Edgy MD

Four sons. Two became producers and two became actors, one of which pre-deceased Kirk by overdosing at 46.

Thirty films. That's a nice round number. No need to cast aside the early stuff. Let them stand or fall in competition.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Kirk Douglas is also 103 years old. We've GOT to get these kids together. (Except, Mrs. Douglas is still going strong at 100 herself.)

Double Switch wrote: There is another bracket: Early Kurosawa sans Mifune that includes Sugata Sanshiro 1 & 2 (when his leading man was Susumu Fujita, who makes an appearance as the cowardly sword master in Yojimbo), They Who Tread Upon the Tiger's Tail, The Most Beautiful, and One Wonderful Sunday. I feel like I'm forgetting something. Susumu Fujita : Toshiro Mifune :: George O'Brien : John Wayne

Are we really using the name "ScarJo"?

Ms. de Havilland is still kicking it at 103.

I kind of take Driver as a comic presence whenever I encounter him. His emoting is always so pissy.

Yeah, a poll couldn't handle Kurosawa. He deserves the spectacular head-to-head matchup of an elimination tournament.

I'll bet Millan has some Irish in him.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: When you see one, especially a good one, even if its old, start a poll on it here. Or even if you're just thinking about one. Anybody see the movie about the South Korean girl with the massive genetically enhanced pig?

I'm a member of a pre-code appreciation society on Facebook. My favorite movie changes a lot, but it's probably never going to be a 21st century film, unless maybe Wall-E.

The worst part of Roger Rabbit was Roger Rabbit. Compelling, inventive movie all around but the title character was annoying. As a cartoon character, he'd be more likely to be pushing a cereal in 30-second spots than to be starring in his own short features. Over the course of a full-length feature, he was a real load.

If it matters, the first two Toy Stories were released last century.

I get the idea that bowdlerized black history has become something of a marketable sub-genre.

So, I'm at Metacritic now, and I'm torn between the inclinations of Lubis and lps25, who I'm certain are the most reliable reviewers out there. Which one are you closest to? https://metsrostercentral.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/screen-shot-2019-11-16-at-11.12.15-am.png> https://metsrostercentral.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/screen-shot-2019-11-16-at-11.12.40-am.png>

=LWFS post_id=26645 time=1573868667 user_id=84]Also, somehow it's the first damn feature about Harriet Tubman!

I thought I remembered your love for The Last Dragon. Thank you for reading that far.

This was surprisingly enlightening. It mostly followed Berry and Smokey, and Berry, who has done some ugly things in his day, seemingly has aged into a genial dude. Smokey was always genial, and the persistence of his green eyes well into his senior years is shocking. Maybe he colors them with lenses. Clearly they're both on their second or third set of beautiful teeth. Some big stars (notably Diana Ross) sat this one out, but they got some real great memories from Mary Wilson, Valerie Simpson, Martha Reeves, Otis Williams, Duke Faqir, and others. Stevie's there too, and even Neil Young — who was briefly on Motown in between The Squires and Buffalo Springfield when he played with Rick James in a Canadian R&B outfit called The Myna Birds. Holland, Dozier, and Holland, who I always thought of as professorial, were actually seemingly regular guys who just flourished under the in-house competitiveness that Gordy intentionally fostered. The film-makers put it together with a cool stylish animation thing of recalling old scenes by using live audio and placing photos of the speakers around the room as their voices played back, making you feel like a fly on the wall of some of these legendary sessions. They skip over some of the darker chapters — only hinting at the power plays by Gordy and Diana Ross that created decades of bad blood. They skip the Jacksons' defection and the tragedy of Tammy Tyrell entirely, but do a pretty good job covering Stevie and Marvin Gaye's personal transformations in the seventies — how it worried Gordy to give them that much creative control, and while it deeply affected the Motown brand, it also gave the world some of the best soul ever. Berry also deserves some extra blame setting the brand adrift by moving the whole operation to LA and breaking off from the roots and the family vibe that made everybody show up to work early and row in the same direction. He was looking to diversify, but I'm still waiting for the guy to produce a good film. Even this doc was made by a British production company. But for a bit there, it really gives you faith that, if the circumstances are right and the vision is strong, a mom-and-pop shop can still conquer the world.

Berry dreams about doing something in the music industry. But he's not in LA. He's in Detroit, doing what folks do in Detroit, working the assembly line in an auto plant. Then he gets an epiphany: Why doesn't he create an assembly-line driven auto plant, but for music? He enlists the aide of a guy named Smokey, and together they assemble a small but committed family of composers, arrangers, choreographers, an etiquette teacher with a finishing school background, and they start to scout talent. In ten years they change the world of pop music, establishing a broadly accessible, stylish, sophisticated form of R&B and Soul. What's more, they churn out an unthinkable amount of hits, and they help turn anonymous midwestern nobody acts into legends. LEGENDS! [YOUTUBE]sTbb39iNNqo[/YOUTUBE]

The Irishman is played by DeNiro, who has some Irish on his father's side.

Watched this again this evening. I picked up a couple of things I missed the first time around. 1) When not filled with ass-tearing dark metal music, the soundtrack is covered by crappy canned music that sounds like it came out of the background of an eighties American film. 2) The weekend warriors guarding the border are not only a comedy staple going back to the Keystone Kops, they also seem to be lifted right out of an Ivan Reitman/Second City company film. 3) It's a standing joke that the morbid bassist doubles as the town's librarian, but he really has a librarian's personality, with an encyclopedic memory and an appreciation for a strong backstory. Willets should watch it if only for that.

Yeah, we both spotted him. Mike Peters. The front man seemed like he was doing a version of Keith Richards that was older and crustier and of later vintage than the Johnny Depp version.

We bailed on this early. This band lacked a Jynnky, or anybody you felt you could get behind. Disappointing, because it's a cool concept, but the writing doesn't take it anyplace interesting. Sort of like this song of theirs that's supposed to be great is a good idea, but the lyrics aren't there.

He's done a lot of dogs in the 21st Century. Even before. #TheFan

I liked it. I wish they closed the circle and returned him to his own world, and maybe to his own music. But I couldn't help the joy of hearing the songs like they were new, with new arrangements — sometimes stripped down as demos, sometimes turned into full assault punk. His "Help!" is authentic because like John (or Kurt Cobain, for that matter), he was having a breakdown in plain sight of the world, and they just wanted more. The funny thing is how John-poor the film was. The music is about 70% Paul, 15% George, and 15% John. They also stick largely to the big singles, when I could have used a "Dear Prudence" or a "Within Without You." I got the idea that they had more trouble securing John's songs, but that can't be right, as the songs all remain Lennon-McCartney compositions, controlled by the same publisher. But hey, even the title song was surprisingly fresh. My wife thought she utterly hated that song, and I've always been, like, "No, Baby, it's just been so overexposed you can't hear it anymore." And she turned to me this time and said, "You're right, it is pretty good." Apart from that, please forgive any prejudice I may have against latter-day pop music, but Ed Sheeran is ... not really an asset to the film. McKinnon was typically terrific, though, and I totally surrendered to the void when we got to that secret scene.