LawrenceA

Yeah, I don't watch a lot of broadcast television, so that may be another reason I've only seen the one promo for it. I think that was during Jeopardy. I was also considering the amount of trailers that I've seen for Joker. Like I said, I don't watch a lot of commercial television, but I swear I've seen that Joker ad about 150 times in the past two weeks.

I didn't watch Cleopatra (1912), but I know you're (Hamradio) not the first around here to say that it was bad. I would have to keep it in context of its time. I know you mentioned another short film from the same year, but you can't really compare features and shorts. I do know that Cleopatra was made before Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which really changed the language of cinema profoundly, so I usually look at movies made before it with that in mind. A lot of them were just static shots of the stage, with no close-ups or edits or multiple angles, etc. That being said, I'm still not sorry that I missed it!

According to Wikipedia, the score was actually commissioned by TCM when the film was restored and first shown in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_(1912_film)#Status

Intolerance uses multiple color tints.

I can attest that outside of L.A., the movie Judy was hardly promoted at all (as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I only saw one very brief commercial on television for it), and I saw no articles about it elsewhere except for the (not positive) few mentions after its screening in Venice. If one doesn't read the Times, which the majority of the populace does not, then they would be totally unaware of this "event of the year" hype. To most of us, Judy is another minor indie film that most will not see. And I say this without any animosity toward the film. In fact, I hope that it's successful, if for no other reason than to spur further adult-oriented dramas.

Gonin 2, Takashi Ishii, Japan (1996) - 6/10 Sequel in name only, with five women, complete strangers to one another, finding themselves in the same jewelry store when an armed robbery goes down. The women, each with their own hardship to deal with, end up with the loot and on the run from authorities and the yakuza behind the heist. Meanwhile, a man driven mad by grief over the suicide of his wife (she had been assaulted by the same yakuza thugs) goes on a bloody rampage of revenge. There's some inventive camera work and quite a bit of violence, but the characters are weaker than in Ishii's previous effort.

Is Judi Evans the "very low-class type"? I know her from Days, which she was on before and after she was on Another World. Was the original Lorna Alicia Coppola? I liked her, and she still shows up in guest spots on a lot of shows.

Yeah, the movie is literally about a black cop infiltrating the klan, so the title isn't misleading in the least bit.

Usually they're just switched without any acknowledgment from the characters. Occasionally I've heard of them using an "accident" requiring plastic surgery as the reason for the appearance/actor change. I know on Days of Our Lives, Drake Hogestyn was brought in as the new Roman Brady, with plastic surgery given as the reason after the character fell off a cliff and was presumed dead. However, the original actor (Wayne Northrop) came back, so they decided that Drake Hogestyn wasn't actually Roman after all, but another guy named John Black who was brainwashed to think he was Roman. Both characters are still on the show as far as I know, only Roman is now played by another actor, Josh Taylor, who, to make things even more confusing, used to be on the same show playing another character (Chris Kositchek) in the 1980's.

I have a friend that's really into Ghost BC. I've never seen them or heard much by them. They seem like fine fellows, though.

Which band? Entombed? In Flames? Amon Amarth? Bathory? Opeth? Meshuggah?

Shinjuku Triad Society, Takashi Miike, Japan (1995) - 6/10 Miike's first film made for theatrical release is this outrageous crime drama that centers on a cop (Kippei Shina) who's trying to stem the growing power of the Chinese Triads in Shinjuku. This brings him into conflict with his younger brother (Shinsuke Izutsu), a lawyer working for unpredictable Triad boss Wang (Tomoro Taguchi). Filled with the kind of excessive violence and aberrant sexuality that would come to signify Miike's 90's-thru-mid-00's output, this is an ugly film in both look and content. The clash between Japanese culture and the increasing Taiwanese-exile population provides some interest. The dialogue switches between Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese frequently, and the version I watched used subtitle changes to help differentiate between them all, with Japanese the standard, Mandarin using "[ ]" brackets, and Cantonese using "{ }" braces.

You left out the one that would arguably be of the most interest to the TCM crowd:

Last Man Standing (1995) - 5/10 Direct-to-video action flick starring Jeff Wincott as LAPD detective Kurt Bellmore. When he arrests bank robber Snake Underwood (Jonathan Fuller), Bellmore stumbles into a web of police corruption that goes to the top, forcing our hero to go rogue to bring down the bad guys. With Jonathan Banks, Jillian McWhirter, Ava Fabian, Robert LaSardo, Steve Eastin, and Michael Greene. This is the kind of movie that showed up on video several times every week in the mid-90's. Canadian martial artist Wincott became a minor B-movie star by featuring in several of them. There's a lengthy vehicle chase scene in the middle of the movie that looks a lot more expensive and elaborately staged than I would have thought they could pull off at this budget, but they do. Not to be confused with the 1996 Bruce Willis film of the same title.

New Variety article: After ‘Judy’ Wows on Opening Weekend, How High Can It Go? Renee Zellweger’s musical biopic “Judy” enjoyed breakout box-office success not unlike that of its subject, Judy Garland. Boosted by Oscar talk for Zellweger’s portrayal of the famed entertainer, “Judy” struck a chord with moviegoers and collected a promising $3 million. That haul is especially impressive considering it opened in just 461 North American theaters, translating to $6,705 from each location and marking the highest screen average of the weekend. If its limited debut is any indication, “Judy” could end up in the category of prestige films that are both loved and seen. Next weekend, the musical biopic will expand to 1,400 to 1,500 screens. “This is an incredibly promising start and bodes well for its future, both at the box office and during awards season,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst with Comscore. “If this film started in 2,000 theaters, you’re taking a huge risk. By going between that and a four-theater run, you get a big enough footprint to make an impression and then you have time for word of mouth about movie’s brilliance to get out.” Roadside Attractions and LD Entertainment opted for a slightly larger screen count than a typical platform release because the specialty studios felt the premise of “Judy,” matched with a well-known leading lady, was easily digestible in trailers and other marketing materials. It’s a strategy that Roadside first deployed with 2012’s “Mud” starring Matthew McConaughey, later in 2014 with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s “A Most Wanted Man” and again with the studio’s 2015 Sherlock Holmes drama “Mr. Holmes” with Ian McKellen. All three films achieved modest box office successes. “We think ‘Judy’ has big potential, but we wanted to find a middle ground,” said Howard Cohen, Roadside Attractions’ co-founder and president. “We felt that if you live in Cleveland or Oklahoma City or Minneapolis, you would ask why the movie wasn’t opening right away.” “It’s a movie with a star and an idea that is easily communicated in marketing, but we didn’t think it was right for a wide release because it’s still a more serious drama. ‘Judy’ is not ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ It’s not about a rock star and it doesn’t end with a stadium tour. It’s much more quiet and edgy.” Dergarabedian notes that buzz out of major film festivals like Telluride and Toronto helped elevate its profile. Zellweger, returning to the big screen after a hiatus, has also been making the rounds on late-night television and in the press. “Renee Zellweger and the director [Rupert Goold] have been out there pushing this movie like it’s a blockbuster, not a smaller scale biopic,” Dergarabedian said. “But if the movie didn’t have the goods to back it up, [the promotion] would fall on deaf ears.” Roadside elected to release the movie in late September, ahead of the onslaught of awards season hopefuls that will hit the big screen over the next three months. “That was very deliberate on our part,” Cohen said. “We couldn’t plan on it, but we were hoping there would be buzz out of the festivals. We timed [the debut] very specifically toward that as opposed to waiting until December and needing actual nominations. We liked being first out of the gate among Oscar movies.” “Judy” also caught the wave of “Hustlers” and “Downton Abbey,” the type of entertainment geared toward female audiences that studios have mostly abandoned in favor of comic-book adventures. In the case of “Judy,” 60% of moviegoers were female, while nearly 80% were over the age of 35. Audiences awarded the film with an A- CinemaScore. “With an older audience, we believe if you build it they will come,” Cohen said. “If there’s something good, they will show. It’s a relatively loyal audience.” https://variety.com/2019/film/box-office/judy-box-office-renee-zellweger-oscar-1203353073/

La Haine, Matthieu Kassovitz, France (1995) - 8/10 The story follows a day and a night in the lives of three friends in the poor, riot-scarred slums of Paris. With Vincent Cassel, Hubert Lounde, and Said Taghmaoui. I think most, if not everyone of the others posting in this thread had listed that they've seen this, so I'll just add that I liked it a lot, the B&W cinema verite look, the foreign yet sadly familiar milieu of the characters' lives, and the racial and ethnic clashes that are even more relevant now. Recommended.

I watched this in the past couple of months, and I loved it. One of my favorites from that year.

That's an impressive list of movies, CI. I can't say that I liked any of them except for maybe The Formula and Legal Eagles. I didn't think Ishtar was nearly as bad as its reputation leads one to expect, but it's nothing I'm clamoring to see again, either.

Gonin aka The Five, Takashi Ishii, Japan (1995) - 7/10 A debt-ridden former rock star turned nightclub owner (Koichi Sato) recruits a quartet of outsiders, including a disgraced former cop (Jinpachi Nezu), a Thai pimp (Kippei Shina), a mentally-unstable businessman (Naoto Takenata) recently fired from his job, and a gay hustler (Masahiro Motoki), to pull off a daring heist of yakuza money. Things don't go as planned, and the five men find themselves on the run, with a pair of dangerous assassins (Takeshi Kitano & Kazuya Kimura) on their trail. I thought this was an entertaining crime picture, with offbeat characters and some good action sequences that eschew Hollywood-style choreography for real-world clumsiness and mess. Takeshi Kitano had recently been in a near-fatal motor accident that left the right side of his face partially paralyzed. This was his first film after the accident, and the eye bandage that he sports throughout the film was not cosmetic.

I like that one a lot. It's my favorite of his giallos. I love the scene when the mechanical doll enters the room.

The Desperate Trail (1994) - 6/10 A grizzled US Marshal (Sam Elliott) is transporting a condemned woman (Linda Fiorentino) to her place of execution when she escapes his custody. She takes up with a wily con man (Craig Sheffer), and the two make a run for it with stolen money and dreams of a future. Meanwhile, the marshal gets a posse together to track them down and kill them. Also featuring Frank Whaley, John Furlong, Rockne Tarkington, and Bradley Whitford. Written and directed by P.J. Pesce, this was originally intended for the TNT channel, but it has a bit of nudity and some salty language, which led to a direct-to-video release and an "R" rating. The usual western paradigm is subverted, as the outlaws are the sympathetic heroes, and the marshal and his posse are either bloodthirsty, idiotic or both. The characterizations are good, but the script is weak.

I've seen Heathers a few times. Speaking of "darker versions", that was the darker version of an 80's teen comedy. I liked bits of it, but Slater's bad Jack Nicholson impression was grating. I saw Adventures in Babysitting on HBO a looong time ago, and don't remember much, beyond Vincent D'onofrio as "Thor". I saw Party Girl when it first came out on video. It was at the height of Parker Posey's reign as indie-film "It"-girl. I don't recall much from it, but if you like her, you should like the movie. I seem to recall there being a TV show based on it that came out later and was canceled quickly. I never saw Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter Is Dead.

I wouldn't say the show is darker at all. It's a comedy. Much like the film, it's a take-off on a traditional high school comedy, mixed with monsters. It has dark moments, but the overall tone is humorous and light, with a lot of sharp, funny dialogue. One of my sisters watched 90210 when it was new, but I never watched it. I knew of Luke Perry, but I think the Buffy movie may have been the first time that I saw him act in something. The movie 8 Seconds was a big deal around here a couple of years later, but I avoided it. I didn't see Perry in another movie until his very brief bit at the beginning of The Fifth Element. Looking over his credits, it doesn't appear that I saw him in anything else, except for a couple of guest appearances on various TV shows.

The TV series was one of the best shows of the late 90's/early 00's. The movie was amusing but seems underwhelming after watching the series. I wasn't too thrilled with the movie when it came out, and thus didn't watch the show until the third season, although I went back and watched the first few later (I have the complete series on disc). I've since watched the movie again as well, and appreciate it more for what it is. I remember Luke Perry being better than I expected. I remember Paul Reubens' "death" scene. That was his first onscreen work after the scandal that ruined his Pee-Wee Herman career for a while. I also remember this movie as being the first time I noticed that Rutger Hauer was getting fat. And Hilary Swank is in the movie, too. I've read that Sutherland, who I'm a fan of, was a complete jerk during the making of the film. Kristy Swanson later played Anna Nicole Smith in a TV movie, and now she's a very vocal Trump supporter and conservative media fixture. She still gets referred to as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", although most anyone who would care about that regards Sarah Michelle Gellar as the "real" Buffy.