EricJ
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Posts posted by EricJ
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Funny coincidence--Just a little while ago, I was posting on another forum about that gratingly straw-man "Nasty bureaucrat" and "Weaselly guy escapes in comic-relief dress" subplot that Peter Jackson grafted out of a clear blue sky (and lingered rather disturbingly on) onto The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies (2014)
(Or at least creatively crafted out of one book sentence of what happened to the mayor of the town.)
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(I would have posted the female duck from Howard the Duck (1986), but it's NSFW.)
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11 hours ago, TikiSoo said:
Amazing. I would never gallop a horse in the open like that-especially without a helmet!
Or, as the Carol Burnett parody said:
"I can hide my hair under a helmet:"(shows Liz Taylor profile)
"...I think you need TWO helmets."
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6 hours ago, speedracer5 said:
EDIT: I wanted to know how well the movie followed the book. Apparently my husband has read the book. After finishing The Fountainhead, he decided he'd had enough of Ayn Rand and isn't pursuing any of her other works.
I'd only watched the first two goofy conservative-made 00's movies of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy (the third got a handful of Razzie nominations), and I can see what scholars study about Rand, but she's still not my thing.
The movies kept trying to homage/invoke 00's Occupy Wall Street imagery when depicting the public rising up in protest against a government crackdown on industry...Uh, correct me if my memory is wrong, but wasn't the real OWS about how we didn't trust big business, that they weren't hardworking picked-on martyrs, and thought the government should crack down on them??
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It's one of the Columbia Orphans, so it's been more visible on streaming lately.
It's also recently surged in popularity with young viewers seeking out why older viewers kept making "Strawberries" and "Ball bearings" jokes during the Trump impeachment and his constant warnings of the Biden Conspiracy. I'd already seen the movie, and MacMurray's psycho-analyses of Queeg's paranoia ("The tendency to repeat certain idiosyncratic words or phrases in moments of crisis") was a helpful guide to understanding the First Three Years, and all the Presidential Tweets in it.
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12 hours ago, Det Jim McLeod said:
I admit I did. And after it was over, I honestly could not recall one song from it. Heather Headley's singing was great though.
Our local semipro theater group has been showing off with getting big recent Broadway plays/shows, and figuring out how to do them on a high-school sized stage.
Plays are easy, but a while ago, they figured out how to do a stripped-down minimal-set Aida--just as the big version was ending its NY run--and only charged a local $20-30 for it. When I mentioned this online, someone asked, "Wait, what? How??" (like, no onstage swimming pool, maybe, or just hint at imaginary pyramids with the magic of theater?), and mysteriously, only a year or two later, Disney Broadway started getting into the business of licensing stripped-down versions of Aladdin, Beauty&Beast and Newsies for school/local theater groups.
(Of course, by that time, our group had already done a stripped-down "Titanic: the Musical", so Aida was a piece o' cake.)
9 hours ago, Dargo said:Sure, the first one pretty much sucks, but I always turn up the volume a bit whenever Philadelphia Freedom comes on the radio!
(...and besides, YOU try writtin' a song for a professional tennis team and see how far ya get, dude!)
I didn't know about the tennis team, but the Bicentennial wasn't THE '76 Bicentennial without it--Kitschy, naively feel-good, and pumps you up in a 70's way. 😄
The same could be said for the MTV 80's, and I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That--Just let the pinball-wizard pound on the keyboard, and you've got an earworm Elton riff. If anything, his Oscar song sounded like a weak knockoff.
7 hours ago, speedracer5 said:I love Toy Story but I'm conflicted as to whether a 4th one needs to exist. I thought that the third one ended the story perfectly.
It doesn't--But Bob Iger needed something to announce for the Toy Story 20th Anniversary to go along with the new theme park, and he's...lately been having fun pretending to be movie producer and think up new marketing-sequel titles that Pixar has to do the hard work and figure out.
That's how we got the equally pointless Cars 3.
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He seems to save his worst songs especially for his Broadway/movie songwriter career--Ever sit through "Aida" on Broadway?
(I'd have mentioned "The Road to El Dorado", but...I honestly don't remember any songs from that movie.)
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11 minutes ago, Dargo said:
Oh, c'mon here, Beth! Half the fun of watching the Oscar telecasts has ALWAYS been waiting to see who is gonna make an a$$ out of themselves!!!
No, no, that's the Golden Globes, where they serve the free drinks--The fun is in watching the second-half speeches! 🥴 (And Joaquin Phoenix ain't got nothin' on your average GG Best Actor winner's time on stage...)
The fun of the Oscar telecasts is in watching the famous clip compilations that Chuck "100 Years of Movies" Workman used to make, and making library rental-list reminders from it--Only this year, they only had one, and Eminem barged right into the middle of it and ruined the whole thing.
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5 hours ago, JamesStewartFan95 said:
Saying that you’ve seen none of the Best Picture nominees is not something to brag about.
And certainly not for the studios.
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In my old theater (the one that's still standing), there was a long corridor that went to a later-added back theater, and the hallway was decorated with framed print-collages of all the Best Picture winner by decade.
For me, the Best Picture race is about who still gets to go up on that wall. I used to win the annual betting pool by saying that Silence of the Lambs, Amadeus and Return of the King deserved to be on that wall a lot more than Beauty & the Beast, The Killing Fields or Mystic River. We're making posterity, here.(It's also why I object to the 8-10 nomination rule, where we fill up Best Picture with rumor and acting-buzz fluff, just because we can't think of more than four that DO deserve to be up there. And now we don't even have those.)
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4 hours ago, Dargo said:
Ya know, I think the next time I encounter a young moviegoer, I'm gonna break out my rendition of the song "Singin' in the Rain", and JUST to see the deer-in-the-headlights looks I'm almost sure to get.
(...I love doin' stuff like this, ya know)
No, sucker him into a bet that he can't get through fifteen minutes of watching it, if he's never seen it before.
Then, after "Fit as a Fiddle", double the bet that he can't get through a half hour.
Then, after "Make 'Em Laugh"...
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As one whose apartment cut the cable FOR me (no way to rearrange the furniture), I was able to stream the ceremony legally for the first time on ABC.com, with Xfinity's blessing.
This is the first year they didn't promotionally hold the stream "Exclusively!" hostage to some mobile provider or TV-app service, although they did make sure we took notice of YouTubeTV in the ads.
5 hours ago, LawrenceA said:Many people have pointed to the "woke" content in the show to explain why the ratings were low, but the ratings were low because people didn't watch it, thus they had no idea what was in it.
A dozen failed "hip, edgy" hosts, and the Academy still hasn't figured out we tune in to watch a year of nominees we've seen...Which is why Boyhood vs. Birdman is still the lowest-rated so far. Nobody wanted to be the guy who tuned in to see if Joker was going to get Best Picture, and even more tuned out fearing it was. The low ratings reflect the number of people who have already seen Parasite and 1917 in actual theaters.
And remember, like our president says, if you get low TV ratings, it's shame and dishonor, and proves that the American people hate you because you deserve it.
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11 hours ago, LawrenceA said:
When I first read about this new Parasite last year, I also thought of that Demi Moore flick.
Thank you. Now I know I am not alone. (And yes, there is a Blu 3D version: https://www.store-3d-blurayrental.com/product-p/parastie3d08-19.htm )
6 hours ago, Mr. Gorman said:Since I did not watch the Oscars what reason did Joaquin Phoenix give for wanting people to stop drinking milk? Or was there NO reason given by Meester Phee-nix?
"We take the babies away from the cows..."
(After some initial calf-bonding, however, I have yet to see some enraged Sally-Field dairy cow fighting the system to protect a mother's custody rights. Cows are not the most self-aware animals in the mammal kingdom.)11 hours ago, Dargo said:So, in other words here you're sayin' that just because ONE dude walks up there on the Oscar stage and starts mouthin' off about cows and about how bad he thinks people treat 'em, THAT is the perfect example of what "Hollywood calls being socially conscious", EH?!
What JP was doing is properly called "Rambling", and when he awkwardly ran out of words near the end, his blue-sky'ing streak from "Vegan warrior" to "Corrupt Hollywood system" to "Grateful comeback from erratic behavior" was starting to lose new topics, and he quickly went into his inspiring-quote dance.
Think he pretty much clinched his own case that he may have had a few bolts loose in the 10's, and is on the mental and career recovery. In progress.
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5 hours ago, Dargo said:
Ah yes. Back when Frankie was constantly being kidded about how slim he was...
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5 minutes ago, JakeHolman said:
hollywood is now totally nuts ...
Nope--Just Joaquin. And he spent the second half of his Patty-Duke-tribute speech apologizing for it.
(It's possible to accept his apology, but we're still waiting for Jim Carrey's.)
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On 2/8/2020 at 12:46 AM, Allhallowsday said:
INTERIORS (1978) on TCM - a depressing WOODY ALLEN film (written / directed by, no appearance) with remarkable performances from DIANE KEATON GERALDINE PAGE E.G. MARSHALL MAUREEN STAPLETON ...more... fascinating downer. I haven't watched a movie I can remember with so many selfish characters.
The first, IIRC, of Woody's 80's campaign to plagiarize-remake all of his favorite Ingmar Bergman films, later followed by his favorite Fellini films (Stardust Memories, Radio Days), and Russian authors (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah & Her Sisters).
We just didn't know that back then, or how low he would sink--Remember when we kept looking for "Shakespeare" parallels in A Midsummer Night Sex Comedy, with all of its smiles on summer nights?
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10 hours ago, Roy Cronin said:
And Broadway is continuing to borrow relentlessly from Hollywood : very recent or soon to premiere musicals of Beetlejuice, Tootsie, Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, Color Purple, Mrs Doubtfire, Bull Durham, Diner, Devil Wears Prada, Flamingo Kid.....the list goes on and on.
Most of the studios are trying to follow Disney and Universal's lead in being the only companies big enough to afford to produce Broadway musicals; unfortunately, unlike Universal, Warner can't get their heads around the "Different musicals" idea, and wants to use a Beetlejuice musical as part of their new "Nostalgia icon" marketing campaign. (We already had a Willy Wonka, Elf, and A Christmas Story musical, and I doubt we're getting one of Blade Runner or The Shining...I hold my bets on Scooby-Doo, however.) And Legally Blonde was only available because the original was MGM public-domain.
Meanwhile, the Broadway "community" has run out of actual gay-icon cult-films to adapt, like Kinky Boots, Moulin Rouge, or Billy Elliot, and has had to wishfully scrape the bottom for straight drag comedies like Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire. Paramount, however, came up with a way to get the best of both, and did a Spongebob Squarepants musical.
Ah, I miss the days when Andrew Lloyd Webber could do a Sunset Blvd. musical just because he wanted to... 😢
3 hours ago, Swithin said:I saw the original London production of the Sunset Blvd. musical with Patti LuPone. She was great, but she had a fight with ALW and they parted ways. The show closed briefly, was evidently changed a bit, and a new lead brought in. I haven't seen any other productions of the musical.
Saw an early-00's tour with Petulia Clark (!) old enough to play Nora, which came as a shock to this Finian's Rainbow fan. (And the temptation to make Monty Python references about Cardinal Richelieu lip-synching "Don't Sleep in the Subway" was too great...)
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4 hours ago, shutoo said:
my first thought was Mr Bevis, the eccentric fellow who gets a life makeover from his guardian angel
Mine too, apart from the aforementioned To Tell the Truth doodles--Growing up watching that, I never knew what else he was famous for, until the Rankin-Bass animated version of The Hobbit came along. (Which I still put marginally above that Peter Jackson atrocity.)
Let us remember the good things about Orson, and pretend that his quirky-gag role in Being John Malkovich never happened...He deserved better.
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On 1/30/2020 at 11:43 AM, filmnoirguy said:
In 2016, there was a big announcement that Barbara Streisand would be starring as Mama Rose in a re-make of Gypsy. Apparently STX Entertainment, which had agreed to finance the movie, backed out a few months later. It wouldn't surprise me if something similar happened to Sunset Blvd.
STX (cough, snicker, drink-spray!)...Those who keep up with current movies are already coming up with their own theories for why this project may not be forthcoming. 😂
As for Cats-phobia, ground may still be irradiated for another few months, but at least conventional wisdom is blaming that one on the Weird Stuff, and not studio chicken-bones voodoo over musicals in general. As long as superstitious studios still think they can get a Christmas-week Oscar-bait, there will be musicals in the movies.
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3 hours ago, Princess of Tap said:
I've seen it. And I couldn't tell you where I saw it.
But it's just a short with Frank Sinatra surrounded by children from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
And he sings the song about it: "The House I Live In."
It's more or less a PSA for diversity and support for racial equality in the United States of America.
(And, not coincidentally, for the studio to play down Frankie's Italian heritage during wartime and make him look like a model citizen...)
It's famous AND public domain, so it's pretty much shown everywhere.
In case you missed it:
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9 hours ago, hamradio said:
The kids wanting to watch "The 10 Commandments" in "Close Encounters of The Third Kind". Mom complained it was over 3 hours long.
Like to mention the soap opera "Days of Our Lives".
And Spielberg's watch-the-skies tribute to Marvin the Martian and "Duck Dodgers in the 24th-1/2th Century" on a TV set in one closeup:
"Happy b-b-birthday, you Thing From Another World, you!" "Ohh, thank you!" "*BLAM!*"
(Hard to believe that cartoon was still an unquotable rarity back in pre-Roger Rabbit 1977.)
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1 hour ago, hamradio said:
"It Lives Again" (1978) Jody's mother and a detective was in a theatre showing "Enter The Dragon" (1973)
And then Sho'Nuf, the Shogun of Harlem entered:
(Er, The Last Dragon (1985), for those non-children of the 80's...)
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11 hours ago, speedracer5 said:
Oh I love The 39 Steps. It was the first film I'd seen with Robert Donat and I thought he was really cute. Though I've only seen it once. Hopefully a second viewing doesn't lessen my enjoyment of it.
Haven't seen the movie, but our local theater company tried to do the off-Broadway four-man stage version last year:
Which One Is It?
in General Discussions
Posted
That didn't disturb me quite as much as his posting it (anyway) at 5 AM.
(Must...not...quote...Billy Crystal "Running Scared" lines... 😑
Even though that's the voice I hear in every one of his posts.)
Likely Woody, or young Neil Simon--Mel already had a working Borscht-belt nightclub act, and is considered to be the inspiration for Morey Amsterdam's old-ham Buddy on the Dick Van Dyke Show, while writer Lucille Kallen is said to have inspired both the Anne deSalvo and Rose Marie characters.
And according to IMDB, the studio wardrobe lady ("Hey, this is for ladies only!") was played by Selma Diamond, who actually did start out writing for Sid Caesar...Cool! Neat!