Amentep

I can't remember which shorts of his I've seen, but they were early ones on that set of early shorts.

Oh wait, my mistake I have seen Lost Highway. I haven't seen Wild at Heart. Awkward. In my defense, I saw Lost Highway once when it first came out, so I probably need to rewatch it (I definitely need to re-watch Blue Velvet as I also saw it once when it came out). And I think I caught the tail end of Wild at Heart once, but my memories of that are vague. So for Lynch... Seen - Elephant Man, Dune, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Twin Peaks (both series), and On The Air Not Seen - Eraserhead, Hotel Room, Inland Empire, Wild at Heart. Would love for On the Air and Hotel Room to get home media releases. And Eraserhead remains a big gap in my watching, both for Lynch and Cult Movies in general.

I disliked Lion King when i saw it. Thankfully my niece didn't make me watch it billions of times. I still haven't seen Lost Highway. My Lynch viewing has some gaps in it that I'll correct eventually (or die trying).

I love the 'haunted house in space' stuff in THE BLACK HOLE and the ship and robot designs are awesome. The Cygnus is, far and away, still my favorite starship design. But I recognize the end is...a mess. I still watch the film every couple of years though. And John Barry's score for the film is really good. And its a solid cast, and...the end is a mess.

Sometimes you just like films regardless. I've liked worse films than Wall-E, to be fair. I love Disney's THE BLACK HOLE but even as a kid I knew the end was stupid (that people couldn't walk in a decompressed section of a spaceship without environment suits nor could you actually survive a trip through the Black Hole). But I can forgive the lack of space suits (they had them, but they weren't properly vented, so the actors vision was obscured and it was ditched for safety reasons, something I only found out about years later) and accept that they wanted a 2001 style metaphysical end even if, really, it doesn't work. I think part of my knee jerk reaction for Wall-E and UP! is they got so much universal praise when they came out, I was mind-boggled that no one seemed to be seeing the major flaws I saw in both.

My problem isn't that it doesn't make sense in the real world, but that it violates the premise of the movie itself (something which even less critical children should be able to pick-up on). Humanity leaves Earth in starships because they've polluted Earth. Wall-E is left behind to take care of the waste, etc. But once we get to the starships, we find that they have the technology to waste resources almost infinitely in an environment many times smaller than that of Earth. Which means they have some form of replication technology (or else it makes even less sense, since these are generational ships). So why did they blast themselves off into space instead of...blasting the trash itself off into space? There's no reason for the piles of trash to exist on Earth if they have replicator technology AND spaceships. Well the reason is that in that case you wouldn't have the environmental themes of the film, but those themes are completely undercut by having humanity never actually learn the lesson of conservation anyhow, since they're still wastrels on the ship - wastrels, in fact, until they crash on earth and then, inexplicably and with no motivation, break free of the shackles of technology and embrace nature (which is, I'm sure, what they want you to take away from the film, but its not an earned takeaway). I have the same basic problem with UP! It also sets up a premise that it violates in the end of the film. UP! establishes in the opening the fragility of humans and the inescapable effects of aging...then spends the rest of the film having Carl bounce around like a Looney Toons character without suffering any real harm. And the thing is, that both films could have used their established concepts and still had their adventure finales had they better crafted the sequences. Wall-E finds the ship, but finds a humanity that, while initially the wastrels that left Earth have learned conservation (and thus earned their regaining the planet) or have Carl still be adventurous but wary of what age has wrought on him and his own frailty. But neither film pays off its set-up, and therefore both violate 'Chekov's gun', IMO. I think instinctively, most people recognize this but then dismiss the problem under "well its just a kid's film", but I think as a kid I would have still been bugged by it (then again, we saw films as the theater as a kid so infrequently, I had a lot of time to think about them, which maybe isn't the case now for kids who saw these films and had tonnes of channels and DVDs to pick from as well as cinema releases)

Yeah, its the blu-ray. I've been watching weekly since I watched the US Cobra pilot, but haven't had much posting time. Next week I'll watch the last of the intro to the Masked Racer / Racer X. There's been some funny faces for sure.

WALL-E bugged me seriously. I think I've mentioned this before...

I think they may already be AT DragonCon...

Watched the first three episodes of the original 67 Speed Racer. I just barely remember the show, so it's been fascinating to see what memories it tickles Very limited animation - almost Hanna-Barbera level, but I can sew why it struck a chords with the viewers.

But...SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is awesome. "...lens cap." I hate that the planned sequel got scrapped.

I still can't believe I got roped into seeing the original. Yeah, it can happen, even if its not often. So I guess I shouldn't have been as dismissive as I was. But I personally didn't like Top Gun, so admit I wasn't likely to find out if Maverick was the exception or not.

The original TOP GUN was mediocre, not sure why the sequel would be any less mediocre.

old thread:

New thread

Bill Pitman of the Wrecking Crew

Slman Rushdie attacked on stage. Its being reported in some places he was stabbed in the neck.

I still haven't managed to catch up with that one.

Gene LeBell, stuntman, wrestler

Herbert Jenkins "The Strange Case of Mr Challoner" from 1921's Malcolm Sage, Detective predated S.S. Van Dine's 20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories essay by 7 years and had the butler as the killer. It is the earliest still known use of the idea; the 1930 book (Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Door) is much better known, so gets erroneously mentioned as this first. The continuing fame of Rinehart, possibly because she was a major seller and continued writing detective fiction into the 1950s is comparatively different from Jenkins, who is probably better known as the guy whose company published the original P. G. Wodehouse books than by his fiction stories (even if three of the Malcolm Sage stories were collected in a 1929 collection of best of detective fiction and Sage was favorably compared at the time to Messrs Holmes and Poirot). EDIT: To be clear, Van Dine's essay basically says using a servant (butler, maid, footman, valet, chauffer) isn't in the spirit of detective fiction (as disgruntled employees killing the person or whatever being too obvious), so doesn't call out Butler's, specifically, either.

It tested poorly from what I've read, which is why they did allegedly around $20 mil in reshoots and were re-editing the film. That said studios have dumped absolutely horrible films to theater, home, cable and streaming. However they've also dropped the SCOOB! sequel, and a lot of the industry reports are indicating the issue is that WBD is looking to release mammoth budgets and prestige to theater and smaller budget to streaming, and these two films at mid-budget wouldn't make their money back (they think) with a traditional theater only or streaming only release (ie they were made for day-and-date delivery, that WBD promised creatives not to do in order to win them back*) and there is a tax incentive that allows them - if they use it - to write off the entire cost of the film (under the condition the film never be released). Some cynics have thought that perhaps WBD is trying to generate their own Snyder-cut press; leak they're taking the tax break, then relent due to public outcry and release it and get more eyes on it than they would have due to controversy. I also admit I'm not surprised they haven't sidelined the Flash film as well. *Not sure how hiring people to create a film and then canning it so no one ever sees it will go over with creatives, so this bit seems to be a bit short-sighted, perhaps.

Looks like WB-DIscovery just scrapped the already filmed, 90 mil BATGIRL film.