EricJ
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Posts posted by EricJ
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Dick Van Dyke at the 2019 Golden Globes:
Promoting his role as Arthur Dawes, Sr. & Jr., in the two Mary Poppins films:
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1 minute ago, Fedya said:
Isn't the correct title I, CLAVDIVS? 😉
Or even "Me, Claudius"?
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30 minutes ago, sewhite2000 said:
Yes, in the so-called new golden age of television, I've completely migrated away from TV to movies as well, save for TCM and sports.
There's the generation that thinks the, quote, "Golden Age of TV" refers to quality--ie. All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Roots, Walter Cronkite, Carol Burnett...
And then there's the generation that thinks "Golden Age of TV" refers to quantity, as in "Look, Amazon and Netflix are making their own shows now! And they look as good as HBO's!"
Obviously, one generation was not alive during the other's.
(And wow, did this thread drift, once we found out that nobody wanted to talk about Lady Bird, The Master or The Florida Project. 😂 )
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9 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
I would think that any "outrage" would be the result if the (for example) Caucasian playing an Asian in a movie as a character that made all Asians look bad. But since the Chan movies were black and white, no stupidity, like making the Chinese character the Caucasian was playing have yellow skin( something none of the Asian people I've ever known actually had) could have happened. Chan was not only very virtuous and intelligent, but likable too. Larry Tang, an old Chino-American friend of mine once told me his grandparents loved the old Chan movies. And yes, they knew the actor playing Chan wasn't really Chinese, but they didn't care. They realized movies were basically people playing "let's pretend" on film, and when you play that, you're always something you're not.
Wayne Wang's first film, "Chan is Missing" (a Chinatown friend named Chan, not Charlie, although the dual meaning is intact) has the main 80's-California character solving a mystery, and poking fun at Chinese-Americans' image of Charlie, who was still airing in late-night TV reruns at the time, as a quaint, amusing font of fortune-cookie wisdom, even if ridiculously inaccurate.
It's only the issue-branding PC warriors who need a "symbol" of uncaring white depictions, the same way that black PC activists unfairly brandish the "Amos & Andy" TV series, or Rochester on the 50's Jack Benny...Without ever clearly having sat down and watched either in detail.
How on earth could just changing the gender of the Mikey character (not "Mickey" btw) from a little boy to a little girl in an updated commercial for this breakfast cereal possibly be considered "Politically Correct"???
OR in other words, WHAT?! Little girls don't and never have eaten breakfast cereals TOO or somethin'?! SURE they do!
Not to mention that it makes more sense that kids would dump an unwanted cereal on their annoying little brother than on a darling little sister.
Someone at Life cereal got a little too icon-happy to remember the point of how the whole thing started in the first place.
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12 hours ago, cigarjoe said:
Funny but I don't even know **** you are talking about, lol.
Namely #'s 61 and 64 on the list, and why they never turn up in everyone's "I've only seen one or two" comments, despite being two of the few titles on the list that actually played real theaters where people could see them.
I also haven't seen a single danged one of Paste's Best TV shows (okay, except for Twin Peaks, and that was on disk), and I'm more righteously smug/judgmental about that than Scorsese was about the current movies.
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14 hours ago, NickAndNora34 said:
#62: THE SWORD IN THE STONE (1963) *Score: 3.5/5*
There really isn't much of a plot to this, but it's still pretty entertaining.
Although the sad story was that Walt was starting to lose interest in animated features by the mid-60's--the bloom had been off the rose ever since the 40's Strike, and he was too caught up with "building" stories for the World's Fair and his new California toy--and he handed the project to his best story man, Bill Peet, to handle overseeing. You're right, there's NOT much plot to it, and story-stickler Walt was reportedly so outraged, he fired Peet and was determined to get back to hands-on involvement with their next project.
Which, as luck would have it, would be finally getting the go-ahead on "Mary Poppins"...
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So, looks like I'm still the only one who saw Inside Out, then? (Normally, we'd get all the Pixars, or at least just Wall-E, Ratatouille and Toy Story 3, if it'd been a snooty grownup-poseur "Best of the 00's-10's/21st century" list, but this was the only one that ever truly deserved the Best Picture nomination...And "thank" you very MUCH, Golden Globes, for making sure it didn't get one. 😈 )
I'll assume everybody's still just waiting to get around to renting Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, or "Eat It, Martin Scorsese" (yep, the snooty-poseurs were surprised by that one too, and wanted to push it into Every Award Ever Given), and given Sony's track record, I don't blame you; I only first saw it in the theater while waiting for another movie--But think of this one as "Sony's 'Wonder Woman'". 👍
(Not to mention, "The film we WISHED Incredibles 2 could have been, when we left grumbling out of that mess.")
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One Trek theory noted that Gene Roddenberry had just recovered from a drinking problem, and that many of the early episodes can be seen as metaphors for Roddenberry's experiences:
Not just "The Enemy Within", with dual good-vs-bad Kirks, but also the beauty-drug addiction of "Mudd's Women", and "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", which was more about Kirk's psychological issues about losing control of the ship than it was about the kitschy "racial-metaphor" black-and-white aliens.Also, the reason that Gene had been selling the series to the networks as "Wagon Train to the stars" was that he was considered one of the better TV-western writers in the industry at the time, Wagon Train included, and if you've seen any of Roddenberry's "Have Gun, Will Travel" scripts, Paladin could out-moral-lecture Kirk any day of the week.
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16 hours ago, speedracer5 said:
Did you get Disney+ ?
If so, have you watched the Imagineering Story documentary? It was fascinating.
Last night, I watched a few Silly Symphonies shorts. I hope they plan on adding more of those.
Imagineering's on my list, but then, so are the old 90's Fox "X-Men" cartoon episodes. (Even though I've got the whole series on disk, I somehow never remembered what happened in the second half of the Dark Phoenix saga, and yes, it was better than the movie.)
Also, I've discovered a chipmunk had gotten into my apartment and is hibernating happily except for early morning kitchen raids, and I can't catch it long enough to put it outside again, so I've had a taste for watching Donald vs. Chip & Dale shorts...Hehehehehh. Y'know, Disney could have been showing us the classic shorts in the 70's and 80's--instead of pre-Renaissance Disney "hiding" them away as too valuable to show on mere TV--and they wouldn't be having the brand-identification problems they have with Mickey & Minnie today, so seeing a growing catalog of the classic shorts back is a lot more welcome than seeing the Vault titles back, which most of us already have on Blu-ray in some form or another.
(Speaking of which: After almost ten years of gloating over seeing my rare Limited DVD now going for $450 on Amazon, I discovered that Disney Movie Club has just re-released the original TV episodes of Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow on exclusive Blu-ray....Since most of the other "iconic" 60-80's titles, like Herbie and 20K Leagues, seem to be the ones freshly HD remastered for Club-exclusive Blu-ray, could this mean that Disney+ is not far behind?
)
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11 hours ago, LawrenceA said:
I wonder how this will compare to the upcoming Perry Mason prequel series from HBO.
Could be, but sounds more like Paramount trying to get into the Warner game, and make "Prequel/reboot franchises" out of all the 70's/80's iconic property titles that audiences know, in lieu of new unloved 10's movies. This would be their "Doctor Sleep" and "Blade Runner 2049".
Their "Summer Nights" Grease-prequel project in the works might also lead one to that conclusion. Let's see, we should be getting Matthew Broderick as grown-up dad Ferris Beuller any minute now...I don't know, I'm just placing bets.
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5 hours ago, speedracer5 said:
If you get Disney+ you can watch all kinds of Disney programming.
And if you get a streaming service that already HAS everything you're looking for, there's no more need to pester cable channels about when or whether they're going to be your nice-people friends and show it, whether they own it or not.
5 hours ago, speedracer5 said:Oh darn, thought they'd finally dug up that missing second Walt-hosted Peter Pan promotional Christmas special, a year or two after the Alice special. (Which I still watch on the Alice '51 Blu-ray every year.)
Not sure if it's "missing", since they still show clips from it, but you'd think some disk release of PP would have dug it out of the Archives by now.
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59 minutes ago, TopBilled said:
You didn't specify which Bette!
Thank you. I thought I was the only one. ☺️
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On 11/20/2019 at 3:23 AM, GGGGerald said:
I guess I'll have to turn in my film lover card because I don't think I've seen any of them. Between the predictable endings and depressing plots, most just look dreadful to me. I'm probably wrong but, that's what I have seen in the previews of most on that list.
I did a quick count, and 17 of those movies could straightforwardly be called Commercial Mainstream Wide Releases. You know what the other 83 are.
I blame the new ten-nomination Oscar rule, that's so determined to publish-or-perish mass nominees out of just a little bit of buzz, they've shoved pretentious indie films down our gullet with a snow shovel, and hypnotized us to think that that's where the 21st-century movie battlefield is being fought, while our appreciation for what comes out of the main studios keeps getting lost in the traffic. Again, that's probably why all the hysterical cult-love for Mad Max: Fury Road, and its 80's Rip-Van-Winkle director who remembers how they used to make them back in the days when studios made more than five or six movies a year. Some saw a "Bold revolutionary director", while I, OTOH, thought "Aw, man, why did he have to kill off the kids from Beyond Thunderdome, that's just gratuitous!"
On 11/20/2019 at 9:20 AM, Det Jim McLeod said:I am going to wait until 2019 is over before I make a list of my favorites.
We've still got Cats, Rise of Skywalker and Jumanji 2: the Old Guys left to go.
Think you're safe going ahead.
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I have not opened this link yet, and will predict that it is the sort of list where "Tree of Life" and/or "Boyhood" will be in the top 3.
(opens)
...Well, I was two off. I suspect "Mad Max: Fury Road" seems to get all the praise either from Millennials who weren't around in the 80's, or miss the movies that were made then.
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"I own 'em, I can do what I want with 'em!"
- Classic film champion Ted Turner defending his hopes to colorize Citizen Kane for TBS broadcast.
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Okay--As Daffy Duck says, let's get down to fundamentals:
While it may be the same unidentified species as Yoda, the Yoda would have been a sprightly 900 years young by the time of the events in "Return of the Jedi" (heheh, look as good at 900, you will not), in which Boba Fett--he is the titular Mandalorian, right?--was killed off and out of the series an hour in the picture before the senior Jedi master did his Little Nell act. (Or is it supposed to be Jango thirty years earlier, before he was killed off in "Attack of the Clones"?)
Which raises the same "spinoff" questions that Solo raised in the theaters: Does ANY of this make the slightest remote sense in canon, or are they now just making it up as they go along, in order to just join nostalgic Original Trilogy references at random?
(Y'know, like the "Where they get blue-milk from" thing in Last Jedi... 😓 )
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On 10/27/2019 at 10:56 AM, Swithin said:
The hymn is used in many films, most notably in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which also relates to runners.
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands' mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
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19 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:
except for one featuring a guest voice from a certain late pop star now believed in some circles to have done awful things.
Oh, like "Moonwalker: the Movie", you mean? 😛
(And yes, I've had some synch problems with the audio or subtitles, but that mostly seems to be streaming problems, especially when I FF/rewind, and D+'s system can't quite keep up.)
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Well, everyone knew they were going to hate the Ghostbusters remake, after watching the YouTube trailer...That's something.
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15 minutes ago, MiddleGround17 said:
Anyway, I don't care if they do the gender-flip thing as long as it works for and doesn't change the fundamentals of the story (that is: as long as they spend more time dealing with aliens than forcing some other plot in there for the characters, and as long as it doesn't change an iconic character -- e.g. Bond is a woman; Dorothy is a man).
And there's no real "main" character of War of the Worlds anyway, without just making up your own darn story from scratch (as Spielberg did with Tom Cruise and the Last Working Soccer-Mom Station-Wagon on Earth).
Wells' WOTW narrator is basically a faceless journalist of events, and in a later chapter, meets another survivor who thinks they could take over now (because Capitalism will always breed corruption and tyranny, says Comrade Herbert). Here, we're likely getting another Empowerment-fantasy where the main female gets to show the boys HOW to be Dedicated enough to save our mother planet personally, etc. I would say "Somebody should just sit down and read the book", but have the feeling they already did, and noticed there wasn't much there to work with.
As a born-and-bred Brit, I have no idea what sacred-cow-tipping is but for some reason, I feel it's a good description of the BBC...
(Google-search "Cow-tipping" online. Yes, there's no real such thing, but it still invokes imagery.) 😀
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Ohh, a "woke" BBC version of War of the Worlds! ("Well, it worked with Doctor Who!")
From the confusing first paragraph, thought they were going to do a "woke" Captain-Marvel gender-swap of "The Time Machine", which would open up a lot of interestingly difficult questions...
(And, why would "Hollywood" be turning against its viewers, if it's a BBC production, from a country that spends most of its time smugly sacred-cow-tipping?)
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9 hours ago, speedracer5 said:
I noticed that they had the X-Men cartoon. That aired on Fox back in the day. I haven't seen what else is Fox-owned.
Marvel owns it now, although the three-way ownership doesn't hurt. Matter of fact, ALL the Marvel cartoons are now under the D/M banner, including that ancient 70's-Filmation version of "Spider-Woman".
(X-Men:TAS, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and Silver Surfer - The 1, 2, & 3 best Marvel cartoon series ever made, now under one roof.) 👍
1 hour ago, CinemaInternational said:Miracle on 34th Street, the Star Wars series, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, Millions, one Garfield the Cat film, and (maybe) Never Been Kissed. Most of the rest of (adult-oriented contemporary) Fox will likely be appearing on the now completely owned Hulu. But Fox got the short end of the stick....
And Ferngully, Rio and Epic likely to follow, as soon as rights can be worked out.
Still, if we got Sound of Music, that bodes well for The King & I...
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12 minutes ago, TomJH said:
I don't recall Clara Bow using an excessive amount of pancake powder. In any event, the pix posted is of Theda Bara.
This is Clara Bow:
And so is this--She's downright adorable in It (1927): 😊
(Look at that dress...Wonder no more whether Clara was the secret inspiration for Betty Boop.)
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Technically, this should be in the "Lines you find yourself using all the time" thread, but:
(persuading Captain Kirk to open peace negotiations with the Klingons: )
Spock: "There is an old saying on Vulcan, captain: 'Only Nixon could go to China.'"
- Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country (1991)
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The 100 Best Films of the 2010's?
in General Discussions
Posted
It wasn't just Showgirls or the collapse of Carolco that killed off Verhoeven's US directing career--
He still had "Starship Troopers", which got polarized reviews (I liked it, in that only Verhoeven could have directed it properly), but when he did "Hollow Man", the writing was on the wall.