Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Petty moves from a petty man.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Books are my comfort food!

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

One way or another, he’s a liar.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

You are here: Home / Medium Cool / Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Talking About Films

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Talking About Films

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.  We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Talking About Films

In this week’s Medium Cool, let’s talk about talking about films.

I’m teaching my undergrad film course right now, and in it (of course) I teach them some technical stuff about films, but without turning it into a Film Studies class. My students are busy with classes and jobs and families and stress of all kinds, and part of why I invented this class was to get them talking about movies. I think we all remember a time in the past, or maybe the present, when you saw films and had vigorous discussions with friends, or maybe even family.

So let’s hear about that. What films really got your argument/discussion juices flowing? Where were you? When were you?

But before we start, here’s a preview of next week.

There’s a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Dems at 7 pm next Sunday, coinciding with the Medium Cool time slot, and it looks to be a good time.  The casts of West Wing and VEEP are coming together for this, and who knows what they have in store for us?  Whatever it is, we can talk about it in the Medium Cool thread next Sunday. ~WaterGirl

Here’s the link to RSVP and donate to get your “ticket”.

https://twitter.com/OfficialJLD/status/1574860517310550016?s=20&t=tx3YAE3JmvOg7FPIoh6peQ

Okay, back to talking about talking about films.

Update:  Subaru Diane points out that the event next week is 7 pm Central, 8 pm Eastern.  BG and I talked off-line, and we’ll put up  Medium Cool next week at the usual time – 7 pm Eastern – for anyone who just wants to talk about anything culture related while we wait for the “show” to start at 8pm blog time.

Reader Interactions

190Comments

  1. 1.

    schrodingers_cat

    Since today it is his birth anniversary, Gandhi. I saw it as a part of a school outing at one of Mumbai art deco theatres, Regal Cinema. There was a lot of discussion and debate at school and at home. And since Gandhi’s killers now rule India the film seems even more relevant today.

  2. 2.

    SiubhanDuinne

    There’s a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Dems at 7 pm next Sunday, coinciding with the Medium Cool time slot

    Just to note that the WW/Veep event next Sunday is at 7:00 pm CENTRAL TIME/8:00 pm EASTERN. So we’ll be an hour into Medium Cool by the time the event starts.

  3. 3.

    BGinCHI

    This also has me thinking about the theaters I grew up going to, as a kid with my sister and friends, then as a teenager riding our bikes.

    Almost none of them remain. Two of the old, beautiful ones are still there downtown, but they don’t show movies any more (lots of great arts programming, though).

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    @SiubhanDuinne: Good catch!

    BG and I will put our heads together and decide whether to start at the usual time with just an  open discussion of anything culture-related OR whether to start MC at 8 pm Eastern.

    Stay tuned.

  9. 9.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    One film that had a negative aspect which lead to a lot of discussion for young me was Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I absolutely adored the movie the first time I saw it, which was at age 12. (Of course, Holly Golightly being a call girl was very much played down in the movie, enough so that my parents didn’t need to have THAT discussion with me because I didn’t catch on at all.) I thought Audrey Hepburn was so beautiful and enchanting, and the music was amazing. And I was young enough and white enough and from a white enough town that, while I knew racism existed and was a Bad Thing, I didn’t yet understand all the myriad forms it could take. So I didn’t grasp that Mickey Rooney’s role in the film was bad (to put it mildly!!!!) until my parents talked to me about it afterward, and explained the concept of “yellowface” (though I don’t think they used that word) and how white people used to think this was totally okay but it actually was, you know, disgusting.

    I watched the movie again in my late teens and was like HOLY WHAT IN THE FUCK. And the next couple of times I saw it, I tried to fast-forward through all of his parts, and then just gave up. Honestly, I wish someone would make a “anti-racist director’s cut” version and just take all of his scenes out. They don’t really need to be there, we can just be told she’s a dodo who can’t pay her rent.

  12. 12.

    kalakal

    @schrodingers_cat: My favourite cinema is the Hyde Park Picture House in Headingley, Leeds. It opened in 1914 and is still going stronga. It’s beautifully preserved, it still has gas lighting. It’s in the big student area of the city and has a wonderfully eclectic range of films from major releases to art house. Gets a wonderfully mixed audience, as one review put it “not just Guardian readers”.

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Park_Picture_House

  14. 14.

    WaterGirl

    BG and I talked off-line, and we’ll put up  Medium Cool next week at the usual time – 7 pm Eastern – for anyone who just wants to talk about anything culture related while we wait for the “show” to start at 8pm blog time.

  15. 15.

    BGinCHI

    One place I saw a lot of great films was at the university cinema at the U of Georgia where I did an MA. I was young and single and poor and they programmed great films 7 nights a week. I probably average 4-5 nights a week there, especially since it was close to my office and the library.

    Thanks to whoever chose all the great films they showed.

    Lots of great discussions after, too, at the bars downtown.

  16. 16.

    BGinCHI

    In the summer of 1988 (before my senior year in college), I moved to Boston and slept on a friend’s couch all summer and worked crap jobs just so I could be in a city. I wanted to get some culture: bands, museums, movies.

    There’s an old theater in Harvard Square called The Brattle that shows (or showed, not sure about now) a series in the summer. Every Monday, Kurosawa, Tuesday, Fellini, Weds., Russian films, and so on. And you could bring in your own food. So I’d get takeout after work and go every weeknight. Again: young, single, poor. It was great entertainment and I learned a ton about film.

    Only drawback is that people ate some pretty smelly food in there.

  18. 18.

    kalakal

    One film that caused a major furore in England was The Life of Brian. The usual suspects decided it was blasphemous* whined VERY loudly and managed to get it banned by many local councils. This lead to farcical situation where it was banned in Leeds but fine in the adjoining city of Bradford ( they merge onto one another). Leeds is much bigger than Bradford and so the next few weeks were the most profitable in the history of Bradford cinemas. They all showed it.

    * It has many targets but Christianity isn’t one of them

  20. 20.

    kalakal

    @BGinCHI: Bradford City mostly.  They’re in different leagues so rarely, if ever, play each other. The real grudge matches around the area are Leeds vs Man U. The fans really, really hate each other.

  23. 23.

    JoyceH

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: ​
     

    I rewatched Breakfast a year or so ago for the first time in, um, decades, and was really kinda gobsmacked. The sophistication turned out to be drinking and calling everybody ‘darling’, and the madcap hi-jinx was shop-lifting. And yeah, the racism was really cringe-making. But what was really the deal-breaker for me was – she threw away her CAT! Yeah, she felt bad and changed her mind, but geeeeeez….

  25. 25.

    zhena gogolia

    No one is a bigger fan of Audrey H than me, but she made a lot of much better films.

  26. 26.

    zhena gogolia

    I’ve had great discussions of Hot Fuzz with my students. It’s an inexhaustible masterpiece.

  28. 28.

    James E Powell

    Two films that prompted all kinds of discussions & some arguments among my circle of friends: The Deer Hunter & Apocalypse Now!

  31. 31.

    Hungry Joe

    At some improvised dump of a theater in Berkeley around 1970 or 1971 I saw “Duck Soup” and “The Bank Dick” for the first time. Maybe 40 people in the place, in crappy old folding chairs. It was PACKED. Never heard an audience howl like that, before or since. About 90 minutes of near nonstop laughter. When, during a madcap car chase, W.C. Fields spots a woman standing by the side of the road and calls out “Hiya, Toots!” the guy in front of me actually fell out of his seat and into the aisle. I staggered out of the place exhausted, stomach aching. Possibly the best moviegoing experience of my life.

  32. 32.

    dnfree

    @James E Powell: Deer Hunter, good call.  My husband was enraged by the story, and I thought it was manipulative.  We had several heated discussions about it when it came out.

  33. 33.

    Mo MacArbie

    The one I had the most intense post-viewing discussion about was L.A. Confidential. Mostly, we were trying to sort out the twists and turns to figure out what we had just seen.

  34. 34.

    dnfree

    @Hungry Joe: “The resale value of this car is going to be nil.”  One of the great movie lines, and one our family has adopted for numerous  items besides cars.  At my age, the resale value of my body is going to be nil.

  36. 36.

    Hungry Joe

    @dnfree: Man, how I hated “The Deer Hunter.” Enraged me, too. “Manipulative” says it in spades, doubled down. The guys I was with loved it. I was so near-apoplectic that I couldn’t articulate.

    “The Deer Hunter.” Now I’m mad all over again.

  38. 38.

    dnfree

    @Hungry Joe: I suspect that if I brought “Deer Hunter” up for discussion again, my husband and I could rerun the same discussion decades later.

  39. 39.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I loved watching Siskel and Ebert argue.
    I liked Gene but he was nutz – gave angry, negative reviews to “Casino” and “Apocalypse Now”. You can give thumbs down, without the hysterics. I mean they weren’t some unwatchable trash like Adam Sandler’s films. Even if you didn’t like “Apocalypse”, seeing the “Heart of Darkness” narrative visually adapted is stunning.​​

  44. 44.

    kalakal

     

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:

    The brilliant comedy show Goodness Gracious Me written and performed by 4 British Indian actors was originally going to be called Peter Sellers is Dead because they hated his performance as an Indian doctor in The Millionairess, espescially the cod-Indian accent.

  45. 45.

    dm

    @BGinCHI: The Brattle is still there.  It’s a non-profit, now.  The concession stand has beer and wine.  I don’t know if you can bring your own food in, I suspect you can.

    In the pre-VCR era, there was a wonderful little cafe in Cambridge called Off the Wall, that showed shorts (mostly animated).  Introduced me to Bill Plympton, Yuri Norstein (and lots of other Easter European animators), stuff from the National Film Board of Canada, and tons of other stuff.

    Films that get one talking — well, I can remember when the pre-internet SF-Lovers mailing list blew up upon the release of The Empire Strikes Back.  Lots and lots of discussion (“Is what Darth Vader said true?”  “Are Luke and Leia related?”, “Is Han dead?”…).  But I suppose that doesn’t really count?

    The load that discussion placed on the site hosting the mailing list (MIT-AI, I think) was probably what precipitated a number of changes in the ARPANET email protocol (SMTP), introducing active mail-list-friendly changes to the protocol to reduce the load on mail-forwarding hosts.  Those protocol discussions probably don’t count, either.

  47. 47.

    Cacti

    Hasn’t been mentioned on the front page that I’ve seen so I’ll throw it in here.

    Today was the first round of voting in the Brazilian Presidential election.  If any candidate wins an outright majority, they become President elect.  If not, the top two vote getters go to a runoff on 10/30.

    Lula is winning, but only with about 47.7% of the vote and 95% of the votes counted.  Bolsonaro has 43.8%, and the third and fourth place candidates have 4.2% and 3.1% at present.  So a runoff seems most likely at this point.

    This is something of a watershed moment for Brazil as it remains to be seen what Bolsonaro will do if he loses outright.  The last military dictatorship ended only about 34 years ago, is well within living memory, and Bolsonaro has been an outspoken admirer of that regime.  The moment is ripe for civil unrest.  I hope that’s not the case.

  48. 48.

    hueyplong

    If I read the site’s average age correctly, The Deer Hunter probably generated the most heated discussions. At the time I thought the people who disliked it did so for the wrong reasons. I can’t imagine watching it again now.

    As for for recent movies, The Lighthouse generated some intense back and forth. Wife loved it. Daughter and I said we “endured” it. You could argue a movie has to be well done for us to sit through it intensely while having a miserable time.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    Never seen so much as a second of Veep. Same holds true for West Wing.

    As far as talking about talking about films, there’s Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert; everything else is, as the rabbinical saying goes, commentary.

    Still snicker over the NYT film reviewer who wrote at the time that Carmen Miranda’s initial appearance in a movie was (paraphrasing from memory) “the most horrifying thing ever shown on a screen.”

  51. 51.

    BGinCHI

    @dm: Thanks! Glad to hear it’s still there and functioning. Next time I’m in Boston I have to get there.

  53. 53.

    Spanish Moss

    BlackKKKlansman. What a powerful movie. We saw it in a theater, and there was stunned silence after the last few shots, and then applause. So many things to think about, our family discussed it for days and ended up going to see it again.

  54. 54.

    JCJ

    @BGinCHI: I remember going to movies at the Mars theater and the Lafayette theater when I was a kid.  I remember seeing Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too wY back when

  55. 55.

    Raven

    @BGinCHI: It was so good when you were here even though the seats sucked! “Raise the Red Lantern” , “Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker”, “Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?” to name just a few. They ruined the joint when it went mainstream.

  56. 56.

    Hungry Joe

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Siskel also gave a thumbs-down to “Taxi Driver.”

    I think “manipulative” encapsulates most of what infuriates me about “The Deer Hunter.” Unspeakably tense and violent situations without merit, let alone rhyme — and forget reason. It was as if a Spielberg imitator had turned psychotic and sadistic.

  57. 57.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Saw Dr. Strangelove in college and everyone is laughing their head off until the B-52 gets hit by a missile and immediately everyone was siting on the edge of their seats with a pained look – they didn’t want the crew to die, which loses the plot because if they survive then almost everyone dies.​

  59. 59.

    citizen dave

    I love The Lighthouse.  Everything about it, from the aspect ratio to the language.

    Googling brought me to these arguments against The Deer Hunter. (threemenonablog.blogspot.com/2010/12/film-review-deer-hunter-1978.html)   I was young-college age when it came out, me and my friends thought it was really good.  Never really thought it was “racist” or lumping in everyone who fought on the VietNam side as bloodthirsty dudes who forced you into Russian roulette.

    Today I can see it’s a bit ponderous, but I still enjoy many parts of it.  Love the gritty Pennsylvania locations as well.

    I can’t recall ever having heated conversations about films.  Life of Brian did generate a lot of news in its day.  Love that film.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    @Kalakal

    There’s something about oft cast British actors named Peter. Sellers, Ustinov and O’Toole starred in many fine films and also more than a fair share of absolute turkeys. The level of their performance waxed and waned in concert with the quality of the product.

  62. 62.

    James E Powell

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:

    There may be several, but the one that most point out is that the depiction of the Viet Cong has no basis in reality. At the time, the war was still a fresh memory & there was a wide spectrum of views toward the war & the Vietnamese people. But even people who hated the Vietnamese could not say there was any factual basis for the torture of America prisoners by forcing them to play Russian Roulette. Also, the film portrays gambling on Russian Roulette as an activity that Vietnamese people engage in for entertainment. I am pretty sure there was no basis in fact for that either, but I cannot be sure.

    At the time, I felt the movie was not as much about the Vietnam War as it was about these particular people from a small steel town. Part of it was filmed in my beloved home town of Cleveland & the characters were very much like people I knew who worked in steel mills and other factories. So I felt more connected with those parts of the film.

    I haven’t seen the film in many years & would probably have to watch again before saying anything more

    ETA – About year after The Deer Hunter came out, I went to a wedding in Steubenville, Ohio, that was so close to the wedding in the film that I was wondering if I had entered the Twilight Zone.

  63. 63.

    Craig

    When I grew up in RVA there so so many great theaters. The Byrd is an old Deco theater that’s a rep house now. The Biograph on Grace street was owned by a professor at VCU and he booked all kinds of crazy shit. Rocky Horror on Saturday night for like 15 years, first place I saw Bava films, he’d book bands to play and run Hammer movies as the background. Another theater with midnight movies every weekend,I musta seen Quadrophenia, The Wall, The Song Remains the Same, The Kids are Alright, Repo Man, and Decline of Western Civilization a million times.

  64. 64.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Hungry Joe: ​
      True, it’s manipulative and extremely graphic, but isn’t that also true of “Full Metal Jacket” and “Platoon”, yet those don’t seem to be controversial.

  65. 65.

    Trollhattan

    Probably “8 1/2” screened in college. The first meta film about film for me and it opened me to European films in general at a time many directors were at their zenith. Also Kurisowa.

    It was a glorious time for cinema and crafted legions of insufferable film buffs. “Oh, you saw Death Wish III? Cool.”

  66. 66.

    hueyplong

    @frosty: Those mountain scenes may have been shot in Oregon but that doesn’t detract from your point. As someone born in West Virginia, I was all WTF about the mountain scenes.

  67. 67.

    Doug R

    @schrodingers_cat: Remember when they’d show you a movie about a week before release and let you stick around for the feature already playing?

    Got to see Blue Thunder and Gandhi together that way.

    Interesting mix.

  68. 68.

    Raven

    “Vincent, a Life in Color”   

    Premiered at the Virginia Theater in Champaign, I’ll. Vincent used to hang around at the the Bamboo Lounge at The House if Chin in Campustown. He was known as “Vincent the Coat Freak” because he had a leather jacket fetish. We’d watch him approach unsuspecting people with leather jackets and ask them if he could try on their coat! The rest is up to you. It was a really interesting film and showed him to be a complex character.

  69. 69.

    dnfree

    In 1968, at the University of Chicago, we attended a small group presentation of “True Grit” (John Wayne version).  The title of the movie was written on a whiteboard, and before it started a shaggy guy walked up to the whiteboard, erased the GR, and changed it to SH, and sat back down.  I didn’t know you could do that.  I guess it foreshadowed the student takeover of the administration building after Kent State.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @citizen dave

    Off the roof of the pate the only film can readily recall which sparked discussion afterwards was Brazil. We all came to the same conclusion: what it needed was subtitles — not for the audio but to annotate the visuals.

    ;)

  71. 71.

    Gin & Tonic

    Last discussion I had, I think, was about Zimna Wojna. Maybe not so much discussion as a chance to explain some things to my DIL.

  74. 74.

    RSA

    @BGinCHI:  This also has me thinking about the theaters I grew up going to, as a kid with my sister and friends, then as a teenager riding our bikes.

    Coincidentally, a friend who’s wired into the Baltimore cultural scene just flagged an interview with John Waters by the Maryland Center for History and Culture, titled “Talking Charm City Theaters with John Waters.”  I haven’t yet watched more than a few minutes, but already a theater I used to go to in college has been mentioned.

  77. 77.

    Doug R

    @zhena gogolia:

     

    I’ve had great discussions of Hot Fuzz with my students. It’s an inexhaustible masterpiece.

    Often the best genre films are parodies-you’ve got to love something to make fun of it properly.

  79. 79.

    BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️

    For discussion about a movie, my seminal experience was “Black Panther.” Mrs. Cisco was an MCU fan (RDJ was her gateway), and she was gone by this time. People DRESSED for the occasion – the colors! The Fabrics! The absolute PRIDE! A camera crew from one of the local affiliates interviewed me on my way in.

    As I left, I noticed groups of people outside the theater. One group was near my vehicle. We didn’t know each other. IT DIDN’T MATTER. We talked, compared notes. I was (by far) the oldest one there AND the only one who had actually read the comic as a kid.

    A VERY SPECIAL night.

  81. 81.

    Amir Khalid

    Nearly 30 years ago, my newspaper* published an article I wrote defending Schindler’s List, which I had just seen while in Rochester, Minnesota on assignment. The Malaysian Board of Film Censors had banned it for reasons that amounted to straight-up anti-semitism, as detailed in its letter to the film’s distributor. (Who then published it for all the world to see.) Had I directly accused the censors of anti-semitism, The Star wouldn’t have dared publish it, so I had to argue around that to say that Schindler’s List should have been approved for screening here.

    As it was, it played in Singapore cinemas for months and months in 1995, because so many Malaysians would come down just to see it. I like to think I had something to with that.

    *As in it “employed me”, not as in “I owned it”. Just to be clear

  83. 83.

    kalakal

    @NotMax: hah, never thought of that. They could all be superb or dreadful. Sellers must have been a nightmare to direct, he was a compulsive mimic, in any conversation he had he’d be unconsciously imitating whoever he was talking too. Ustinov was in an awful lot of unfunny comedies which is a shame as he was hilarious in real life, films of his stage shows are wonderful. O’Toole was simply a law unto himself, I always loved the review

    “If he was any prettier they’d have had to call it Florence of Arabia”

    A happy exception would be Pete Postlethwaite – never seen him give a bad performance

  84. 84.

    Hungry Joe

    Medved, of course, moved from film critic to right-wing talk radio scold and evolution denier — i.e., he’s still an insufferable prig.

  85. 85.

    Craig

    I forgot to mention the magic of $1 theaters. Roll the dice, but love the price. The Henrico Theater in RVA was awesome. I was 1/3 of the way through Big Trouble in Little China before I figured out what John Carpenter was doing. When I first moved to Frisco there was The Strand on market st.. amazing booker at that place. Double features of Jackie Chan movies, weird stuff like Fortress/Carnasaur. Pay a dollar and hang out smoking weed in the balcony with a bunch of junkies, drunks and degenerates. A great cinema education.

  87. 87.

    NotMax

    @Ben Cisco

    Friend from long ago appeared in the TV commercial for Andy Warhol’s Trash. For the ad a camera crew set up to interview people coming out of a screening (whole thing was unscripted) and strung together snippets of people’s reactions. This is how his short appearance went:

    Interviewer: “What did you think of the movie?”
    Friend: “It certainly lived up to its name.”

    True story.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    @BGinCHI: When I was a kid there was some special occasion in the late ’60s or early ’70s when we got to see a film at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.  Just an amazing venue.  I’m not sure what the film was.  Maybe 2001?  GWTW?  Some big blockbuster.

    It was a crime against humanity when Murdoch was allowed to buy that name for his propaganda outfit.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  92. 92.

    CaseyL

    “Spirited Away.” I had the pleasure of seeing that for the first time many years ago (I think it was still in its first or second theatrical run) with some very good friends. We went out to dinner afterwards and had a wonderful time talking about the movie.

    I was not familiar with Asian feature film animation – I knew it existed, knew it was considered excellent, but other than that had no experience with it.  (I associated it with anime, which I think is something else completely.)  I was enthralled by the dive into a whole world of storytelling, myths, cultural images, totems, and cues totally new to me.  And the animation itself had me by turns sputtering and speechless with awe and delight.

    I’ve seen Spirited Away at least three times since then, and each time is a delight.

  93. 93.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @oatler: ​
      it’s so ridiculous. I remember when “Schindler’s List” was broadcast uncensored on free tee vee and the usual suspects weren’t offended by the depraved violence, but by some actress showing her boobs.

  95. 95.

    BGinCHI

    @JCJ: ​
      Those were the two I was talking about!

    I ate so many junior mints and lemon drops at those two theaters!

    Did you ever go to Cinema West over on the Bypass in WL? That was also a great theater. I distinctly remember seeing A Bridge Too Far there.

  97. 97.

    Quiltingfool

    Very OT:

    Greengoblin, if you’re hanging around, I’d like you to look at a photo of 2 blocks – you requested #18, and I have 2 of them.

    Would you like the top block (cat backs are made of different fabrics) or the bottom block (cat backs are made of just one fabric)?

    Thanks!

    pin.it/1Xwv1NO

  105. 105.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: OK, I think I got it

     

    The people portrayed in this scene are first and second generation Rusyn Americans (see The Carpatho-Rusyn Americans) mixed with Russian and Ukrainian Americans whose ancestors arrived in the US between about 1895 and 1925 to work in the steel mills and coal mines in and around Pittsburgh.

  106. 106.

    Gin & Tonic

    The one film I truly hated, and that still sets my teeth on edge thinking about it, is the Al Pacino Scarface. Talk about manipulative.

  108. 108.

    Hungry Joe

    @kalakal: A lot of those guys grew up desperately poor, and never could shake the impulse to take any work that was offered them. I remember reading an interview with Michael Caine in which he told of standing in a line (or “queue,” I guess) for the dole and spotting two of his buddies in front of him — Sean Connery was one of them, I think, and the other was another soon-to-be-big-time actor; I forget. Hard to get over that kind of trauma/humiliation.

  112. 112.

    Another Scott

    @Hungry Joe: “Manipulative” is a real turn off for me as well, and Spielberg is so blatant about it that I haven’t seen any of his films in ages.

    I mean, Amélie is manipulative, all films are to some extent because the medium demands focus on a particular image, but it’s fun and loving about it.  It doesn’t beat you over the head the way Spielberg does.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  114. 114.

    gwangung

    @BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️:  Ah. Yes.

    I think the parallel experience for me was when Crazy Rich Asians opened. Because I saw it late night. With DOZENS of other Asian American theatre actors, directors and playwrights. In the middle of the national conference of Asian American theaters, where we spent the week discussing representation, breaking stereotypes and making Asian Americans the stars of their own story.

    I think that combo gets to an inkling of what you went through.

  115. 115.

    James E Powell

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I have been in that church, St. Theodosius, in the hall where the reception was held, and I replaced gaskets on an ice cream freezer in the grocery store where Meryl Streep’s character worked.

    For movie location buffs, these are not very far from the house from A Christmas Story, which is a museum devoted to the film.

  117. 117.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Hungry Joe: When someone tried to get snotty with Michael Caine about making Jaws IV, he calmly replied that the house it bought him was beautiful. Alec Guiness hated Star Wars and referred to it as his pension.

  118. 118.

    raven

    @James E Powell:

    The parish of St. Theodosius was organized in Cleveland in 1896 by Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants living in Tremont.[2][4] The founders had emigrated from Carpathian Ruthenia in Austria-Hungary (now Zakarpattia Oblast in present-day Ukraine) when the tide of Eastern European immigration to the American urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest was at an all-time high.[7] They were originally Ruthenian Greek Catholics (also known as Byzantine Catholics) who became dissatisfied by their affiliation with the Catholic Church and followed Carpatho-Rusyn church leader Alexis Toth into Russian Orthodoxy. This same situation played out in many Eastern Catholic parishes in the US, and the results formed the core group of the present Orthodox Church in America (OCA).

  119. 119.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @raven: ​

    There had been a secret communist organization in Hue for years. And when the revolutionary forces seized the city, they came out of hiding to set up a revolutionary government. They believed they would liberate the entire city.

    When our soldiers withdrew from Hue, the Revolution’s secret forces had already exposed themselves. If they released the people they’d arrested, the those people could identify the revolutionaries.

    I don’t know if the order came from a local commander or from a higher level. They killed people who worked for the South Vietnamese government and for the American military. But they also killed people who had been wrongly arrested. It was a massacre. It was a stain. It was an atrocity of war.

    Nguyen Ngoc

  121. 121.

    kalakal

    @Hungry Joe: Oh, I’m not blaming them, any work you could get was good work. Connery worked as a milkman, O’Toole grew up in Hunslet, Leeds which I can assure from personal experience is a very poor area, Sellers parents were bottom rung variety show actors. Another aspect was they grew up in the tradition that you didn’t turn down any work because if you did you wouldn’t get offered any more in the future

  125. 125.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I think it galled Sir Alec that so many Star Wars fans knew absolutely nothing about his distinguished earlier work, and tthat he was most famous for being in a piece of throwaway pop culture.

  127. 127.

    kalakal

    Update on the Brazilian elections Lula 48.2 %, Bolsonaro 43.4%. Goes to a run off on October 30th

  128. 128.

    Gin & Tonic

    @James E Powell: The Internet says the reception was filmed in Lemko Hall. The Lemkos are an ethnic sub-group from an area of southern Poland and southwestern Ukraine, but north of where the Rusyns or Ruthenians are from. They speak a dialect of Ukrainian ( but have been largely assimilated by now.)

  130. 130.

    Ivan X

    @hueyplong: I dislike De Palma in general, or at least more than I feel like I should given the acclaim he gets. I feel like on the NY Mag Approval Matrix, his films would be in the highbrow/despicable quadrant. Obviously many other people disagree.

  131. 131.

    Ivan X

    @Another Scott: I have always disliked Spielberg films for that reason, starting with ET as a kid, with a few exceptions here and there like Raiders. But talk about your broad strokes. I don’t like having my chains yanked. Also agree with whomever said that the music is cloying af.

  133. 133.

    James E Powell

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Yes, I’ve been in Lemko Hall. The neighborhood, Tremont, is a sort of gentrified restaurant & art gallery neighborhood that was my hang when I lived in Cleveland.

    The people I know who grew up in that neighborhood all refer to themselves as Ukrainian. They & their families moved out years ago.

  138. 138.

    Jay

    OT. On Thursday I sent out my resume to a German Headquartered Tech Company, in response to their local site’s ad. On Friday they responded with a Microsoft Teams interview for Tuesday am with their German HR Director. They found my resume “interesting”.

    As we are really sucking wind here financially, (T”s still waiting for Disability, it’s been a year since she applied, and my Orange wages just covered the basic’s, barely), I could really use some good wishes for Tuesday.

  140. 140.

    Amir Khalid

    @Ivan X:

    Also agree with whomever said that the music is cloying af.

    Blasphemy! John Williams is the pre-eminent figure of modern movie music.

  144. 144.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @raven: ​  by adding up the free fire zones

    In December 1969 in the aftermath of the revelation of the My Lai massacre, stories began to appear in the press that atrocities by Americans and their allies were far more commonplace in South Vietnam than the U.S. government was willing to admit.[14]: 237  Robert Kaylor of United Press International alleged that according to American pacification advisers in the Mekong Delta during the operation the division had indulged in the “wanton killing” of civilians through the “indiscriminate use of mass firepower.[14]: 238  Ewell refuted the report, describing it to COMUSMACV General Creighton Abrams as “the biggest collection of malicious innuendo I have ever seen.”[14]: 239

    In June 1972, Newsweek’s Saigon Bureau Chief, Kevin Buckley working with Alexander Shimkin, wrote an article titled “Pacification’s Deadly Price” that questioned the spectacular ratio of U.S. dead to purported VC, as well the small number of weapons recovered, and suggested that perhaps more than 5,000 of the dead were innocent civilians (quoting an unnamed U.S. official).
    ***

    The US Army Inspector General estimated that there were 5,000 to 7,000 civilian casualties from the operation.[17](link)

    but mostly by counting the red dots (link)​

  154. 154.

    BGinCHI

    @zhena gogolia: ​
      There’s nothing better than watching it with someone who hasn’t seen it, then seeing how hard they laugh at the “jumping over the fences” scene.

    Comedy gold.

  155. 155.

    Brachiator

    Wow. Sorry that I am coming late to this thread.

    A movie buddy and I started laughing with derision in the theater while watching Woody Allen’s Interiors. We thought it silly, ponderous, and mindlessly trying to imitate the style of better filmmakers.

    Apart from the controversy of his personal life, I like some Woody Allen films. But I think he is America’s best second rate director. This causes arguments with people who think he is a genius.

    Similarly, I think that Forrest Gump and The Shawshank Redemption are deeply flawed and phoney films. Again, this stirs up partisans.

    Vertigo and Citizen Kane often vie for the top spot of greatest films. I loves me some Hitchcock, but think that Citizen Kane is the better film.

    I detested the latest Bond film, No Time to Die, and just do not understand why it got a pass. I thought that Daniel Craig was the best Bond after Connery, but the only good Craig Bond movie was Casino Royale.

  157. 157.

    Tehanu

    @Mo MacArbie: The first time we saw L.A. Confidential, we came out of the theater totally exhilarated and talking about how wonderful it was, and the lobby was crammed with people all doing the same thing. I don’t think I’ve ever had an experience quite like it.
    The first time I saw Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, it was on a double bill, showed after The Seventh Seal.  When Max Von Sydow appeared, about 10 minutes into Wild S, as a cheerful gas station attendant, the entire audience (including us) laughed hysterically for at least two minutes.​

  159. 159.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    you guys have on the verge of dialing up Hot Fuzz again

    surely better than my planned evening viewing of hoping the new Dragon show gets better

  161. 161.

    The Golux

    @Hungry Joe:

    I saw “Duck Soup” and “The Bank Dick” for the first time.

    One of my favorite movie experiences was seeing “Casablanca” for the first time (1979 or so) with a packed house at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.  Apparently, many in the crowd were also seeing it for the first time, judging from the reactions at the end.
    Thirteen years prior, my father took my sisters and me to a double feature of “A Night At the Opera” and “The Lavender Hill Mob”.  Astounding for a 14-year-old.​

  163. 163.

    Suzanne

    Probably “Avatar”. I contended that it sucked. Everyone else contended that it was great. I was right and I still am.

  165. 165.

    zhena gogolia

    @The Golux: My high-school friends and I went to the revival house to see Casablanca every night for a week. I used to know absolutely every line of dialogue by heart. I’ve seen it probably 20 more times since then, and still know pretty large chunks of it.

    There’s a good book on it by Noah Isenberg.

  168. 168.

    Craig

    @Brachiator: totally agree about Shawshank and Forrest Gump, that shit is just dumb. Totally disagree on No Time To Die. I love that Barbara Broccoli let Craig, Cary Fununaga, and Phoebe Waller Bridge blow up the whole franchise. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is my favorite Bond movie, so all the shout outs to that in No Time just resonate with me.

     

    @Brachiator:

  170. 170.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    My high-school friends and I went to the revival house to see Casablanca every night for a week.

    Casablanca used to be regularly shown on TV, but I skipped it for the longest time. When I finally saw it, I was knocked out.

    I have been watching some YouTube reactions to the film, and find it interesting that people who hate old movies, and people who have never seen a black and white movie, and who know nothing about the film careers of Bogart or Bergman still find this film magical. There was, however, one woman who just could not forgive Bergman’s Ilsa for being unfaithful to her husband.

    I also find that there are contemporary filmgoers who demand that every film have a simplistic redemption arc. Other people insist that films they like have a happy ending. These people are relieved that Rick is a good guy after all.

    ETA. I still cannot get used to the idea that the 1980s is considered to be the main era of classic films for contemporary audiences.

  171. 171.

    Amir Khalid

    @Suzanne:

    Avatar is a groundbreaking piece of 3-D filmmaking, and I think it’s worth watching for that. But I have to agree that thet the story is lame.

  175. 175.

    Brachiator

     

    @Craig:

    Totally disagree on No Time To Die. I love that Barbara Broccoli let Craig, Cary Fununaga, and Phoebe Waller Bridge blow up the whole franchise.

    I don’t care about them blowing up the franchise since it is clear that they are going to bring back some version of Bond. But as far as this goes, there is a scene early on where it is clear that they are in effect shutting everything down. The movie deflated like a tire with a blowout and all of the excitement drained from the film. It was now just a matter of watching things wind down.

    It bored me that they turned the franchise into a family romance with M as Mom and Bond and Bloefeld working out family trauma. No Time To Die was poorly written and directed. I could see where parts of the narrative was stiched together. The female lead was boring and Ana de Armas just looked stupid in her single action scene in the film. They could have done much more with the new 007.

    This was the first movie I saw in a movie theater after the pandemic. It was a total letdown.

    On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is my favorite Bond movie, so all the shout outs to that in No Time just resonate with me.

    Agree that OHMSS is pretty good.

  176. 176.

    Ivan X

    @Brachiator: could not agree more about Craig being very good in CR and all the subsequent movies being awful. (Well, maybe the second one was ok but I don’t remember it much.) I don’t know whose idea it was that Bond should become brooding and pensive and sour. No fun at all, which sort of defeats the purpose.

  177. 177.

    Ivan X

    @Amir Khalid: the dialogue and quality of acting is general is pretty cringe. But I found it an amazing visual extravaganza when I saw it in 3D. I really enjoyed the 3D renaissance during that period, I’ll watch any piece of shit if it’s in 3D and love it.

  179. 179.

    prostratedragon

    @James E Powell: Saw it just a few years after its release, so the feelings captured in the movie were still very much abroad. The Pennsylvania scenes were certainly the easiest to connect to — that wedding scene, or sequence, was fantastic I thought. The last act didn’t reflect any literal experience that anyone I knew had had over there, but to some it might have been a fair metaphor.

  180. 180.

    BGinCHI

    @JCJ: Closest theaters to us were the Jerry Lewis theaters at the Purdue Service Center (later, Purdue West). A 4-mile bike ride. I remember seeing so many films there, including Star Wars 3 times.

  183. 183.

    Brachiator

    @James E Powell:

    There may be several, but the one that most point out is that the depiction of the Viet Cong has no basis in reality. At the time, the war was still a fresh memory & there was a wide spectrum of views toward the war & the Vietnamese people. But even people who hated the Vietnamese could not say there was any factual basis for the torture of America prisoners by forcing them to play Russian Roulette. Also, the film portrays gambling on Russian Roulette as an activity that Vietnamese people engage in for entertainment. I am pretty sure there was no basis in fact for that either, but I cannot be sure.

    I never took The Deer Hunter to be a realistic depiction of the Vietnam War. Similarly, I don’t take any version of Apocalypse Now to be a realistic depiction of the Vietnam War. The same is true of Full Metal Jacket.

    I think they are all interesting meditations of how War affects minds, bodies and spirits. I liked how much of The Deer Hunter centers on the community and how some men look to define themselves.

    We don’t see the main characters thrown into a long military campaign. The war is a shock, and it has traumatized and brutalized them. The Russian Roulette stuff emphasizes how War has corrupted and brutalized the country and society which is supposedly being “saved” by warfare. The Christopher Walken character has become trapped by this alternative society. Death is his home now.

    At the time, I felt the movie was not as much about the Vietnam War as it was about these particular people from a small steel town. Part of it was filmed in my beloved home town of Cleveland & the characters were very much like people I knew who worked in steel mills and other factories. So I felt more connected with those parts of the film.

    A coworker who moved to Los Angeles from Pittsburgh claimed that at the time the film is set, more people from communities like the one depicted had soured on the war. But he thought that the film captured the feel of the community very well.

  187. 187.

    prostratedragon

    @Brachiator: ​ To me, artists and works of art are nowhere near commensurable (well, either there’s a measure or there isn’t) enough to rank them definitively, apart from maybe a broad class (Malcom X versus Car Wash).

    Both are extremely well-crafted movies. Citizen Kane has an obviously broad scope, though it is centered on one life. That scope would, to many, put it ahead of other fine efforts that seem less ambitious. But Vertigo takes a summary and critique of how propoganda methods (also part of Citizen Kane) had culminated in the postwar marketplace and “urban renewal”(*) and embeds it within a story of a post traumatic sufferer and what might be the brutal shutdown of a long-running espionage con. That’s also seldom-matched virtuosity.

    (*) The first round pursuit of Madalene Elster was originally also supposed to be on foot.

  189. 189.

    Brachiator

    @prostratedragon:

    To me, artists and works of art are nowhere near commensurable (well, either there’s a measure or there isn’t) enough to rank them definitively, apart from maybe a broad class (Malcom X versus Car Wash).

    I agree. As I noted, I seriously love Hitchcock, but I also think that Citizen Kane is the superior, more audacious film. I also don’t agree with definitive rankings. I have, for example, a permanently rotating list of my favorite Shakespeare plays. And that’s just one artist. As far as Vertigo is concerned, I have visited some of the Bay area locations used in the film. But still love Kane more.

    Both are extremely well-crafted movies. Citizen Kane has an obviously broad scope, though it is centered on one life. That scope would, to many, put it ahead of other fine efforts that seem less ambitious.

    Kane is, of course, an audacious piece of work by a young Orson Welles. And I continue to marvel at its audacity. A biography with an inherently unreliable narrator. Kane is a newspaper man whose life is told to us solely by the reflection of the media (newspapers, news reels, etc) and the memories of people who knew him or who worked for him. But that story, about American power, still resonates, and probably will forever.

    But Vertigo takes a summary and critique of how propoganda methods (also part of Citizen Kane) had culminated in the postwar marketplace and “urban renewal”(*) and embeds it within a story of a post traumatic sufferer and what might be the brutal shutdown of a long-running espionage con. That’s also seldom-matched virtuosity.

    I’m more interested here in the personal story, and the man’s obsession with the woman, and in her surrender of her self in order to try to please him. Like Kane, Vertigo is also a work that is aware of the power of cinema to warp our sensibility, but for me there is a certain coldness that is present in many of Hitchcock’s American films that prevents my loving it as much as I love Kane. And yet overall, Hitchcock and Kubrick, another cool director are at the top tier of my pantheon.

  190. 190.

    J

    I always had to think hard about Wim Wenders’ films upon seeing them at first release: Paris, Texas…The Goalie’s Fear of the Penalty Kick….Wings of Desire. There was the film, the actors, the way he painted with color on the screen.

    And for your class you could compare/contrast his Wings of Desire with horrible Hollywood remake of it!

    One other thing…I remember watching FILMS: those things on reels that rolled thru projectors and whose light fell upon a screen…not digital movies. I still can’t see an old film without seeing the :05 and :00 second cues for the reel changes every 30 minutes or so….a small white dot of light in the upper right corner of the screen image. Once you been taught to see it from the projection room, you can never not see them….

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