EricJ

(And he played a pretentious cynical hipster jerk in that one, too...) Me, OTOH, I was in line for the first Star Wars, and certain lightsaber-tossing Empire-fanworshipping jerk directors have severely slashed my interest in what should be the culmination of a fan lifetime for Episode IX. Even when said fanboy-jerk directors aren't directing it, the taint will never go away. The new Disney Parks area, maybe, but I feel as if my democratic defense of "Force Awakens" has forever been betrayed. 😭

I'm not fond of Ustinov's "cute" Poirot--compared to Albert Finney or David Suchet--but he seemed to have a lot more fun in the more tongue-in-cheek Evil Under the Sun (1982), with almost the same cast. I can't understand why people couldn't figure out "WTH is that 'Cats' musical about?" when it came out, since the Old Man was my first introduction to T.S. Eliot's Practical Cats. And since Charlie Chan & the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981) is better left unmentioned, I'll pick a more suitable example of a wonderfully earnest, sporting and professional Ustinov performance in an otherwise criminally goofy/moronic movie: Disney's Blackbeard's Ghost (1968)

In fact, it's often hinted that No.6 was the retired John Drake, but McGoohan was beginning to weary of the earlier series, and would have none of such theories.

It's hard to tell exactly what "a Christopher Nolan film" was, before the fanboy barrage on The Dark Knight and Inception. Up to that point, it was generally "A tight psychological thriller", which this is, and much better than the competing Edward Norton scheming-magician pic The Illusionist (2006). Hopefully Nolan hasn't given into Warner's hopes that Nolan will believe his own fan hype for the rest of his career. Apparently, both the movie and the book tried to use "Magician's misdirection" by taking the plot way off into science-fiction territory with the Nikolas Tesla plot, when the real solution was just an earthbound bit of deception, and left the plot a bit unsatisfyingly fish-or-fowl.

The game was originally offered on Disney's website as a teaser for Tron: Legacy (2010)--Supposedly you could unlock Easter eggs for the movie through the game, but I never figured out how. Alan Bradley even announced it at a big event at Encom HQ:

I'm guessing Warner TRIED to make an Ash-vs.-Team-Rocket Pokemon movie way, way, wayyy back during the '99 craze, got too hung up in Japanese rights, made a mint importing the cartoon's first movie instead, thought "Eh, close enough", and ran the cartoons into the ground until the third one flopped. If they'd made first cartoon-friendly movie with the CGI they're using in this one, history would have been made. Being Warner, it's hung around in forgotten memos for twenty years, until Nintendo Japan wanted a movie to promote their Detective Pikachu game, and Warner thought it was an excuse to dig out the old memos, but...now they're "embarrassed" about a resurrected project, think the audience might laugh at an "old" craze, and they use the game's "talking Pikachu" idea to bring in obnoxious Ryan Reynolds and kiss up to the presumed haters in the audience. It's sort of a distant cousin of Warner's whole neurotic trauma over DC Comics movies.

(....Sorry, I couldn't find a YouTube clip of "Clark, NOBODY says 'neat' anymore!")

David McCallum as Judas--genuinely heartbroken at having to rat on his friend--is probably the second-best reason for watching The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). (Creepy-as-usual Donald Pleasance as the devilish "Dark Hermit" who shows up at Jesus's temptation on the mountain, and then gets the crowd to shout for Barabbas, being the first.) (Or "The Jesus Film", now that it's changed a few hands in ownership, and now has a new contextual intro added for overseas evangelism.) Some of the more modern productions by the Visual Bible Society have done a good--and occasionally theatrically-released--text-accurate and historical-context depictions of what must have been Jesus' natural crowd-friendly populist style with the Judean 99%. And while Henry Cusick is earnest enough in The Gospel According to John (2009)--how many times can you start a sentence with "Listen what I say to you:" and still sound conversational?--Brian Deacon still retires the jersey for doing it for the production company first.

Two words have just restored my interest (or at least raised its status up from "Non-Existent") in Disney+'s made-for-streaming series. (And the Watchers had already been introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, so MCU's already got precedent.) I've never seen the end of it, since I walked out on it in the theaters for excessive corniness. I tried watching it again on 3-D Blu-ray (to celebrate its "release from captivity", after the infamous marketing bungle that sank 3DTV), but...nope. Jim, you've REALLY got some major issues, haven'tchu? 😓 But Disney never realized they'd someday own Fox when they built that entire Avatar section of the theme parks, so it can only work for them.

The rabid "Spielberg's a poopyhead!...Made-for-streaming movies are too 'real movies'!" movement has almost literally become a fanboy tantrum against "Why did Green Book win the Oscar and not Roma?? 😡 " (Because the stupid messed-up Oscar voting causes the second-place winner to get it, that's why Black Panther didn't win either.) Apart from Lawrence's list of "properly" theatrical-released Amazon titles, you don't hear any other made-for-streaming movies being mentioned in the debate. ANY. Go ahead, name another one. This is the same "It's new, it's neat, it's digital, which means it's the future!" argument that was thrown around when studios were trying to sell us movies on DRM, and getting us to throw out our Blu-ray disks. We didn't, and it flopped. In point of fact, most audience didn't know why they were supposed to fall in love with DRM in the first place, just like most streaming audiences giggle that a studio movie has been "BUS-ted!" if it ends up "exiled" direct to streaming, just like "The Cloverfield Paradox". (Another title you never hear mentioned in the debate.) It's also cousin to the same trendy web-article honeymoon that surrounded Bitcoin, self-driving cars, AI, Uber-style Internet startups, and anything else that modern-day adults don't really understand, but want to make a great overcompensating show of being willing to adopt rather than be "crushed" hanging onto the "old" technology. And what crushed DRM--and Bitcoin, and self-driving cars--is that it didn't solve a need, the rabid evangelists had to create a "need" for it by demonizing the old technology, made themselves vocal jerks in the process, and only created a debate where loyalty to the old system could be newly defended. The more we hear "Who needs theaters anyway?--They're all stupid cineplexes showing superhero movies, with cellphones in the audience! The future is being able to sit at home in comfort!", the more theaters will experience a new renaissance.

Wait, you've SEEN Street Fighter and you're still asking if there's a good adaptation? 👍(Maybe we just weren't expecting Steven DeSouza to write tongue-in-cheek action scripts in the 90's, although you don't hear as many complaints against "Die Hard".) If you can't take Raul Julia for what he's worth, I don't know how to answer that. And Doom too, huh? (Well, guess I'll give you Prince of Persia.) Guess that narrows it down to Takahashi Miike's Japanese version of Ace Attorney (2012), for us app-game players: The rules of a good video game adaptation are exactly the same as a good TV-series movie adaptation: Would you WANT to play the game, if you'd never played it before seeing the movie? I've only played the Gameboy version, but the original first 90's-00's seasons made me a fan. Ash, Misty, Brock and Team Rocket are such lovable goofs, you can't not get hooked. (Amazon Prime has its own sub-channel of the vintage reruns, although which seasons are airing "free" changes periodically. The original classic, now "Indigo League", is still on Netflix.) That said, next summer's upcoming Detective Pikachu movie does such an unexpectedly fan-loyal job of recreating the other Pokemon critters in "real" life, you just wish they'd push the two obnoxious American-pandering characters OFF the screen, and let us see the Pokemon Movie we paid to see. 😀 (To those who've never seen the cartoon, we apologize in advance for the movie's use of a Pikachu who does not say "Pi-ka-chu! ☺️ " in the most adorable way imaginable.)

We could have had this conversation two years ago about "Bright". (Anyone remember that one? Embarrassed show of hands?) But we didn't. Suddenly, a lot of Roma fans get vocal about it not winning, and all of a sudden, streaming is being "persecuted". If Netflix wants to be a "new TV network", then how are their movies NOT "Made-for-TV movies"?...Why, just because they don't have Joan Collins in them?? For some reason, we're also not arguing about Amazon, eg. Woody Allen's "Wonder Wheel", being "cruelly barred" from the Oscars. This is a tempest being stirred up SOLELY in Reed Hasting's narcissistic teapot, and whipped up by rabid cable-issued Roma-ntic fanboys, as he seeks to make Netflix something it never was, and then throw industry temper tantrums when it doesn't become that. (Just think what Netflix would be today if Reed had been allowed to create "Qwikster" without the mail-service fans' tantrum that they thought they were supposed to get Instant Netflix "free" with their disk service.)

In high school, we watched the 80's direct-video version, filmed on a bare Elizabethan Globe-style stage with Ephram Zimbalist Jr. as Prospero, and as Stefano & Trinculo--the two comedy-relief clowns who think they're alone on the island and try to "rule" Caliban--David "Officer Tackleberry" Graf and Ron "Arnold Horschack" Pallilo. For Lawence who can't get his feelings straight on it, BBC's Shakespeare Uncovered series did a surprising essay episode with Trevor Nunn analyzing the play from the perspective of an older Shakespeare facing retirement after his last play, and seeing his own daughter married off and leaving the nest. The whole series is a good CliffNotes primer, but this one in particular was a good perspective to shoot down the snooty "Fakespeare" conspiracy theories about other playwrights.

In What is Cinema? (2013) Chuck Workman--in trying to show how "cheap" and "commercial" 90's-00's Hollywood films were, compared to bold indie filmmakers like David Lynch and Michael Moore! 😓 --does a brief TCM-style montage of 100YoM-worthy iconic shots from recent new-classics, like Jack meeting Rose on the steps from "Titanic", Harry's first Quidditch game from "Sorcerer's Stone", smoldering teen romance from "Twilight", and Aragorn receiving his crown at the end of "LOTR: Return of the King" It's supposed to be a bad thing, you see, but since Workman never made a movie look bad in his life, it's just one more reason WHY we need a TCM 125 Years of Movies, just like we got an updated AFI 100 list.

....NAWWWWWW. Even without Warner, MGM, UA, New Line or RKO, there's still enough Fox and Universal to keep a channel going with! Just imagine the Jaws/Blues Brothers/Omen/Exorcist programming blocks! Cleopatra, hey, there's four hours right there! Oh, from the year I was born! Thought it said "Favorite film from '94", and it's amazing how many Millennial, quote-fingers, "classics" from 1994 I can't physically stand to watch. The Lion King makes me want to throw something at the screen in the hope I'll hit Linda Woolverton or Jeffrey Katzenberg, we watched Forrest Gump not realizing how bat-house nutty Robert Zemeckis would later become, and "The Majestic" has scared me out of watching anything Frank Darabont directed after Shawshank. At least we admitted he was a One-Hit Wonder, but that Quentin Tarantino still had a rich career waiting for him after Pulp Fiction. (Me, I remember 1994 for two guilty-pleasure cult-favorites, and I had to check IMDb for the year on those: ) As for my favorite film of, ahem......1964 👴, I'll gladly pick Mary Poppins over Dr. Strangelove.

If it's Tarantino...it's a homage to SOMETHING culty from the late 60's to early 70's. 😓 Just keep telling yourself that the next time you sit through Ken Russell's "Lisztomania"...

Actually, there was no product called "New Coke"--The sweeter recipe imported over from Diet Coke was changed to the main flavor for "Coca-Cola'" (in order to try and compete with Pepsi), and when the audience objected, and the original flavor also sold, there had to be some distinction in the product name. And, of course, when the new Coke was retired, there was no longer a "Coke Classic".

...You've NEVER SEEN "Gregory's Girl"?? 😮 Imagine "Local Hero" relocated to every boy's high school--When Bill Forsyth's better-known movie opened in '83, not every movie fan was "taken by surprise" by quirky Scottish whimsy, and knew what to expect. (Forsyth's early "That Sinking Feeling" was also dug up later on the strength of his big-studio hit, but then, after "Comfort & Joy", his work suffered a pretentious, nutty depression and fell off a cliff.) Heartbeeps at least had one of John Williams better least-known early-80's scores to redeem a reasonably patient tolerance of it: https://youtu.be/L6EE5vpY7Kw?t=35 Wolfen came on the strength of a big paperback novel, and Grease 2 was Alan Carr's attempt to pick himself up, dust himself off, and try to get his "glory days" back after the fallout of "Can't Stop the Music". (And he still had two more films and a Broadway musical to go before the Oscars ended it all.) In its defense, the opening number of Grease 2 is required viewing for 1 fans--and yes, that's Michelle Pfeiffer as the new Pink Lady boss--but anything after those opening ten minutes plays like an embarrassing "Porky's: the Musical". 😓 And if we're talking Unknown 1982, I continue my defense against Airplane II: the Sequel's neglect by history. Paramount was Movie Cool in the 80's, not sure what they are now. Monsignor was the other example that sprang to mind of lesser-known '81-'82 John Williams redeeming a fairly awful movie (mostly for a Nino Rota "Godfather"-knockoff theme and Vatican church music), but not quite to the degree that he could make Heartbeeps watchable. I'd go for the trilogy hat-trick, but still don't know if I could face Yes, Giorgio.

Oh, whew--From the header, I'd thought Jeanne Crain had bumped the thread herself, in support of her own "Why did TCM show Maitresse??" thread when that one wasn't satisfactorily to the answers she wanted. (Unless maybe she did, and the Moderators pulled it??)

(Okay, just because our senior-high English class got to field-trip into the city and watch James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer on tour in the 80's, and I was still a sophomore, go ahead, rub it in... 😡 ) Oh, you know Phil--He did the voice of the cat in Kiki's Delivery Service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIAaChVWXc

Now why am I thinking of that scene from Saturday Night Fever?: "What do you mean, 'Who's Laurence Olivier'? He's famous! You know that old guy who does the Polaroid commercials? I was just talking to him the other day!" "What, you think you could get a camera from him on discount?"

"AI" is the New Bitcoin - The press loves to talk about it, investors want to get in on it, and no one knows what the flippin' heck it IS, or how anyone is attempting to make money off of it. ("Self-driving cars" used to be the new Bitcoin--"Maybe Uber will be all self-driving someday!"--but that idea crashed. In more ways than one.) Watch this commercial, and watch Roland Emmerich's 2012 (2009), and tell me which one looks like it was generated by feeding old movie scenes into a computerized sequential plot algorithm, untouched by human brains. Attempts to use tone-adaptive computer speech synthesis for pop singing have been rather successful in Japan as of late: ☺️

It was deliberately trying to make Around the World in 80 Days's lightning strike again in an artificial Graff generator, by using the "secret ingredient", but didn't work--Guess there were a few more secret ingredients than just throwing some celebrity cameos around him and filming the scenery with a Cinerama camera. While Cantinflas is talented in his own country, it's a different sense of humor than we gringos get up north. He's not exactly David Niven.

I remember liking Russel Crowe, the first time I saw him in The Insider, Gladiator and Master and Commander--Does anyone remember liking him?? I mean...that's like liking Liam Neeson, the first time you saw him in Schindler's List, Darkman and Star Wars: Episode I. Who knew?? (To be fair, though, Kevin Spacey was still annoying as far back as Seven.)

Before we all wring our old-generation hands about the Young Kids and their Hula Hoops, keep in mind that it all dates back to 2001 and 2008: 2001 was the year Warner got two audience-hysteria multi-movie franchises handed to them on a silver platter, already written in book form from A to Z, with the multi-movies already in production to deliver one movie a year by the clock for the next three to seven years...Now, they'd not only know what they'd be showing this December, they knew what they'd be showing next December at this same time! How cool and convenient is THAT?? 😆 2008--in addition to being the year that "taught" studios another way to make big audience-hysteria multi-movie franchises out of recognizable pre-written books, and all link them together so you had to go see every one of them--was also the year of the last big Writers Strike, which declared that studios now had to pay movie and TV screenwriters rights for (then new and theoretical but still not down on paper yet) Blu-ray and digital. That officially made spec-screenwriters too expensive to hire...Eh, they're just a buncha ungrateful diva prats anyway, anyone remember that Basic Instinct/Prince of Thieves "bidding war"? Who told writers they knew how to make movies anyway, it's da Big Sharks in the Pond who make the REAL Hollywood mega-deals!...Heck, I could sit down at my laptop myself during one of my power lunches, get Johnny Depp on the phone, and come up with a dozen teen wizards with crossbows! And that's how things ended up in a mess: Up through the 90's, making a movie was like the Left and Right Halves of the Brain--The spec-screenwriter comes up with a new idea out of his imagination, but doesn't know how to make a competently produced big-budget movie (and now decides to become a "Bold independent filmmaker", and film his own sloppy self-indulgent first draft himself for the Sundance fest). The producer knows how to hire the right people, but doesn't know how to write a movie to save his life (but at least he can hire Alex Kurtzman to turn it into a "franchise" for him, and then maybe get James Wan to turn it into another "Crossover universe"). Without that co-existence between the two, the Abstract and Rational portions of the Hollywood "brain" are separated, and what the industry basically has is a stroke.