EricJ

The marketing of the "Part 1" movie, and the whole horse-blindered fanboy-dom that grew up around one character in it, seemed so subjective--fueled by the same post-Batman Joker-obsessed cool-caulrophobia, and the same "Kids on bicycles" we-miss-the-80's button that created Stranger Things' mania--I was surprised the director was even bothering to go on to film Part 2: The Neurotic Traumatized Grownup Years. (Which was...pretty much the whole point of Stephen King's novel in the first place. Although that was also basically stroking the other half of the fandom to begin with.) Like most folks, I was ready to judge this movie by its uber-fans, but I'll give its credit, director Andy Muschietti does a surprisingly creepy job of creating Nightmare Style. Any cheap commercial horror director raised on the cynical James Wan era can throw strobing shots and flashes at us thinking he's creating "scary", but it takes a little talent to create a real sense of innocent unexplainable dread straight out of a kids' nightmare, that things are going to turn very bad suddenly if you go into the wrong room in the old house or become curious to see what made the strange sound. King wanted to write a novel about "all the classic monsters", and had the kids meet the Teenage Wolfman and the Creature From the Black Lagoon, but updating the movie to the (oo!) 80's meant the story had to focus on having the kids facing their fears. Takes a lot to scare ME, and this one did. ?

Yeah, Connery winked through the whole movie, which was the problem with Never being the "fake" Bond movie. Apart from being legal concession to finally placate the Thunderball guy, I don't remember much of the plot, I just remember Connery pushing comedy-relief Rowan Atkinson into a pool. Even Roger Moore would never have gone there. Well, he meant he would never personally do another one for producer Harry Saltzman, but the "fake" Bond movie without Saltzman or Albert Broccoli was okay.

They're not on the main roads between the strip malls like in the old days (since you don't use up that much open acreage and not jealously attract another strip mall), but they can be found. In our area, some are out in the woods, in what would normally be a big state-park picnic spot, shown on billboards--Since it's all radio-frequency nowadays, who needs the big cement ocean of speaker-posts? And since most parks are closed in the winter anyway, it's not taking business away from the theater half, in the seasonal areas of the country. (We used to have an old-school one in our neighborhood, growing up, when I was too young to drive and there was nothing playing that parents would take us to. Never saw the inside except for two shows, but watching Amazon Prime's collections of drive-in trailers still makes me nostalgic. ?)

It's definitely an "establishment" film by 50's Hollywood/sitcom writers that thought they had to dig up "current hit singers" for the Young Kids, but they seem to have hit on quite a few serendipitous choices. There's a distinct artistic difference between Girl and The T.A.M.I. Show, but can't deny there's some great archival bits on there.

...TWO "80's Fantasies" is a "theme", Warner/MGM? Dug up the poster from "Innerspace" but couldn't even decently squeeze out The Neverending Story for a third? No MGM-owned Cannon Pictures Masters of the Universe? (Although, to be fair, most of the true 80's Fantasy Summer-of-Love are either Sony, like "Krull", "Ghostbusters" or "The Dark Crystal", Paramount like "Dragonslayer" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and almost everything else Spielberg was from Universal.)

In the 70's, 007 were the only 60's films that were still MAJOR TV ratings when run in prime-time. Before cable and VCR, you planned your week, popcorn and pajamas around the Thursday or Sunday-night ABC showing. And Ernie Anderson's 70's-ABC "To-night:" made any theatrical movie you first watched on TV an event: (Even Faye Dunaway in "Network" brags "ABC wants to trade us five Bond movies for Howard Beale!", as if that was one of the recognizable ratings Super-Bowls of the day.) My first ABC Sunday-night popcorn-pajamas-and-can't-stay-up-to-the-end Bond? Goldfinger, of course. Even if all I remembered for years was the tricked-out Aston Martin with the oil slick and ejector, and wondering how it was possible to kill someone with gold.

Like Thunderball, Licence to Kill and Man with the Golden Gun, Moonraker stretched the envelope limits of the occasional "CAN the songwriter actually write a plausible theme with that title?" challenges...Octopussy, OTOH, graciously conceded. ? And I also wanted to believe that Octopussy was the "fun" answer to the gritty action of For Your Eyes Only and before the geriatric goofiness of View to a Kill. But I watched it again just a year or two ago and..yes: Too silly, in the truest Graham Chapman definition of the word. And I didn't even mind Moore dressing up like a clown when I first saw the movie in theaters. A View to a Kill is funnier if you look at Christopher Walken's villain as literally an SNL sketch of "Christopher Walken auditions as a 007 villain". I guarantee it will be impossible to keep a straight face at Walken deliveries like "Oh...you do amuse me...Mr. BOND." And TND is my pick for the "essential" Pierce Brosnan 007, not least because of Pryce's villain. Yes, a British poke at Rupert Murdoch, but given that Ted Turner's channels were having seemingly non-stop "Bond Week" monopolies, the obvious CNN karma was there too. Musically, I never learned to recognize John Barry's soaring string-sections and blaring french-horns until the 007 scores--And while any true 007 song should have Shirley Bassey and "Goldfinger"'s brass-blares, you know you're listening to Barry on "You Only Live Twice": (Now that's the future composer of "Out of Africa" and "Dances With Wolves".) But, we all digress: Is Goldfinger the definitive 007 film?: Connery. Gert Frobe. Harold Sakata. Honor Blackman. The Aston Martin, with gadgets and ejection seat. Fort Knox. "Why no, Mr. Bond..." Answer: YES.

At least Mighty Joe Young had more sense of showmanship:

Yeah, if we wanted off-topic politicized kaiju, we'd watch Shin Godzilla.

My dad snuck me into Blazing Saddles at 10, which, N-words and (then-inscrutable) Madeline Kahn lyrics aside, was pretty much a perfect 10-yo's speed. To think that in 1974, such a shocking thing as gaseous baked-bean jokes were considered unfit for tender eyes under 17, and befitting a Restricted rating... One of my earliest theater memories was going with the family to see 2001: a Space Odyssey at 5 (although that was soft G-rated by '68 standards), since it was easier than finding a babysitter, or else I might just sleep through it. I did. ? One time, we had a summer youth group going out to see a big summer movie, and since everyone still loved Richard Dreyfus from "Goodbye Girl" and "Close Encounters" in '78, we chose to go see The Big Fix, and barely understood a bit of it. Watched it again a few years ago, and the movie's "Whatever happened to our college-radical 60's?" theme was literally five years ahead of its time before "The Big Chill" grabbed all the credit, but that was lost on us back then.

And although I haven't seen it yet, FWIH, the "James Cromwell Rule" of Sci-Fi Films is in full operation here. To violate it would be heresy. ? (SPOILER) The Cromwell Rule specifically stating, that in any sci-fi action movie where a brand-new, revolutionary technology is now considered commonplace, after being invented years ago by legendary genius James Cromwell, but is now being used for nefarious purposes, GUESS who will turn out to be the mastermind behind the conspiracy. Cromwell also invented robot technology in "I, Robot" and "Surrogates", so dinosaur gene-splicing would not be too far out of his league. And if there's ever a sleeper inside plot to destroy Starfleet Federation, you KNOW the inventor of the Warp Drive will turn out to be behind it.

Oh, you know how Tim does remakes: It's not going to look anything within a hundred miles of anything faintly resembling the original...Like, no crows, no Timothy, no snooty talking elephants, Eva Green plays the misogynistically retro-glamour villainess, and the whole story is now refocused around "They're picking on me!" https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dumbo-everything-know-disneys-live-action-remake-1123533 (But, hey, at least he remembered the clowns and the Pink Elephants.)

That Creepy (and obnoxiously mean-spirited) Plastic Duracell commercial series was supposed to be cribbing Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters' robot makeup from Heartbeeps (1981), which we would know if anyone had ever actually seen that movie (Which is only tolerable for its John Williams score.) ...THAT'S why nobody ever got it.

And....that's why we're getting the Tim Burton remake. (No, really: The guy IS married, right? With kids?)

D'ohh, how could I forget the many Ferris wheels in movies? (Vintage Coney Island Wonder Wheels, not the constant London Eyes every time there's an 00's action-movie sequel, or those ones in Sony movies that break off and start rolling away, like in Goosebumps and Smurfs 2.) So, no Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis in Made in Heaven (1987), then? Suit yerself.

I like the Kids in the Hall's version better: "I'm your worst nightmare!" "Maurice Lawrence from high school??"

Since nobody's answered that question, that would be the previously mentioned "Man in the Dark"? (Now available in its original 3D, on compatible players: http://www.store-3d-blurayrental.com/Man-in-the-Dark-3D-Blu-ray-Rental-p/2115.htm ) And while Harold Lloyd's Speedy (1928) gave us a glimpse of Coney Island Past, back when Luna Park was still a national attraction, he was still an avid coaster enthusiast in "Number Please":

OTOH, I watched Russell's first major movie, the Michael Caine Harry-Palmer spy thriller Billion Dollar Brain (1967), and for a while, it seemed like a nice, tidy, disciplined movie--Up to about the two-thirds mark, I was thinking, "Is this really a Ken Russell film, or was he just phoning it in for the work?" Until (SPOILER) we see the villain explain that he's doing his evil plot all for God, America and the Flag, and then, with easy target in hand....yyyyep, it promptly becomes a Ken Russell film. ? It's Australian for "subtle", mate.

Like I said, Americans who've never seen the Carry On comedies in their lives think AYBS? is hilarious. Those of us who've been infected (at least from other fans on this board) can not only spot the series as a baldfaced DIY "Carry On Shopping", but find new humor in that the show went out of its way to find comic doppelgänger-equivalents for Jim Dale, Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims, and Charles Hawtrey. Took me a while to figure out who the Sidney James equivalent was, until I saw the early episodes with the janitor.

It's "Moulin Rouge fan-fiction", which means you could classify it as a "musical", but it shouldn't flatter itself.

Also, it's a lot safer now: In the old days, if you were being chased by some evil conspiracy, made it to a phone booth, called your friend/contact, and heard him over the phone say "Okay, stay where you are, we're coming to pick you up", you knew immediately that you'd been double-crossed, he'd been on the villain's side all along, and car headlights would immediately turn on to run you over-- But with no more phone booths, it's safer to walk the streets at night!

Wrong beans, though-- The Who were parodying the oft-seen Heinz "What's For Tea?" ads (which I would have never known in the US except for being a richly overexposed target of parodies for British comics like Benny Hill and The Goodies), but Ken's old advertising devils were for Rex baked beans. So it's open to interpretation.

Oh, thought it was going to be about technologically vanishing movie cliche's, like somebody coming home from work at night and suddenly getting a breakup or a villain warning on the answering machine tape to the landline phone in their kitchen.

Although I side with the comic abuse that Monty Python would gleefully heap upon Ken Russell-- One sketch, for example, ends with the characters breaking out into cute '20's musical, and the onscreen title reads: "Sandy Wilson's production of 'The Devils'". (An obvious poke at Ken Russell's production of "The Boy Friend", in case you hadn't gotten it yet. )

It was baked beans. And why? Accdg. to IMDb: IOW, pretty much Ken Russell throwing story out the window and making the whole scene About Him.