LWFS

=MFS62 post_id=83864 time=1640958746 user_id=60] I've been aware of Eurovision for several years. One of my favorite actresses, Danielle Ruah(from Portugal), has hosted it several times, and one of my favorite singers, Saara Aalto (Finland) finished second one year. For Americans who don't follow it, it is a BIG deal, watched by hundreds of millions every year. That said, I'm a little reticent to see the movie because I'm not a big Will Farrell fan( to put it delicately), and he will ruin Eurovision for me. Later

This the good shit.

If this is average to you, I want your watchlist. Supercharming romcom, but with the aforementioned bonus stuff Edgy mentioned AND a generous soupcon of that great-sci-fi thing where they assay/interrogate the nature of something (What is love? What is commitment? What does time and our finite share of it mean to both?) by analogy, and end up with a more to-the-meat-of-things examination than if they'd set out to do something more direct. Also, JK Simmons! I think it's metaphysical Annie Hall, without the Woody bullshit. In a just world, this sort of thing gets award noms.

=RealityChuck post_id=55388 time=1612387073 user_id=82] OK, but pales in comparison to the much superior Book of Life, which used the same themes.

Yeah, that soundtrack. This felt like Inside Out for grown-ups, which I mean as a high compliment. Edgy MD wrote: Pixar films I have never seen: A Bug's Life Cars (I think I bailed at about the half-hour mark on this.) Cars 2 Monsters University Cars 3 The Good Dinosaur Coco Onward I feel like Cars was where they started doing the movie-star "one for you, one for me" thing, only as a studio. (Thankfully, our little spawn never really had a vehicles-and-nothing-but phase, so we only watched this once, and didn't have to see any of the sequels.) Of those, the only one I think you'd miss if you didn't see it is our south-of-the-border entry. Coco is pretty delightful, with marvelously filigreed story and animation, and earwormy Mexi-folk-showtune pastiche music (courtesy of the "Frozen" team). And-- be warned-- it has a 97-98% chance of making you ugly-cry.

one of the last times i went, we went with a friend who was not the strongest swimmer. they did the cannonball slide - the one where you drop out of the tube into a pool several feet below. he had to be pulled out by a lifeguard. he was ok, but did get to have "CFS" written on his arm. we reasoned then and there that it meant "Can't Fucking Swim" one day, i'll watch the HBOmax movie about it. SPOILER: That's exactly what it meant.

As a kid who summered in Jersey in the late eighties AND had plenty of older cousins/older cousins' friends with cars and a chaotic-neutral alignment... this felt made especially for me. Watching with a wife who also grew up making the occasional Traction Park run AND a child with a frightening appetite for lurid war stories tripled the fun. The only real criticism I have is that it doesn't quite nail the landing, in terms of squaring the nostalgic hijinks of the first half with the-- spoiler alert?-- deaths and tragedy of the latter one. I could watch Chris Gerherd spin Tales of Dirtbag Jersey for hours, I think.

While some lunatic was reading from Stephen Miller's bar napkin about left wing fascists destroying history into a South Dakota microphone, the rest of us were enjoying the crazily-anticipated, richly-reimagined, insanely-hyped musical version of said history, courtesy of Disney Plus and Lin-Manuel Miranda. As someone who's heard this soundtrack so much on car rides/shared speaker experiences/Zoom "sleepover" monitoring, I've inadvertently memorized it almost in its entirety... I still found this shockingly good, and intensely moving in spots. My MVPs/those served best by the direction: 1) Leslie Odom, Jr. (crazy range, performance and expressiveness-wise-- even more than the considerable range he displays on the cast recording) 2) Renee Elise Goldsberry (that "Helpless" into "Satisfied" is a fucking gut-wrench and a half; she will EGOT one day, mark it down) 3) Daveed Diggs (destroys with charm in both roles; it's nuts how hard he is to peel your eyes from, even in company numbers) Do you agree? Or are a far-left fascist cadre trying to destroy (artistic depictions of, and the enjoyment thereof) our history?

We watched Young Frankenstein the other day. Is it sacrilege to suggest that it's something of a museum piece at this point? It's painstakingly crafted, obviously, and what's funny is great, but it's MUCH slower and more airless than I remember it being.

FINALLY caught it myself. Extremely on-brand, it is. Also, long. The acting-- where the actors were allowed to, like, talk a bunch and stuff (sorry, Margot!)-- was superb, though, and some of the set pieces had a real buzz.

Unrelated it'd be interesting to see a NEW movie/comic/hero franchise to take off from the villain standpoint. Like have a Joker movie that's less origin story and more him terrorizing Gotham in the years prior to Batman becoming Batman, in fact, he's the impetus for BECOMING Batman.... The Joker had his own comic book, for a brief run in 1975-76 --- the only villain in the DC universe to be given that treatment. [FIMG=666]https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91JJ69oCEnL.jpg[/FIMG] … to that point. Post-antihero '90s, everybody got their own books, provided they could be the center of something appropriately "gritty." The '90s were all about that grit. Gritty heroes, gritty antiheroes, gritty parodies. So much grit, you'd think you went to the beach and started woodworking using money you made selling kiddie-pyramid-scheme newspapers. (Some later Joker series and mini-series were actually damn good.) Is that Dick Giordano or Neal Adams art? Looks like one of the two.

Vic Sage wrote: just saw it. They could've stopped with 3 and i'd be fine. They really, really, REALLY could have.

So, so good. Without having seen 1917, I'll go ahead and say they made the right choice here. We've seen two of his previous shebangs-- the previously mentioned OKJA and SNOWPIERCER-- on Netflix.

More data points-- by Tweet or by "brutally honest" ballot or by numeracy of award show results-- SHOULD lead to better guesses/fewer real surprises, right?

I'd say it's artistic-cum-commercial protectionism, only the Academy has always been pretty cool with BRITISH (and other English-speaking) foreigners grabbing some of that shine. Xenophobia is closer to the thing, probs, with a healthy dash of favoritism. That may seem unduly harsh, unless you've ever seen some of the Hollywood Reporter's https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/brutally-honest-oscar-ballot-irishman-was-boring-tarantino-amazing-1275576Brutally Honest Oscar ballots: Parasite is beautifully done, but it didn't hold up the second time, and I don't think foreign films should be nominated with the regular films... I liked 1917 and Sam Mendes' direction, but I thought Quentin did a great job, and I want an American director to win. The Oscars is an American thing; English things win BAFTAs and the French vote for the French, and Quentin Tarantino should be honored for a great American movie... I didn't like American Factory — when the Chinese boss says "We're better than them" and they show the American workers as big fat slobs, I thought to myself, "Why is Obama attaching himself to this?" [Higher Ground, the production company run by Barack and Michelle Obama, is behind the film.] The Cave and For Sama were basically the same movie with different characters.

It was. It won there as well. I've never been under the impression that the two categories were mutually exclusive, at least not by letter-of-law. They do seem to have been previously regarded as such by the voting body.

FWIW, I thought that score WAS great. 120 minutes of slow, seeping aural dread.

Just being glib-- more of a "joke"-related way to ask the "what'd you think" question without tipping my hand. For instance, I might have poisoned the well had I asked, "What other movies traversed the same plot beats and/or thematic ground as this stylish but ultimately empty pastiche, but did so first, and far more meaningfully*," or "Was Joaquin Phoenix the best actor in a film this year, or did he just do the MOST acting in a film this year?" *For my money: TAXI DRIVER (of which this is basically the airplane-plastic-cup version of the same basic cocktail recipe), KING OF COMEDY, YOU WERE NEVER REALLY THERE, and BRONSON. Off the top of my head.

Was watching with the kid, so I couldn't shut it off. It was better than the shopworn premise. thanks to the charm of some of the leads. Which isn't saying all that much.

FINALLY caught this movie. Or, rather, I caught the version of this movie with this particular title, since it, well, kinda felt like I'd seen this movie before. What'd you think? Funny ha-ha? Funny observant and resonant? Or funny like week-old-fish smells?

Finally saw JOKER. In terms of carrying the weight, Phoenix was like LeBron on the Cavaliers team that forced him to initially leave the Cavaliers. In terms of everything else... well, the production design was really good, for aping Martin Scorcese slavishly, and... well. It ain't my favorite.

LOVE his other stuff that I've seen (The Host, Snowpiercer). As it's non-stream, still haven't managed to see this one.

CRAZY charming. The meta stuff helped make the movie for me. Gerwig makes really interesting choices, and is getting much stronger as a filmmaker. Ronan is the kind of actress who elevates terrible material to memorably-good, and stuff that's good, she takes to special places. She's great in this. (I liked Chalamet, too, in the oft-thankless role of Laurie.) I was slightly less hot on Watson-- who was amiable enough, but seemed dropped in from a different family-- and Pugh, who had the unenviable task of playing 12 as an adult.

You remember this story from such films as Little Women (1917), Little Women (1918), Little Women (the Katharine Hepburn one), Little Women (the color one with Liz Taylor, Margaret O'Brien, and Janet Leigh, Little Women (the Winona Ryder/Christian Bale one), and more radios, plays, radio plays, and BBC serials than the supermarket has... um... juice brands. Also, I think it was a book. This one's adapted/directed by Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), and stars Saoirse Ronan, Hermione, The Streep, and the girl from Midsommar/the forthcoming Black Widow. Does it make you happy as a cricket? Or would you rather take coffee than compliment this one right now?

Captain America: First Avenger :: The Rocketeer/poor man's Raiders Captain America: Winter Soldier:: Day of the Jackal/The Conversation in tights Captain America:: Civil War:: the stupid version of Civil War from the comics/Face Off? Iron Man-- the first one-- holds up surprisingly well, and goes a long way toward keeping Downey Jr's Stark rootable through the whole series