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2019 Q3 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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Paris, Texas is a slice of perfection. That Criterion package is really beautiful and worth the price, but why not rent it? I mean online, if you don't have a swell video store or a good public library in your part of the world. 

Has anyone here had a chance to see 'The Dead Don't Die'?  I didn't think it was by any means 'high end Jarmusch', but there's much to enjoy. Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi and Adam Driver all have some terrific moments. It'll no doubt fly under the radar, but worth a look.   

Edited by HarryArchieGus
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From the last quarter thread: 

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The Dead Don't Die was a lot of fun. Hilarious and prescient without being preachy, I'd put it up there with Shawn of the Dead but think it works better as a horror movie while Shawn is a better comedy, if that makes sense. I also liked how Jarmusch decided to be openly meta because he just doesn't give a fuck. It feels like at the end of the movie he said "we don't have an ending for this, who cares?" Which is kind of the point.

I question putting Buscemi in the role of the MAGA dude because he seems far too nice for the role, but it's an interesting choice. Needed more RZA too.

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So I watched John Carter and it had a great cast. But the movie was a mess. It's like Disney wanted their own Star Wars franchise, so they made a movie that was as derivative of the Star Wars movies as possible. But they mostly ripped off Attack of the Clones (and Avatar). Even though actually Star Wars and Avatar are actually ripped off from the original Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter stories. And they should have done something about that title. John Carter, Warlord of Mars, that's a good title. John Carter and the Princess of Mars, that's a good title. Just John Carter, you could make all these jokes about how I liked the bit where he won the Pulitzer Prize, but it was sad at the end when he gassed himself. Oh wait, that's Kevin Carter*. The part where he knocked out Matt Serra with a spinning backfist was good, but his career just seemed to fizzle out after their rematch. Oh wait, that's Shonie Carter. It was good when Bully Ray put him through a table...

Never mind. Quite a lot like the later Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Decent moments, but the story is all over the place. The one man vs an army leading to the buried under a mound of corpses part was cool. Like The Battle of the Bastards played for laughs instead of horror. Maybe that's where GoT got the idea. I'm sure the talented actors in the cast really enjoyed spending the paychecks they got for making this below par movie.

* They actually made a movie about Kevin Carter. It also starred Taylor Kitsch. I haven't seen it.

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On 7/6/2019 at 5:09 PM, odessasteps said:

This might be an “only for Piranesi” post

It’s funny that Jessica Harper starred both Phantom of the Paradise and then Shock Treatment but not Rocky Horror itself. 

Harper definitely wouldn't be able to play Janet with her low register. 

On a side note, if you get a chance to see Phantom in the theater, do so. The new print is gorgeous and just a tiny bit silly. (There's a press conference scene where the Death Records logo being digitally superimposed is extremely obvious)

 

Edited by Ace
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Been watching a lot of John Woo lately.   Watched Face/Off last night.  Yeah, boy, that did not hold up well.  Cage and Travolta seemed to be holding a competition to see who could be more over the top, the supporting characters barely get names, and that plot....  So many plot holes.  It may be the worst plotted film I've seen recently, and I watched Keanu Reeves in Replicas a few weeks back.  And I was sure Travolta's character having a scar near his heart was going to be a plot point (probably the way the character's wife recognized her real husband).  Nope.

On the plus side, it's apparently cheap and easy to get a total face transplant.  Who knew.

For some reason, the prison where they made the inmates wear magnetic boots made me laugh.  And it was still really easy to escape from that thing.

Watching Hard Target this weekend.  Marginally higher hopes for that movie, though it stars Jean-Claude Van Dam and Yancy Butler - neither of whom can act.  Although they'll probably chew less scenery than Cage and Travolta, both of whom were respected actors at one point.

 

Edited by Doc Townsend
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36 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

I rewatched Hard Target in bits and pieces when it was on TV recently. Wilford Brimley with his preposterous Cajun accent is pretty entertaining, as is JCVD's glorious mullet. It's very much a John Woo movie though slightly domesticated. 

I saw Hard Target again some months ago. Van Damme is basically playing Quint from Jaws, but if Robert Shaw did crazy stunts and martial arts. The special effects are wacky as fuck as well. I never liked Face/Off, but Hard Target is way too absurd to dislike especially with the aforementioned Cajun Wilford Brimley and Lance Henriksen as the big bad.

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Guest The Magnificent 7

Van Damme punches a rattlesnake and knocks it out to set a trap for the bad guys. Knocks it out. KNOCKS IT OUT. 

That’s all you need to know about Hard Target.  It’s off the charts dumb. 

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2 hours ago, Doc Townsend said:

Been watching a lot of John Woo lately.   Watched Face/Off last night.  Yeah, boy, that did not hold up well.  Cage and Travolta seemed to be holding a competition to see who could be more over the top, the supporting characters barely get names, and that plot....  So many plot holes.  It may be the worst plotted film I've seen recently, and I watched Keanu Reeves in Replicas a few weeks back.  And I was sure Travolta's character having a scar near his heart was going to be a plot point (probably the way the character's wife recognized her real husband).  Nope.

On the plus side, it's apparently cheap and easy to get a total face transplant.  Who knew.

For some reason, the prison where they made the inmates wear magnetic boots made me laugh.  And it was still really easy to escape from that thing.

Watching Hard Target this weekend.  Marginally higher hopes for that movie, though it stars Jean-Claude Van Dam and Yancy Butler - neither of whom can act.  Although they'll probably chew less scenery than Cage and Travolta, both of whom were respected actors at one point.

 

What possessed you to watch Woo's shitty American movies, when you could've watched The Killer and Hard Boiled instead?

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I knocked out a fly once. I was trying to kill it with a punch, only got a glancing blow, and it dropped to the floor, so I figured it was dead. Then a minute later it got up and started buzzing around again. I figured that were small and flimsy enough that an impact powerful enough to stun would also kill, but apparently not.

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2 hours ago, mystman said:

What possessed you to watch Woo's shitty American movies, when you could've watched The Killer and Hard Boiled instead?

I watched both of those films last month.  I own a number of Woo's films and watch them every couple years.  I don't like most of Woo's US films that much, so I don't own those and haven't watched them in years.

I am looking forward to rewatching Broken Arrow. 

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7 minutes ago, Doc Townsend said:

I watched both of those films last month.  I own a number of Woo's films and watch them every couple years.  I don't like most of Woo's US films that much, so I don't own those and haven't watched them in years.

I am looking forward to rewatching Broken Arrow. 

When I was in my twenties, I actually liked both Broken Arrow and Face Off. I saw the latter again a few years ago, and now I hate it. Haven't rewatched Broken Arrow. Wondering if it holds up.

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43 minutes ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Publicist: "Alright, Scarlett, if anyone asks about the controversy surrounding some of the roles you've been cast in--"

ScarJo: "Let me stop you right there. I've got this."

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Hey it worked for Olivier and Orson Welles!

Spoiler

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Anthony Quinn also wanted to play Henry Christophe.

Edited by Elsalvajeloco
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On 7/12/2019 at 3:24 PM, Curt McGirt said:

I'd like to see the original cut. The Valenti MPAA (remember them?) had Woo recut it like ten times before it got an R.

EDIT: Oh, and in typical fashion, they wouldn't tell him what they wanted cut.

I read a biography of Woo that talked about how tough his adjustment to the US was.  One thing in particular stood out to me was a scene where JCVD shot an unarmed man and they made him reshoot and put a gun in the guy’s hand because the Hero couldn’t shoot an unarmed man no matter how bad the bad guy was.  

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1 hour ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Hey it worked for Olivier and Orson Welles!

Anthony Quinn also wanted to play Henry Christophe.

Those are both great films, though. Great NYT article from 1972 by Ellen Holly about the Quinn situation.

 https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/11/archives/-black-history-does-not-need-tony-quinn-black-history-does-not-need.html

Did anyone ever make a Henry Christophe biopic?  

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14 minutes ago, Execproducer said:

Those are both great films, though. Great NYT article from 1972 by Ellen Holly about the Quinn situation.

 https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/11/archives/-black-history-does-not-need-tony-quinn-black-history-does-not-need.html 

I like Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite) and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but that don't mean Rod Steiger and Eli Wallach should be playing Mexicans.

19 minutes ago, Execproducer said:

There is a great interview of James Earl Jones suggesting that he is okay with Quinn playing Christophe, but he should then be allowed to play Ludwig van Beethoven. ? He was clearly trolling Cavett who was in favor of Quinn playing him.

 

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Did anyone ever make a Henry Christophe biopic?  

Danny Glover has been working on the Toussaint L'Ouverture film since 2006 so I'm going to safely assume no one has done one on Christophe. Tariq Nasheed did a documentary called 1804 about the Haitian Revolution a couple years back. I think that's the closest to an English language film we're probably going to get concerning anything Haiti.

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14 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I like Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite) and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but that don't mean Rod Steiger and Eli Wallach should be playing Mexicans.

There is a great interview of James Earl Jones suggesting that he is okay with Quinn playing Christophe, but he should then be allowed to play Ludwig van Beethoven. ? He was clearly trolling Cavett who was in favor of Quinn playing him.

 

Danny Glover has been working on the Toussaint L'Ouverture film since 2006 so I'm going to safely assume no one has done one on Christophe. Tariq Nasheed did a documentary called 1804 about the Haitian Revolution a couple years back. I think that's the closest to an English language film we're probably going to get concerning anything Haiti.

I am generally going to defer to actors being able to inhabit roles they weren't necessarily born to play, especially in older cinema and theater. There are going to be exceptions to that or bridges too far.  Would it be ridiculous and insulting for Daniel Day-Lewis to portray Othello in 2019? Of course it would. But in 2019 there are a lot of people that would feel the same way about him playing Christy Brown. In 2019, Othello is a play that is a magnet for criticism no matter who is cast and those lines are going to continue to narrow. We are probably eventually going to be a true multi-cultural society where everything that might offend will be long gone and that will be very vanilla indeed. 

Having said all of that, I completely respect the other viewpoint in terms of appropriate casting and am selfishly glad that I still live in a time where I can celebrate the past, even some of its more troublesome parts, while also being around to see the constant pace of change that even The Great Corporate Overlords can't truly stop. 

 

 

Edited by Execproducer
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2 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I like Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite) and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but that don't mean Rod Steiger and Eli Wallach should be playing Mexicans.

There is a great interview of James Earl Jones suggesting that he is okay with Quinn playing Christophe, but he should then be allowed to play Ludwig van Beethoven. ? He was clearly trolling Cavett who was in favor of Quinn playing him.

 

Yeah, I never had a problem with Dick, but god does he come off like a weasel in that. James burning him like he was at the stake with the Beethoven remark doesn't help. Unfortunately, Dick was still probably the only host that wouldn't call "go to commercial" over this kind of dialogue back in the day. 

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That channel has been posting all kinds of great clips. I feel like Cavett is kind of open to ideas, and that's what makes him great. He has his own opinions but he's genuinely interested in the guests, and sometimes they really open his eyes. It's funny to watch him look a little clueless in that James Earl Jones clip and then watch him and Jim Brown not hold back on Lester Maddox: 

 

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In the Scarlett Johansson argument, I keep seeing comments arguing that only trans people should play trans people. I don't think those people are thinking things through though, because the continuation of that argument is that only non-trans people should play non-trans people. In effect trans actors should be pigeon holed into a certain type of role.

If only trans people can understand what it means to be trans, then only non-trans people can understand what it means to be non-trans. That then sets up a slippery slope where only disabled can play disabled, only homosexuals can play homosexuals, only heterosexuals can play heterosexuals, only soldiers can play soldiers, only astronauts can play astronauts and so on and so on.

Acting is the ability to use one's imagination and creativity and skills (and research) to put oneself in another human's shoes to tell a story. It's one of the fundamental basics of storytelling throughout human history. If a writer can only write stories about what they know, then we would only get stories about writers and no other characters and what a dull world that would be.

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