Let's all go to the movies~

[KingRoyal]

I'm not sure about the ending but the part where he says that bringing people back to life can only be done by Jesus Christ was definitely put in to appease the censors

[Thad]

Yeah, that reminded me of old Star Trek too. Kirk just occasionally throwing out a reference to God out of nowhere.

[Thad]

Also, "ill" is a pretty unusual way to describe someone who's been shot dead, but "shot" doesn't rhyme with "still".

[Büge]

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a movie about how reckless authority figures with guns (or more advanced weaponry) make terrible decisions in the heat of the moment.

It ends with a monologue about how cops are great and we should trust them.

I...kinda feel like they added that last part to the script to placate the censors so they wouldn't notice all the other stuff in the movie that's, like, the exact opposite of that message. It's kinda like watching an old Star Trek and there's some allegorical conflict and they bothsides the hell out of it but it's pretty obvious which side you're supposed to sympathize with.

Oh, sorta like The Invisible Man (1933), how Griffin (the title character) is constantly ranting about how he'll conquer the world, how the moon is afraid of him, and how easy it is to murder people, and at the end he's like, "oh what a fool I was to tamper in God's domain" and then he dies. Like they had to give him a fourth-quarter deathbed recantation so people wouldn't... ingest dangerous and untested chemicals?

[Niku]

LET'S FUCKIN' GOOOOOO

[Büge]

My only criticism of that trailer is those headlines. "45 years after the collapse" and so on. It feels like something a studio exec made them put in because he didn't think audiences would "get it".

[Niku]

as does the subtitle "a mad max saga" but i'm fine with bullshit marketing as long as the movie itself rips as much as it seems like it will

[KingRoyal]

I was already on board before Chris Hemsworth came out with a car chariot, but that just sealed the deal

[Niku]

my partner's review of Godzilla Minus One:

"i never thought a fucking godzilla movie would make me cry"

absolute goddamn banger of a film. it's like a modern remix of 1954 in a lot of ways while also very much being its own thing.

[Thad]

"i never thought a fucking godzilla movie would make me cry"

I think people tend to forget what an absolute downer the original was.

[Niku]

A lot of people have also just never seen the original; they know Godzilla through cultural osmosis or saw a bunch of the 70s era films on Saturday TV or have only recently gotten exposed to the Legendary movies. I got into the series by collecting/finding what I could throughout the late 90s and early 2000s and it was pretty much exclusively the monster mash stuff that was available and what I was seeking out at the time as well as the very anime Heisei stuff.

I feel semi-lucky that I never saw the original until it had a very short arthouse run in the early 2000s uncut and subtitled so I've never even seen the Raymond Burr cut, but I remember just how surprised I was by just how GOOD that movie is and how much it holds up.

[Thad]

Yeah, I mean, people have certain reasonable expectations for what a Godzilla movie is based on the dozens of sequels that are that thing; it's the original that's the weird outlier.

I think we could probably draw some parallels to western monster movies of the 1930s, your Frankensteins and Wolf-Men and Kings Kong and such, in that in the early going they spoke to fears and anxieties but over time they leaned more into empty spectacle. (Not to say there's anything wrong with empty spectacle. The later Godzilla movies aren't profound or thought-provoking, but they tend to be a lot more fun to watch than the original.)

I don't know which Godzilla movie I saw first, but I definitely saw the original subbed before I saw the Burr version -- which I actually watched for the first time just a few weeks ago on Svengoolie. It's...interesting. The seams are really, really visible (Burr rarely interacts with the main cast and when he does they're clearly body doubles), it cuts out a lot of the important stuff (Japanese nuclear anxiety is barely addressed at all), and while the ending is the same its last lines are more hopeful than in the original. But clearly it was effective at making the movie successful in the States, and there are some good choices in there -- there's actually comparatively little dubbing, a lot of the Japanese dialogue is preserved (and then translated for Burr's character by an interpreter). The original is clearly the version to watch, but the Burr cut remains an interesting historical curiosity. It was well worth half-watching late at night when I was barely lucid but had to stay up and feed the baby.

[Büge]

Shazam finally made it onto Netflix (or maybe it's been there before. I dunno, the search function is ass) so I watched it this morning. I was kind of starstruck to see Billy Batson run into a TTC station when he was being chased by bullies.



Seriously. That's Greenwood Station. I would get off at Greenwood every day to go to work at Face to Face Games.

[Friday]

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a movie about how reckless authority figures with guns (or more advanced weaponry) make terrible decisions in the heat of the moment.

It ends with a monologue about how cops are great and we should trust them.

I...kinda feel like they added that last part to the script to placate the censors so they wouldn't notice all the other stuff in the movie that's, like, the exact opposite of that message. It's kinda like watching an old Star Trek and there's some allegorical conflict and they bothsides the hell out of it but it's pretty obvious which side you're supposed to sympathize with.

I just rewatched Rambo: First Blood a few weeks ago and I want to talk about how special Rambo is because it is one of the very few examples that doesn't do this. Unlike every other piece of media made, the movie does not turn around at the last minute to reassure the viewer that actually cops are super cool dudes. Nope! They just suck fat dick!

I rewatched the movie after watching a clip of it that popped up on youtube. It's the clip where Sheriff Teasle (played to absolute flawless pitch perfection by Brian Dennehy) first picks up and harasses Rambo as he makes his way through town. When all Rambo was doing was just walking through town with long hair. And I read the comments and a lot of them were like, asking why the fuck Teasle was doing what he did. "Why was he even harassing Rambo like that? So unrealistic." and I just kept thinking have you motherfuckers ever MET a cop?

Jesus Christ. I know the answer would be "yes, I got pulled over once/twice and they were super respectful of me because I am a white person. What is the big deal just be respectful to them and you'll never have a problem" and also "I have watched a metric fuckton of copaganda and in every TV show and movie cops are portrayed as heroes and friends"

meanwhile in real life cops are harassing the absolute shit out of every marginalized group nonstop forever (I mean, when they're not actively murdering them) and the marginalized groups have been telling us this, SCREAMING AT US THIS, for forever, and the stats have been telling us how awful the reality is for forever SINCE LITERALLY THE FUCKING LATE 1800s and everyone just ignores it because it's just easier to pretend that cops are our friends, smiley face emoji.

Anyway Rambo First Blood is fucking based

[Mongrel]

Long hair... Y'all making me link Kristofferson again.



The time Rambo came out, a fair number of white folks would still remember when they were just as harassed and attacked. Then the cops (at least in the US - the British police kept on doing it to white folks for a while longer) figured out they'd get a way easier ride of it if they stuck to minorities, and that knowledge and experience passed out of most white families and social groups.

@Buge: Whoa! That's cool as fuck. Neat. I wonder if any other parts of our neighbourhood are in there.

[François]

The biggest movie I know for sure was partly filmed in my town was effing Barney's Great Adventure; they shut a whole street down for some kind of apple-themed parade.

I mean it's not unusual for movies to be shot in Montréal, but it's weird that Saint-Hyacinthe was one anyone's list for this sort of thing.



Man what a weird way to experience a twenty-five year old snapshot of your hometown. This is like a five minute walk from here.

[Thad]

I rewatched the movie after watching a clip of it that popped up on youtube. It's the clip where Sheriff Teasle (played to absolute flawless pitch perfection by Brian Dennehy) first picks up and harasses Rambo as he makes his way through town. When all Rambo was doing was just walking through town with long hair. And I read the comments and a lot of them were like, asking why the fuck Teasle was doing what he did. "Why was he even harassing Rambo like that? So unrealistic." and I just kept thinking have you motherfuckers ever MET a cop?

"All I wanted was something to eat!" Yeah, I'd say it's Stallone's finest performance, and probably Dennehy's too.

I did find that scene jarring, watching it ~15 years ago, and I think that's because one thing that's changed since the post-Vietnam years is that most people have come to believe that abusing veterans is a bad look. Not that cops won't do it, obviously, but I think they're likelier to hold off harassing a guy in a uniform unless they have some other excuse (panhandling, yelling, having an episode, sleeping on a bench, the usual kind of thing cops harass people for). "You know, wearing that flag on that jacket, lookin' the way you do, you're askin' for trouble 'round here, friend" -- I don't know that a conversation with a cop is necessarily going to start that way in the post-"support our troops" era.

I also think that fashion and cultural signifiers have changed enough in the last 40 years that it's not as obvious to a modern audience why Rambo's appearance makes him a target -- I'm not sure most people would even describe that as "long hair" in 2023. I look more unkempt than that on any given day, and I'm one of those white guys who's been pulled over once, had a polite exchange with the cop and gotten sent on my way without a warning.

I think part of it's an aging-Boomer thing. The stuff that's transgressive when you're a kid is normal when you're an adult; long hair and a beard don't set you apart as a rebel anymore, and Rambo's look in 1982 isn't even close to "long hair and a beard".

(Our generation's equivalent would be the 40-something in the next cubicle over who's got pink hair, a nose ring, a sleeve tattoo, and maybe a couple grandkids.)

I also think it ties into that conversation we were having the other day about how country music's turned from an anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian genre into flag-waving servility. My dad's mentioned that at some point cops stopped fucking with him for having long hair, and he suspects it's because guys like Kid Rock have made it a popular look among pro-establishment types.

I dunno, maybe. At any rate I don't think Rambo's look would make him a target today in the same way it would have in 1982. Which isn't to say cops don't fuck with people for looking a certain way, just that the look has changed some in the last 40 years.

[Friday]

yeah that's a good point. Rambo by today's standards looks tame, normal even, or slightly right-wing (the american flag generally has become a marker to me, at least, of conservative politics) and he doesn't have like, pink hair and shit, which you noted is one of today's outward signs that you are probably left wing. Tats are pretty neutral, though perhaps what the tats actually ARE can give people away. You probably won't see a whole lot of lefties with skulls that have burning eyes and you probably won't see a lot of right wingers with like, full flower sleeves or whatever. YMMV, of course, and exceptions always exist, but I bet if you put me in a room with 100 people with tattoos, 50 of them left wing and 50 of them right wing, and asked me to guess each person, my accuracy would be higher than 50%.

Anyway, maybe the comments I was reading about how everyone just cannot believe a cop would harass a guy who looks and dresses and grooms themselves like Rambo are a little understandable and forgivable, but like, still. Cops harass people. For little or often no reason whatsoever. Seeing so many people thinking the very concept of a cop going after someone for basically no reason is unrealistic is like "tell me how much white privilege you got without telling me how much white privilege you got."

[Thad]

I think part of it's an aging-Boomer thing. The stuff that's transgressive when you're a kid is normal when you're an adult

Come to think of it I think this ties back to what I was saying about the chuds insisting Russell T Davies' first run on Doctor who wasn't queer as fuck*, even though I'm sure some of them are the same dipshits who were ranting about how queer it was at the time.

I remember years ago, during some moral panic or other -- Marilyn Manson, GTA, I don't remember exactly -- somebody was talking about the history of moral panics and how at one point it was Elvis. And some southern politician, a Congressman or some damn thing, acted all outraged at the mere suggestion, and insisted Elvis was never scandalous and how dare you compare violent video games (or whatever) to wholesome all-ages entertainment like Elvis.

And more recently, during one of his rants about Disney, DeSantis said something about how when he was a kid, parents didn't worry about what cartoons their kids were watching. Motherfucker is 45; he was 11 years old when The Simpsons premiered.

Now, if I were to guess, I'd say Rando Southern Conservative is just too young to remember a time when Elvis was controversial and too pig-ignorant to accept that such a time ever existed, whereas DeSantis knows what he's saying is bullshit and doesn't care -- but regardless of the motivations, over time things that used to be controversial become uncontroversial, and people behave as if they always were.

* huh, now where have I heard that phrase before?

yeah that's a good point. Rambo by today's standards looks tame, normal even, or slightly right-wing (the american flag generally has become a marker to me, at least, of conservative politics)

And you know, Vietnam vets really did get treated like shit when they came home, by people across the political spectrum, and the result was that the US military realized it had a reputation problem and spent the past two generations on aggressive PR -- TV advertising, pro-military entertainment like Top Gun and GI Joe, recruiters at schools (and malls, back when that was where teenagers hung out), "support our troops" events at sporting events, etc. Every American under 50 grew up being targeted by an incredibly aggressive government campaign to constantly praise the troops -- without thinking too hard about actually helping them in any kind of concrete way, aside from maybe the occasional charitable donation, because of course it was never really about honoring the troops, it was about keeping recruitment numbers up and criticism of foreign policy down.

Frankly, the truth of how people treated Vietnam vets when they came home is legitimately jarring to people who aren't old enough to remember it. It's...well, it's like going back and watching First Blood after watching Rambo 2-6 and the weekday-afternoon cartoon series.

[Mazian]

my partner's review of Godzilla Minus One:

"i never thought a fucking godzilla movie would make me cry"

absolute goddamn banger of a film. it's like a modern remix of 1954 in a lot of ways while also very much being its own thing.

Yeah, that greatly exceeded my expectations. I wasn't expecting a compelling period drama in my monster movie.

I also appreciate how it kept the pace up by assuming some familiarity with the basic Godzilla cultural knowledge – WITHOUT ever doing the wink-wink-nudge-nudge routine of, say, a Marvel movie. It just knew when to cut a scene short. Here's some brief footage of Bikini Atoll, quick shot to establish the radioactivity in the ocean, done. Here's the heat ray, we don't need to technobabble on how it works. Let's get back to elaborating on the hellish aftereffects of war.