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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / Open-er thread

Open-er thread

by Tim F|  August 4, 20148:51 am| 34 Comments

This post is in: Popular Culture

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Thanks to Frankensteinbeck for answering my pedantic quibbles about Guardians of the Galaxy. Most of it boils down to irrational decisions looking more rational if you are a megalomaniac with a god complex putting on a show as a kind of coming out party.

In all seriousness the movie is awesome. Go see it. And keep in mind that it’s really about the raccoon.

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34Comments

  1. 1.

    bago

    August 4, 2014 at 8:55 am

    Yep.

  2. 2.

    bemused

    August 4, 2014 at 9:04 am

    I didn’t catch why Patrick J Buchanan’s name came up at the very end of Morning Joe but Joe said we have to get Pat back on soon. If they did that, I suppose they’d have a cake to celebrate his long absence.

  3. 3.

    Randy P

    August 4, 2014 at 9:19 am

    Are there any Gilmore Girls fans here? I’m becoming kind of a Melissa McCarthy fan. Just saw Bridesmaids (I see why people picked her out as stealing the movie, because the rest of it is either meh or poop jokes. Or meh poop jokes.) And through the magic of the intertubes, I’ve learned that she had a big role as Sookie on Gilmore Girls.

    Don’t see a lot of TV. I remember the existence of this show but never saw it except perhaps the pilot. So what was the character of Sookie like? Did she have a chance to shine comedically?

  4. 4.

    bemused

    August 4, 2014 at 9:32 am

    @Randy P:

    I really liked Chris O’Dowd in Bridesmaids. He and McCarthy were my favorite characters in Bridesmaids and they both were also in This is 40.

  5. 5.

    brent

    August 4, 2014 at 9:33 am

    @Randy P:

    I enjoyed Gilmore Girls immensely but its built around that sort of rapid fire dialog that Aaron Sorkin and GG’s show runner, Amy Sherman-Palladino are very much known for. I have found that it can wear thin on some people pretty quickly. I, myself, don’t care for Sorkin much but I like Palladino’s writing.

    In any case, Melissa McCarthy is great in it. She is not featured in every episode but she has a pretty prominent role in the series and she is incredibly funny every time she is on screen.

  6. 6.

    NonyNony

    August 4, 2014 at 9:47 am

    In all seriousness the movie is awesome. Go see it. And keep in mind that it’s really about the raccoon.

    After seeing the movie, I’m fairly certain it’s actually about the tree. The raccoon is just his sidekick.

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    August 4, 2014 at 9:51 am

    @NonyNony:
    I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s really about the 1970s mixtape and the Sony Walkman.

  8. 8.

    Hawes

    August 4, 2014 at 9:56 am

    Isn’t it always about the raccoon?

    Isn’t it?

  9. 9.

    NonyNony

    August 4, 2014 at 9:56 am

    @Amir Khalid:

    I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s really about the 1970s mixtape and the Sony Walkman.

    HEY! Spoilers man, spoilers!

  10. 10.

    Belafon

    August 4, 2014 at 10:10 am

    Actually, the whole movie was a trailer for restarting the series alluded to in the scene at the end of the credits.

  11. 11.

    dmsilev

    August 4, 2014 at 10:16 am

    @Amir Khalid:

    I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s really about the 1970s mixtape and the Sony Walkman.

    Sony’s product-placement team is thorough, but not particularly fast.

  12. 12.

    Mike in NC

    August 4, 2014 at 10:17 am

    We’re making two trips to Virginia this month. One’s for fun and one’s for a funeral. Speaking of the latter, lots of Schadenfreude following the trial of ex-governor Bob McDonnell, who not so long ago was being groomed by the media as a future GOP presidential candidate.

  13. 13.

    schrodinger's cat

    August 4, 2014 at 10:28 am

    @Randy P: GG fan here. Melissa McCarthy was the best friend of Lauren Graham, one of the eponymous Gilmore Girls. In the show Lorelai and Sooki (Graham and McCarthy) are friends and coworkers who later go on to become business partners. McCarthy’s character, Sooki St. James,who was a chef in show, was one of my favorites.

  14. 14.

    Eric U.

    August 4, 2014 at 10:33 am

    I still can’t believe how brazen McDonnell was. Va. Governor’s job is ready-made for wingnut welfare, you can only serve one term. There have been governors that sat out a term and then came back for another, but that’s silly if you want to increase the size of your Rolex collection.

    I was wondering if the weird 1 term and out scheme is why Virginia’s Dem governors have been such a disaster as far as helping to develop the party in the state. I don’t think a Virginia Governor is going to go on to be president, and moving to the senate is somewhat limited by the number of seats available

  15. 15.

    Matt McIrvin

    August 4, 2014 at 10:36 am

    @brent: Some of the same people made another series, “Bunheads”, starring Broadway star Sutton Foster (who is kind of like a Lauren Graham who can sing and dance) and set at a small town ballet school. It was badly promoted (the title probably didn’t help) and it didn’t last long, but I was sorry to see it go.

  16. 16.

    Frankensteinbeck

    August 4, 2014 at 11:00 am

    @NonyNony:
    I think it’s about their friendship. One thing that impressed me is how completely partners they were. Rocket is hard boiled and sarcastic, but they respected each other absolutely and worked together without thinking about it to cover each others’ weaknesses, like a happily married couple. I have no trouble imagining the ending reversed.

  17. 17.

    maurinsky

    August 4, 2014 at 11:02 am

    I was bummed to see Bunheads canceled, too, even though I find the Palladino rapid fire dialogue a little wearing. I love anything with dancing in it.

    Chris O’ Dowd is an international treasure, as far as I’m concerned. The IT Crowd, The Sapphires, Moone Boy…he’s brilliant.

  18. 18.

    cmorenc

    August 4, 2014 at 11:20 am

    Another movie to highly recommend: “Get on Up” the James Brown biopic. I’m not at all particularly a fan of the funk genre of R&B, nor really of Brown, but WOW! The numerous red-hot musical numbers will have you unable to help yourself from literally dancing in your seat – a good analogy to just how good – think “church” scene from “Blues Brothers” (with the real James Brown) and the diner scene with Arethra Franklin. Chadwick Boseman (who played Jackie Robinson in ’42’) absolutely nails Brown, right down to his athletic, elaborate dance moves. Speaking of “Blues Brothers”, Dan Akyroyd is terrific as Brown’s agent. It doubtless helped having Mick Jagger as a key co-producer (Jagger helped secure the necessary rights to Brown’s music for the movie). The movie took a nonlinear, nonchronological approach to James’ life, skipping back and forth between scenes from early career, later career, boyhood, prison, but it works really well here to explain who Brown was and how he came to be, including the not-so-nice parts (selfish narcissism, abusiveness and disloyalty to those closest around him) and the sheer uninhibited wildness that was both a key part of his genius and a key part of his often-spectacularly troubled life.

  19. 19.

    Chris T.

    August 4, 2014 at 11:29 am

    @Mike in NC: Ah, Governor Bob! Corrupt in all (and only) the right ways! He only takes bribes from bidness, not from any unions!

    I like how, at trial, Mr McDonnell is all “who me? what? what bribes? must have been the wife!” while the business guy (Williams) says “duh, of course we expected to get something from this, we weren’t just shoveling out cash for the fun of it, what kind of idiot business man would I be if I did that?” Governor Bob has to hope that the jury thinks Williams is the kind of idiot whose bribe never makes it to the husband and therefore isn’t a bribe, or something.

  20. 20.

    Cassidy

    August 4, 2014 at 11:54 am

    I think a new Ghostbusters With Melissa McCarthy and Emma Stone is a wonderful idea. It’s time to pass it on to a new generation.

  21. 21.

    Karen in GA

    August 4, 2014 at 12:15 pm

    I’d never heard of the comic before, but the movie sounds like fun. Do I need to know the comic before seeing the movie, or does it stand on its own?

  22. 22.

    VincentN

    August 4, 2014 at 12:21 pm

    @Karen in GA:

    As someone who has never read the comic, I enjoyed the movie immensely. And the group of friends who I went with, many of whom were big comic book readers when they were younger, had also never read this comic book series. So I suspect that Marvel realized this and did their best to make a movie that was accessible to everyone who isn’t familiar with the source material.

    There are a few references to prior Marvel movies like the Avengers and a few comic book related in-jokes but you wouldn’t notice they were there if you didn’t recognize them.

  23. 23.

    eyelessgame

    August 4, 2014 at 12:21 pm

    You don’t need to know anything. Even as a huge former Marvel fanboy I didn’t know the comic; it’s D-list that virtually no one read. But this movie is why people go to the movies. Just go and enjoy yourself; you don’t need any background. There are a few things that connect it to the rest of Marvel if you know what they are, but if you don’t it’s not any problem because you’ll eventually see Avengers 3 and it’ll all make sense there.

  24. 24.

    Tim F.

    August 4, 2014 at 12:26 pm

    @Karen in GA: The movie doesn’t assume that you know anything about these guys.

  25. 25.

    Karen in GA

    August 4, 2014 at 12:42 pm

    Cool — I’ll go this weekend. Thanks!

  26. 26.

    Cassidy

    August 4, 2014 at 1:26 pm

    Mom one is all that familiar with this iteration if GotG; iirc correctly this particular team was created in 2011, maybe 09. It’s not important eenough to look up other than to say they’re a recent book. GotG has existed for a long time with a loose cast of individuals mainly serving to augment any interstellar stories.

  27. 27.

    Felinious Wench

    August 4, 2014 at 1:36 pm

    I have to drag my husband to any kind of “comic book” movie, and he loved it. It’s the raccoon…sounds weird, but he’s a fully-fleshed out character, not some silly cute fur ball to sell stuffed animals. I can say I did not have a single moment in the film where I found Rocket cute.

    Also saw Boyhood this weekend. Profoundly moving and just a great film.

  28. 28.

    Matt McIrvin

    August 4, 2014 at 1:39 pm

    @Karen in GA: Almost nobody has heard of the comic, and the movie was definitely made with that in mind.

    There are some little bits of continuity with the other Marvel movies, but they’re completely peripheral too. And the last post-credits cookie is there to shock people who were around in 1986.

  29. 29.

    Seanly

    August 4, 2014 at 1:40 pm

    @VincentN:

    You have to make the characters in even the Star Trek movies accessible! A long time ago, I read an article about how one of the problems with the X-Files movies was that they didn’t do enough to initiate the significant portion of the audience that had little to no knowledge of the TV show and it’s (over-complicated, no-sense-making) alien mythology. The article touched on the math that even a very popular show might only account for only a million or so movie-goers which isn’t enough for any film.

    A movie that did a great job of making the characters seem accessible was Serenity. I had hated the TV series when it first came out, but the movie got me to go back & watch the series with a more open mind.

  30. 30.

    libarbarian

    August 4, 2014 at 1:46 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I assume your handle is a contraction of Frankenstein and Steinbeck …… but I’m secretly hoping its actually a reference to a Frankenstein Glen Beck.

    I kind of like that imagry. Mmmmmm … Frankenstein Glen Beck.

  31. 31.

    Bob In Portland

    August 4, 2014 at 1:50 pm

    Amir: I wrote several responses about that Daily Beast article and its author (and the publisher) from that open thread yesterday.

    Then there’s this. I presume if true it would be the Ukrainian troops trapped in the Southern Cauldron. NY Times hasn’t reported it, so does that mean it didn’t happen?

  32. 32.

    Randy P

    August 4, 2014 at 2:08 pm

    @Seanly: I loved the character development in X-Men: First Class. Although I was somewhat familiar with the X-men universe, I am decades out of date. I found it very character-centered and it is the memories of those character relationships, particularly Charles and Erik, and Erik and Raven, that sticks in my memory.

  33. 33.

    ruemara

    August 4, 2014 at 2:13 pm

    @Randy P: she was great as Skokie, but her roles don’t have the quality of Sookie. Which is a shame. Sookie was a person, but she’s grown big playing caricatures of fat girls.

  34. 34.

    Amir Khalid

    August 4, 2014 at 5:13 pm

    @Seanly:
    Even us X-Philes who had been following the mythology from day one were disappointed with what we saw of it in The X-Files: Fight The Future. It was The X-Files reduced to a big loud action movie, with the mythology elements dumbed down for a wider audience.

    The second movie, The X-Files: I Want To Believe, wasn’t a mythology movie at all; it was the other kind of episode, a monster-of-the-week thriller. I reckon it was an excellent one by the TV show’s standards. But it was not a summer blockbuster, as you would have expected given its release date a week before The Dark Knight. It was a relatively low-budget movie set (and shot) in winter, and it should have been released at a more appropriate time of year.

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