basically the maximum amount of actual tron the guy is the tv cartoon where he was doing the batman beyond thing and training the new tron or whatever
1 Like
wish I had a 100 more movies of ken takakura being stoicly melancholic to watch
1 Like
I’ve been thinking a whole lot about intermissions lately.
At home I’m a sit the fuck down and watch the whole movie nonstop in the dark (alone) person, but two of the local theaters that run classics and cult stuff that i go to a lot do intermissions for every single show and I dig it. Hitting the snack bar during intermission is a whole occasion, and its a good opportunity to chat with friends.
The placement of these intermissions becomes a whole matter. Theoretically it happens at a reel change, but with digital projection that’s sort of out the window and I’ve seen some random ass breaks. Usually it’s not as egregious as the kids who run the screenings in the porno room of the old rental store here and just hit pause on a disc mid scene though.
And even with the prints, since they’re not always 35mm theatrical ones, and instead are some collector’s 16mm versions that were shopped to tv stations or cheapo theaters those will have different reel change moments.
And the reel change used to be a bit of movie anatomy that thoughtful filmmakers would account for. Some kid would be doing the splice at the theater so you had to have a transition that could still work if it was a little sloppy.
I was just watching Evil Dead on 35mm, and since that was shot on 16 originally and blown up so it could be shopped as a real reel film, the damn reel change falls at a super tense timing sensitive moment when Ash is pulling that curtain to look for one of the girls. Really underscores the renegade first movie feel of the whole thing.
16 Likes
oh wow this is an awesome response, I don’t know why I never thought about intermissions having more thought put into them than like a glorified commercial break. the physicality of that is cool. knowledge stolen
3 Likes
Thank you!!!
Yeah, it hit me a couple weeks back that for as much nerd ink and blood has been spilled over Star Wars, I have never seen anyone talk about where the reel changes fall in that.
Also had a big discussion about whether 2001’s built in intermission would have presented OG theater goers with the screen as a large black rectangle —a sideways monolith—as it plays out in the home releases or if curtains would be pulled and lights would be raised and all that.
10 Likes
You ever feel a movie calling to you
During this scene in 1961’s The Ladies Man I declared, out loud, to miffy, “The French were right about Jerry Lewis.” And they were. By the time I finished that Jerry Lewis biography I was kinda sick of that dude’s bullshit, he became such a fuckin blowhard, but man he really was a genius, it’s fucked up.
Like nearly every shot in this movie is eye catching and yes maybe that’s cuz it features dozens of beautiful women in it but it’s also like 85% Jerry Lewis so y’know big obstacle to overcome there. But fuck he is weird, all the manchildren who followed in his wake pale in comparison, he is loud and obnoxious but he isn’t afraid to be quiet and slow and obnoxious and that’s worth so much to me, that’s fuckin’ confidence right there, that’s some fuckin’ skill.
Just prior to this I watched The Naked Time, which I think may have been the first Star Trek episode about space madness? I had a gas, I hooted so much when Kirk had a breakdown cuz he wanted to bang his yeoman but couldn’t cuz he was married to a spaceship. Also I loved all the colors. Like, it had colors, and they popped. Next Generation is felt like…fuckin’ non-stop beige and I hate that shit. Anyway The Ladies Man also has great colors, there isn’t much Dan Flashes’ shit in its wardrobe, just lots of solid bold shirts and dresses, reds and pinks and purples I just adore, it’s crazy how shitty this dude’s later movies look, can’t wait to watch Hardly Working again tomorrow, will not report back on that one though, I’ll just keep that to myself.
The French were all ooh la la Monsieur Lewis is an auteur and, also, le technical innovator. And that’s true, you can see it all over this movie, most of it takes place in this giant mansion set, there’s all sorts of real fancy, never-before stuff going on in this thing, and it’s mostly used in service of gags that legit made me laugh-out-loud.
Like Tati spent like what, 8 years making each one of those movies about that ucnle guy? At his peak Jerry was making like 4 movies a year and at least one of them was The Ladies Man and that’s pretty fuckin’ sick okay, don’t think anyone else coulda done that. Yeah it doesn’t really have a plot and it’s just a bunch of vignettes loosely strung together and a big THE END, NO MORAL but that’s good, that’s what film comedy should be, scriptwriters are the bane of comedy.
Also: manchildren who get the girl at the end. Fuck that shit! You watch Billy Madison lately? No? Keep it that way! The meet cute in that one is a grown-ass man assaulting his 5th grade teacher on the bus. Fuck that shit, Jerry don’t really touch no one on-screen in this one, and at the end he decides to carry on being a huge fuckin’ simp for what I assume is very low pay. Perfect! NO NOTES
Awhile back I went on about how surprised I was by how Jerry seemed to do no drag or toying with gender roles in his work and ha ha ha I really hope I didn’t post that publicly cuz holy shit was I ever wrong, what the fuck was I thinking. This dude loves being the lady, he spent his entire run with Dean doing that shit, and in this one he plays his own mom and dances with George Raft, it is the closest the movie gets to romance. I wish I owned that photo of Jerry and Dean nude in the shower together. I wish I coulda bought that off eBay when it was available.
There’s this great bit with a TV show that gives a small taste of the showbiz cynicism that pops up in some of Lewis’ later work and it has some real fun, daring shots, I adored it, so much of this is cartoony (positive), you can see how much of an influence Frank Tashlin had on Lewis. Imagine if Adam Sandler or any of Jerry’s other SNL manchild babies had 1/10 his panache? What a bunch of jokers (negative).
Like I almost feel bad sharing this screenshot but y’know what you watch this movie and you’ll still be taken by surprise, I am not really spoiling anything, this is one of those cinematic moments that’s so odd I’m almost worried I dreamed it. You come across this shit in the middle of the night with no prior knowledge of Jerry Lewis and it is going to blow your mind just as much as like anything Lynch has done okay, this guy was doing some wild stuff and his (well deserved) rep sure has tainted how one interprets it but oh well, glad I’m me, glad I’ve poisoned myself enough to let go and simply freak out over Hubert H. Hubert’s first encounter with Miss Cartilage. What a moment! Five stars!!!
Oh yeah I bet Jerry would have been amazing in a Murray Wilson biopic. Sorry to put that thought in your head. Sorry to break your heart that it never happened. Sorry.
Good night!
27 Likes
i love this movie so much! i was in the bathroom of the beacon cinema in seattle a few days ago and they had a jp poster for it and i had to take a pic
while i was there i did a screening of takashi ito’s grim and paul verhoeven’s showgirls for 15 seattle friends and left very happy
12 Likes
goddammit the whole time I was reading this post I was like haha he kinda looks like Murray FUCK FUCK FUCK haah
anyway I gotta watch the fuckin ladies man
4 Likes
saw Mickey 17 today:
initially wasn’t sold on the core premise, but it’s capturing the worst of humanity in a nutshell so,so well …. so much so that it becomes outright unbearable at times. And the best thing is, it shows how we grow so accustomed to monstrosities among us (too) quickly, and let them do their job (literally and figuratively) that if the movie wouldn’t counter-balance it with showing what love can do for (and to) you, it would get depressing quickly… and then flipping that on its head as well.
The only thing that really stings more than watching our collective inaction/being inhumane is the phoned-in ending that tries to put some pretty wallpaper over a pretty good picture of what we’re capable of (or rather, accept and perpetuate by inaction).
it hurts just to think of it…. on that end, BJH really succeeded following up Parasite, because this def isn’t just-more-of-the-same 
3 Likes
New running man isn’t as good as old running man. Despite being less cheesy it is less believable and has less to say about resistance to fascism. I really don’t know what Edgar Wright is doing any more, Hot Fuzz is just about the best movie I’ve ever seen but he can’t seem to scare up the same verve since. And they don’t even put Glen Normalman in neon orange lycra… what is even the point really
5 Likes
I skipped that because the feedback was all over the place, but in the past week I’ve seen Blue Moon, Sentimental Value, and Die my Love which were all fantastic
Well it was the only thing playing at 1230 that my kid had even remote interest in before his afternoon soccer tournament game so I guess I’ll have to get to those later
1 Like
Cmon, you’re telling me your son isn’t more excited to watch the latest work from lifelong collaborators Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater, what is a assuredly a poignant and heartfelt biopic about one of the great American songwriters?
4 Likes
not enough people saw wildcat
5 Likes
Love The Coopers. I don’t think I have hated a Christmas movie as much as this in a long time.
thinking about this lumières film
5 Likes
I’m making my friend watch Dreamcatcher. She has no idea that Stephen King wrote this while fucked out of his mind on oxy or that the aliens kill you by crawling up your ass. I’m so excited you have no fucking idea
4 Likes
thats such a good movie to spring on someone i used to do that hahahahha
1 Like
Zardoz (1974)
“Hi, welcome to the film asshole”
This film mainly exists as a meme of Sean Connery in red underwear running around and I decided to see what the hell it actually was. Basically in the far future a bunch of people become immortal psychics and then become really really bored, so one of them selectively breeds an outsider and then teaches him how to read so he’ll break into their paradise and destroy the immortality machine that keeps them all alive. In between there’s a lot of boobs, chest hair. I found the “outside” world in Zardoz much more compelling despite there being basically no information about it. Theme wise it’s kind of a coda to Hard To Be A God, where instead of a god coming into a primitive world it’s the opposite. In the end everybody still dies.
Less entertaining but more coherent than Megalopolis. A sleazy high concept Sci-Fi film. Relies way way too much on Beethoven’s “Symphony No.7”. I guess I was pretty bored by it, and I like a lot of “bad” films.
You’ll never guess where the name Zardoz comes from. When I got to this part I groaned pretty hard.
6 Likes