Dissolve's Forgotbusters: Movie Hits That Audiences Forgot

Some of the essays are great, particularly the one on the mysterious popularity of Alan Alda in the late seventies/early eighties, how massive The Secret of My Success was, and how batshit in the best way Hannibal was.

We're voting on the best obviously.

"Wild Hogs is as obsessed with the prospect of gay orgies and man-on-man rape as a PG-13 family film released by a subsidiary of Disney can be."

inclined to say Dragnet here tbh

Good essay on Rising Sun too.

10 is a movie for grownups. Mystery solved.

I think The Secret of My Success is the only other I've seen.

I always get 10 mixed up with Blame it on Rio (the latter is unwatchable)

10 is a movie for grownups. Mystery solved.

You're right! Explains the inclusion of Bringing Down the House.

I am kinda amazed Jack did so well, my memory was that that bombed.

Who could forget Tango & Cash?
http://filmsack.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tango-and-cash-header.jpg
And why do I always get it mixed up with Turner & Hooch?

Dragnet, iirc, was the cover story of the first issue of Premiere.

Only ones I saw theatrically at the time were The Secret of My Success and Rising Sun. Saw most of the other 80s/90s ones, or at least bits of them, on cable or home video ('kept Jack, which looked like unwatchable shit to me even when it was new). The Toy and Days of Thunder are the only ones I've watched recent-ishly, and they both suck.

*'cept Jack

and how batshit in the best way Hannibal was.

Want to hear more

What's XXX

voted for disclosure twice

Not since Atlas Shrugged has a novelist strayed so egregiously from plausible human behavior in dogged pursuit of making a muddled ideological point. For example, when Meredith calls Tom to her office on her first day as his new boss, Tom attempts to keep things strictly business while she lasciviously discusses his “nice hard tush.” Now, I could be wrong, but I very much doubt that the phrase “tush” has ever been used by anyone other than heavily bearded blues-rockers from Texas and Eastern European Jewish grandmothers describing their grandson’s posterior. It certainly has no place in foreplay. It would be tempting to say that the unexpected and glaring appearance of “tush” in the novel’s big semi-sex scene took me out of it, but that would imply that I read the novel with anything other than morbid fascination, a grim sense of obligation, and a mounting sense of rage.

Disclosure is so poorly conceived that a prominent plot point involves Tom lurking outside a room in time to overhear a crucial piece of information relating to his future (coincidences are the lazy writer’s best friend/crutch), and the climax involves Tom walking down a virtual corridor in search of important files. That’s right. The man behind Jurassic Park tried to generate suspense from his protagonist strapping on a silly virtual-reality helmet before embarking on a hunt for relevant data. Is it any wonder the novel’s incredibly successful advertising campaign focused on sex?

http://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/

^^ to read the reviews.

He does need an editor though.

Accordingly, the screenplay for The Secret Of My Success repeatedly features characters marveling that someone as smart as Christy could also be so staggeringly gorgeous. But this idealization isn’t just verbal. The film also repeatedly cuts to Fox gazing adoringly at Slater in a state of profound erotic intoxication. The filmmakers labor under the delusion that the image of Slater taking a sip from a water fountain in slow-motion against the heavenly backdrop of “Oh Yeah” is a tableau as irresistibly carnal as Marilyn Monroe on a steam grate in Seven Year Itch.

As written, Slater’s character is a fairly terrible human being. She has sex with her married boss, whose idea of flirtation is to ask his mistress, in a crowded eatery, “Do you think this restaurant has an upstairs with beds in it?” She’s condescending and mean to Fox upon meeting him. When a financial crisis arises, she proposes laying off workers in the Midwest. And when Prescott asks her to, she spies on the hero. So the film needs an actress so charming and utterly irresistible, viewers will still root for her to end up with the hero. In other words, it needs a co-star as appealing as Michael J. Fox, and there aren’t many.

Slater’s performance not only doesn’t solve the fatal problems with Christy’s conception, it actively makes them worse. She has exactly two states: haughty and robotic. It doesn’t help that in her first full scene with Brantley, the screenplay burdens Slater with one-liners like—remarking on a brown suit—“I like your suit. It goes nicely with your nose.” That line is supposed to have the bracing bite of sexy banter, but it instead feels like Fox is being insulted by a mean, creepy lady android. Brantley’s lust for Christy is supposed to be one of the primary engines driving the plot, but there’s a yawning void where Slater’s charisma and romantic chemistry with Fox should be.

I haven't read any essays yet, but top 25 grossers of the year is a pretty low bar, no?

Tango & Cash is credited to Andrei Konchalovsky, a Russian filmmaker who co-scripted Andrei Rublev with Andrei Tarkovsky, filmed an adaptation of Uncle Vanya in his native land, and directed Eric Roberts to the first of no doubt many Academy Award nominations.

what did happen to Helen Slater

Could not vote Wild Hogs fast enough

Dragnet and it's not even close.

Billy Jack is a right-wing trash classic

What Women Want had Judy Greer, Marisa Tomei faking an orgasm and Mel Gibson in stockings - I assume that's why it was in the Top 10.

(and that's in spite of its politics actually being pretty left-wing!)

Looks like Alfred missed Shark Tale, Psycho II, Congo, Space Jam, Godzilla '98, and The Golden Child, all of which are covered on the site. Psycho II has its defenders, but I doubt that anyone was gonna rush to vote for any of the others.

I've never laughed as hard in a theater as I did when Hannibal pops the top on Ray Liotta. Such a terrible movie at the time, I wonder if it would improve with rescreening?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx_hlStCL7g

This fuckin' movie.

Looks like Alfred missed Shark Tale, Psycho II, Congo, Space Jam, Godzilla '98, and The Golden Child, all of which are covered on the site. Psycho II has its defenders, but I doubt that anyone was gonna rush to vote for any of the others.

Nope. Was gonna cover'em next poll.

"10" is a real movie, guys, it doesn't matter that you were three when it came out.

say what you will about that original av club crew but at least they've got ideas for features. beats 'watch this'. anyhow morbs is right, this is "10" pretty easily. four seasons is interesting in a 'wow movies like this were hits once' but you couldn't pay me to watch it. most of these lack any charm, there are lulz to be had w/ hannibal and disclosure i guess, maybe tango & cash. was amused/amazed to find out tango & cash was directed by the coscreenwriter of andrei rublev (or at least he got the credit, he was fired before it wrapped and they brought in the director of purple rain to finish it). the toy is one jaw droppingly toxic movie. will be RUSHING to vote for congo in the next poll.

tango and cash is kind of amazing (not the same as good) as a late '80s action artifact. i saw a double feature of that with 'cobra' a year ago and those two together was something else. nothing in T&C as the killer from 'cobra', who is like the killer from 'cruising' crossed with Scorpio from 'dirty harry'.

I think this is pretty easily 'dragnet' though I haven't seen '10'.

lol tango & cash director also directed homer & eddie. they should've gotten him to do oscar & lucinda.

A retarded man get help from a sociopathic woman when tries to reunite with his dying father, who years earlier disowned him.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTg3MzUzMTgxNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzQwOTgxMQ@@._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg

then of course after jim belushi died whoopi made this sequel

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Eddie_poster.jpg

I am kinda amazed Jack did so well, my memory was that that bombed.

Ditto. I remember it being in theaters for all of 10 days.

"receded culturally" is a moving target, but Eraser seems like the definitive forgotbuster.

So forgettable, in fact, that when it popped up on TV a few months back, I watched a half hour or so of it because I honestly couldn't remember if I'd seen it before or not. Seemed really boring, ugly and humourless; say what you will about the dreckiest 80s action flicks (Cobra, for instance), but they usually had a personality.

A good idea for a feature, but some of these maybe require less "explaining" - Eraser was basically the New Jersey momentum picture off of True Lies, and its mediocre "ordinary 90s blockbuster" look and feel is probably why nobody gave a shit about anything Arnold did after that. Haven't seen most of the flicks here but might vote Tango and Cash as the one that seems the most appealing, mainly for the presence of Russell, who usually cheers me up (though he can't save everything, see Tequila Sunrise).

I think Jingle All the Way and Batman and Robin were the bigger debits in Arnold's Q score, but Eraser as his New Jersey is basically right.

My main memory of Eraser is that I had to take summer school that year, and every morning in assembly I'd see this loser kid reading the novelization of Eraser.

THE NOVELIZATION OF ERASER.

true lies was the new jersey momentum picture off of t2!

It's a little fuzzy because Last Action Hero totally is what first took the bloom off the rose, but after True Lies - noxious, awful super-blockbuster that it is - it maybe seemed like LAH was just going to be the one misstep that you could forget about later. But from Eraser on he just didn't have anything that connected with audiences or became iconic or anything, they were just star vehicles with nothing else going on. Same kinda thing was happening to Harrison Ford post-Fugitive (Air Force One struck a chord but that was way more to do with Gary Oldman IMO), and Bruce Willis too (god that dude has a lot of movies I can't recall at all, for being a huge star whose good shit I love to death). Costner kind of a different deal but definitely it was over around the same time. The late 90s blockbuster landscape is this graveyard of late 80s/early 90s stars, but the real story is everything looking like Congo: post-JP, pre-Phantom Menace, movies still largely made out of stuff and thus relatively limited in locations and scope compared to what would follow, but lacking the obsession or the craft of a Spielburg or a Cameron and just ending up feeling more like people in dress-up in front of the Action Playset from Kenner. Batman and Robin is like this, Sphere is like this, Twister is like this.

xpost i'd accept that, mainly because i think it's a sickening and gross film and would prefer to think america didn't really give a shit about it in the end.

true lies was HUGE with everyone I knew but in retrospect it's just terrible. great action scenes but so stupid and horrible w everything else.

Yeah it's one of those things where the premise sounds like a good idea for an awesome movie at first glance, but then when you start thinking about it, there's almost no way to write it where the protagonist isn't just a horrible asshole. And then the actual film True Lies manages to find all these additional, unnecessary ways to make him an asshole and to just be kind of a horrid thing generally. Honestly I haven't seen it since it was new and I really shudder to think what else there might be there beyond Arnold's long, drawn-out assault on Jamie Lee Curtis, and the Muslim terrorist stuff with Art Malik and Grant Heslov (also of Congo!.. and Dante's Peak). Also apparently Charlton Heston is in it, which I've forgotten completely and doesn't bode well either.

remember thinking it was mean-spirited, misogyinst bullshit at the time. awful fucking movie, amazed it was a hit then, that it still has fans now.

christ the acting in that Hannibal clip! no wonder Foster gave it the swerve.

Ebert raved about The Golden Child iirc.

'don't deny the golden child' - roger ebert, chicago sun times

lil ilm humour for the beanie set. true lies having this rep as some kinda classic is pretty wtf to me as well - some nice set pieces maybe but otherwise it's creepy beyond fucked up misogyny, racism that felt weirdly out of date at the time even, and tom arnold. prime arnold ends w/ t2 at the latest, everything after (and to an extent this includes t2 but the movie overcomes it) is him playing a dull hero or dully playing against that type. before he'd just been a hilarious killing machine.

congo otoh is just such a wonderful little piece of shit. *taps chest* 'amy - good - gorilla'.

what the heck is New Jersey momentum?

true lies so awes fuiud

prime arnold ends w/ t2 at the latest, everything after (and to an extent this includes t2 but the movie overcomes it) is him playing a dull hero or dully playing against that type. before he'd just been a hilarious killing machine.

yeah I think T2 is pretty great but it was filled with warning signs for the rest of arnie's career. for pure undiluted Schwarzenegger you've got to stick to his conan thru total recall era and no further. Even watching something like raw deal or red heat is a nice palette cleanser.

Dragnet and it's not even close.

― Mr. Snrub, Tuesday, July 1, 2014 1:23 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Voted Hannibal - have always liked its baroque black comedy, the only way to treat the source material

Have any of these other than Tango & Cash been lethal brands of heroin?

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/04/nyregion/toxic-heroin-has-killed-12-officials-say.html

Rising Sun is fairly regularly shown on Film4/C4 for some reason.

Sean Connery as cultural liaison officer has a lot of (realised) comedic potential.

true lies was the new jersey momentum picture off of t2!

― balls,

Yeah, that's the way I look at it too. I saw True Lies in college w/my parents and cousins during one of our last hey-it's-summer-let's-all-hang-out things -- one of the most depressing experiences of my life. I was very much alone while the audience yelled and clapped and hooted through every one of Tom Arnold's terrible one-liners (lol remember momentary Supporting Actor buzz??) and the glee with which the movie and Arnold took revenge on Jamie Lee Curtis for the script's risible notion of imagining an affair b/w her and the car salesman (!). The striptease routine is still one of the most embarrassing and grotesque spectacles I've ever seen; it justifies the extinction of the human race.

Let's not even get into the Arab stereotypes either. They're worse than "Carbombia" in the original Transformers cartoons.

It's a little fuzzy because Last Action Hero totally is what first took the bloom off the rose, but after True Lies - noxious, awful super-blockbuster that it is - it maybe seemed like LAH was just going to be the one misstep that you could forget about later.

True Lies was such a monster hit that LAH really felt like the kind of bomb studio execs can forgive because it's humbling and the star learns his limits or something; it's the Days of Thunder Clause (although DOT apparently made a bit of money so forget the theory)

what the heck is New Jersey momentum?

― Nhex,

Every huge artist has their "New Jersey" - a huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

yeah until his fall from grace the only real flop cruise had after becoming tom cruise was legend. dot and far and away may have underperformed but they still did well.

ah, thanks Alfred

tom arnold in 'true lies' was one of the worst roles i've ever seen in an action film, never mind the performance itself. i can't think of anyone who came out of that movie looking good. it was a particularly degrading role for JLC. and i mean iirc arnold's recurring one-liner in the film was him saying 'sorry!' to innocent bystanders during action scenes.

Everything is so misconceived. It should have been somebody you wouldn't expect to be a super-spy as their day job, not this cold-blooded powerhouse. Michael Keaton or somebody. Billy Crystal. You could get some laughs, still do some cool action - I'm thinking, like, a Date Night vibe. His wife should be in on it, because wtf. It's the kid who doesn't know, because they don't think/realize he/she is ready yet. I mean how hard is this shit?

Didn't read the article about that one yet. Wasn't it based on a French movie and if so did the original have the flaws you are pointing out?

I think the film could have gotten away with JLC not knowing if it had been done a lot better. the whole second act where she's fumbling around w paxton and Arnold is stalking her is stupid, creepy, and a total momentum killer. racism and misogyny and bad humor aside (which means 35% of it aside) acts 1 and 2 contain elements of a good action movie. and I like jimmy cams a lot, I think even titanic is really solid and avatar was kinda shockingly great.

And why do I always get it mixed up with Turner & Hooch?

One has a big brown dog. The other has Stallone.

everybody otm abt true lies but i will confess an enduring love for "yes, but they were all bad!"

And why do I always get it mixed up with Turner & Hooch?

One has a big brown dog. The other has Stallone.

One is Kurt Russell. The other is a big brown dog named Stallone.

True Lies is certainly appalling for all of the reasons listed above, but I'm about half in agreement with al on the film. As pure ridiculous action spectacle, it has its moments and, if I were being honest with myself, I'd rather sit through it again than Avatar any day.

As I’ve written before, Disclosure’s possibly my favourite junky ‘90s movie. I’ve seen it four or five times. Michael Douglas is at the apex of his I’ll-screw-around-so-you’ll-feel-sorry-for-me stardom (technically, he’s less guilty than in Fatal Attraction--technically), and Donald Sutherland is still in peak JFK form.

I really like the idea for the piece, but did all of the films listed have cultural impact? (To “recede culturally,” there must have been some to begin with.) I’ve only seen five of them, but some just look like generic concoctions that made a lot of movie. I went through the ‘70s lists (Listal...no idea if they’re accurate: http://www.listal.com/list/top-grossing-films-1970) and found four that would be more my idea of films that a) were argued about/controversial at the time, and b) hardly ever get written about anymore. (Sometimes with good reason--Midnight Express is pretty heavy-handed.)

Joe (1970--#13)
The Hospital (1971--#13)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977--#23)
Midnight Express (1978--#17)

The Michael Crighton-based films were a definitely a big deal culturally around Jurassic Park times, hence Rising Sun and Disclosure doing so well

Looking for Mr. Goodbar doesn't really get shown much anymore but it still comes up often in discussions reflecting the sexism/feminism of the period

Midnight Express gets rerun on TV all the time, foreign prison fear always sells

voted secret of my success because i loved it when i was a kid and i like to wind morbs up.

i really want to see joe

Looking For Mr. Goodbar strikes me as a good choice: cultural phenom based on best-seller, Diane Keaton riding the Annie Hall acclaim.

Are all these essays by Rabin? He's not a very good writer, is he?

I like his asides.

xp he has a schtick which can be effective when skewering the ludicrous but can also get a bit wearing, I think

Also apparently Charlton Heston is in it, which I've forgotten completely and doesn't bode well either.

http://cinemasights.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/truelies-dialogue.png

Goodbar is still cultural shorthand. In my world, anyway.

Goodbear you mean

Last Action Hero had funny/weird stuff in it! I didn't mind it at all, considering the total shit it's been followed by.

Haven't seen True Lies since it was released, didn't really mind that either; racism and misogyny about par, it was Reagantimes.

voted secret of my success because i loved it when i was a kid and i like to wind morbs up.

And for all I know it's the second-best choice. Try harder.

Reagantimes?

agree with morbz here, the racism/misogyny wasn't much different from every non-Terminator Arnie movie. never occurred to me that it was worse than his others, still dumbly enjoyable

http://image.toutlecine.com/photos/r/u/n/running-man-02-g.jpg

i suppose i should applaud your restraint for not going with Sub-Zero

Hannibal is a blast. Makes no attempt to swim the deep waters of SOTL and is all the better for it.

i think the racism and misogyny in a lot of other arnie flicks is more 'received wisdom' type shit that wasn't a major plot element of the story, though, whereas w/true lies the movie stops for entire scenes where arnold and arnold can bitch about women or speculate about the virginity of a 14 yr old girl or w/e.

Reagan...times?

in high school i wrote an op-ed chastising bob dole for praising true lies over true romance

the right ta-ta but the wrong ho-ho

nathan rabin is the king of writing unreadable shit like i'd to read about

on subjects i'd like to read about, i mean

Didn't "True Lies" also cast an Arabic actor (dunno the guy's name) as one of the comedy-relief computer/gadget geeks at the agency? I figured that was Cameron (or the casting department) being self-reflexive about all the negative Arab stereotypes and the anticipated uproar.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

hahaha

Weird.

ilx's male predominance at work?

XXX one vote short of "3" votes (3 Xes in title)

guess I should watch The Secret of My Success for the first time in....28 years?

Those of you who voted for it, come forth! why should I rent it?

Dragnet?? we were voting for best right?

What Women Want is a lot of fun if you like a good trainwreck.

I can believe 5 ilxors have fond memories of seeing Dragnet on TV in elementary school that outrank their feelings about any of the other films.

I didn't vote cuz i've seen less than half of these but of what i have, it would have been Tango & Cash.

Which I enjoyed watching drunk with other nerds in college.

The Toy = easiest the creepiest movie in this list.

kid asks his dad to buy a black man.

what do y'all got against nathan rabin? i think he's great.

I kinda liked the guy until he named something Forgotbusters.

I read the one about tango & cash, which is the film I voted for because it is awesome and crazy, and it read a lot like - what was that shitty website that did "funny" scene-by-scene descriptions of bad movies

Guy has good ideas for features, and 1-3 good observations usually buried in there, but my god, word count, people! Yeah, it's really infected by the 'recap' school - I actually don't need to know all the plot details of Chairman of the Board or the blow-by-blow of the Norm Macdonald clip, but if you do have something unexpected to say about the movie I'd be interested to get to it, quickly. Also, a bunch of them seem to give up quickly on the idea of "explor(ing) what originally attracted audiences" to the movies, and just beats up on them as misguided ideas and so on. Really not what I need a critic for, at that point.

Ultimately we don't know why a film that's not a sequel becomes a hit; to be honest, I never mind reading the plot points of The Toy just to tell myself, "An audience in 1982 paid money to watch this."

he writes too long. he writes as if no one else at the site looks at his work before it goes online. and he writes as if he thinks observations like "Throughout his heyday, Alan Alda reigned as arguably the preeminent Alan Alda type" are Wildean bon mots of unparalleled excellence.

actually I don't think anyone at the site looks at his work

I mean, Forgotbusters? I don't think this is getting the scrutiny it deserves.

He is not even a real forgotBuster.

"Forgotbusters, whaddya want?"

The studios promised Stallone untold wealth (and with it, untold sandwiches) if he would give his script over to them as a star vehicle for someone audiences would actually pay money to see, someone like James Caan or Robert Redford, rather than a relative unknown who talked like he had marbles in his mouth and looked like his head was made of rocks covered in skin. This was a great role for a movie star, and everyone but Sylvester Stallone agreed that Sylvester Stallone was no movie star. He seemed like someone with a one-way ticket straight to Palookaville, population: Sylvester Stallone.

Like, I get what he's going for here, but it's just a waste of my time. First of all, the "population" joke never adds anything to a paragraph, it's just redundant, and in this case nonsensical since it starts from the premise that he was just an ordinary schmoe... meaning that we have to assume Palookaville would have a large population, right? It's also just riding on the hope that if you repeat "Sylvester Stallone" a few times, it'll give this recap of his career a joke's rhythm. Maybe he worked backwards from the "population" joke and realized it would be funnier (?) if he'd said "Sylvester Stallone" a few extra times.

The thing is, all he actually needs here, to make his points about Tango and Cash (Russell vs. Stallone, early Stallone vs. late) is "Stallone's career was originally based on his underdog appeal, which bled over from the plot of Rocky to its production. The no-name actor took on the big studios, went the distance, and audiences loved him for it. But by 1989..." Or something. But the 'joke' part plus a couple more additional sentences, not quoted, pad this little bit of groundwork out to 225.

I'm not trying to beat up on Rabin - it's just that this kind of writing is basically everywhere on the internet at this point, especially in pop culture writing, and especially in Onion-land. He's better at it than most - I think we all know how wince-inducing this stuff is in the hands of nerd amateurs scripting themselves for Youtube reviews of N64 games - but I really think it saps good writers of their powers. It renders essays flabby and without structure, just a string of samey paragraphs. It washes out tone, so that you have to read every sentence as if it might be the setup for a weak-tea joke. And it buries content, so that if he did actually have something unique to say about Tango and Cash (or, per the feature's premise, why it connected with audiences), I totally missed it.

Or, I mean, just...

At this point, I started imagining that Ray Tango had Bruce Vilanch lying in the backseat of his car, feeding him wisecracks and punching up his lines on the fly. It’s established that Ray Tango is independently wealthy, thanks to his wise investments, and is involved in law enforcement solely for the action. That’s communicated when Tango’s superior (played by Geoffrey Lewis, one of a handful of great, eccentric character actors in the cast, in addition to Michael J. Pollard, Michael Jeter, Brion James, and Jack Palance) asks Ray—whom he’s apparently known well for years—“I don’t understand you! You make a shit-ton of money. You dress like a banker. What are you doing this for?”

Making perfectly timed jokes that literally add insult to injury (in the sense that he’s insulting people he’s also physically injuring) seems to be as important to Ray as fighting crime. So why not have his own personal gag-man helping him be the sassiest cop he can possibly be? I like to think of Ray asking Vilanch for some good gags for the arrest he’s about to make, and the tiny jokesmith spitballing, “How about, ‘Metal is in this season!’ No, how about, ‘I ain’t Carmen, but these are your Miranda rights!’ No, how about, ‘Do you like jewelry?’”

Bring on the x-acto knives. If you have to go with this whole conceit at all - and I guess it could convey how Stallone's one-liners feel more bloodless or artificial than the ones in every other movie - how about just

At this point, I started imagining that Ray Tango had Bruce Vilanch lying in the backseat of his car, feeding him wisecracks and punching up his lines on the fly. It’s established that Ray Tango is independently wealthy, thanks to his wise investments, and is involved in law enforcement solely for the action. So why not hire his own personal gag-man?

okay okay i'll stop now

Perret makes an extravagant show of bringing two small rats out of an expensive wooden box, calling them mice for some reason, sniffing them inexplicably but deeply, and placing them back into that box, just so he can climactically place them in a maze to symbolize how lost Tango and Cash (the hero cops, not the rat-mice representing them) will be once they’re safely tucked away in prison.

i'm getting an education reading this, having missed out on 'spoofs' for the last 20 years.

http://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/665-hot-shots-helped-popularize-a-broader-dumber-sort-/

Thanks to the intertwined forces of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer and the Wayans brothers, the standards for parody have fallen so low over the past 15 years that I no longer dare expect to laugh at movies from either camp. After joining forces for the sadly precedent-setting, zeitgeist-capturing abomination that was 2000’s Scary Movie, Friedberg/Seltzer and the Wayans split apart, so as to inflict the maximum amount of harm on our culture. At this point, I’m satisfied if their movies don’t broadcast contempt for their characters, their audience, and humanity as a whole. I no longer expect spoofs to be funny; I just want them to not make the world a coarser, sadder, stupider place.

Scary Movie is great. Leagues better than anything ZAZ mustered after the second Naked Gun movie.

i actually liked zucker's scary movie 3 more than scary movie

I know humor is subjective and all but ... really? Michael Jackson jokes?

ok you can either say "really? michael jackson jokes?" OR "scary movie 1 is better than scary movie 3" you can't do both

like, the idea that 3 is when it starts to wallow in weak culture refs

Simon....Rex

marlon...wayans

(that was an arg for...not against.)

Xpost dammit

For my money they were all equally horrible movies that i loved to watch on basic cable.

yeah i mean i have my preferences based on which had more random bits i recall fondly but jesus if i did have beef with someone liking 4 more than 2 or 1 more than 3 i don't think i'd lead with "but it had a corny pop culutre joke!" or "but it had a wack actor!"

Yea it boils down to "which memetic hodgepodge do you prefer?"

Simon Rex rap battling Fat Joe wins regardless

yeah that scene was great

also totally going to rank sheen and nielsen over the wayans bros when it comes to this kind of movie, c'mon

I just realized that this was an argument I was about to enter and then I re-prioritized.

no no you entered it, now you gonna run away

I just realized that this was an argument I was about to enter and then I re-prioritized.

http://i.imgur.com/vTimL2N.gif

He one of those instigatas

http://www.mouthymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/5EInvGx.gif

most fondly recalled non-zaz zaz movie is loaded weapon 1

though i never saw carl reiner's fatal instinct

F. Murray Abraham in Loaded Weapon showed how easy Hannibal Lecter was to play.

man remember when Samuel L. Jackson played second tier Danny Glover to Emilio Estevez and Nicholas Cage

did jackson get those pre-pulp fiction comedy lead roles off of jungle fever or is there some other breakout moment i'm forgetting?

sea of love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UytZHT1ewnI

i don't know why the opening of this scene kills me but it does

weird now, seeing the picture at the top :/

http://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/237-with-jack-coppola-gave-robin-williams-his-sentimen/

In this moment, the film shamelessly ejaculates thick streams of undiluted sap in a 25-person gang-bang of grotesque melodrama.

Prepare to get plagiarized, Rabin. Hard and often.

Prepare to get slimed, world.

Indecent Proposal:

http://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/708-in-1993-indecent-proposal-made-sleazy-sex-look-bor/

In the 1990s, Demi Moore became highest-paid female movie star

http://www.hotflick.net/flicks/1993_Indecent_Proposal/993IPR_Demi_Moore_116.jpg

"me highest paid female movie star"

Crime is a disease, meet the cure

http://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/749-cobra-gave-the-1980s-the-dirty-harry-knockoff-it-d/

A seemingly ballsy choice, but actually quite OTM. I can't remember the last time I heard anyone mention this film.

http://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/877-avatars-rapid-rise-sudden-downfall-and-endless-bil/

According to Box Office Mojo, it made more than 2.7 billion dollars in theaters worldwide. Audiences loved it so much, media reports claimed, some viewers became deeply depressed or even suicidal because the film’s fantastical alien world of Pandora wasn’t real.

0_o

There has been so many clickbait articles about how forgotten AVATAR is today, they've collectively defeated their own point.

Boomerang:

Murphy entered the guilt-stricken dad/silly fantasy gimmick/fat-suit portion of his career shortly after Boomerang, but in that one film, he plays a character rarely seen in American films of the time: a black man who’s also a proudly sexual, cultivated professional. Murphy’s Marcus has money and class. He’s assured enough in his place in society that when a snooty high-end clothing store clerk treats him, and friends Gerard (David Alan Grier) and Tyler (Martin Lawrence) with racist condescension, Marcus experiences pity for the racist clerk’s ignorance rather than anger at his bigotry. It’s worth noting that the exchange is also the only scene in the film that suggests the existence of racism. Otherwise, Boomerang occupies a post-Cosby Show realm full of rich, upper-middle-class African-Americans who rarely acknowledge race.

Was inspired enough by this to actually give the film a fresh look tonight, and this is OTM. The film's vision of an affluent, professional world populated entirely by African-Americans, and its remarkably sex-positive attitude both remain striking. I still wish the romance was a little less boring, though.

oh fuck Monster in Law:

Monster-In-Law, 2005’s 23rd highest-grossing film, is a particularly egregious case, because it marks the cinematic return of Jane Fonda, one of the preeminent feminist voices of the past century, following a big-screen absence of 15 years. A fierce force like Fonda starring in a movie with gender politics this regressive, particularly after such a long absence, is like Gloria Steinem starting her own Lingerie Football League, in collaboration with Hooters.

http://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/544-the-agonizing-dullness-of-alan-aldas-the-four-seas/

The still at the top could not shout 1981 any louder.

btw that review a classic example of the criticism Rabin deserves. An editor could've mad tightened those two opening grafs.

lol @ at this comment:

There's this peculiar aesthetic blandness to much of the studio filmmaking from the very late 70s and the very early 80s, which in itself is also a difficult period to delineate culturally with any distinction. For the life of me I've never been able to get any real insight into what sort of sensibility would flock to the theater to sit through Oh God!, with George Burns AND John Denver for Christ's sake, or glue themselves to the television set for another installment of Mama's Family. I mean when was that thing ever not a rerun on TBS, where much of the mass cultural detritus from 1981 ended up in the 1990s. Who were these people? What had the 60s taught them, or perhaps what were they reeling from in their insipid pop cultural decisions?

Add Same Time Next Year, Making Love, All Night Long, heaps of other Neil Simon plays, Ambrosia on the radio, and you've got the hangover before the eighties begin in 1983.

Holy shit, Nathan Rabin got axed!! Somebody hire this man immediately!!!

haven't seen Oh God! in 25+ years, but it WAS written by Larry Gelbart and directed by Carl Reiner.

tho likely not their finest hours

I have childhood memories of my mom really liking that movie. I'm afraid to watch it now.

Rabin got axed?

Yeah it was on facebook. i'd post a link but i dont know how.

http://thedissolve.com/news/6187-the-end/

surprised they held on as long as they did. (and that's not a reflection on the work they did)

Pretty disappointing. I've known those guys for a long time, and I think they did a great job with the site.

Been wondering if this book would be interesting or just depressing:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419aRd4GZRL._SX297_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Probably the latter.

Well it uses the phrase "Creative Class" in the title so my money would be on suckitude.

bummer - my gripes with rabin's style upthread aside, this was a generally very readable and enjoyable site.

Rabin (his style as well as his subjects, often) was such an afterthought to this site. He was more of a personality. It's all the other stuff I will really miss. I'm sure they will land on their feet, but I don't know if the already massively constricted writing market can make room for half a dozen more tenured voices. I wonder how long this has been in the pipes? Hopefully long enough to give them time to devise some "what next?" scenarios.

Given the fact that they hadn't even finished this week's feature on Grizzly Man, I'd say they proabably weren't given much time.

so.. where do all the fun loving film fans go now? i miss it!

To the movies, silly!

Perfect candidate: Presumed Innocent, one of 1990 top fifteen grossing movies, starring a serious Harrison Ford.

Good call. Too bad this series isn't still around, because I'd love to read an essay on how the "legal thriller" drama became so passé in the years since PI.

And by "drama," I mean "genre"

it sure took awhile though

and even then it just moved to TV

the Poppy Bush-era musical interzone between 1988-1992 also existed for mainstream movies: floral print ties, baggy suits, overt sexism.

Alan J. Pakula's staid trilogy of mainstream entertainment: PI, Consenting Adults, The Pelican Brief.

i miss the legal thriller genre - nice, cheap adult entertainment. presumed innocent kind of a bridge between aids fear glenn close sex thrillers of the 80s and grisham legal thrillers of the 90s. i think i generally like it better than any of the former or latter though, the political angle is fun, raul julia is awesome, john spencer - "the lady was bad news". interesting structure as these things go iirc. the twist at the end seems a bit corny now but at the time had to be a mindblower, esp considering in combination w/ the initial implication of 'omg indiana jones WAS guilty'. amazing to think what a hubbub was made over harrison ford's caesar at the time as well. not sure why that legal thriller genre went away - too many david kelley lawyer shows on tv? not enough grisham bestsellers to feed the pipeline? the best one i can think of from the past ten years or so is michael clayton, where the legal aspect is ancillary basically, or the social network, where the thriller aspect is questionable. it's funny to compare the relative (relative) legal sophistication of something like presumed innocent to something like the verdict, which probably kicked this whole cycle off about ten years earlier.

god speaking of forgotbusters i caught disclosure on tv a few weeks back, such a strange, awful hackish movie. the misogyny is kind of amazing also, ted bundy or jack the ripper could have written it.

amazing to think what a hubbub was made over harrison ford's caesar at the time as well.

the pressing question upon the movie's release.

I had no idea that Turow's book is considered some kind of touchstone. Anyone read it?

Yes, it's a pretty good legal thriller w/ overreaching literary pretensions (book def better than the film). I guess it's a touchstone because it predates Grisham (Turow again is a better writer than Grisham)

The Raul Julia character appeared as the main character in Turow's next book The Burden of Proof, which was then itself made into a miniseries (on ABC?) with Hector Elizondo starring. No disrespect to Elizondo, but that's a heck of a downgrade.

best legal thriller remains Anatomy of a Murder, although I'd question whether it's a thriller.

The Verdict, which I've seen several times, always seems rather junky.

Aside from Newman's closing speech to the jury, the moment of The Verdict that always sticks with me is Milo O'Shea telling Newman, "You're not going to get a mistrial, boy!"

For whatever reason.

Milo O'Shea's scene with Mason, Newman, and the bowl of clam chowder is my second favorite after Mason's monologue to his junior lawyers.

Presumed Innocent is closer to Witness for the Prosecution than it is to Anatomy of a Murder, imho

yes

I'd assume that the decline of the legal thriller has to do with the eventual phasing out of adult audiences at the movies (no surprise that the genre thrived longer on TV). And yeah, I wasn't taking into account the 90s run of Grisham adaptations in my earlier post; obviously, those were huge. I don't remember much about PI (aside from my easily being able to ID the killer even at 11-years-old), but I'll take its granola pulpiness over the sanctimony (and homophobia) of Grisham any day.

(Though obvs Anatomy of a Murder >>>>>>>>> any of these)

i do miss this series though, i wish he had looked at more older 'wtf was this? how the fuck was it a big hit?' movies vs more recent (ie past thirty or so years) hits that made you go 'o yeah, i remember that, hadn't thought about that movie in forever'. like when you look at top ten grossing films lists for the seventies there's often one or two that you're like 'wtf' and it'll like not even be available on video anymore, like one of the movies from that jack davis poster thread only it was a huge hit.
eg
this was the sixth highest grossing film of 1976
http://cfdb.owmconsulting.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/In-search-of-Noahs-ark-Christian-Movie-Christian-Film-VHS-Video-James-L.-ConwayBrad-Crandall1.jpg

these are two of the ten highest grossing films of 1975

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Film_Poster_for_Aloha%2C_Bobby_and_Rose.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/Film_Poster_for_The_Other_Side_of_the_Mountain.jpg

like summer of '42 and billy jack have been kinda lost to time but anyone who knows '70s pop culture knows of them even if they've never bothered to actually watch them (which yeah, ok, the in search of movies totally qualify here also). the only ppl i know who know anything about aloha, bobby and rose are like ppl who have two lane blacktop memorized.

Rising Sun isn't much different -- both are Crichton by the numbers, but instead of covering up corporate crimes with a sex act, you get weird "japanese culture" orientalism surrounding a sex act that was part of a corporate crime cover-up

Crichton probably deserved a lot of blame (especially for the recurring sexy crime plot device) but I think there were a handful of movies that mined that space, like Ridley Scott's Black Rain (a cop drama involving a liason with Japanese cops)

sorry, that was an xp to a mention of Disclosure

aaron sorkin really missed his calling here, malice so easily the best thing that guy is ever gonna write -

https://youtu.be/8g2dkDh4ov4

- you coulda been a contender you fool!

Presumed Innocent has the (SPOILER) worst character-who-did-the-murder-explains-at-length-how-and-why-they-did-it scene ever! but it's a good movie IMO. especially this bit where Ford as the suspect, gives his own summing up of what the prosecution will say

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XJ1JOwyWbc

also the soundtracks is the bomb.
and yeah to echo balls doesn't it fucking suck that Raul Julia died so young?

yeah crichton and demi moore are such weird 90s phenomena that have aged so poorly in general, kind of a dull humourlessness to both of them as well.

i wish he had looked at more older 'wtf was this? how the fuck was it a big hit?'

this is so otm. I'm fascinated by films that were hugely popular but is now completely unavailable/forgotten/unknown - there are so many of them!

may raul julia's ghost forgive me but madea in gone girl reminded me of him.

yeah i can see that.

forgot how sleazy Harrison was in this actually. and those suits, ecchh.

check out the #1 films of 1975: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1975_box_office_number-one_films_in_the_United_States

We're so blockbuster oriented (thanks, Jaws!) that to look at a year when Dog Day Afternoon, Shampoo, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Let's Do It Again could hit #1, sometimes in the third week of release, is like studying trilobite skeletons.

re 1990: Bonnie Bedelia in her second suffering wife role in a blockbuster.

never heard of Let's Do It Again.
Milkman Clyde Williams (Sidney Poitier) and his best friend, Billy Foster (Bill Cosby), are members of a fraternal lodge, The Brothers and Sisters of Shaka, that needs money for the retirement home they sponsor. Since Clyde has a gift for hypnotism, they decide to fix an upcoming boxing match by hypnotizing the underdog fighter (Jimmie Walker).

0_o

never heard of Let's Do It Again.

!! movie is pretty good, the soundtrack is incredible (Curtis Mayfield + The Staple Singers)

i know weekly movie box office is hard to read into pre-jaws changing everything cuz it was super rare for things to go in wide release everywhere iirc but still, holy cow at that the day of the locust adaptation being #1 for almost a month. like i guess someone could look at se7en being a blockbuster also but that's some cartoonish grimness, it's frank miller dark. day of the locust is ~your dreams will never come true/your life is inconsequential~ grimness, it's fucking iceman cometh dark.

This is boggling my mind:

The Man Who Fell to Earth
Julia
The Front
Coming Home

all #1 for at least three weeks.

As the title hints, Let's Do It Again was a followup to the popular Uptown Saturday Night, with the same stars, so it was able to build on that momentum I think.

in 1980 Coal Miner's Daughter was #1 for nine weeks

yeah i remember that movie being huge

haven't seen it in a very very long time but iirc as oscar bait biopics go it's pretty good

It is.

do we have a thread about movies that seem to exist to be oscar bait?

Cissy Spacek was on a roll

movie is okay

xp

lol @ Reds holding at #1 for two weeks in the fall of '81 during Reagan's first year in office.

I don't think I really noticed it as a thing until The Cider House Rules but I wasn't really up on my film criticism

xp to self, obv

but yeah, I think I said this upthread, but Forgotbusters was a great premise/pitch unfortunately dreamed up by a man driven to write over-long, recap-oriented, and too-clever prose, at the expense of actually addressing the premise.. feel like any given movie, tossed to this thread, would quickly generate much more informative and interesting commentary that really interrogates; to what audience did this appeal? what chords did it strike? what became of those folks? etc. but he would pick super-hyped genre junk. who can possibly explain why this mega-hyped, action-packed blockbuster with big-name stars was popular in 1992?? The Dissolve deserved better imho.

dying laughing - ringo starr's caveman was the #1 movie at the box office for two weeks in 1981. alan alda's four seasons was the big memorial day blockbuster. baby boomers man.

Four Seasons is funny! kinda.

lol I have a distinct memory of a kid on the playground describing Caveman to me and making it sound totally awesome

xp

one of the better Forgotbuster essays, Dr. C, is about The Four Seasons.

nathan rabin isn't a particularly great writer (though he gets too much flack from some ppl here for being a white guy who really shouldn't write about hip-hop, some real mike love 'this guy is eating my lunch' action) but he can come up w/ some great ideas for running features. this applies to alot of that original av club crew tbh.

reading through the entirety of the thread this morning, I was wondering if Mr. Snrub is Rabin

i have very distinct memories of my mom and my first stepfather and their friends watching caveman w/ me on cable and them loving it more than me because they were high af.

were they eating fondue and Sociables?

i wonder - was "in search of noah's ark" basically a passion-of-the-christ kind of movie success? like it taps into this parallel audience of moviegoers who may or may not go to lots of other movies, but are definitely going to go to this one. more religious, more small-town/rural, etc.? thinking of the success of true grit and things like that.

i started watching the CNN "the 70s" series on netflix, which is a real mixed bag of short-attention-span history, but has some nice moments so far. it brought my attention to something probably very familiar to folks iit: the 1971-ish network cancellation of the "hillbilly shows" - petticoat junction, green acres, mayberry rfd, hee-haw, etc. - which were all still popular, but not with the coveted demographics. there are still tons of rural and small-town dwellers in america, and i believe there were way way more back then. entertainment that appealed to them might not sell a lot of advertising air time but it could probably sell a lot of movie tickets. just spitballing here though.

re: rabin, yeah, i just wish that, after coming up with this great idea, he had passed it around the dissolve for other people to pitch specific articles in this series. have to think they would have picked more interesting movies and had fresher takes. i have no real animus to him, just feels like he's turned himself into a certain kind of niche writer whose approach just doesn't work for anything but a certain kind of niche article. longform semi-comic recaps of capitol critters, stuff like that.

nah they were just smoking weed and drinking busch and laughing at ringo starr and listening to juice newton records and i'm in a corner reading encyclopedia brown

in search of noah's ark definitely would have appealed to evangelical crowd but the series in general would've appealed to a wide if somewhat fringe crowd, very post-60s we can't trust the establishment maan phenomenon. the cbs hillbilly shows got canceled cuz babe paley overheard someone make a joke at her expense about it at lunch.

xps I think I mentioned this already itt but ages ago someone recommended this site where they "hilariously" reviewed bad films and it was full of stupidly long articles that literally just described everything that happened in the film, like those Wikipedia contributors who don't know what a synopsis is. That was my introduction to this "recap" thing, which I do not get at all.

I think you're talking about ILE Oscar threads

Oh Christ I've never opened one of those

demographics doesn't really become a major influence on tv programming until the 80s and then as a way for networks to sell shows that got mediocre ratings overall but did ok w/ a segment that advertisers liked. i think nbc kicked it off as a way to save st. elsewhere basically and then abc went all in on the strategy in the late 80s pitching hardcore at the boomer market w/ thirtysomething etc and then when something like the wonder years had broad appeal it was gravy. then nbc just went nuts w/ it in the 90s.

wow presumed innocent. i think it's a really solid movie for reasons that balls articulates pretty well. the cast alone is just so good imo, like almost a dream team of '90s character actors and star power. kinda like something along the lines of 'hunt for red october' in that regard. ford of course, but julia and bedelia and scacchi and dennehy and spencer and whitford and winfield and even a young jeffrey wright.

i didn't see it until a few years later, and previously the ending had been spoiled for me by a Kids in the Hall sketch haha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L8wftRFLX0

a few days ago my friends and were speculating about Matlock and In the Heat of the Night, which hung in there for years getting steady ratings by appealing to the Geritol crowd. I don't include Murder, She Wrote because that thing was its own beast, a ratings juggernaut.

then in the '90s we got Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman on a Saturday night.

god in the heat of the night is still on in reruns an insane amount, it must be a really cheap show to get. i can remember exactly which town it's shot in but if you ever want to know what 70% of georgia looks like watch an episode of in the heat of the night.

balls, that's interesting, and makes sense - both on the noah's ark fringe appeal (is there a chariots of the gods? crossover here?) and the broadcaster/demographics business.

"hilarious" reviews of bad films are such a magnet for recap-heads. there are some podcasts i'll throw on as total background while i'm doing something else, like movie fighters, where if they would just talk about the movie it would be really great because they will make some weird connections between things or have a deep knowledge of certain genres or whatever. but the marching through each scene of the movie with how ridiculous and crazy and whatever it is, it's like, you guys have made something longer than the movie itself, and you are not the plinkett star was prequel reviews.

In the Heat of the Night was pretty decent for awhile there, but it was a lightweight show, went down very easy. and not really in the "comfort food movie" way that I find the original compelling (w/r/t atmosphere and music and casting and a straightforward mystery told cleanly, punctuated by an iconic scene or two...reminds me of Bullitt in that way for some reason.)

yeah totally in that chariots of the gods ballpark

i tell myself it's me dropping any snobbish hangups though i suspect it's just me aging into the demo but i rather enjoy some of the recentish cbs dramas - person of interest, numb3rs, *breathes deep* ncis. have gained a real appreciation for hourlong dramas that don't involve superheros but also don't think or pretend they're prestige tv.

for awhile there i was watching criminal minds like i was a 75 yr old retiree.

i checked out after Paget Brewster left though

idk how many hours of in the heat of the night i've actually inadvertantly watched in laundromats etc but i'm not sure i've ever gotten past 'hey - it's archie bunker! and there's rog's wife from what's happening now! and there's archie bunker again!'

haha my sister watches criminal minds alot, though never first run iirc. was tempted to watch it when i found out paget brewster was on it but i think she had left by then. definitely have a thing for paget.

My wife binge-watches NCIS and just hearing the characters' stupid dialogue from across the room makes me want to poke my eardrums out.

Paget Brewster is my favorite celebrity sighting story, in the middle of my criminal minds obsession i went to the grocery store to buy some baby wipes and she was in line ahead of me with a dozen bottles of red wine. She turned and looked at me and said i should cut in line ahead of her and said the wine wasn't all for herself, haha. so i cut ahead of her, thanked her as i left, and she told me to have a nice night.

there's a season of numb3rs where every episode has a former cast member of either deadwood or the wire pop up until they ran out of ppl i guess and then it was someone who was in clueless popped up in every episode.

my mom had/has a thing for criminal minds, so whenever i'd be home visiting i'd invariably get dragooned into watching some. it's kinda like svu with the brakes off in terms of grossness and the melodrama cranked up to 11. in one episode jason alexander plays a maniac with long white hair who dresses like siegfried and/or roy.

Thomas Gibson on CM is probably the most dour dude on network TV. i also saw HIM at a grocery story, hovering in a produce section, looking at some squash like it was a corpse.

o god yes i've seen that jason alexander criminal minds

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--4dzecnA4--/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_north,h_358,q_80,w_636/18m7v1ffijkgkjpg.jpg

here's yr new col sanders

i'd suggest someone do a poll of jason alexander performances post-seinfeld but we all know the winner

https://youtu.be/-qcZ9M-QoOc

what about before Seinfeld – as Richard Gere's shitback rapist pal in Pretty Woman?

lol all this criminal minds talk reminds that joe walsh will have pics of him hanging out w/ beatles and stones and it's not big whoop here i am on vacation w/ paul again but then he'll run into thomas gibson and joe mantegna somewhere and be all 'OMG I GOT MY PICTURE TAKEN W/ THE GUYS FROM CRIMINAL MINDS' and then when they ask him to do a guest appearance he'll be all 'CAN YOU BELIEVE IT - I'M GONNA BE ON CRIMINAL MINDS! ME, A BOY FROM CLEVELAND. DREAMS DO COME TRUE.'

in 1981 jason alexander was in the original production of merrily we roll along, four years later he was in this -
https://youtu.be/Eh1kmVwS4Hw

Preppy dude in green polo looks like he want to bone him

am I crazy or was "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" in the same block of programming as "Walker, Texas Ranger" for a while?

my family watched the latter because it was so bad and hilarious. pretty sure we knew the words to the theme song, which is really bad, and sung by Chuck Norris. it pleases me that Conan O'Brien had a gag where he had a lever he could pull to play "random" scenes from the show for a while, because it showed that we weren't the only ones watching it for the badness

chuck norris had a good bit of creative input in to that show iirc and it showed. i've only seen one episode, jonathan banks was in it but it was still pretty bad.

trying to tackle serious subjects and crime with chuck norris as the main character and star with creative input

lol i was trying to remember if chuck norris did the theme for walker, texas ranger or if maybe it was don johnson did the theme for nash bridges and now i'm like shit it was probably both wasn't it

anyway i tell myself that the cbs shows i watch are the broad appeal four quadrant hits and that the old ppl cbs shows now are things even ppl who watch ncis are barely aware of like blue bloods which from what i've seen is three generations of cops sitting around a dinner table talking about how firefighters are pussies and sometimes black lives don't matter

I appreciate how this revival has turned into an analysis of the queasy morass that passed for mainstream entertainment as such, TV or movie, in the early 90s. Bad memories, mostly.

Can't get Alfred's trilobite comment out of my head when it comes to studying 70s box office results/returns. Bach's Final Cut really is a key read, because it's not really about Heaven's Gate so much as so many other things, and captured pretty much at the time rather than in mythmaking retrospect.

Final Cut is one of the best, most entertaining Hollywood reads ever.

I watch a lot of Criminal Minds because my digital antenna (I don't have cable) pulls in the Ion network, which runs one cop/procedural show all day long each day of the week; I don't remember the schedule, but there's an all-Criminal Minds day, an all-Law & Order: SVU day, an all-Blue Bloods day, etc. The most disturbing aspect of Criminal Minds, for me, isn't even the torture-porn aspect (which gets way over the top at times) - it's how much Thomas Gibson looks like Lux Interior from the Cramps. Once you see it, you can't un-see it.

the only ppl i know who know anything about aloha, bobby and rose are like ppl who have two lane blacktop memorized.

That's...basically true. I have a bootleg DVD (a direct rip of Anchor Bay's blink and you'll miss it DVD release). It's like somebody made a film of a mid-'70s Springsteen song, with an absolutely insane Classic Rock soundtrack--loads of Elton John, ELP etc., which is probably why it hasn't been more available on disc. apparently that got all those songs for peanuts back in the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKo-gpcxbo4

did I spy Harry Dean Stanton for a second there?

I don't think so...this was like the one deep 70s LA atmosphere movie he wasn't in.

yeah I don't see him in the credits. maybe it was Eddie Olmos as "Chicano #1"

Apparently Paul LaMat makes his living these days by touring car shows with replicas of the Milner Coupe from American Graffiti and AB&R Camaro.

The cruising scenes (excerpted in the trailer) are a wonder--in addition to the Elton, Stones, and Ringo billboards there's a glimpse of one for Time Fades Away!

Apparently it's been reissued by Shout! Factory and you can get it on Amazon for under $10. Might toss it in the cart the next time I'm ordering a bunch of other stuff.

what do y'all got against nathan rabin? i think he's great.

― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, 10 July 2014 03:38 (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought it would never happen but I've finally got into this podcast thing, I listen to them at work when I've burned through my audible credit, and I'm desperately trying to root out the good ones. I actually googled "serious film podcast" in the vain hope of finding something other than the usual honking nerds trying to be funny (the lamentable "recap" thing discussed above especially) and the first link pointed me to the podcast of this website, which I only ever read once. It's really not good but this Rabin character is the fucking worst and his voice is such a bad time, I don't know how they let him go near a microphone

rabin's a bad, disorganized writer

re: non-awful movie podcasts - - - the defunct Bonnie and Maude was good, as is Loose Canon (which I discovered from their links). also in that category, people rave about You Must Remember This, which looks informed and informative, but I've always been too intimidated to listen.

oh - and this is in the "plugging my friends' stuff" category, but the movies-with-animals-themed Pet Cinematary has been a real hoot, recommended.

I am listening to you must remember this and absolutely love it, it's beguiling: easy chatty style but well researched and insightful. Some of the production choices are a bit baffling (corny sound effects and actors) but at least it is produced, as opposed to a couple of jerks in a room squawking about their initial impressions of Jurassic world

I will check out the others, thanks!

rabin's a bad, disorganized writer

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson)

he writes shaggy dog stories. i like shaggy dog stories.

I've heard Script Notes & Filmspotting are good

for art-cinema stuff, i like the film comment podcast, and the cinephiliacs. For the latter, i'd recommend skipping his opening movie review to get right to the interview sections.

I read (poss in the same link that repped the awful dissolve) that the projection booth is good, I listened to some of the wake in fright one and it seemed promising but the other couple I tried I wasn't that into and they are longer than films! They have a batman returns show that is over four hours long

I like the film comment one too

the auteur museum was good too, but it stopped after 3 episodes

another defunct one i've heard good things about but not listened to myself is "they shot pictures"

oh, and one more, the film society of lincoln center one has some good interviews

Listened to casino's mates' podcast during my watering shift today, it's a fine example of the type of show that you can zone out and miss a few minutes of without feeling the need to rewind (I mean that in a good way). My BiL and I listen to how did this get made but I can only take so much of the shouty funny guy. Dr C are they always drunk when they do it? I swear I can hear noticeable slurring at times!

Thanks for the tips, y'all!

Hahah dunno about the drunkenness. Seems plausible. It's definitely in the "old film friends getting together" genre but thankfully not (imho) of the painful-nerds-trying-too-hard genre. The Super Buddies one gave me that vibe a bit, especially how they keep calling it "Space Buddies." I think my favorites so far have been the really weird-sounding movies (Roar, Max Mon Amour, and the Boon the Baboon films).

I've complained about How Did This Get Made on other threads (the MST3k one I think) - the whole thing is people trying to be the biggest shouty funny person! Combine that with my initial sense of betrayal upon realizing that they were not in fact going to reveal how anything got made, and it's a recipe for irritation. As far as that KIND of podcast goes, I can take Read It And Weep in doses while doing the dishes (though it would be better if shorter, with less recap and less shtick).

doc, a couple of my own recommendations if it's not too late

The Flophouse - like HDTGM without the shouting. and it's more, idk, friendly. hosts are elliott kalan, former daily show writer now mst3k reboot head writer & dan mccoy current daily show writer, and their friend stu who runs a bar in brooklyn.
it's very fun & silly & a nice time imo

Secret History Of Hollywood - like You Must Remember this but longer & more detailed. Beautifully produced & really, really great.
Old movies mainly - Hitchock, Universal Horror, Warner Brothers

This is turning into a very useful thread! Thanks VG. Yeah, I've enjoyed some Flophouse episodes. I have to be in the right move to groove along with them but a few bits have stuck with me. Secret History of Hollywood sounds great! Bookmarking.

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the new Hollywood podcast on headgum is more of a straight interview 'cast but usually directly related to movies and he gets good guests somehow

the host does def know his stuff, and in a nicely not authoritative or nerdy kind of way, tho hes a bit too self-deprecating sometimes