EricJ

The "Bundle" that's attracting all the ooh's and aah's in the press is a three-service bundle of Disney+--which, as noted, we all know--ESPN's service, for sports, and HuluPlus, for TV reruns and standard studio-streaming movies. That pretty much covers a good basic of all the basic cord-cutting programming, and makes the package look like the good "Default" service. The reason streaming hasn't become the gold mine everyone else wishes it was, is because, deep down, viewers WANT what they had with 80's-90's cable, before it went off a cliff: One monthly price, to put a coin in the slot and see their TV show something...Not the corporate studio dream of "All my favorites are Warner, I want to subscribe to their service!"

Well, it means we can finally drop all those weird foreign shows on Netflix, for a start, now that we have some new default "one-stop" subscription service. That's why nobody's been subscribing to the others, you know, because we still naively want to believe in Netflix having "everything", and not having to go anywhere else.

Technically, that's because once a new studio acquires an old one, if it wants to cement its own stamp on one of the iconic franchises, it has to make one of its OWN, from scratch, under original authorship. (As was the case when Disney had to make a new Muppets movie, and Michael Eisner was compelled to make a new Fantasia and Mary Poppins after buying Old Disney.) And if Disney plans to cash in on Home Alone, Night at the Museum, Cheaper By the Dozen and the neo-Apes, that means having to make "our" version that doesn't belong to anyone else. Although, admittedly, Home Alone can't be stretched out into a Disney+ series, so that one just gets a one-off remake. Still, as long as there's no word yet about Alvin, Ice Age, Predator or Die Hard, we're still safe. 😅

Well, Michael Rennie comes off as an unintentionally funny total-snotbag, but I wouldn't put it on my list of "hated" classics...Now, if you've avoided "Forbidden Planet" because of avoiding sci-fi, that would be more of a problem. I remember during '88, the neurotically toon-phobic 80's NBC David Letterman tried to get an entire summer of material out of making schoolyard nerd-pokes at the fan-hype for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", while guffawing that he'd never go to see it in his life. It was funny for about two days, and then the experience of listening to a comic stretch his limited knowledge into bigoted opinions about something he'd never seen just...got...annoying. At one point, fans joked about abducting him, tied and gagged, and forcing him into a theater showing it, just to break up the MONOTONY. A year later he thought this new kiddie "Batman" movie Tim Burton was making would be ripe for the same nerd-pokes, but went to see it, discovered...it wasn't quite the 60's Adam West movie he joked it was going to be, and fan-raved about it on his show for the next few weeks. (Even deliberately annoying Teri Garr with "What was it like working with Michael Keaton on 'Mr. Mom'?") [Disclaimer: Dear gods, I can't stand Who Framed Roger Rabbit either--and Robert Zemeckis's later disturbingly-unhinged fling with CGI has not since softened my sanity diagnoses of The Loudest Movie Ever Made--but at least that's an opinion formed from experience. Like the Vietnam vets told the protestors, you weren't there, man.]

And pretty much all covered by Kino Classics, as they're the silent-movie label with the Russian and German-Expressionist tendencies. Same for Fritz Lang and Sergei Eisenstein.

I'm not sure of the age here, but it's a good way to tell other Millennial movie-phobes when they have symbolic ideas of movies in their imaginations just from a decade or a genre. They're always "90% certain", but a great movie gets you with that 10% of uncertainty, and looking for that is how we grow up. 😁 For example, you may think you know what "Astaire & Rogers" is about, until you sit down for "Shall We Dance?" and find out just what a snarky overconfident wiseguy Fred could be in his movies, and how much Ginger could be a romcom-sparring-partner for him...Or are we just going to quote that feminist t-shirt/coffee-cup/bumper-sticker again? Now, when I was a kid, the very idea of watching Shirley Temple was insulting (an idea mostly formed by Cindy Brady, when Jan & Marsha told him dad's client was really a Hollywood agent)...But, sitting down one night with an old movie channel, they were showing "Heidi", and--well, yes, her movies were corny, but little Shirl was such a trouper, she's in complete command of every movie she's in. Later on, I found out that EVERY movie she made was a clone of "Heidi", so I felt I'd gotten the essential cross-section, but it didn't kill me to get that basic ground information.

You can usually tell a Bubble, in the Bitcoin/Dot-com/Moviepass sense, when: It's a New, Neato Technology that absolutely nobody outside its target users understand, and is therefore considered a "hot new market" by those afraid they'll be left behind if they don't, There's usually one person--often the inventor or entrepreneur--telling everyone why it's the Future, and Too Big To Fail, The more investment goes in, the more the industries believe, oh well, it'll penetrate our society just like the Internet and Uber, and now we'll have to shape our future modern way of life around it, and start investing in other connected industries that take its success for granted before any results show up, Investors start losing reasons to invest in anything else, since, well, anything else is outdated now! A few industry naysayers start saying "Um, where will all this money we're going to get be COMING from?..." and are quickly shouted down as "jealous" of the new industry's success, because they're "too nostalgic" for the old days and are secretly afraid of being left behind. I don't know whether to categorize Reed Hastings' delusions-of-grandeur for Netflix as just a "Boom" or a "Bubble" (depending on how crazy the tech-illiterate industry went for it), so I can't tell whether their own Bust just officially went Pop. It's not a "pop" in the Mortgage Meltdown house-of-cards sense that everything's going to come toppling down tomorrow, but at least it's going to take the bloom off the "Why isn't Netflix getting Oscars?" discussion, or the "Oh well, at this rate, theaters will be obsolete in three years, now that everyone's staying home" future-fawning. It's always something from the real world that happens at the last minute, and like Tony Soprano says, you never hear it coming...

Uh, because it mentions "snowflakes" and "packages". That's IT. (Ohh, I feel your pain. 😡 ) Ohh, that painful 60's-film-school "trip" sequence! On a lighter note--Breakfast at Tiffany's (the Mickey Rooney discussion reminded me): Yes, Audrey looks lovely in opera gloves, but are we supposed to see her as "Free-spirited", "Tragic", or as just plain nutty as a rabid mongoose? (A complaint I've similarly had about Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, but that one was funnier.)

The frustration with the "Eisner formula"--sniffy fey villains, melodramatic plots, wacky sidekicks, the same rotation of musical numbers--boiled over when Hercules came out in '97, but much of those camel's-straws may have been created by Hunchback a year earlier...Wow, was that one the edge of the cliff, but loyal Lion King fans still refused to admit Disney could do wrong. At the time, everyone complained about Hercules' odd, stylized Gerald Scarfe design, and the attempt to do a fast-paced "Aladdin-style" sitcom-burlesque of Greek mythology came off "too Eisner", and seemed like it was trying to backhandedly snub the material. Even I remember raging at the movie at the time, but now that cooler heads prevail twenty years and Blu-ray later, though, it's a lot of fun--It's got what the good 90's movies got (for the same reason), Danny DeVito was made to be a Wacky Sidekick, and James Woods' villain is a hoot. 😁 Besides Tangled and the Holy Cult of Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph is considered the other "Great" Disney movie of the 10's (the first one, anyway, the second one's cute if inconsequential). The action-oriented and pretty-darn-good Treasure Planet was unfairly sunk by horrendous marketing, a bad release date and more boiling anti-Eisner frenzy, Fantasia 2000 has some great moments but big shoes to fill, and like Bolt, Meet the Robinsons is good if you know that John Lasseter was revamping the studio in mid-production, and you can see the crazy beginning turn into a huggy Pixar movie by the climax.

No, but it underlines the childishness, and mean-spirited pettiness that "Str8s" perceive in the community trying to form some tribalistic culture out of nothing--In the hopes of trying to market themselves into one, and goof and guffaw their own bigoted self-stereotypes in the belief they're "celebrating" them, rather than build bridges with anyone who still holds them. A culture wants its cake, with big pink icing, and to eat their own "misunderstood persecution" for it too. No, Bette Davis in All About Eve was never a "gay movie", but it's since been adopted as one, since Davis, her stylized acting, and the story's backstabbing/catfighting plot, seems to live up to one culture's bitterly misogynistic issues about their fantasy-perceptions of the opposite sex. Those of us with fewer personal problems would like to appreciate the movie for what it is, without the pointed cheap-gag hooting from the balcony...And since I was only dissing it for its association with its "fans", that probably disqualifies it, and I should withdraw the question. As for Tennessee Williams and Streetcar, well, that's hardly any secret there, but that doesn't make the character depictions of Blanche and Stanley any less grating or truer to life either. I'm not the one who hijacked the thread, and I only wanted to wrap up the point--But only recently, I found out that "Grease" is now considered a, quote, "gay icon" movie, because the community sees it as a "hetero fantasy" of Greaser and T-Birds doin' it in the back seats at drive-in's...So, now, movies are, quote, "gay" for being "TOO straight"? The rest of us will "mind our own danged business" when someone else learns how to first. (And if I was on YouTube, I'd be in tears shouting "Leave 'Xanadu' alone!!! 😰" 😃 )

I used to have a great joke for how only Jeffrey Katzenberg could turn Pixar's "A Bug's Life" into Dreamworks' "Antz", by hearing an on-paper description of Pixar's movie, and getting everything, line-by-line in the plot synopsis, WRONG, by trying to turn it into other movies and sitcoms they already knew. ("So, this ant doesn't feel like he fits in..." "He's neurotic! He's a Woody Allen ant, and he goes to his therapist!") That feels like it's pretty much what happened when JK and "Tim Burton's Alice" screenwriter Linda Woolverton got a hold of the afore-YouTubed 60's-boomer Japanese cartoon, and tried to "interpret" it: "So, the young cub has to take over the kingdom after his father's death--" "--And he's haunted by guilt! He has to deal with Scar's manipulation and self-realize his adulthood! It's Good Will Hunting in the jungle!" I've always held the theory that the audience mania for Lion King and Beauty & the Beast (another one I should have saved for the Classics I Can't Stand thread--see above comments about Linda Woolverton) were actually subconscious DELAYED REACTIONS to the surprise audience word-of-mouth for "Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin", the two good movies of the 90's Big Four which respectively came before the other two, and both, non-coincidentally, directed by the same people. Back in the mid 80's, animation was still too identified with the Care Bears, and when Little Mermaid came along in '89, it still invented the 90's Renaissance, but everyone passed it off as their 9-yo. daughter's favorite film they liked to watch too. When Beauty & the Beast got the big NYFF work-in-progress screening, well, that made it art now, so we have to give it an Oscar nomination...Just like the films that grownups go to see! (And then, like Marvel's Black Panther, once it got a "safe" Oscar nomination, everyone discovered they liked Disney movies.) Grownup audiences even had to make excuses for going to see Aladdin without being considered a "pedophile" ("I'm just a Robin Williams fan, that's all!"), and by the time THAT was publicly considered okay, everyone made a big show of going to the Fourth One. Which, as misfortune would have it, would be LK. And yes, Pocahontas and Hunchback were bad (yeesh!) but it was hard for audiences to come to grips with their feelings of being "betrayed" after Lion King, and their denial complexes didn't come to a boil until a big cathartic explosion unfairly took their grudges out on "Hercules". Which just happened to be by the Aladdin/Mermaid directors who had been getting it right all along. 😣

I come from the generation where we had to sit through his films in theaters, and "Bad, mercilessly-milked, miles-over-the-top in-your-face slapstick" and "Irritating high-school misogyny" is what springs to mind at the sacred holy utterance of John Hughes. (Some remember Ferris Bueller, others remember "Weird Science".) That said, "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" is the closest thing to a sentimental non-cartoon "normal" comedy he ever made, and still holds up. Watching Kevin Bacon in "She's Having a Baby", we also feel as if we're watching 45-yo. Hughes just on the very post-high-school twenty-something verge of trying to sort out and approach the wide, new, scary world of responsible Adulting, but...then Home Alone came along the next year, to take Hughes back to cartoon Neverland. The road not traveled. 😢

Oh, darn, and I JUST posted in the Lion King thread... As for the AFI 100, I can say off the top of my head that some Gone With the Wind fans like spending four hours chronicling the dysfunctional relationships of a spoiled brat--As for the others: Vertigo - Yes, Jimmy Stewart, you can play creepy...Hooray for you and thank you, Alfred. Now go back to your binoculars. The Graduate - How pubescently angry would you have to be in the 60's to not find Mike Nichols and Buck Henry overbearingly decade-cornball? (And that goes for Catch-22 and Man Who Fell to Earth, so there!) It was the Laugh-In decade, and this was what passed for "Angry satire", before we discovered Subtlety. For most of the movie, Anne Bancroft comes off as a complete psycho for throwing herself at a mumbling, zombified Dustin Hoffman, and we can't blame him for wanting to run out the door. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - Every time I see this movie, Jimmy Stewart makes me WANT to like it...But then, in come the Capra Orphans. It's a Wonderful Life - Yes, it's fun to look at my old hometown. 😁 But you'd be better off showing "Duck Soup" to a suicidal case than this movie, and it would make more sense. All About Eve - Thanks, but I'm hetero. A Streetcar Named Desire - Thanks, Tennessee, but I'm...you know. Titanic - I won't begrudge that the last half is Movie Epic, but oh, that first half... Blade Runner - People have made better imitations/homages of the movie over the last thirty-five years, having been dazzled into the illusion that a Ridley Scott film had a coherent plot and dialogue. These are all from personal experience, I don't make a big brick-throwing show of "symbolically" hating movies, like Larry with Mary Poppins...Oh, come on.

Hey, I'm from Boston, don't knock Julie Taymor. 😡 (Who went on to direct Titus (1999) and The Tempest (2010)) See, at the time, Disney was jumping into their new Broadway career after "Beauty & the Beast", and had originally hired Taymor and her giant artsy puppets to do a "Pinocchio" musical--But then, like the remakes, the need to promote the Big 90's Four took over... (Yes, I know, "trademarks", but what does that even mean??? 😕 )

Well, it's not like they stole hip street-bully hyenas, or anything: As the official legend has it: Disney execs were in Tokyo for a 1987 meeting, back when nobody in the US had literally HEARD of Japanese anime since the '60's (oh, any early-90's anime fans remember the days of "Speed Racer" and "Astro Boy" jokes? 😓 ) and were surprised to see, gasp, someone else did popular animation too. The old-fogey execs obviously didn't recognize Doraemon, Gundam or Totoro, but they did recognize a certain 60's-boomer-TV Osamu Tezuka character from "Jungle Emperor" who was celebrating his 20th-anniversary nostalgia marketing. This was back when Disney was on a craze for Americanizing French comedies with Martin Short, so they had the neat idea for their animation division to Americanize a popular Japanese movie that US audiences knew. But that was back in 1987, why did it take so long? Well, see, rights fell through, and it wasn't until after Tezuka died in 1989 that Jeffrey Katzenberg announced Disney's FIRST ORIGINAL story ever, "King of the Jungle", loosely inspired by Hamlet! (...This guy got a freakin' Humanitarian Oscar???) 😡

....AAAAAAAAAAAA-A!!

Although it's a good portion of of that '60 color season that's since turned up on DVD/Prime: https://www.amazon.com/The-Land-of-Oz/dp/B07DQBTWJ7/ (And she's still cute in her 20's/30's! 😁) And yes, a...LOT of people were watching Lassie, but competing with Walt Disney was a fool's errand.

As noted earlier, not the ONLY version on DVD (but which couldn't be converted to Blu-ray, hence fan rages)--But it's gone, and getting pricey: https://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Episode-IV-Limited/dp/B000FQJAIW/ (It still affects an OG fan to see no "Episode" on the crawl. 😥 ) And yes, Han Shot First. Because Han ALWAYS shoots first, it's his answer to everything.

Unless it was MGM T&J/Tex Avery, and then they had to use The Harvey Girls' "The Atchison, Topeka & the Santa Fe" every time there was a train gag.

Stuck in Boston, I only got to see the roadshow tours of the original Sweeney Todd and Phantom. And to a new generation of cheap budget-cutting theatrical producers, I can say...the original Sweeney Todd was a LOT better with big Prince-style scenery.

Usually in Warner cartoons, as a song originally written for Golddiggers of 1933...See how it works? (Warner's "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies", back in their ancient 30's B/W days, even started out as a studio excuse for Warner to promote cutesy parodies of their pop-music catalog of studio songs that turned up in other movies. That was the advantage of the days when studios owned everything.)

Factory-era studios usually had their own publishing-rights divisions for songs written for their films, and had absolute control over ALL their songs for many years, to be used and re-used at their convenience with no rights issues-- Which is how "As Time Goes By" could resurface in Warner's Casablanca, or how Wizard of Oz songs could occasionally turn up in MGM Tom & Jerry cartoons.

He's like Boba Fett, Darth Maul and Captain Phasma--One film, creates memorable character, and then offed. Leaving us to wonder what might have been.

Well, we've had Bugs Bunny cartoons inspired by the Bowery Boys:

They were, AFAIK, but we've never even seen them in deleted scenes. In the movie, Luke reunites with Biggs (aka "Red 3") briefly at Rebel HQ just before the big Death Star assault, but by that point, we have no idea who he is. And yes, Fox was panicking over the movie before release, so it's possible the scene was a late cut.