The Medusa Fora

On TCM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVsgpTaBhSY

Paul Dano is the best.


James Marsden is great in this and Johnny Knoxville really can’t act for shit.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - Watched it with my 18 year old. Apparently It has held up just fine.

The Velvet Underground (2021) - An artful documentary for an arty band. A good examination of the trajectory of that art, and it's placement in a wider musical continuum - the thesis being that Cage came out of, essentially, the end of minimalism movement and the deconstruction of music, and he & VU & Warhol started there and re-built pop music from the ground up. Also, that Lou Reed is a dick, but that's never been up for debate, i don't think.

Run (2020) - A "psychological thriller" because it's people who are scary, not monsters. This was good.

Frances wrote:
James Marsden is great in this and Johnny Knoxville really can’t act for shit.

It worried me that the first actor listed is Matt Lucas. And then I lost any interest in it that I might have had when the second actor listed (depending on whether you read across or down) was Rebel Wilson. That's like seeing Adam Sandler on the masthead: it guarantees that this is a film that will not get 2 hours of my life.

DzM wrote:

Frances wrote:
James Marsden is great in this and Johnny Knoxville really can’t act for shit.

It worried me that the first actor listed is Matt Lucas. And then I lost any interest in it that I might have had when the second actor listed (depending on whether you read across or down) was Rebel Wilson. That's like seeing Adam Sandler on the masthead: it guarantees that this is a film that will not get 2 hours of my life.

Oh, we fancy like that.



Rebel Wilson is in the film for less than five minutes.

James Marsden is great in it and if you have any interest in ghettos and urban blight the setting is a success.

Billy Crystal ain’t cutting it as a supposedly alcoholic fire detective. They really need to stop using flasks in movies. Cranberry juice, Big Gulp or Pedialyte bottles for the win.

Crystal’s toupee freaks me out as much as Mickey Rourke’s fibrous weaves.

Amanda Plummer freaks me out in every movie she has ever done. Egads.

Frances wrote: They really need to stop using flasks in movies. Cranberry juice, Big Gulp or Pedialyte bottles for the win.

With all due respect to Guy Clark's fabulous song Dublin Blues (I wish I was in Austin, at the Chili Parlour Bar / Drinking Mad Dog Margaritas and not caring where you are), I always thought a "Mad Dog Margarita" was when you bought a $5 colorful bottle of MD 20/20 and mixed it into a $1.00 slushy in the parking lot of the Circle K before heading to the punk gig (something i did exactly once before deciding to stick with the cheap malt liqour when i was in the states) (as a young man... now in my old age obviously i stick with the cheap fancy bourbon when i must drink in Amerika).

Low D wrote:
With all due respect to Guy Clark's fabulous song Dublin Blues (I wish I was in Austin, at the Chili Parlour Bar / Drinking Mad Dog Margaritas and not caring where you are), I always thought a "Mad Dog Margarita" was when you bought a $5 colorful bottle of MD 20/20 and mixed it into a $1.00 slushy in the parking lot of the Circle K before heading to the punk gig (something i did exactly once before deciding to stick with the cheap malt liqour when i was in the states) (as a young man... now in my old age obviously i stick with the cheap fancy bourbon when i must drink in Amerika).

http://www.bumwine.com/


So what is a mad dog margarita? I’ll check.

Slamming Boone’s Farm bottles and spacing out was always a cheap high. I think they were $1.17, LOL. I was always the one who walked right in, underage, and bought an armful (on a good day). They are owned by cheap-ass Gallo now, I think, and it isn’t the same Apple Wine or Country Qwencher. Ah, adolescence.

The one experience I had with Night Train learned me and I can usually drink.

Never had a Brass Monkey as I ha-te beer.
Sounds and looks vile.

Now, neon, fruity, so-called schnapps... Pucker is a whole other catastrophe.
Never knocked me down, though.
Unlike Night Train.

One scene from Me, Myself & Irene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hub_Sbd4kXQ

*Warning Foo Fighters music included.

Frances wrote:
http://www.bumwine.com/

Some test subjects report a slight numbing agent in MD 20/20, similar to the banana paste that the dentist puts in your mouth before injecting it with novocain. Anyone that can afford a dentist should steer clear of this disaster.

Fair.

Dune (2021)

It could be argued that Frank Herbert wrote Dune as as retort to 'Laurence of Arabia" and what we would now call the white savior complex. It could also be argued that with this film, Denis Villeneuve has turned Dune into Laurence of Arabia.

Other than that, it'a a great movie.

Low D wrote:Dune (2021)

It could be argued that Frank Herbert wrote Dune as as retort to 'Laurence of Arabia" and what we would now call the white savior complex. It could also be argued that with this film, Denis Villeneuve has turned Dune into Laurence of Arabia.

Other than that, it'a a great movie.

I thought the slow-moving shield-penetrating bombs hitting the Atreides ships as they tried to launch were really cool.

I thought Jason Mamoa was surprisingly effective at making a character - any character - in Dune not seem like a walking chunk of wood.

Overall the visuals were nice, and eliminating all the Very Important Inner Monologue was a good move.

I'll watch Dune 2: The Reduning when it comes out.

But overall this suffered from the same thing all adaptions of Dune seem to suffer from. They all suffer from the source material and the fact that it's all great weighty portent about the Messiah to come and everyone walks around with a "could HE be the ONE" look on their faces at all times (well - except for the Harkonnens who are too busy wishing they had long thin mustaches they could be twiddling). That just gets damned tedious.

DzM wrote:I thought the slow-moving shield-penetrating bombs hitting the Atreides ships as they tried to launch were really cool.

You didn't miss the old-school minecraft shields from the David Lynch version

DzM wrote:Overall the visuals were nice, and eliminating all the Very Important Inner Monologue was a good move.

The only thing from Lynch's version worse than the shields...

DzM wrote:I'll watch Dune 2: The Reduning when it comes out.

But overall this suffered from the same thing all adaptions of Dune seem to suffer from. They all suffer from the source material and the fact that it's all great weighty portent about the Messiah to come and everyone walks around with a "could HE be the ONE" look on their faces at all times (well - except for the Harkonnens who are too busy wishing they had long thin mustaches they could be twiddling). That just gets damned tedious.

This is true. Which is hard to "fix" as it's, well, baked into the story. The trick I guess is how does it get translated to the screen - a subtler whispering approach might be better, why has nobody tried that?

Like you, I will go see part II...

I really hope the franchise is a success and they get down to the "Chapterhouse DUNE" sequel, and the "God-Emperor Dune" sequels, etc. 'Cause THAT is going to be riveting movie making.

And the spinoffs! "CHOAM: The Untold Story". "Butlerian Jihad: Fuck The Thihnking Machines". "How I Wrote the Orange Catholic Bible". "Bene Gesseret After Dark". These things just write themselves.

Watched a film yesterday...'Shame'...about a guy in New York who is a sex addict. After it had finished, my first comment was 'what the fuck was that supposed to be about?'

The French Dispatch - Wes Anderson's visually beautiful, completely bonkers masterpiece.