Take Sides - Cool Hand Luke v. Shawshank Redemption

Shawshank Redemtion is fine. Cool Hand Luke is incredible.

It was kind of unfair setting up a nice little movie like Shawshank for such an assikicking.

I just don't like prison movies that look like Hallmark cards (even with tasteful long-shot rapes) and end with someone getting rich, kinda like Arthur.

I was freaked out that I knew the Lalo Schifrin chain-gang music as the WABC New York Eyewitness News theme.

http://www.musicstrands.com/coverm/48/221248.jpg

(Stuart) Rosenberg had found the novel, written by Donn Pearce, at Pickwick Bookstore in Hollywood and brought it to Jack Lemmon's production company.

"It was the first time I had come across an existentialist hero — not an antihero — in American literature," he told the New York Times in 1968.

Nominated for the Directors Guild Award but losing to Mike Nichols and "The Graduate," Rosenberg would direct Newman three more times, in "WUSA" (1970), "Pocket Money" (1972) and "The Drowning Pool" (1975).

"He was as good as anybody I ever worked with," Newman, who has been directed by Martin Scorsese, George Roy Hill and Sidney Lumet among others, said in a statement Saturday.

Shawshank Summarized in a minute:

shawshank sure is soppy

like I said upthread, George Kennedy in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear >>>> Cool Hand Luke

Yep.

dopes.

What are some other good prison movies? Seriously, I have no clue!

Besides "Caged Heat" exploitation style, I mean...

Brute Force

The Great Escape is the dopest prison movie imo, if you count a POW camp as a prison

Shawshank Redemption lacks any style whatsoever. I have no idea why it's the most popular movie on imdb for like five years running.

Millennials like pretty, redemptive prison fables

What are some other good prison movies? Seriously, I have no clue!

THE CON FILM FESTIVAL

http://www.filmforum.org/films/con.h(most, but not all, have the big house as primary location)

Tango and Cash

Longest Yard
Papillon
Midnight Express
Brubaker
Kiss of the Spiderwoman
In the Name of the Father
Dead Man Walking

I finally watched Shawshank Redemption all the way through a couple of weeks ago. I can understand The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II being so high on the IMDB list, but I do not get the Shawshank Redemption being number one, other than Pavlovian conditioning from incessant repetition on on cable tv.

not surprised that a revenge fantasy would top the list of best movies ever on a website most frequented by internet nerds

to answer this thread's question: cool hand luke and it's not even fucking close.

as to shawshank: the most aggressively mediocre & mawkish film i've seen yet. i wasn't terribly interested in it when it first came out, but broke down and watched it after enduring 18 years of gushing accolades & i wanted to see if i missed anything. turns out i hadn't ... morbz is absolutely right, this film is just a fairy tale for yuppies. i bet Tim Geithner and countless Goldman Sachs alumni love its message that not only is financial fraud unpunished and "victimless" but hey its perpetrators can console themselves if its collateral consequences are good (the prisoners stopped boning and shanking each other and got themselves an education and books b/c Tim Robbins enabled the warden to launder money so yay!) but i guess it's better than Darabond & King's other stinky turd the green mile b/c at least there's no "Magic Negro" nonsense here.

and also, this thread (and shawshank) are responsible for this post which summed up the very essence of gabbnebbery for one and all to behold:

is there something wrong with a fairytale for yuppies other than the fact that you're not a yuppie (and you don't like fairytales?)?
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, May 8, 2006 8:40 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like alex in nyc said countless times (and i can think of few other instances where repeating his quote is so serving), "raise your standards people!"

Tim Robbins, the Magic Honky.

"Shawshank is just an R rated Disney film"

aggressively mediocre

This phrase (perfect to describe Shawshank AND ESPECIALLY its fan base) got the near-parallel phrase "deliberate mediocrity" from an old AVC column echoing in my head: http://www.avclub.com/article/the-gentlemans-f-and-the-scourge-of-deliberate-med-91737

The disparity between Shawshank's undying popular deification and cinephiles' continued dismissiveness is the perfect cultural stalemate of our era. The abortion debate has more middle ground than this middlebrow avatar.

(Yes, I found myself in a pointless Shawshank argument recently.)

to answer this thread's question: cool hand luke and it's not even fucking close.

^ this