The Cable Guy". I really liked the dark humor. And there's this too:
Millennial young women just discovering the 90s: I roll my eyes when I see them wearing "Friends" shirts, but then I realize that I am no better as I only recently discovered Monty Python, for example.
Going to see "1917" tonight.
Friends, though, still not funny to me. God damn. Also (as somebody near to me is rewatching it lately) its gender and sexuality politics have aged BADLY. I'd forgotten how edgy they'd tried to be in that direction. It had always seemed so milquetoast.
Anyway there's probably something to older millenials like myself having less predeliction to 80s shit because we came of age when it was too recent to be retro and was just lame. There must be a measurable number of years old cultural artifacts have to be before 20 year olds get back into it.
Not laugh-out-loud hilarious, but situations where the relatable quickly merges into the surreal, dark and ridiculous makes me smile. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more had I discovered it when I was much younger, less mature and still smoked weed. They definitely paved the way for sketch comedy to come afterward, namely anything Lorne Michaels related. The least funny Python gag is probably still better than anything that Saturday Night Live has done in the past two decades, in my opinion.
1917: interesting how it was made to simulate as if it were done in a single shot (cuts hidden with darkness or movement). Roger Deakins deserved yet another cinematography award for this. Requires some suspension of belief (a special mission to save 2,000 men when hundreds of thousands were already thrown into the meat grinder, the well placed plane crash, our hero seems to escape and survive explosions better than everyone else, etc) but entertaining. .
1917 was on my list until the baby kiboshed cinema trips for a while. Sad I don't get to see it on the big screen, but not heartbroken. I love long takes and used to seek out Russian Ark, the first true one-take film, Mike Figgis' Timecode (splitscreen 4 simultaneous one-takes!), Hitchcock's Rope (like 1917, but with less trickery to hide the cuts) and so on. That plus Deakins' photography sways me even though the plot sounds like an excuse.
I did finally stream Uncut Gems. I generally love the other films by the Safdies that I've seen - The Pleasure of Being Robbed, Heaven Knows What and Good Time. I think Uncut Gems fell in the middle of the ranking for me, even with Heaven Knows What, behind Good Time, and ahead of Being Robbed. All are worth watching though. The Safdies know how to ratchet tension and also make movies about convincingly endearing low-lifes, which I like. Sandler was not irritating in his role as a total degenerate check-writer, and the character actors are perfectly cast. You see faces in those movies that you don't see on Hollywood casting call lists, I'll put it that way.
Watched Uncut Gems last night - that's what I would call a very satisfying movie. Entertaining, great acting and dialogue, solid ending. I've missed the entirety of the Safdie's career due to having kids syndrome (my oldest is 8), but I will do my homework.
yeah, I saw when it was playing in Brazil last year, and now I wanted to take some friends to go see it here in Los Angeles but looks like we'll have to postpone that