Saturday, April 15, 2023

Weekend Open Thread

22 comments:

  1. Woot! Spring is in the air! Happy weekend y'all!!!

    Marathon Man (blu 1976)

    My new mission to fill in "classics gaps" continues. I got several good suggestions from a recent Screen Drafts podcast on 70s Conspiracy Thrillers. I had tried to watch this before but found it too slow. And it is very much slow...oh...also its BRILLIANT. Particularly the writing. I cant stop thinking about some of the intricacies of the plot. Its also a really powerful reflection that movies these days rarely take their time laying out details, characters, and story threads. This flick has very little action but where it is, its perfect. Im not going to go into details as i think that its best to know as little as possible about the plot. However if you've had this one on a "i should see this someday" list..i highly suggest you check it out. I absolutely adore it.

    Of course before you watch...i should ask you...Is It Safe?

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    1. I saw Clerk Animated Series before seeing this movie, i didn't know the reference. When i finally saw it i was like Leo Dicaprio in Once Upon A Time pointing at my tv 🤣

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    2. ha! i love that story!! Its also a great point about when we see things that are big in movie pop culture vs when we've seen them referenced. I remember when i was dating my wife and she'd never seen a James Bond movie...i showed her Goldfinger (cuz its amazing) and during it she was like "so this is like a serious Austin Powers?". she'd seen a parody of it first and that affected the experience.

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    3. I saw that episode on 70's conspiracy thrillers, but haven't gotten a chance to listen yet. The episode on train movies already added a bunch to my watchlist.

      It's 60's but Seven Days in May (1964) is really good. I think it might have been my top watched movie from last year or the year before. Frankenheimer has several political intrigue movies from that time I want to see.

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    4. Great call Paul...the Train movies Screen Drafts was awesome and was the reason i ended up seeing Runaway Train (also the Canon screen draft with our own P Bromley!) and Unstoppable...both PHENOM watches. Ive got the #1 pick from the train draft on deck as well....pretty stoked for that one. You're gonna dig the 70s Conspiracy ep for sure!

      Thanks for the click to pick on Seven Days in May! Never heard of it but im in for sure. Frankenheimer!?! So in.

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  2. I haven’t posted in a few weeks, but have seen some great movies worth mentioning. More than that, many of these were classics that I had been meaning to watch since some time.

    Ran (1985, Kurosawa). This samurai movie was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It’s reputation is well deserved. Everything from the costumes to the natural lighting and hundreds of extras. I felt transported there to an degree not many movies manage to accomplish. My favourite bit was during the big siege in the middle, where at one point the sound of flames, hooves pounding and swords clashing was just replaced with music. Just incredible.

    Under The Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer). This was really weird but completely captivating. There were many things that went unexplained, but it works great without all the details being filled in. I really liked the beautiful Scottish landscapes and the score was wonderfully unnerving. I enjoyed that the copious amounts of full frontal nudity included both men and women.

    The Irishman (2019, Scorsese). I waited way too long to watch this! Maybe it was the long run time that initially put me off, but finally it didn’t feel long at all. It was more contemplative than his other similar movies, and I enjoyed how it ultimately felt mostly about what happens after leading that type of life. Lots of people discussed the de-aging effects, but I honestly forgot and stopped noticing after 5 minutes.

    The Magnificent Seven (1960, John Sturges). This western remake of Seven Samurai is about as good as it could be. Yul Brynner is excellent as well as the rest of the all star cast. Great score, great setting and the action when we get there is as good as any western.

    Hatari! (1962, Howard Hawks). All the previous movies were known to me, but I had never heard of this before, and it was my first Hawks movie. What a delight! It’s an adventure/romantic-comedy about wild game trappers (trapping to sell to zoos) set and filmed in Tanzania at the base of a dormant volcano. It’s kind of swings back and forth between the characters hanging out (John Wayne falling in love with an Italian photographer) where we get much of the comedy, and super exiting scenes where they’re chasing and hunting down wild animals! Rhinos, giraffes, etc. The crazy thing is, Hawks insisted that the actual actors perform the animal captures themselves! They’re not using stun guns, but rather lassoing the animals and then taking them down. There are a bunch of baby elephants which feature prominently. The animal safety thing, and African characters being nothing more than extras is unfortunate, but I thought it was a great movie of it’s time.

    Last, but far from least, we have Antarctica (1983, Koreyoshi Kurahara). The EXCELLENT score by Vangelis is one I’ve owned for 25 years, but I finally got around to watching this hard-to-find Japanese film. It held the the Japanese box office record for 14 years, so I don’t know why it’s unavailable anywhere. Anyways, it’s based on a true story, where 15 sled dogs get stranded in Antarctica. So the movie follows the dogs as they survive in the desolate environment (8 of them managed to break their leashes and get free), as well as the 2 Japanese scientists wracked with guilt about abandoning the dogs and eventually going back to rescue them. It’s a very atmospheric movie, of which large portions are just the dogs making their way through stunning Antarctic landscapes with Vangelis’ beautiful score playing. Most of the dogs die, drowning and getting crushed by moving ice etc. but it’s incredible that any of them survive at all, abandoned there without shelter or food for a year. If you visit doesthedogdie.com before watching a movie, this definitely is not for you. However, it does treat the deaths with reverence and it’s a heartwarming story at it’s core.

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    1. Outstanding selection Paul! Ive got Magnificent Seven on deck for viewing in the next couple weeks!

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    2. I have a blu-ray set of all the Magnificient Seven movies. They're all fun

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    3. An argument could be made that you watched the greatest movie of the 20th century, then the greatest movie of the 21st century (so far)...

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    4. I'm curious Matt. Are you referring to Under The Skin or The Irishman. I'm thinking the former? And Ran might be one of my favourite movies ever. It's still really fresh, and I'll have to watch it again, but I was blown away. I assume that's which 20th century movie you meant.

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    5. I said Antarctica was impossible to stream, and I ended up buying a region 2/B blu after a search only managed to dig up something on archive.org which looked like a particularly shitty rip from a VHS. But FINALLY, it's on goddamn youtube. Decent enough looking version too. Supposedly 720p. Brain fart that I forgot to check there haha.

      The movie is great, but I encourage everyone to at least check out the score. It's an all-timer. Vangelis (full name, "Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou") was freaking awesome. I'm been listening to his 1492: Conquest of Paradise score a ton since last year.

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    6. I was meaning Ran and Under the Skin. But the Irishman is a masterpiece as well! Basically you've watched some very amazing movies lately. Under the Skin is my pick for greatest movie since 2000. Unforgettable and unique. Pure cinema.

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    7. Yeah, Under the Skin reminded me of Spring Breakers (another movie perhaps in the running for best since 2000) in that it's quite unlike anything else I've ever seen.

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    8. Under the Skin is also one of my favorites of the past decade. I also have a theory that the events of the movie are also happening in cities all over the world. They're harvesting skin to blend in and colonize the Earth. Kinda fun to think about.

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  3. I think I'm the only person in the world that watched The Cowboy Way (1994) this week. I had never seen it before. Why didn't anyone tell me it ends with one of the most spectacular action/stunt sequences of the 90s? My jaw was literally hanging open at what I was seeing. Amazing stuff, and well worth watching the rest of this otherwise fairly forgettable fluff.

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    1. "How the East was won". And the poster is them riding horses among NYC city taxis. Definitely adding to the watchlist. I had never heard of this film before.

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  4. Orca (1977 streaming rental)

    Ive only seen this once...when i was around 9 years old..and never revisited but VIVIDLY remember being mortified by a scene early in the movie. Jump to now, as an adult, with a kid that adores Jaws (he's got great taste) and wants to watch some of the "better" Jaws rip offs. We've done Tremors, The Car (it is a Jaws rip off), and others but this one is undeniable for that category. In the end its a pretty cheezy but entertaining re-imagining of Moby Dick thru the lens of a revenge flick mixed with Jaws. As with Jaws, theres not much luck with trying to do practical Killer Whale models so they get creative with how the whale can do damage without needing to see much of it. The finale takes place in a pretty creative environment.

    One silly observation...spoilers-ish ahead....i mentioned several influences on the story...however upon reflection...ive got one more..and its a doosy. Orca is a remake. Its a remake of Death Wish. I know it sounds bananas but the premise of Death Wish is a man seeks revenge for attacks against wife/daughter. Orca is very much that..a male whale seeks revenge on the 'thugs' (read: humans) that murdered his wife/child and the movie is his step by step taking out of the attackers. It also separates Orca from most Jaws rip offs (like Piranha, Alligator, Grizzly, etc) in that the animal attacker is really more of an anti-hero vigilante rather than the villain of the story.

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  5. F This...TV??

    One bonus comment....BARRY returns for its 4th and final season tonight on HBO...AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So excited. The writing on this show is nothing short of incredible. Hader is helming the directors chair for all eps this season. Should be a doozy!!!!

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  6. Puss In Boots The Last Wish has no rights to be this good. They actually made a real movie with real characters, cool action scenes and funny jokes.

    P.S. yes i watched the movie because Nostalgia Critic talked about this last week

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    1. I thought it was good, too. (One night it was the only thing playing in the theater that was remotely appropriate for my younger sister, so we saw it). I thought it looked nice, too - the mixture of 2D and 3D animation. Usually I don't care for 3D and avoid it, but it wasn't overwhelming in this movie. Yeah, and enjoyable plot and characters.

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  7. Finally saw MARNIE (1964), which came out a little after PSYCHO (1960). Hitchcock really liked repeating his themes. Haven't given it a lot of thought yet, but I like it. I like the chemistry between Tippi Hedren (Marnie) and Sean Connery, her co-dependent husband. It was kinda sexy, too. First movie I think Sean Connery's dreamy. I KNOW everyone considered him dreamy, and of course, I like Sean Connery, but he just never did the dreamy thing for me before. It fleshed out the psychology behind one of Hitchcock's lady characters more than ever before. His movies are great without doing that, but it was nice.

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    1. NICE! i started digging deeper into Hitch's catalog during the past few years but have several to go. Marnie is one of them. Gotta check that one out soon. As for Connery...i grew up with his Bond and theres no denying that he could very much evoke a level of charm/confidence/charisma with few words and a stare.

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