This week’s Show:
We start out talking about the Rutgers student who took his own life because he was being bullied. We play a clip of Dan Savage in a you Tube Video, Here is the whole video:
We talk about the “Tyranny of the Left” and other nonsense and finish the segment with this parody add of Christine O’Donnell
We Rant about the MPAA and Hatchet II , we Rave about The Colony.
Tom and Cecil have fond memories of American History X, but the movie does not hold up. Both give it a low rating. Repo Men does no better, getting a .5 from both.
Next time:
Local Hero, No Escape, Jaws
Vote for 2 of these for flatmates:
1. Odd Couple
2. Withnail and I
3. Did You Hear About the Morgans
4. The Visitor
5. Happy go Lucky
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I think we can thank the T-shirt Timothy McVeigh was wearing when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City for all the “Obama is a tyrant” talk. It bodes ill.
I hereby refuse to vote for any of the flatmates options you’ve listed. I hope others will join me in a write-in campaign for “Shaun of the Dead”. My two votes go for Shaun.
Hey Some other Andy, I’m guessing you’re an ardent Simon Pegg/ Nick Frost fan (?) Have you ever seen “Spaced”?
I’m actually new to the whole thing. Just saw Shaun for the first time a few weeks ago. Haven’t seen any of their other work. I think.
I don’t think I can find “Spaced” in Tokyo. Should I try?
“Spaced” is a comedy show they did for channel four over here in the Uk about ten years ago. Edgar Wright directed it, and it’s a real treat for movie fans/computer gaming fans/music fans.
There’s a wiki page about it where you can read more.
Of course, I’d NEVER suggest that you download a torrent of it….that would be illegal……!
I’d never suggest that anyone else interested in it should download a torrent of it either.
No way!
Woah there…Woah there Big Fellas!
The UK is NOT “America Lite”, it’s “America LIGHT”………… for fuck’s sake.
Anyway, I couldn’t agree with you more about American History X, it’s guilty of all the failings you mentioned plus the fact that it’s just plain dull.
Holy shit, Local Hero AND Jaws in the next episode, two of my favourite ever films. Be nice to them, Local Hero is my “A Christmas Story”, and Jaws holds a special place in my heart ever since my parents took me to see it back in 1975. I was seven. I was terrified. Happy days! Nonetheless, it’s a great movie.
My next two choices are Withnail and I (obviously), and The Odd Couple. You’ll find the words “cult” and “indie” bandied about whenever “Withnail and I” is mentioned, which I know will fill your hearts with unbridled glee, but I’m really interested to hear what you think about it.
Great podcast. Way to touch on the Profoundly Stupid “Obama is a Tyrannt” “Constitutional Purist” bullshit that’s happing in the US of A. As progressive, it’s insulting to watch these wanker hacks try to out “bleeding heart” those with legit right to be pissed about how the American Dream has let them down (aka the poor, minorities and fucking Tom Joad)
Keep up the good work C & T
“Hemp Crunchies! The crunchies that give you the muchies!”
i vote for “Did You Hear About The Morgans?” Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant in a romantic comedy about two city folk who wind up in Wyoming? you had me at hello.
I’d like to submit Brothers Bloom & The Lookout (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) for “The Heist”
Also if you can’t rundown a copy of “No Escape” I’ll gladly send my copy.
Cheers
free ham
I would like to submit both of my votes for “Withnail and I”. It sounds magically delicious.
I cast my two votes for The Visitor. I don’t necessarily know if you’ll like it, but it’s the review I would be most interested in listening to.
Great episode as always, by the way. I’ll be looking forward to hearing your take on Jaws.
I vote for Withnail and I. It’s a fantastic movie and funny as hell. Naturally, I look forward to hearing how much you both hate it.
I also vote for The Visitor.
I’ll vote for Visitor and Whitnail and I, but I’m more interested in what you guys think of the Moving Arts Film Journal’s list of top 100 greatest movies of all time that just came out today:
http://www.themovingarts.com/100-greatest-movies-of-all-time/
“Mulholland Drive” is on this list and “Unforgiven” is not? I would like to respectfully tell the people who came up with this list to go eat a bag of razors. Also, I thought it was blasphemy for a list like this not to have “Casablanca” and “Citizen Kane” occupying the top 2 spots.
MDS: I have to disagree. This is actually one of the better lists I’ve seen. It’s nice to see often overlooked greats like Battleship Potemkin, Ikiru, and Singin’ In The Rain rank so highly–and to see The Dark Knight, Memento and Fight Club omitted.
Also, Citizen Kane and Casablanca are in the top ten. I don’t necessarily see why they absolutely have to occupy the top two spots.
This is a list for film students. If you (not as in you directly, but a general or rhetorical “you”) happen to be a film student–congratulations, you get to cream yourself over the recognition for “Battleship Potemkin” and “Andrei Rublev.” But if you are not a film student, this list reeks of self-importance and is filled with movies that have zero re-watchability (and are probably excruciatingly boring… unless, of course, you’re a film student). This is the kind of list that would satisfy people who think that “Duck Soup” is the greatest comedy of all time.
And I know that “Citizen Kane” and “Casablanca” are in the top ten, but in most lists they are #1 and #2 in some order because the former is widely considered to be the first great movie ever made, and the latter is considered to be one of the greatest screenplays ever written. (Note: I don’t necessarily believe these two sentiments 100% but they seem to be unanimous opinions throughout the many generations of Hollywood actors, producers, writers, directors, and critics.)
Citizen Kane = Snooze-fest. MDS how often do you listen to Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major ? I think those movies are great, but I’d watch the *Usual Suspects* or *Brick* before I’d watch Casablanca.
Unforgiven is an amazing movie. But another movie that you may not have heard of is *The Proposition* with Guy Pierce and Ray Winstone. It’s a great movie and one you’re not likely to see on basic cable.
I listen to the Clarinet Concerto in A Major all the time, except on my playlist it’s titled “Venus In Furs.” And it’s by The Velvet Underground instead of Mozart. But I digress…
Free ham, you can make the argument that every single movie in the top 10 on this list is a snoozefest. “2001″ is probably one of the most boring movies ever made because of its sparse dialog. Is “2001″ important? Yes. Is it technically great? Yes. Is it the greatest movie ever made? Certainly not. Unless you are on four 9′s pure LSD.
W/r/t “Casablanca” and “Citizen Kane,” everyone is entitled to their opinions. My main point in bringing them up is that they are so important in just about every facet of movie-making that any list that doesn’t have them in the top 2 spots (yet claims to be an “all-time greatest movies” list) is an inherently ridiculous list. It’d be like coming out with a “greatest painters of the 20th century” list and having Picasso at #7, regardless of whether or not you actually like Picasso’s paintings. Picasso transcends everything about modern art that he should never be ranked lower than #2. Same goes for the two aforementioned movies.
W/r/t “Unforgiven”… look, I’m not going to sit here and say it’s the best movie ever (though it’s certainly in the top 10 for best westerns) but it is head and shoulders above “Mulholland Drive” and if you believe differently then, well, I can’t help you or your questionable life choices. Maybe if Eastwood had shot a tastefully erotic lesbian love scene, then the folks at TMA would’ve have given it a higher mark.
Well, the TMA have decided this is the definitive list of the top 100 movies of all time…so it must be true. Yet another wholly pointless exercise until it’s time for next years list.
I’ve never quite understood the critical plaudits thrown in the direction of Unforgiven. I always thought it was a pretty average film, and smacked of the Hollywood machine saying “Holy shit, Eastwood’s still around! Let’s give him something a) before he kicks the bucket b) because he’s never won anything in his life”. Perhaps I need to go and take another look at this movie.
“The Proposition”, by the way, is excellent (until someone asks me about it in 365 days time, that is)
MDS one of the problem with a “classic” is that all the risk is taken out of making it ‘You’re Choice’. A classic is a classic because, by definition, it has withstood the test of time. 2001 is great because of the feelings of isolation one gets from Kubrick’s use of wide angle camera shots. I would argue the same technique is used in the Cohen Brothers movie “Miller’s Crossing” but because it’s a more recent movie, it’s yet to be recognized as the stroke of genius that it is, not only because of the amazing camera angles and wide angle shots, but the witty fuckin dialog and smart character development too. I really like Unforgiven *the western to end all westerns* but chances are you, like 90% of all people, have not see Dead Man with Johnny Depp (a Jim Jarmush independent film) featuring Neil Young on a pump organ guitar and the poetry of William Blake. While I maybe the poorer for having excluded Unforgiven, you’re the richer for being exposed to Dead Man, or The Proposition. In the scheme of things I’d argue it balances out…
free ham, i agree that maybe the “timeless” element makes up the largest chunk on the pie graph that is used to make most Greatest lists. but, to me (and i realize that this my own bias and may not translate with anyone else here on this thread), if you want to make a list–a list that purports to be the “all time” greatest–the timeless aspect is built-in by default, unless the contributors provide a deeper context of their list that is more than just “this is what we decided on.” the TMA list is prefaced with a generic “you may not agree with us but that’s what debate is for” notion and nothing much else. there is not a one or two sentence summary of why each picture was chosen and slotted the way that it was. the list was posted by Eric Armstrong but no other mention is made as to whether this list is the brainchild of him alone, or if it was the brainchild of other contributors. and because of all of this, i have to take it all at face value and, to me, this comes across as a list that winks at people who are not rabid (or even semi-rabid movie consumers). you’ve never heard of “Andrei Rublev”? well *that* is tragic–it’s an incredible movie. captures the real essence of life. or whatever.
to put it another way i’ll use a music analogy (i do better job with music anyway and i’ve written a ranked list about it before). there are essentially two camps of people when it comes to Captain Beefheart: the first camp believes that his avant-garde philosophy (its near universal agreed-upon apex being the album “Trout Mask Replica”) is important and they would mostly believe that “Replica” should get some love from all-time greatest albums lists, and then you have the second camp–the people who have a) never heard of him and/or b) think his music is horrifically awful. the middle ground is most likely to put “Replica” at around #200 on a list because in the grand scheme of things the album is important on some level. but to say that “Trout Mask Replica” is greater than “Rubber Soul” or “Highway 61 Revisited” would be patently ridiculous. it would transcend personal bias to make such a claim. and by TMA putting “2001″ at #1 and boxing out “Casablanca” and “Citizen Kane” from the top 2 spots, they are basically saying “we want you to notice how clever we are, how outside the normal box of thinking w/r/t classic movies we are.”
which is fine. but by not writing any kind of useful summary for anything revolving around this list, i find it to be a ridiculous list. again, i know that i am biased towards it but i would respect it a hell of a lot more if they wrote summaries/reasons for why each movie was picked, or if the list was called “TMA’s Favorite Movies of All Time” or something other than what it’s titled. because the way i see it is that they’re basically trying to convince me that Captain Beefheart is more important than The Beatles (i.e.–”2001″ over “Citizen Kane”) in the overall scheme of things. which is a kind of bullshit that’s okay to bring out from time to time in conversation form when you’re high and/or drunk, but it doesn’t deserve to ever be published online. but that’s just my (long-winded) opinion.
MDS,
Your right about the timeless corruption of “Greatest EVER” lists. If your premise is that contributors to these lists need to provide greater transparency, then I would agree too. I’m a believer in creditable critics too. The point I would make would be this. A lot of these list exist to invite discussion. So take that as you will. Growing up, I had a friend that loved artists like Roky Erickson and Hazel Atkins and your beloved Captain Beefheart. Fuckers that were just OUT-there. While I could dig Roky, some of the others were not to the liking of my palette. But having experienced there music, it change my perspective on the albums I liked and listened to in the future. Also, growing up, one thing that really annoyed me about folks were the ones who, maybe liked Metallica’s Black album, but never listen to Metallica’s the Master of Puppets or Ride the Lightning albums or Thin Lizzy or Black Sabbath, nor cared to. It seemed to me hard to appreciate Albums like the Black album without first appreciating the earlier. So in the sense that Citizen and 2001 are earlier movie that have had a great and important impact, is it annoying when they aren’t included? Sure, but are they relevant? I would say no. I don’t have to have an appreciation for “Birth of a Nation” in order to watch and enjoy “Inception”. At it’s core, artistic creation is all about the experience and relevance. Let’s not get so fucking purist that we sacrifice having an emotional response to something for a dogmatic purist focus. Dude, stop singing the praises of the EGG and make me a Cake. That said, any favorite all-time list, worth it’s salt, has to at least give credence to the lineage and influences of film, or music or whatever it is that it’s listing. Otherwise it’s just a bullshit list and we shouldn’t waste our time with it…
who am i to stand in the way of one man’s enjoyment of cake without eggs? it’s why i kept reiterating my bias, and why i framed the context of the last sentence in my first post they way i did.