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DigiGods Episode 254: The Friedkin Connection
52 Plays1 year ago
An ode to William Friedkin, Ferris Bueller and more on 4k and an avalanche of great Asian cinema and Hong Kong classics.
DigiGods Podcast, 08/22/23 (M4a) — 49.5 MB
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In this episode, the Gods discuss:
- After Hours (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Alienoid (Blu-ray)
- Aloners (DVD)
- Angel Face (Blu-ray)
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Blu-ray)
- The Assassination Bureau (Blu-ray)
- Asteroid City (Blu-ray)
- Babylon 5: The Road Home (Blu-ray)
- Battle Kaiju Series 01 – Ultraman vs. Red King Blu-ray (DVD)
- Beau is Afraid (Blu-ray)
- Bo Widerberg's New Swedish Cinema (The Baby Carriage, Elvira Madigan, Raven's End, Adalen 31) (Blu-ray)
- Book Club: The Next Chapter (Blu-ray)
- The Boy With Green Hair (Blu-ray)
- The Brave Archer Collection (The Brave Archer, The Brave Archer II, The Brave Archer III, The Brave Archer and His Mate, Little Dragon Maiden) (Blu-ray)
- Breathless (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Broadway Melody (1929) (Blu-ray)
- Broker (Blu-ray)
- Caged (Blu-ray)
- Cimarron (Blu-ray)
- Code of the Assassins (Blu-ray/DVD)
- The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Blu-ray)
- Cracked (DVD)
- The Damned Don't Cry (Blu-ray)
- Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (Blu-ray)
- DuBarry Was a Lady (Blu-ray)
- East of Eden (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Ender's Game (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Ender’s Game (DVD)
- Enter the Dragon (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Fast X (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Fastest Gun Alive (Blu-ray)
- Fear the Walking Dead” Complete Seasons 1-7 (DVD)
- Ferris Bueller's Day Off (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Fist of the Condor (Blu-ray)
- Fool's Paradise (Blu-ray)
- Game Trilogy (Blu-ray)
- The Grandmaster of Kung Fu (Blu-ray)
- Hand of Death (Blu-ray)
- Heart of Dragon (Blu-ray)
- Helen of Troy (Blu-ray)
- Hey There, it's Yogi Bear (Blu-ray)
- In the Line of Duty I-IV (Blu-ray)
- The Jackie Chan Collection: Volume 1 (1976-1982) [Battle Creek Brawl, Dragon Fist, Snake & Crane Arts of Shaolin, The Killer Meteors, Shaolin Wooden Men, To Kill With Intrigue] (Blu-ray)
- The Jackie Chan Collection: Volume 2 (Winners And Sinners, Wheels On Meals,The Protector, Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars, Armour Of God, Armour Of God II: Operation Condor, Crime Story, and City Hunter) (Blu-ray)
- Justice League: Warworld (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- King Solomon's Mines (Blu-ray)
- The Last of Us: The Complete First Season (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Last Starfighter: Collector's Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Last Time I Saw Paris (Blu-ray)
- The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk / The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk 2 - Jet Li Double Feature (Blu-ray)
- Legend of Gatotakaca (Blu-ray)
- Mallrats [Limited Edition] (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Night of the Assassin (Blu-ray)
- Nightbreed Collector's Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Old Man and the Sea (Blu-ray)
- One False Move (Blu-ray)
- Project Wolf Hunting (Blu-ray)
- Queen Christina (Blu-ray)
- Radiance (DVD)
- The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Bud Boetticher (The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alon
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction
Foundation Season 2: Better than the First?
00:00:26
Speaker
All right. And we're back. We were just having a conversation before the, Tim, foundation. We were talking foundation. Let's just dive right into it and share it with the listeners. Your issues with foundation second season, which I have not started yet. I've been slammed. I was on vacation and, you know, the film week and all this stuff we're talking about today. So I have not had time to delve into foundation second season. Does it improve on the sloggy mess that was the first season?
00:00:54
Speaker
I believe it retracts itself and it reconnects itself to the foundational material, if you will. We're walking through a story that's more familiar, particularly those of us who read those books from way back in the day, that's more familiar. We were just talking about it a lot.
00:01:12
Speaker
The principal problem that I really had in foundation really just had to do with the kind of language that they use in the show, because it's very present, it's very contemporary to the present moment. And we were joking about, look, I want to hear a character say, hey, man, you know, or something. I can't, you know.
00:01:32
Speaker
You can't do that. So I have a problem with that. But now that it's sort of pointing itself back at the story, the building of the foundation, the building of the second foundation is where we are now.
00:01:49
Speaker
of stories that I'm familiar with, so I like it better. But that language thing is just a thing that sort of drives me
Audio Challenges: Subtitles and Automated Voices
00:01:59
Speaker
crazy. The other thing that we started talking about, I was telling you, and you were telling me that you had to turn it off, but I started listening to, while watching shows, that voice for the hearing impaired.
00:02:13
Speaker
And it started with turning on the subtitles or with everything. I just turn on the subtitles with everything now. I just have the subtitles on. I go. I do what I'm doing. I can read it from across the room. This mostly owes to the insane
00:02:29
Speaker
insanely inconsistent mixing of programs, broadcast television, every streaming service, DVDs. The mix of any given thing that you're watching is just outlandish and you just have no idea what the gain will be on any given moment of broadcasting or watching that you do.
00:02:52
Speaker
It's just terrible, to my mind. It's just absolutely awful. Even using some of the technology that we have to sort of level out the audio. I'm sorry, it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. So I took to simply turning the audio down and turning on subtitles. And now I've taken to turning on that automated voice, that voice for the hearing impaired. And you were telling me what you don't like, and I want you to make sure you tell everybody that, but I got to tell you, I enjoy it.
00:03:22
Speaker
I've been doing it not on television, but I've been doing it with articles, right? Like if I'm sitting in the car and there's an article and it's not a podcast or anything. So I want to, I'm like, I got to, I kind of want to hear that sub stack. So, you know, cause I follow a lot of stuff on sub stack. So I'll hit that little button at the top of the sub stack that reads it to you. And it's in this, I feel like it's a cross, like I'm a third person.
00:03:45
Speaker
And Hal 9000 is reading me the news and it's very creepy and I did it for like two days and I said I can't I can't do this anymore. This is just way too like it's way too AI.
00:03:57
Speaker
It is. It's wonky in the reading area. That's kind of strange, too, because, you know, that stuff has been around a while. Now that AI is starting to do it, I think it's going to get better. For listening to it while watching, you know, whatever it is that you're watching, streaming, whatever it is, it's sort of interesting. Yes, you can still sort of hear that synthetic quality to it.
00:04:20
Speaker
It does change from program to program. You know, I'm watching Foundation, that's why we started talking about Foundation. There's this voice, you know, and then I switch over, I'm watching Shrinking, which I think is Apple Plus. And it's this other, it's like this weird little female voice that's doing the, and it's just very strange. I think it's interesting that the voice is always a little bit ahead of the action. As I thought about it,
00:04:48
Speaker
I don't know. It may be it's just a timing thing because I'm thinking of myself. Well, you know, why would the voices this is meant for the Visually impaired obviously, so I'm wondering why the voice would need to be ahead of the action But I don't know this it's an interesting thing but it's something that I've taken to doing for one thing it allows you to just get up and go do whatever the hell you want and And until we own our
Remembering Paul Reubens and His Legacy
00:05:11
Speaker
car chase starts. You don't need to be there. I
00:05:12
Speaker
I really do value that increasingly. A little bit of news. So our guy, Warren Pereira, who made the documentary Tiger 24, which we have covered on this podcast. We interviewed him on this podcast and we covered the movie on on Film Week. We've kind of, you know, really given him the
00:05:29
Speaker
the red carpet treatment target twenty four is now on netflix yeah yeah anybody who hadn't caught up with it before you got your netflix subscription go watch it it's a great doc by a fantastic filmmaker who we really really support and consider a good friend let's talk old bits here a little bit is a whole got a whole bunch of them.
00:05:49
Speaker
I'll just lay them all out in one Paul Rubens Bo Goldman and William Friedkin that's the big gnarly trio that we lost and Robbie Robertson of course you know as well not a young person but you know a great musical talent who's been covered in movies like yeah the last waltz and Indians who rocked yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah man.
00:06:10
Speaker
It was so weird, Paul Rubens. For one thing, Paul Rubens, Pee Wee Herman, Paul Rubens. When that was announced, it caught me by surprise, the cancer. What surprised me most is that Paul was 70, a little past 70. I don't know why, maybe it's because of that Pee Wee persona, but Paul was always in my head in that tiny little suit, somewhere around 38, 39, no matter
00:06:37
Speaker
He is for me, for you, he's in that little suit. For me, he's in that little adult theater in Florida.
00:06:46
Speaker
Get arrested. That whole situation. Ah, well, you know. A moment, a moment. Paul had a moment. Look, one of the things, I was a big fan of Paul Rubens and his work and his development of that character, Peter Herman. I did not know that Paul Reuben had been on The Gong Show, you know, The Gong Show that you and I grew up on. You used to use it in the middle 70s. Plus 60 times, more than 60 times on The Gong.
00:07:15
Speaker
And I watched the Gong show, late 70s, whatever it is. I don't think I ever knew. I didn't know who he was. I just had no idea. Again, it's like going back and revisiting the electric, the electric company and going, oh, that's.
00:07:35
Speaker
And it's like, I mean, this happens to me all the time where I'll, I'll go back and I'll revisit a movie. Like it happened to me after Mad Men had its run, I was watching, you know, as I do every Christmas season, I'll, I'll watch Love Actually. Love, Love Actually. And then it gets to the end and I go, Oh, that's January Jones. Like,
00:07:58
Speaker
She was nobody at the time. It's a thing. It's one of those things. It's Paul. I did see him a couple of times doing Nightmare Before Christmas Live recreating his original character in that. He did wonderful work for Tim Burton. He left a good solid legacy. Pee Wee is a hell of a character.
00:08:24
Speaker
Well, you know, that TV show, I think you and I were chatting, you know, Pee-Pee-Pee's Playhouse. Yeah. And everybody remembers Lawrence Fishburne, Cowboy, whoever he was, Bob, or whatever he was, you know, everybody remembers him. Though I had forgotten that Jimmy Smits came through that show. I had forgotten that S and Path of Murchison, you know, Law and Order and all those, you know, homicides or whatever, these heavy dramas, you know, these came through that show.
00:08:53
Speaker
I had forgotten all of those people came to
Bo Goldman and William Friedkin's Impact on Cinema
00:08:56
Speaker
that show. And Peery reached out and tapped all of those folks personally. Get me some Lawrence Fishburne, get me some Jimmy Smiths. Because he knew that their range was much deeper and wider than what we had suspected because he had seen them do all of these things before.
00:09:16
Speaker
And you know pewis big adventure is is a is a very odd movie that lingers i mean it started timberton's career it took a tv character and gave it a big screen persona a big screen profile in a way that that almost never happens and it's got some really priceless moments i mean the large march ball but is still one of the funniest things i think i've ever seen on screen.
00:09:39
Speaker
No yeah it's all there you know bo goldman for a second one of the great writers of all time no relation to william goldman legendary screenwriter in his own right melvin howard kind of the one that we always point to many other great screenplays as well.
00:09:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I'm like you though, I'm those little quiet. He's one of those working screenwriters from from that early television age who when when drama was the thing, right? Right. Right. Was the thing, right? So he's he wasn't writing car chases. He wasn't writing anything to do with aliens. He wasn't writing
00:10:17
Speaker
this was all these were human stories and drama so you get movies like shoot the moon you know it was just about a marriage falling apart yeah you know which was you know weighty enough to have a you know a full-size film and you get the flamingo kid man movies like that that are just about you know people um in a sense of a woman you know uh so anyway yeah that kind of stuff
00:10:42
Speaker
Well, a great writer, if you're an aspiring writer, get hold of his screenplays and read the screenplays. Don't just watch the movies, read the screenplays, read how he wrote dialogue, how he constructed scenes. Wrap your head around it. It's wonderful to use him as a benchmark.
00:11:01
Speaker
really is. Man Friedkin, what can we say? This guy came on like a firestorm in the 1970s along with all the other 70s filmmakers. We can throw in Coppola and Scorsese and Spielberg and Lucas and De Palma and all of them who kind of came out of maybe the late 60s a little bit, but they really kind of defined the 70s.
00:11:24
Speaker
Freapkin did it in, you know, George Roy Hill, probably another one, but Freapkin of that whole film brat generation is the guy who seems to be associated with the brattiest of it. You know, um, French Connection was just, was not your, your grandparents cop movie. It was not the crime film that people come to expect. It was,
00:11:48
Speaker
In many respects, it kind of has one foot in the blaxploitation genre a little bit. It's sort of there across a hundred and, you know, a little bit. Um, but it, but it's, it's, it's gritty in a different way too. It's, you know, it goes to Europe and it, it's, it's got, you know, something that is kind of hard to put your finger on. And the Exorcist was the same thing. It was not Rosemary's baby. It was not, you know, the previous generation of horror films. It was something new and creepy and really just,
00:12:18
Speaker
You felt Friedkin's personality in these movies. You felt his anxieties. What can we say that defined him for that generation? Well, I'm a film school guy. You're a film school guy. I love film schools. William Friedkin did not go to film school.
00:12:35
Speaker
He was a dude who went to a war, and he had jobs and a life, and he came up through documentary filmmaking. He had to learn all of the stuff. He knew how to string a Nagara. He knew how to threat that.
00:12:52
Speaker
that that 16 millimeter area he knew all of that and all of that you see that style that verite you see in every film that you just mentioned the French connection he didn't know how to make films quote unquote in the way that you know for all these people also didn't go to film school by the way but
00:13:08
Speaker
But all of these folks who were trained in the traditions of the studio system, he didn't know how to do any of that. So he didn't try. He didn't even try. That's a great point. And you know, I think the movie, the most underrated film of his that they have to revisit is To Live and Die in LA.
00:13:25
Speaker
to live and die in LA. Again, you know, you watch that movie, it's like you're watching a documentary. The sorcerer, you know, which is, you know, but you watch it, it's the tension comes from the fact that you feel like you're involved in the thing. Because again, he brings the immediacy of that sense of air to you know, and you and I got to tell
00:13:45
Speaker
He didn't lose it. It's not like he lost it. The film's changed. He never really changed. He was making it through. Killing Joe is a nasty little number. That's only 10 years ago or so. That's a nasty little number that lives in the present day. There you go.
Asian Film Releases: What's New in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese Cinema?
00:14:06
Speaker
Well, let's jump into some movies. I'm going to blow through some, we got a lot of great Asian titles here. Have not done a segment on Asian titles in a while. So I want to blow through some stuff that's really great. Korean film, Project Wolf Hunting. These are all titles I'm going to go through right now from Wellgo.
00:14:21
Speaker
Project wolf hunting is basically a kind of a diehard on a ship, a bunch of prisoners, jailbreak on a ship thing, and they take over the ship. But it does this Korean thing because Koreans love to mix up genres. They love to turn one thing into another thing.
00:14:36
Speaker
And you know with the last voyage of the Demeter tanking right now and mentioning this. That also on this ship is, I had to review this for film week too, is basically a zombie dude experiment like a crazy Frankenstein-y guy down in the hold and once he gets loose it's just right about mayhem. Doesn't really make sense, it's kind of a ridiculous movie on many many levels but
00:15:05
Speaker
it's deeply entertaining you're never bored you roll your eyes a lot but then it'll throw you a curveball and you're never ever bored. The tank, another, these titles. I don't even know how to sum this one up.
00:15:27
Speaker
the this is a you can it's in english first of all if that is anybody it's it's english language. I'm not entirely sure what the the the back story is on this but the this is a about some people oh boy.
00:15:46
Speaker
I'll give the whole thing away if I if I get too far. All right. It's it is it is about a family who inherits a certain property and there are family secrets associated with it and those secrets emerge in deeply troubling and frustrating ways. So.
00:16:14
Speaker
It's a little bit like, oh boy, I don't want to call it a haunted house story. It's because it's a thriller. It's a thriller about mysteries. And it's called The Tank, and the tank is not a military tank. It's like a hidden tank, a water tank, like a water tank.
00:16:31
Speaker
So give it a look. It's in the classic kind of a well-go vein. About 10, 12 years ago, maybe the last Scott Walker film. And Scott made this film with John Kuzak and Nicholas Cage. Nick Cage and John, you do it together. And I think it was called The Frozen or something like that.
00:16:57
Speaker
And it was loosely based on this true story set in Alaska. And it's just interesting the way these folks' careers go. That's about 10 years ago, which might be the last time Scott knocked one of those things out. But he wrote it and adapted it. I got to think Vanessa Huggins was in it. I remember that. She was really young. And that was a really, really good movie, The Frozen. But it was one of those ones that just kind of came and went. It was John Cusack and Nicholas Cage. Funny stuff that sticks in your head. There's just no reason whatsoever. Totally.
00:17:25
Speaker
We got an utterly bizarre Korean film here called Alienoid. Again, Koreans love to mix up genres, so I'm going to do my best to explain what this is. So you got a couple of people from a previous Korean dynasty, like a thousand years ago,
00:17:46
Speaker
Who are there like you know shamanic shamanic mystery man and they magically or maybe not so magically transport themselves to the future where they suddenly run into the problem of a people who are like fighting.
00:18:09
Speaker
a crazy alien that is basically like the alien almost like the robot in the new lost in space. Oh, yeah. So it's it's fighting aliens. It's time travel. It's people from 1000 years ago. It's people in the future. It's all of this stuff wrapped up in a story, which is beautifully, beautifully. Oh, yeah. But do not think about it for a single solitary because the plot will unravel like a like a moth eaten sweater.
00:18:41
Speaker
Good looking movies they make. A lot of good looking people too, I must say. They make these movies for a buck 95, but they look like they spent some bucks on them. Yep, that's for true. They get great production value out of this stuff.
00:18:58
Speaker
Absolutely top-notch production value and then we have another Korean film called night of the assassin which is just a straight-up kind of it's you know the it's a facsimile of a like a feudal Japanese samurai film like a Ronin film lone samurai kind of thing accepted set in the same.
00:19:16
Speaker
facsimile of Korean history.
Martial Arts and Classic Hong Kong Films
00:19:18
Speaker
So it's a period Korean feudal action thriller. You know, you get swordsman and you get oppressed villagers and all the usual stuff. It's and it's basically a Ronin movie. It is it is either Kurosawa film, but it's but it's a lot of fun. It's really well done. Knight of the Assassin, a final mission.
00:19:41
Speaker
And then a bunch of these on a new series of them, they're all Haya Originals. These are all movies that you can see on Haya, which is the streaming platform for Asian and martial arts and action films. And these are all from that deal. So these are all Haya Originals. Starts with Fist of the Condor, which is pretty great. I thoroughly enjoy this. This is, you know,
00:20:06
Speaker
It's all martial arts, it all takes place in the wake of the fall of the Inca Empire 16th century and they just use that as a backdrop to invent a new martial art and have a whole lot of fighting scenes.
00:20:25
Speaker
But it's pretty great. You know, the guy who stars in it, Marco Zoror, whom you've seen in the last John Wick film and a few others. Great fighter. So it's super cool that he gets his own thing. I think he's Hungarian or something like that. Yeah, big guy. Yeah, big strong.
00:20:41
Speaker
Got one of those chins. Got a young Ip Man movie here as if we haven't had enough Ip Man movies. This has absolutely nothing to do with Ip Man's actual life story. This is just another one. This is trading on the title Ip Man. Throw it in, you know, throw that in some Wing Chun in there and you're good to go. Probably one of the weaker Ip Man movies, but it's still got some decent fight stuff in it. You know, again, they, you know, they get, it has a number of scenes that justify it.
00:21:09
Speaker
The Grand Master of Kung Fu is a whole lot of fun. This is a mainland Chinese film, but it has that Hong Kong style before it. And of course, they have to tie it in with Ip Man here. The tagline on the back is before Ip Man. Before Ip Man. Now we're before, we've exhausted Ip Man's life, right? Now we're going before Ip Man, there was Master Huo.
00:21:34
Speaker
Alright, those are quite the same ring to it. But yeah, you know, there's a lot of, as with a lot of Chinese films, a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment. Yeah. And, you know, the Japanese are the bad people here. It's gonna be that way for a while. The non-King thing, man. Yeah, it's what it is. Anyway, so yeah, you know, it's Qing Dynasty fighting the Japanese and lots of great martial arts stuff.
00:22:02
Speaker
We also have the legend of Ghatotkaka, and I don't want to emphasize the kaka. I'm sorry, but that's what this is called. The legend of Ghatotkaka. G-A-T-O-T-K-A-C-A. A hero awakens.
00:22:20
Speaker
You know, it's a martial arts thing, it's a superhero thing, it's a little bit of Doctor Strange. It's a lot of the mystical martial arts stuff that we've seen before. There's an English language track in here which you might want to take advantage of because otherwise none of this stuff will make sense.
00:22:39
Speaker
But yeah, it's got its moments. They're doing superhero stuff a little bit differently elsewhere in the world. And then the last one here from the Well Go Well is Code of the Assassins. So this is another medieval swordplay thing, but it's more of the epic war. It's not in the samurai vein. It's in the vein of those period Chinese films, which are all about battling warlords and armies.
00:23:06
Speaker
They're often times Mongols and this one, it's about a young assassin who is caught in the middle of all of this intrigue and these palatial plots.
00:23:21
Speaker
And again, you know, it gets a little convoluted, all of the various interlocking, interacting parties and their cross purposes, but it's very well done. Production value is through the roof and you wonder why can't all Hollywood films have that kind of consistent production value.
00:23:43
Speaker
Also, I got some DVDs here from Film Movement, two of them also from Korea. One is a horror film called Sire, S-E-I-R-E, from Park Kang. This played at the Fantasia Film Festival. It is like all Korean horror
00:24:08
Speaker
really, really chilling. It's a ghost story. And it gave me absolutely the Willys very, very effective mood, not on Blu-ray only on DVD. And then another lovely film called Aloners.
00:24:23
Speaker
This is a drama and it's a really, really lovely Korean film. It comes with a great short film on it too called The Moths Will Eat Them Up.
00:24:41
Speaker
It's a workplace movie, which is usually a French thing. And we've got another one of those that we're going to talk about a little bit later. Movies about jobs and the workplace, the stresses of employment. That's not really a Hollywood thing. We don't make those kinds of movies. Not anymore. You got to go back to, oh, I guess a blue collar, maybe sadly filled with Martin Ritt. Martin Ritt and I was in Stanley and Iris, something like that. But yeah, not for 50 years. 30, 40 years, yeah.
00:25:11
Speaker
So that's partly what this is. This woman, she works at a call center. She just lives on the phone all day long. And she now has to train a new employee. And it's about friendship. It's about work. It's about all of these things that are kind of a microcosm of issues in Korean society. It's really, really how people do feel alone and they feel isolated because of the modern world. So Aloneers. It's a nice little film.
00:25:38
Speaker
And and then we've got a Thai movie called Cracked, which is Thai horror. It's a ghost story. Thai movies freak me out a little bit too. They do because they always go to some like some weird village witchcraft thing. You know, there's always something about somebody who lives in a little a little hut somewhere in the mountains in the rain and they've got a pot and they put weird
00:26:05
Speaker
put bats in the pot and then ghosts come alive and start eating people. There's all kinds of weird stuff going on with ancient stuff. Anyway, this has some this has some shots and I'm gonna say some scenes. This has some shots that will just make you scream. Absolutely scream. Very, very effective. So anyway, the it's called cracked. And don't watch it with your family. Just telling you that. Getting down here. Oh, let me let me I'm gonna
00:26:31
Speaker
put a couple of the rest of the Japanese stuff on hold. Let me just go through the Hong Kong stuff real fast. It's really great. So from Arrow, got a couple of great, a lot of great stuff from Arrow, but first a couple of stand-alones. Hand of Death is an all-time classic. It comes with Mandarin and English lossless on it, plus Cantonese stereo. This is a 1976 Golden Harvest release.
00:26:54
Speaker
And it was not like a huge success at the time. It's a kind of a Shaolin temple story, but man, it does have some great fighting in it, really great stuff. Same thing for Warriors 2, which features Han Solo Wong and Sammo Hung. Anything with Sammo is worth watching. This is also a... And this was Sammo Hung's directing debut, by the way. So you see...
00:27:19
Speaker
He's a great director in his own right, better than Jackie Chan in many respects, I think. And then some great box sets, The Brave Archer Collection. These are wonderful, wonderful movies. There are five of them on here, The Brave Archer, The Brave Archer 2, Brave Archer 3, The Brave Archer and His Mate, and Little Dragon Maiden. These are absolutely terrific wu-sha stories. It's a wonderful saga. All the stories are great. All five films are top notch.
00:27:45
Speaker
I got a feature-length documentary on here as well and audio commentaries and it's all great stuff it's a wonderful education in this film series but in the genre in particular box covers for every single one of those beautiful graphic designs energy and actions.
00:28:02
Speaker
And Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh anchors the In the Line of Duty films, all four of them. Comes with a booklet as well. This is from the Fortune Star collection. And this is just an absolutely wonderful collection of films. You got to check these out if you can find them. I think this is increasing. This is from the 88 Films Library.
00:28:31
Speaker
by a Fortune star. Anyway, the In the Line of Duty films are terrific. Cynthia Rothrock's in here as well. Anything with Cynthia and Michelle is absolutely to die for. It's fantastic.
00:28:42
Speaker
One of my all-time favorites, Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain. This was directed by Choi Haak. There's been another Zoo Warriors since, which he was also involved in. The original, there's nothing like it. Absolutely fantastic. This is from Shout Factory, and it's one of the all-time great Hong Kong New Wave era Wuxia films. Yun Bu, one of the three brothers with Jackie Chan and Sam O'Hong is the star. He's a deserter, and there's
00:29:10
Speaker
you know ancient vampires in the mountains and it's it's just it's it's a riot it's absolutely a lot of fun the fighting the comedy the whole thing is fantastic.
00:29:19
Speaker
Donnie Yen, a very young Donnie Yen. These people are in hot movies now. Donnie Yen, of course, the blind guy in the list, John Wick. One of his earlier films is Tiger Cage, which has been bootlegged forever because nobody would put it out on Blu-ray. Shop Factory finally did. They include the sequels as well, Tiger Cage 2 and 3, which are not as good, but it doesn't matter. There are bonuses on here. This is directed by Yun Wu Ping, of course, legendary of early Jackie Chan, all the way to The Matrix.
00:29:49
Speaker
Tiger Cage is great, great action stuff, and it's kind of the movie that made Donnie Yen a superstar. Donnie Yen also made Iron Monkey along with Yurong Guang, which is the story of a kind of a lone ranger-y, Zoro-y type hero played by Yurong Guang, who wears a mask and Donnie Yen is this dad who winds up allying himself with him. Tiger Cage had a good run here in a hacked up version from Miramax and Harvey Weinstein.
00:30:19
Speaker
I actually interviewed Donnie for the first time at my house for that and got a piece in the LA Times. So I was the first person to interview Donnie Yen from Major American Newspaper. Thank you for this experience. But it's a great movie. It is a great movie. Iron Monkey, awful lot of fun. Donnie Yen is terrific.
00:30:34
Speaker
Just the one, not the set. Iron Monkey 2. No, no, no. Just Iron Monkey 1. That's it. No other Iron Monkeys. And it's really the only one you need to see. Dunnean also stars in Sakura, which is a little bit of an offbeat thing for him, but it's also, you know, Wushaw, it's based on a novel that I'm not familiar with.
00:30:56
Speaker
it was never released here in English. He's like a gritty martial arts master and he's been accused of murder and he's got a
00:31:10
Speaker
He has to come out of exile and clear his name. It's kind of a familiar trope, but it's still great. Jet Li, The Legend of Fang Sayok 1 and 2, a double feature that is absolutely to die for. This is wonderful.
00:31:28
Speaker
These movies have not been properly released until now on Blu-ray and get them both. They're absolutely a joy. I remember seeing these at the Hong Kong Film Festival right when they were initially released in the early 90s. They defined Jet Li. He had only done the Shaolin Temple movies of significance before this and these just put him over the top. These movies are hilarious, brilliant, funny, eccentric, beautifully shot. You just can't do better.
00:31:56
Speaker
Heart of Dragon, Jackie Chan and Sammo hung together. This is like if you had done Rain Man as a martial arts film. That's what this is. Sammo plays a mentally handicapped guy. Jackie is his brother and they have an awful lot of fun over the course of this movie. Don't think too much about the plot. It's really, really fun.
00:32:18
Speaker
And then more Jackie Chan's in two volumes, the Jackie Chan collection, both of these from Shout Select. This is essential for anybody who wants to be a Jackie Chan completist. There's just an unbelievable amount of good stuff on here.
00:32:34
Speaker
But you gotta kind of know the films a little bit. I mean, there's audio commentaries galore, backdrops on Jackie's career, and a lot of great stuff. Armor of God and Armor of God 2, Operation Condor, are both here. Absolutely essential.
00:32:52
Speaker
Crime Story and City Hunter, super fun. Crime Story is very serious. City Hunter is based on the video game. It's a little bit wacky. I'm always amused at this, by the way, City Hunter. Here's a little detour on City Hunter.
00:33:07
Speaker
What's his face? Norton. I forget his first name. Richard Norton. Richard Norton, thank you. Richard Norton plays the bad guy here. And city hunters basically die hard on a cruise ship. And you get some things that are not PC, like Jackie looks at a woman's chest and there's like this little.
00:33:25
Speaker
These hamburgers like these hamburgers appear where her breasts are and he reaches out because he's hungry Dumb wacky campy humor like that will never fly today There's a musical interlude like a you know, like a teen boy band performs. It's all very very odd movie For reasons that you would understand if you're a Hong Kong fan the Director of City Hunter is a bit of a legendary figure. Anyway, um, but here's the thing Richard Norton
00:33:55
Speaker
This is a white guy in Hong Kong who clearly understands his job is to play the bad guy in every single movie. There are no legit acting opportunities for him. And you know, he's good with that. Yeah. Yeah. He just plays out gay. He kept going through a whole bunch of movies. That's it.
00:34:13
Speaker
So, the Killer Meteors is on one of these volumes as well. Shaolin Wooden Men. There's just a lot of stuff here. Dragon Fist. So, you know, Winners and Sinners is an awful lot of fun. The Protector in its original cut, not the American cut, the original Hong Kong cut. So, I mean, this is, you know, Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars.
00:34:38
Speaker
These are great sets. You gotta get these. These films are great transfers. Many of them have never been transferred here, have been shown here in proper form, so it's essential. And then lastly, a ton of Shaw Brothers stuff.
00:34:51
Speaker
This is courtesy, Shaw Brothers will not keep their library together. So you got to piecemeal this stuff together a little bit. So we have Shaw Brothers classics, volume one and two from Shout. And there's a ton of amazing stuff here. The Assassin is top notch. Brothers Five is legendary. There's like 11 or 12 movies on each of these things.
00:35:19
Speaker
The flying guillotine is here which i absolutely adore the master the flying guillotine not here and i've done two audio commentaries yeah so but the flying guillotine is the sequel and it's fine not as good as the original but it's fine that's here and that's nice. Man of iron the bells of death the flying dagger which wants to be a flying guillotine all this all this stuff is really really great that's on the shop factory sets.
00:35:48
Speaker
And then we have volume two of the Shaw Scope series from Arrow, which is, that's the top tier stuff. That's the really, really hot stuff. This thing is amazing. This is a big, beautiful box set like the previous volume is.
00:36:04
Speaker
And this includes double features on every single one of these discs. There are eight discs and the movies are My Young Auntie, Magnificent Ruffians, Ten Tigers of Kwantung, 36 Chamber of Shaolin, Legendary Disciples of the 36 Chamber, Return to the 36 Chamber, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, The Kid with the Golden Arm. All these things are legendary films. You can't go wrong with any of this stuff. So if you're a Shaw Brothers fan, you will love all of it.
00:36:34
Speaker
Yes. All right. And let me just pull out a couple of... Hold on here. Couple of Japanese titles here. Hideo Gosia made a lot of great samurai movies and gangster movies. We've got Samurai Wolf 1 and 2. If you're a Gosia fan, those are really, really good. Also great from the gangster end of things is Violent Streets. So these are all from film movement.
00:37:05
Speaker
And then we've got Ultraman versus Red King and Ultraman. This is like a.
00:37:12
Speaker
This is from Mill Creek. This is a part of their Ultraman Battle Kaiju series, and this is the first volume, so there's gonna be a lot of these. Ultraman versus Red King is basically Ultraman versus a really, really bad Godzilla suit. That's all I can, that's what it appears to be to me. I'm not a big fan of the Ultraman movies from that period, so I couldn't tell you. A more serious recent movie is Ultraman Shin, or Shin Ultraman.
00:37:42
Speaker
Excuse me. And the visual effects are basically still just as cheesy, but it's got a little bit more of a modern sheen on it. And it's, you know, you'll recognize some of the actors in here, like, for example, Kimio Tamora, who was in Drive My Car.
00:38:04
Speaker
Well, that's the character. The actress is Hidihoshi Nishimura, I guess. So anyway, it's the actress from Drive My Car, who stars in it. So you'll recognize her. And Warm Water Under a Red Bridge. Tim, did you ever see this? I don't think I did. Okay. So Shohei Yamamura, who has won two palm doors at the Cannes Film Festival,
00:38:30
Speaker
made this. What year was this? I can't remember what year it was. This is like 20 years ago. Yes, 2001. So he I saw this and I reviewed this for box office at the time. This is
00:38:43
Speaker
a weird, surreal, wonderful fable. It's magical, but it's a totally, totally creepy movie. It's mystical. It is clearly symbolic. I don't know that it's based on anything ancient, but it all takes place in a small village
00:39:03
Speaker
And without giving anything away, there's a woman who her reproductive system is connected in some respects to the stream in the village. I can't tell you how or why. It still doesn't make sense to me. But when it is poetic, the way that it is all executed in a very creepy and weird way.
00:39:30
Speaker
It is a very unique film. And then Japanese filmmaker, Naomi Kawase, a couple of films from her, Still the Water and Radiance, both of which are very, very beautiful and poignant and poetic. Wonderful filmmaker. Those are, if you're a fan of Kawase, these are worth checking out. Again, the films are Radiance and Still the Water from Film Movement.
00:39:52
Speaker
An anime film turned live action called Whisper of the Heart, totally bizarre. I don't get it at all. It's got some sweet acting and a cat and otherwise I've never seen the anime. I don't think I want to after seeing that. Cora Aida, beautiful, wonderful filmmaker of Shoplifters, which was Oscar nominated.
00:40:15
Speaker
Me and Zaggy is one of the writers of that. I was just don't think the whispers of the heart movie. He's not a director, but he's one of the writers. No, he was one of the writers of the original anime. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know it either, but yeah, it's a little bit, a little bit odd, but it is what it is. And then Cora ate a film broker, which is lovely. Absolutely lovely.
00:40:36
Speaker
continues some of the themes that he started in shoplifters and Song Kang Ho, the great Korean actor, is the star and it's really beautiful.
Criterion's 4K Releases: Must-Have Classics?
00:40:46
Speaker
This never got a great release because of the pandemic, but it's worth rediscovering right now. Broker. It's beautiful. One of the ones I talked about on film week very good.
00:40:54
Speaker
It's good, right? It's really good. And then the last two are basically Japanese gangster movies. Yakuza Graveyard finally gets its Blu-ray premiere. Hasn't been out before. Kinji Fukusaku, the great gangster film director from Japan. This is an epic film. Yakuza Graveyard, just trust me, it's amazing.
00:41:19
Speaker
And then the game trilogy which is includes movies the most dangerous game the killing game the execution game all starring you soccer matsuda and just good solid nineteen seventies late nineteen seventies era you know gangster crime stuff.
00:41:36
Speaker
great era for Japanese cinema. Movies are tough not to not overly graphic and you'll have a lot of fun really really well written but they're straight up kind of noir genre films and beautifully beautifully shot. And that's it for the the great Asian titles.
00:41:53
Speaker
So let's talk about new stuff, television, 4k. You tell me. You know, just real quick, if you don't mind popping over to the arrow, just because there are a couple of movies and they last start fighting all the rest of the world, you know, from the 80s and 90s to early days, so I really, really dig, particularly.
00:42:11
Speaker
Last Starfighter, Nick Castle's film, which I happened to, there was this wonderful documentary series called Search for Tomorrow and Search for Tomorrow. And you remember that thing I did with all those sci-fi movies from the 80s and Last Starfighter was one of them and Lance Guest was one of the folks on the panel that I was on there. It was really lovely to talk to him and we had a really wonderful
00:42:35
Speaker
chat about that movie and how it really was, you know, at the precipice at the beginning of that era of films. This is like 1984. And the technology, the CGI is not quite there yet. But I remember seeing this movie, you know, Catherine Mary Stewart and Lance Guest and all the, you know, Daniel Harrell and really, really thoroughly enjoying it and thought it was a whole lot of fun.
00:43:03
Speaker
This movie has been talked about for a remake for a while and I'm not sure you could capture the magic of it because it was a moment when video games were innocent. Like video games now are so sophisticated that we expect everything to be kind of like Ender's game isn't even realistic now. Like everyone expects like, oh yeah, I could totally defeat an alien empire because I've been playing
00:43:24
Speaker
in a whatever game and people will take it seriously. And the idea of a kid who goes to the arcade and is good enough at a video game that that qualifies him to engage in intergalactic battle, that was amazingly sweet and innocent on an ET level kind of wish fulfillment thing in the 80s. It really was. Yeah, exactly, exactly. A lot of fun. Anyway, so that was one of the ones there that I really, really sort of dug from way back then.
00:43:48
Speaker
And then Mallrats, look, let's see what you want about Kevin Smith. Every now and again, he got one right. This was one that I thought that he got right. I think that this film really does capture the zeitgeist of a moment, 1990, whatever the heck it was, between three, four, five, with Shannon Doherty and Jason Lee and Jeremy Lin. And all these sort of folks from that period, including those characters that Kevin and whoever that knuckle is, he was.
00:44:16
Speaker
Through the film, you got Ben Affleck walking around before he became Batman and everything else. Jason Muse, that's the guy. And you still got Stan Lee. He shows up in one of those fellow Stan Lee moments, you know, that he does. And just all that cast of characters that got more of that. Oh yeah, he's in there. He's in there. He had forgotten that.
00:44:36
Speaker
that whole, that whole, that whole thing. So anyway, this was one that in malls and malls are gone. There are no more malls. So one day in the future, the title of this film won't even make any sense to some people. True. That's so true.
00:44:54
Speaker
War to the World, same year, 1995, Kevin Costas, big gigantic movie, such a huge movie, so much anticipated for this film that they built an entire theme presentation at Universal Studios here for the film, which was long after the film flopped at the box office, that
00:45:15
Speaker
War to World theme, it's not a ride, it's like a presentation thing, which I attended many times, it was still there. And I have to tell you, War to World is a film, it took a good kick. Kevin Reynolds directing. Yeah, they were saying Road Warrior on water. Yeah, and all that kind of stuff. I remember thoroughly enjoying this film at the time, and in the many years since, when it pops up here, it pops up there,
00:45:44
Speaker
It gets me to sit down and watch it for a little while. It's a very energetic film. It's a lot of fun. And Dennis Hopper is just having a damn good time in this. He really is. He really is. And it's worth noting Waterworld, Mallrats, and The Last Starfighter all on 4K. These are their 4K debuts from Arrow.
00:46:04
Speaker
One other one from Arrow, not a 4K, it's only Blu-ray, but make quick mention of the Assassination Bureau, which is a super fun film that has been out a few times, but never with all these, some of the, never looking as good as this, and with some of the extras that this has. It has a new audio commentary with Sean Hogan and Kim Newman, and a 30-minute appreciation by broadcaster and historian Matthew Sweet, which kind of puts this thing in its context. For those who don't know,
00:46:32
Speaker
This is a, I don't want to call it a superhero movie. It's kind of like a Mission Impossible sort of thing that is set in 1908, just before World War I, based on a novel that Jack London never finished. It was published after he died. But it's really, really, it has a really fun vibe to it. Diana Rigg and Oliver Reed and Telly Savalas, all people who have, you know, a certain
00:46:58
Speaker
a certain genre identification for us. And, you know, it's great. Diana Rigg plays a very early kind of suffrage activist, and she, you know, discovers this secret group.
00:47:15
Speaker
called the assassination bureau and they have they've been around a long time and all the all the pieces start falling into place. And it's really quite fun. Oliver Reed is really has a lot of fun with this. He it's one of his most enjoyable parts. So, yeah, assassination bureau. Oh, man. Diana Rigg. Anything with the young Diana Rigg. Forget about it. Any Diana Rigg. Any Diana Rigg.
00:47:41
Speaker
What do we do? Criterion, if you don't mind, because there are a few there. I was doing after hours, for instance, is at the top of that list.
00:47:53
Speaker
I was talking about something and this movie came up. Oh, I know what it was. It was Bo is Afraid, the area astronaut. We're also talking about, so we want to talk about that in the same. I guess we squeeze them all together because the one thing is I'm not, look, not nuts about a lot of area astronaut, but certainly Bo is Afraid. It's an interesting film. It's really, really long, but when I got to thinking about it,
00:48:20
Speaker
I could tell that it was drawing a lot from, at a minimum, after hours, if not some other sort of films from the period that had that sort of sense of a roaming inter-psychological account, so just roaming around. And there's a lot there. This, to me, is a lot more fun than though it's afraid, which is, you know, has more in common probably with
Ari Aster's 'Bo is Afraid' and Other New Releases
00:48:46
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. Um, um, the guy that wrote adaptation of, um, oh, yeah, a lot of that kind of stuff there. But anyway, this movie, I remember liking a whole, whole lot and it's kind of off the beaten path for a young Morris Scorsese.
00:49:03
Speaker
Well, After Hours is also a 4K debut. Tons of extras on here, including a commentary with Scorsese and Thomas Schoonmacher and another commentary with Scorsese. Well, yeah, Scorsese and Schoonmacher and Michael Ballhouse. And Griffin Dunn is in on it as well. I have not had a chance to listen to that yet.
00:49:25
Speaker
But I will. That would be neat. That would be neat. Yeah, gotta be neat. Bo is afraid while as long as we're on the subject. That's also out. Comes with the from Lionsgate gets a digital copy on it. I have not watched this. I know you you watch some of it. Yeah, yeah. Good chunk of it. Three hours long. Three hours long. Yeah, you know, and look, as I say, often about Eric, he makes films that are interesting. That I find interesting, but he's
00:49:53
Speaker
He's yet to make a film that I actually like, Midsommar and Hereditary. They're very internal and all of this, and I appreciate the filmmaking, but I don't actually like any of these movies. This is another one, Joaquin Phoenix Bow. Look, it's a film about a guy and his relationship with his mother, his extremely unhealthy relationship with his mother, and how that manifests itself inside his
00:50:21
Speaker
His psyche, his internal psyche, his external existence, it's divided into these sort of like large chapters that we sort of work our way through. But that's at the end of the day what's going on. Every place, whether it's inside his mind or in the real world, there is his mother lurking over him and his guilt and all kinds of things. I will say this.
00:50:44
Speaker
Again, in a very, very committed performance of a movie that I appreciate but don't actually like. Using the word committed very loosely. Yeah. So other 4Ks from Criterion here. Let's kind of pick and choose. Oh, Breathless. I see that one. Breathless. Yeah. Godard's Breathless on 4K, a movie that was not even shot on 4K. It was shot on 16 millimeter with
00:51:10
Speaker
a lot of grit. I can tell you this, I don't know that that movie needs to be in 4k because there isn't 4k worth of data on that original 16 millimeter film. But I am grateful for what they did because it certainly does feel richer and more kind of in the moment, especially all the scenes where you see everybody on the streets of Paris looking into the camera and thinking, what are these people doing? I mean, this is guerrilla filmmaking, you know, 101. Yeah, talk about the
00:51:40
Speaker
freaking, you know, none of these guys went to film school either. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting that 4K
00:51:49
Speaker
What I noticed is that it renders things that were never really black, you know, black and white, we say black and white, but there was never anything in that film that was actually black or white. It was not really. In the 4K, there are things that are black and there are things that are white. There's a silhouette of when Gene Seaburg is walking through an alcove towards the light.
00:52:16
Speaker
And she and he, but mostly she is carved out in black and white. That was never that crisp before. So, you know, I don't know, it's kind of interesting and I don't know that it's correct, but when they're running down the streets, black and white, black and white at night, the lights of the cars, it's black and it's white, which is, you know, that's interesting.
00:52:38
Speaker
Also on 4K and a very strange choice for Criterion to go 4K on this. So I will let Tim weigh in on why he thinks they did this. I have no idea. The Renowned Westerns by Bud Bodicker with Randolph Scott. That's Renowned, R-A-N-O-W-N. And the films, this is five films in a box set.
00:52:58
Speaker
The tall T decision is sundown, Buchanan rides alone, ride lonesome, and Comanche Station. I am not a fan of any of these. I'm not really a fan of Randolph Scott generally, but I get he had a moment where these films were, you know, these are all kind of late 50s, early 60s, 57 to 60s when the films were made.
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah, some of that foundational material, which I know more, actually, the tall T, I think it's Elmore Leonard, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, Elmore. I don't know. There's sort of foundational material in some of that stuff, because Elmore was basically doing noir. So the tall T, that would be an example of how noir can be in any genre.
00:53:39
Speaker
Because that's a noir. But there you go. Why on 4K though? Why would we buy films on 4K? There's a lot of saturation in some of them, but I don't know. It's a good question. It's a good question. But it's not like these were ever technicolor or anything like that.
00:54:05
Speaker
Well, anyway, we also have Thelma and Louise on 4K. Ridley Scott kind of stopped doing genre stuff and became a real filmmaker in the eyes of a lot of people with this movie. They thought, wow, it doesn't have aliens or it's not futuristic. It's not kind of actiony. It doesn't have that genre-y thing that he's being associated with because he had done, prior to this, pretty much it was
00:54:27
Speaker
you know, the duelists, which was, you know, dual, kind of a still in action sort of thing, alien and blade runner and legend. And, you know, suddenly he's, he's doing something that is just a legit drama. Boom, real filmmaker. Yeah, documentary in here that features everybody. And, you know, does this film hold up, Tim, does it hold up for you?
00:54:52
Speaker
Well, actually, it does. This is really one of my favorite films of 1991. I guess it's 91. It's 30 years old. Oh, yeah. Cali Corey there and Gina and Harvey. Interesting that for Ridley Scott, you think of Ridley Scott and what Ridley Scott turned out to be was a woman's director.
00:55:16
Speaker
You know, obviously Ripley, you know, a Sigourney Weaver. In this film here, and a few others, you wouldn't have thought that about Ridley, but when it comes to Ridley, that's what he turned out to be, a woman's director. Even that film that he made with the one with Adam Driver, and it's really, you know, that's really her film. So, let's just hold up, and it starts on the way.
00:55:43
Speaker
Culturally does it hold up? That's really the question, right? Because culturally over the years, this film has taken a beat down. And then it kind of had a cultural comeback in sort of the post Me Too sort of movement. So it's an interesting sort of thing. I always was feeling it way back in 91. But it's interesting to see how the culture sort of puts a film through the ringers in some ways.
00:56:09
Speaker
Akira Kurosawa's dreams in 4K is a wonderful thing. This is 4K and Blu-ray combo and it is a wonderful thing. I first saw this film projected it was shot in HD. It looked ugly. It didn't look the way it needed to look because it was HD and they transferred it to film and all the technology was a little bit wrong.
00:56:28
Speaker
It's been very beautifully cleaned up. All the colors are vibrant like they were not at the time in 1990. What a lot of people remember most about this is Martin Scorsese playing Vincent van Gogh and disappearing into his own paintings. You're like, wow, Martin Scorsese directed by Kurosawa.
00:56:49
Speaker
Who knew? There's a great audio commentary on here by Steven Prince. Really, really beautiful. It contextualizes everything perfectly. And then a documentary by Catherine Kuddu, who was a longtime translator for Akira Kurosawa. Great interviews here. Bertolucci is interviewed in Uritu, Hayama Miyazaki, and Scorsese. Really, really good stuff. So a lot of great extras on here.
00:57:14
Speaker
I'm still waiting for a big old Kurosawa box set, but in the meantime, 4K for Dreams, which is a series of vignettes based on his actual dreams. Kurosawa made these little short films about his dreams.
00:57:30
Speaker
Yashiro Honda is not usually credited with some of the writing that he did on some of those sequences, which is always so interesting. But yes, his dreams, his dreams. But yeah, I hope they correct that box set and they talk a little bit about
00:57:47
Speaker
You show Honda's connection to something. I don't know, but I will absolutely check. And the last of the 4K criterions is One False Move, Carl Franklin's One False Move, which introduced the world to Cinda Williams and Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton was kind of came of age. Cinda Williams was in The Last Call, that little bar film that my friends shot at Lacey Street where I was wrangling extras. Got to meet Cinda Williams.
00:58:13
Speaker
Williams there. She was the fum-futal in that film. You know, One False Move is a seminal movie, and yet it's kind of forgotten. Carl Franklin's directing career went back to TV not too many years later. Billy Bob Thornton doesn't really show up much anymore.
00:58:33
Speaker
Yeah. So why should, I mean, I've been trying to figure this out. This is such a seminal film, but it didn't create a huge amount of momentum for everyone in it. Not like it would if it were today. Well, it was a moment.
00:58:48
Speaker
momentum for the moment. You know, and I knew a lot of these cats back in this is 91. And you know, there they were, oddly Billy Bob, who had been acting, you know, I think he was on a sitcom or something like that. And he had, and he had, I think he had, he had written something else. I can't remember what it was. And
00:59:07
Speaker
And then Billy Bob had that career as an actor and a director. What did you Sling Blade? He did Sling Blade and whatever. And then he would be in these big old movies Armageddon. And I think he pops up in Oliver Stone's U-Turn. It's really weird thing that went on with Angelina Jolie for a while that we've all forgotten about. You remember Billy Bob and Angelina? That was a whole thing like that.
00:59:27
Speaker
But you have these solid worker day folks. Michael Beach came out of this movie. Like you said, Bill Paxton came out of this movie. Cinda was in Spike's Mobile of Blues a year or two out of this movie. And then it just sort of, yeah, it's an interesting kind of thing. Today, this gritty little movie, which was really considered along the lines of like,
00:59:53
Speaker
Oh, what's that film, Straw Dogs? Oh, yeah, yeah. Pek and Pa. Pek and Pa. This was considered a Pek and Pa moment. Right on. In 91. That's how intense some of the stuff that happens at the top of this movie. Well, Carl Franklin is only 74, considering that Ridley Scott is 86 and directed Napoleon. Somebody should be throwing some great work at Carl Franklin and letting him make some great movies again, because he's
01:00:19
Speaker
It's one of the best directors of the last 30 years. The last three criterions here, not on 4K, but on Blu-ray, there is Bo Wiederberg's new Swedish cinema, which includes the four films, Elvira Madigan, The Baby Carriage, Raven's End, and
01:00:35
Speaker
Oderland 31. Elvira Madigan, really the only one there that I'm particularly fond of and that most people are familiar with. But, you know, Wiederberg or Wiederberg, however you want to pronounce it. Certainly was one of the hallmark Swedish directors in the 1960s alongside Ingmar Bergman and a few of the others who came out of that school. So, you know, that's a nice box set. Wayne Wang's Dim Sum, a little bit of Heart.
01:01:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Nice little low budget movie that helped along with Wang Is Missing or yeah, not Wang Is Missing, Chan Is Missing. Yeah, Chan Is Missing. Along with Chan Is Missing launched Wayne Wang's career. And Dim Sum's a really sweet film. So, I mean, I like later Wayne Wang more than the early stuff, but you certainly see where he's coming from with a lot of this. And The Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye. Yeah, yeah.
01:01:30
Speaker
which is also on Criterion channel right now. You can watch this on the channel too. You know, this is a terrific movie from 1996. What happened to her since then? Well, she has a career in television. You know, you look over there, you'll see here, Elwood and all that kind of stuff. This film here, you know, at this particular moment in time, it's funny because I think
01:01:53
Speaker
You and I and Ray, our buddy Ray Green, had a conversation about whether or not she would have been considered a part of the LA Rebellion. Exactly. At that time, that sort of late 90s, would that be right before you, right after you at UCLA? LA Rebellion kind of starts just before me. It's around 83, 84 that it starts and it kind of sort of ends in some people's minds around 1990, which is when I was there.
01:02:22
Speaker
So it's an imprecise thing, but the actual filmmakers who were part of it, they basically span late 70s to about mid 80s. That's when their work is there. So I would include it personally, because I think that if nothing else, she is a descendant and offspring of that movement and certainly pays homage to it. But I get why it's a question mark.
01:02:52
Speaker
It was certainly in terms of the gay and lesbian cinema. It would be foundational there for sure for whether or not, yeah, interesting, interesting. But yeah, a really, really great movie and I'm glad it's getting the Criterion Collection treatment.
Warner Archive Highlights and Classic Hollywood
01:03:08
Speaker
That's really great.
01:03:09
Speaker
I am too, and especially because it ties into a performer from the 1930s who was known as the Watermelon Woman, which is this wonderful mystery at the middle of this. It's really great. It's a terrific film. It's a really strong independent entry, another from a decade that was just filled with them.
01:03:31
Speaker
Where next? What should we hit? Let's see. How about we dash ourselves over to some of that Warner archive material? There's a whole bunch there. Excuse me. And then check out some of that. The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Is that the series? The complete series? No, that's the original movie. The Vincent Minnelli movie. Okay, fantastic.
01:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, that's the so here we go. Let me let's let's plow through it. The the original of its finale movie with Glenn Ford and Shirley Jones. Yes, yes. Really interesting because, you know, the the idea of broken families and single parents was a thing that was really only being explored in the 1960s. And there were a ton of those TV shows. We talk about it, right? I mean, the 60s had, you know, the Brady Bunch combined two of them and there's Family Affair. Oh, God.
01:04:22
Speaker
and all that stuff. It was like a thing, man, for a while there. It was. Yeah. Ron Howard, I had forgotten, played Eddie. Yeah. Because you always might think of this, always think of the television show, you know, Bill Batsby. But Ron Howard played Eddie. Man, that guy, his career, both as an actor and then, you know, a writer, director, director, filmmaker, unparalleled, I think, in this town. It's really true. It's just ridiculous. Yeah. It's fantastic. Really true.
01:04:49
Speaker
King Solomon's Minds with Stuart Granger and Deborah Carr. Kind of, I don't know if his date's all that well, but it's kind of fun in a cheesy way a little bit. I don't know. Yeah, a little pre on the heels of the Indiana Jones movie, doing whatever it did. It's kind of interesting. It's sort of pre that, a sort of inspiration for that at this.
01:05:14
Speaker
We got Ruben Mamoulian and directing Greta Garbo in one of her very final films as Queen Christina. I would say just watch it because of Garbo. If you haven't seen Garbo, there is a thing about her. I don't know what it is.
01:05:33
Speaker
It's just she's icy, and she's compelling, and she's sexy in a way that was not visible in movies at that time. It's just there's something about her. There really is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I'm looking at her next to a picture of Gail Godot right now. You know, obviously both young. I agree. Garbo would have to be young. I think she would act when she was like 36 or something. People forget how much longer she lived. You would see
01:05:59
Speaker
Greta Garbo roaming around the streets of New York in the 80s because she owned all this property on the Upper East Side. She would just be roaming around being Greta Garbo. If you didn't know who she was, and you wouldn't if you hadn't seen her in 35 years, you wouldn't have known that that's Greta Garbo. She did that for years and years and years.
01:06:21
Speaker
And there's a great Sidney Lumet movie called Garbo Talks with Ron Goldman and Bancroft. And I dearly love that movie. I love it. And people just diss on it. Doris Sherry, great producer, great old indie producer, did The Boy with the Green Hair. Oh, yes.
01:06:40
Speaker
Back in the day and I just, I dive, this is such a popular film for so many people and I just don't get it. I have never gotten it. It's, I just don't. It's like this weird kind of nuclear age, pre civil rights era attempt to create a metaphor, which for me just doesn't work at all. And Joseph Lozi directed it and I'm inclined to think the only reason anyone remembers this is because Lozi directed it.
01:07:08
Speaker
You got Young Dean Stockwell roaming around this movie. He's the kid. If you watch it today, Barbara Hale is in this movie. She's a Perry Mason secretary. It is sort of a nice walk down memory lane and that sort of way. But you're right, Dwayne Hickman is in this movie. But you're right, it's an odd little movie that's a reference to all kinds of things.
01:07:37
Speaker
Hey there, it's Yogi Bear. Really nothing else to say about this. This was a feature-length Yogi Bear movie and it overstays its welcome a little bit, but back in the day, I thoroughly enjoyed it. So there is now the feature-length Blu-ray of Hey There Yogi, It's Yogi Bear. The original women in prison movie before Jonathan Demme started
01:08:00
Speaker
of doing them is Caged. Caged was quite a thing in its day in 1960, I think this was, 1950. It's a John Cromwell film, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's the one, yeah. Yeah, I mean, Eleanor Parker and Agnes Morehead and Ellen Corby, who was later on the Waltons. Nobody had done a women in prison movie. I guess I got to give them credit for it. I don't think it's that great.
01:08:29
Speaker
You know, it's Dangerous When Wet, a great Esther Williams movie from MGM. You know, it's an Esther Williams movie. It's, you know, it's a little schmaltzy. It's a little melodramatic. You're really watching it just so that you can see Esther Williams do some Busby Berkeley style water dance with Tom and Jerry. That's really all it is. And that's, you know, there it is.
01:08:57
Speaker
I know it's just another one of those movies. Helen of Troy is maybe the only decent movie ever made about the actual Helen of Troy story. It's a little cheesy. It's a little bit sword and sandal-ish, but it's directed by Robert Wise. So that's worth something.
01:09:20
Speaker
Right? Absolutely. Robert, why don't you give me a little Star Trek, a little Star Trek, a little, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, let's, you know, so, yeah, a nice synoscope. Story of Helen of Troy. No one's done another one since. Glenn Ford, Robert Crawford, and Gene Crane, and an MGM Western called The Fastest Gun Alive, which is perfectly fine. You know, it's a good solid Western, and Glenn Ford, who has, you know, graduated from my high school,
01:09:48
Speaker
Good solid western guy. I don't know if there's much else you can say about it. Joan Crawford and David Bryan in The Damned Don't Cry. Joan Crawford totally holds this down. Better movie than I recall it being originally, but it's still kind of a hard-boiled B-level noir.
01:10:10
Speaker
So, you know. Absolutely. Hang on with that. That's the Angel Face. They are all of Preminger's film. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember liking that movie a lot. For one thing, it's Robert Richmond and Gene Simmons, ridiculously beautiful Gene Simmons, Angel Face, speaking of which that was a really, really good movie. I loved that a lot. And Preminger directed for Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes was, yeah.
01:10:34
Speaker
From that from that that Hughes moment, that is that is a good film and you know, anything with Mitchum and Howard Hughes was into Jean Simmons, too, I think. Yeah, yeah. A couple of a couple of Academy Award Best Picture winners here, the original Simran, based on the Edna Ferber novel by many considered to be the worst Best Picture winner in history. I think that's being a little cruel. It's about the 1899 Oklahoma Land Rush, which is kind of also the subject of Far and Away, the Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise and Coke in it. Yeah. Yeah.
01:11:04
Speaker
But you know what? I mean, it won Best Picture because it has a huge epic land rush moment in it. Everybody looked at that and said, holy cow, how did they pull that off? And in the early 30s, that was a big deal. Yeah. So yeah. So I mean, Simran is an important historical artifact. A little more important is the Broadway melody.
01:11:23
Speaker
which was also a Best Picture winner. And I think a very, very deserving one. This was Harry Beaumont's MGM effort, which was one of the first big musicals that really kind of showed what musicals could do and what they could do with sound and kind of trying to open up the capabilities of movies. And they would repeat it again and again and again. Broadway million 36, Broadway million 37, Broadway million 38.
01:11:48
Speaker
Oh man, they made a ton of these, they made a ton of these. Yeah, so this is the original Broadway melody and it is a nice artifact. It really kind of holds up in some interesting ways. Let's talk for a second about the Old Man and the Sea, the Spencer Tracy adaptation of The Hemingway. John Sturgis, you know, great widescreen director here. We know him from things like, you know, The Dirty Dozen and
01:12:11
Speaker
a lot of, you know, a lot of other great movies. Does this capture the book? Because it's been a long time since I read the book. Oh, well, you look, it's very presentational and traditional, but what I suppose the book is too. So to the extent that something, you know, they can capture the book in that way, I would say that it does. You know, looking at this, it's really funny. It's such a it's so you can you can see
01:12:38
Speaker
the matte painting. You can kind of see all that stuff there. So the sense of dire, but on the other hand, you know, in that presentation sort of form, Spencer Tracy doing that sort of accent thing that he's doing there. So, you know, but it's a movie movie. I kind of like it.
01:12:58
Speaker
You know, a musical that tends to get overlooked a lot is from the early 40s. Doobberry was a lady. And this is before she was on, before she had her own TV show, Lucille Ball, at a moment where she was on the verge of being a musical movie star. And she is the object of affection for, are you ready for it? Red Skelton and Gene Kelly.
01:13:21
Speaker
They're fighting over Lucille Ball. Very, very peculiar little bit of casting there. Tommy Dorsey and Zero Mostel are in here for the ride. Arthur Freed produced it. Roy Del Ruth directed it. Good solid MGM, a bunch of people. I think it's a fun movie, but it is certainly in light of what all of them did later, Red Skelton Show and all of Gene Kelly's other movies, you know, Singing in the Rain and her, you know,
01:13:46
Speaker
This movie is why Lucy came to be known as a redhead. She's so beautiful and this Technicolor is a redhead. She decided to adopt it as her hair color for the rest of her career. It starts with this movie.
01:14:06
Speaker
And then Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson, absolutely delightful in The Last Time I Saw Paris, which also features Walter Pidgeon and Donna Reed. Good solid melodrama, good solid MGM melodrama from the early 1950s. Very much in the moment, the fashion is so 1950s. Just seeing Donna Reed and Elizabeth Taylor in those great 50s fashions is just terrific.
01:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little bit, you know, it's a little bit in that Peyton Place mold. It captures the moment of the post war malaise and post war hope all at the same time. And all and set in Paris for crying out loud. I you just can't
01:14:47
Speaker
go wrong with this. Richard Brooks keeps everything from getting a little bit too melodramatic. It's based on an F Scott Fitzgerald story, but very loosely adapted by Brooks and the Epstein brothers. But I think it's perfectly wonderful. I think it's a great film and it ages very, very well.
01:15:06
Speaker
It's sort of, it's just the kind of work that he would go on to do, or he would allow writing, Richard Brooks
Recent Films and 4K Releases: Hits and Misses
01:15:12
Speaker
would. But he would go on to do, it's kind of like what we're talking about with freaking, this sort of really realistic sort of thing. As a director, they would become more and more realistic. So you get your Elmigantrian, you're in Cold Blood, and you're looking for Mr. Goodbar, which is just like, you know, absolute realism there. And this sort of walks into that path.
01:15:33
Speaker
Let's hit a few of these new movies because there's some good stuff to make mention of here. Are you there? God, it's me, Margaret, I didn't think made enough at the box office because I am not a girl. I have never been a girl. I don't know what it means to be a girl. But I hear that this book is like the coming of age book and has been for over a generation and they have a whole
01:15:55
Speaker
piece of this movie where they a lot of famous people just go i read it when i was eight i read it when i was twelve and it would it saved me it did to find life for me and it's like you holy cow what am i watching here and it is darn good it is darn good i really really love this movie and it's it's weird that i loved it the film is sad
01:16:17
Speaker
It's set in the era when the book was referencing. I put it like that. Yeah, that's correct. It's set in the era. Judy Blume moment. Judy Blume 60s, 70s moment. And I wonder if that has something to do with why it didn't quite connect with a contemporary young lady audience. That's a good point. The equivalent of the
01:16:44
Speaker
because these girls, you're looking at, you know, I'm looking at, I enjoyed it too, but then again, I'm from this era. I'm not a girl either, by the way, but I am from this period and all of this rang true to me with respect to my big sister and folks like that. I think everybody in this is great, Rachel McAdams, Abby Ryder-Fortson and Kathy Bates, three generations right there, mother, grandmother and daughter. I think they're all gonna be in the running for some kind of awards consideration and I think this film will come back at award season and people will rediscover how wonderful it is.
01:17:29
Speaker
find an old guy, a crusty old Finnish guy who's on a horse and he's dragging a bag of gold with him and they decide to try to steal his gold. What they don't realize is this guy is like Mad Max, Dirty Harry and
01:17:37
Speaker
Remember, that would be great.
01:17:44
Speaker
And Batman rolled into one times ten and he decides it is going to be the end of them and the death of them and he's going to get his gold back and make them pay. And this old guy is just not to be believed. This movie is brutal and gory just to the nth degree.
01:18:05
Speaker
How long before this is? What would this be? Who's going to play this guy? Oh, the American remake? Oh yeah. Who's going to play this guy? I'm sorry. This is an American remake. They'll probably just nowadays will just dub it and put it on Netflix. But who would have? Because it's just really that good.
01:18:24
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I would have, you know, it would have been Clint Eastwood 20 years ago. I would have been Nick Nolte 10 years ago. Charlie Bronson 40 years ago. Yeah. I don't know. But man, what a crazy movie. I'm also a big fan of Fool's Paradise. Charlie Day wrote, directed stars in nice throwback. It's like being there. You love this movie, too. We had fun with this. Yeah.
01:18:51
Speaker
It's like being there crossed with Chaplin and Keaton and all the rest of the great silent comics and it's about this hapless homeless guy who doesn't utter a word in the whole movie played by Charlie Day who literally stumbles into movie stardom. And somehow it just works out for him. This movie is absolutely hilarious and Ken Jeong plays his agent and manager who also stumbles into discovering him.
01:19:20
Speaker
Great supporting bits from a ton of people, Malkovich and Jason Bateman. Ray Liotta is here as a crime loss. It's fantastic. Kate Beckinsale is the movie star. He winds up marrying. It's just too funny. Really, I mean, if you like Peter Seles being there, that sort of thing, it really lives right in that space. And you can tell that Charlie is a student of all of that. You're Harold Lloyd, you're Chaplin. He's a student of all of that. And he brings it to burial.
01:19:50
Speaker
They're very funny. Yep. It's very funny. It is really funny. There are a couple of laughs in here that just sent me over the edge. Book Club, the next chapter. Didn't watch it. Didn't see the first one. Have no interest in doing it. But a bunch of actresses who are well past their prime seem to be having fun. Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candace Bergen, Mary Steenburgen. And I have been told that in this edition of Book Club, the next chapter, nobody actually reads a book.
01:20:13
Speaker
Hey, look, I'm not going to talk crap about any, I guess we'll call them senior actresses, performers, getting a chance to star in movies. I know that women within the range of these women love these movies. They do. They love seeing themselves up there on the screen. They love seeing Don Johnson, who I think
01:20:38
Speaker
By the way, it's too young for all of these broads. You old cradle robbers, you. But nevertheless, what I say about these movies is, hey, give the ladies what they want.
01:20:50
Speaker
Asteroid City. What do you think of Asteroid City? Look, man, you and I have experienced the entirety of Wes Anderson's career. We started in this business when there was no Wes Anderson and you came into those movies. And I got to tell you, these films have gotten more and more twee. Now, in particular, if you think about that first film, Bottle Rock, right?
01:21:14
Speaker
There's nothing to you about that film at all. It's a nasty little Jimmy Cong gangster movie. I appreciate what Wes does, but sometimes I feel like he is just, dude, you have got yourself in that little gig that is the universe in which you create this film. This film is a film, is a play set within a film that's on a television show.
01:21:37
Speaker
So, we're watching this play about this place called Asteroid City, which is, yeah, it's just this whole thing. And you think of it as, it really is at the heart of it, just a lovely little movie about grief. That's all it is. Jason Swartzman's lost his wife. He's got these kids. He's got a raise. That's all it is.
01:21:55
Speaker
But he couldn't just fucking make, just make that movie, dude, just make that movie. He gets lost in the obsession with style, with having everyone have that kind of monotone delivery with the camera constantly being on a dolly and moving sideways and then moving sideways again. And all the style, it's like he's doing a parody of his own, like he's caught up, he's trapped by the expectations that he himself has created. And does it have to look
01:22:22
Speaker
like my parents bleached out chroma, chroma comb slides from 1964? Does it have to look like that bleached and kind of faded? Because that's what the look is. And it's not the 1950s to me. It's yeah, I knew that can we go in and look, I like some of the I like a
01:22:45
Speaker
A lot of the performances, Tom Hanks happens to join his little cast, because he has like a little road crew that he drags around in these movies, Jeffrey Wright and Ed Norden and whatnot. Here, he adds Tom Hanks, he adds Scarlett Johansson. They're good too, but it's all to an end. Again, it's just too twee. If you just made the movie about this subject with all these people, without all this tweeness, I think I would have liked that movie.
01:23:15
Speaker
Well, let's hit some 4K here. There's a ton of great 4K this week. Most of it is catalog stuff, but it is totally worth it because it all looks great. I am not a huge fan of the movie Ender's Game. Big fan of the book. I think the movie kind of misses the point a little bit, but it's out in an exclusive 4K steel book for Best Buy, so you can only get this at Best Buy. Steel book packaging. But, you know, some people are really, really vibed to this. I don't know. Did you like Ender's Game? No.
01:23:43
Speaker
I'm more of the book kind of guys in the actual kind of film. Look, I will admit that it kind of got me. You're not going to give anything away. It's a 10-year-old movie, but whatever. But I was like, oh, OK. But there you go. Interesting.
01:23:59
Speaker
Rio Bravo, the Howard Hawks muscular Western with John Wayne and Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, where all three of them seem to be in a totally different movie. John Wayne is making a John Wayne movie. Dean Martin is wondering, why am I in a John Wayne movie? And Ricky Nelson is thinking, I'm so going to make money. I need a great paycheck. It's about time I got one of these. His name is Colorado in that movie. Well, you know what's fabulous about this movie?
01:24:29
Speaker
Andy Dickinson. Thank you. Absolutely. Part of the Warner Brothers' 100th anniversary release of a lot of great movies, as is the 40th anniversary of Enter the Dragon on 4K, still totally holds up.
01:24:51
Speaker
You know, John Saxon, Jim Kelly, really, I think this movie, it's, it's still great. Samuel Hong is in this as well, very briefly at the beginning. You know, I mean, it's, it defines its era. And this is the movie when Bruce Lee kind of stepped forward and became an international icon, transcending race. And it's the martial arts film that started it for everybody. It started it for me. It's funny.
01:25:17
Speaker
This and hip-hop, born the same year. I think it's fantastic. Fantastic. Well, lots of great extras on this thing. Really, really worth checking out. The Paul Heller, Michael Allen commentary is superb, but it's the 4K that just sings. The movie has never looked more spectacular. Along the new movie front, my gosh, Fast X, it's finally over, or is it? Or is it?
01:25:40
Speaker
look man this movie was outlandish i will give it that but it was outlandish to the point look there's a moment in this movie i'm not giving anything away when a giant flaming nuclear weapon is rolling through the street
01:25:59
Speaker
Now, it's not just a nucleol, a flaming nucleol. It's a CGI. And I'm like, okay, look, guys, the physics of these films have been debated for quite some time. Now they just simply decided that there are no physics in these films. And then they drag everybody, most everybody, not quite everybody, but they drag everybody back to the movie. And I don't know. Is it over? Who knows? I'm not sure.
01:26:25
Speaker
Shout Factory has given us World War Z on 4K. And you know, I'm wondering, will this, will there be a sequel as they keep hinting? Any thoughts on that?
01:26:41
Speaker
Good question. Will there be a sequel to World War II? There certainly is enough material there for there to be a sequel, and considering how many Walking Dead sequels there have been, I can't imagine they can't sort out...
01:26:59
Speaker
I figure out the way to do a sequel to this band. It's a great master. I am very fond of this film, Mireille Enos, who plays Brad Pitt's wife in the film. I know the family very well. I've known him for a long time, so I always root for anything that she is in, and I'd love to see her in a sequel. Yeah. So, you know, get it done. Mark Forster, get the band back together. Do a sequel.
01:27:22
Speaker
It is also the 70th anniversary of Roman holiday, Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. And we have a 4K from Paramount with a voodoo code on it. And I highly recommend it. This is simply the most charming movie in the world. Audrey Hepburn held her own against Gregory Peck and won an Academy Award and delivered what I consider to be the archetypal Academy Awards acceptance speech. She went up there and she said, I am so thankful you've all been so very, very kind.
01:27:52
Speaker
and she walked off and that was it. It was basically it. She didn't thank her agent. She didn't thank her co-star. She didn't thank anybody. She just said you've all been so very, very kind and she was borderline tears and then she walked away and everyone loved it. That's what everyone's speech should be. You didn't get out. The show is over. I love it. I love it. It can't go wrong.
01:28:12
Speaker
It is really. No, you can't go wrong. It's just a wonderful tour of the city and it's a sweet story. And Gregory Peck is wonderful as a scoundrel who is lovable. East of Eden, Elia Kazan, John Steinbeck. James Dean, Julie Harris. What do we say about this movie? Does it rock like it did at the time?
01:28:37
Speaker
Well, you know what? James Dean being a part of the coming of transition from that sort of presentational form of acting, which everybody else in this movie is doing, by the way. I mean, everybody. Even the good people, Raymond Massey, Julie Harris is very good. All good. But they're all engaged in that very classic to the moment presentational form of acting. And then you got this guy, James Dean, who's engaged in this method.
01:29:03
Speaker
You know inhabiting this character, emoting emotions that seem, and there are moments that Raymond Massey is plainly uncomfortable. That's really true. I've never given that any thought, but you're right. You can tell in those moments where Massey almost feels like, what have I got in myself? Yeah, like, what the hell is going on with this kid?
01:29:33
Speaker
But that, that, that is what really elevates those moments in this film. So that's the thing I teach this film a lot when in acting classes who I do with James Dean, because you know, you can put a marker on him, you can put a marker on Brando, you can put a marker, and then you can follow those guys straight through to your Dustin Hoffman's, your
01:30:02
Speaker
You know what else is a landmark in method acting? Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
01:30:10
Speaker
Not really. But you know what I love about Matthew Broderick, whenever I ask, you know, what will be the thing that you remember, he says, Ferris Bueller. Yes. Be honest. Matthew Broderick played Ferris Bueller. And you know what? He's okay with that. And I love that about him, which is why I think I like that about this movie that much more.
01:30:35
Speaker
Well, anyway, that's on 4k, a steelbook edition, it is, this movie holds up, it is more fun to watch than any movie has a right to be. It's John Hughes, it is very best. John Hughes always had two sides to him. He had the, you know, the kid, the really inside teenager side, the breakfast club side, and then there's the home alone side, which is, you know, vacation, you know, the wacky, the wacky stuff. And I think it all comes together here.
01:31:00
Speaker
I think this is the consummate John Hughes movie, all sides of his personality. And I love it. And it is on 4k. And, you know, it's got the the John Hughes commentary before he died. And you can't go wrong. It's a steel book. Do it. Yeah. Nightbreed is also on 4k. I don't know why. Maybe you can tell me why this movie has any following at all. I always thought this was just lame. Clive, Clive, Clive. Although
01:31:26
Speaker
David Cronenberg is walking around this movie, and he's a lot of fun walking around this movie, David Cronenberg. But yeah, no, it's one of those Clive adaptations before Clive just went completely bonkers and off the rails. You gotta be into Clive, and I've never been particularly into Clive, but if you are, I suppose this will work for you in the way that those Clive Barker adaptations work. Interesting that he directed it.
01:31:54
Speaker
He wrote it, it's adapted from his own stuff. So what you got is what he intended. So if you ever wanted to get inside his head about what this stuff should look and sound like, this is one. And then three final 4Ks from Warner Brothers. There is Justice League War World, a DC Universe movie, which is perfectly fine. They're all pretty well-written by comics people.
01:32:26
Speaker
It's the Wonder Woman Batman Superman tandem again, and it goes a little bit far afield for my taste, but I know that fans like it. There's also Babylon Five, The Road Home, which is original Babylon Five movie. I am not a Babylon Five junkie like some people are. This is basically an animated thing, so it's got some original cast member voices.
01:32:46
Speaker
And, you know, this one, this one's okay. I mean, it's a little bit...
01:32:53
Speaker
Bruce Box Lightner and Peter Jurassic and Billy Mummy and a few others. I don't know. It feels like stretching the franchise a little far, but again, I'm not a huge fan of it. And then the first season of The Last of Us, the HBO series, is on 4K and that'll dovetail us into TV here. How do you feel about The
TV Series: The Last of Us and Fear the Walking Dead
01:33:13
Speaker
Last of Us? I am very mixed.
01:33:14
Speaker
I thought it was pretty strong. First of all, I don't know anything about that game, didn't play the game, don't know anything about the game. I thought it was pretty strong in terms of its presentation of an apocalyptic narrative. What I liked about it were those stand-alone, and none of them are stand-alone, but because it's all out of sequence.
01:33:34
Speaker
That sequence with Nick Offerman and Mary Bartlett, that I thought was just absolutely extraordinary. And I loved it when it was doing that, the sort of walkthrough narrative. I'm sorry, with all of these, walking dead, pick whichever one you want to pick.
01:33:54
Speaker
They eventually become repetitive because there's really only one thing that can happen here. We have our heroes. Our heroes will be under threat of being overtaken by whatever it is you can overtake them. I think it's mushrooms or some shit in this. I don't know what it is. Or vampire, whatever it is. And then they have to survive that threat and whoever's lost is lost and then we do it again.
01:34:18
Speaker
Well, you know, I can only take one season of The Walking Dead doing that. I'm not sure why I would want another whole bunch of seasons of this doing that. So we shall see what happens.
01:34:33
Speaker
Let's wrap things out with just a little bit of TV here. The Venture Brothers have a stand-alone Blu-ray release of Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart. Of all the titles you could go with, that's the one you went with. Okay, fair enough. Anyway, and this goes along with The Venture Brothers, the complete series.
01:34:57
Speaker
Uh, on, uh, on DVD, I just don't know. Um, never was, never was, never was a venture brothers guy. Never was. Yeah. It's fan fans only for that one. Uh, Tim, you've mentioned fear, the walking dead a couple of times seasons one through seven, uh, on a box set here, uh, DVD, not, not Blu-ray. Um,
01:35:21
Speaker
People should buy it, not, what do you think? Well, the one thing I will say about Fear the Walking Dead, and again, I was a Walking Dead guy, but Fear the Walking Dead does in fact have at the center of it some really, really, really, really, really good performances and some excellent actors. So that's what I like about Fear the... Excuse me, Cliff Curtis is in there. You got Coleman Domingo walking around there. You got Lenny James walking around there.
01:35:45
Speaker
So that's what I kind of like that Jenna Elfman is even walking around. She's good at it, by the way. But that's what I like about this run. Some great performances. How does it compare to The Walking Dead? No. How does it compare to The Walking Dead? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't even come close. Because we do not have the opportunity to build up that character allegiance thing that's going on, because what they're doing in this
01:36:08
Speaker
is engaging
Nostalgia Collections and Industry Strikes
01:36:09
Speaker
you and then I don't want to ruin it for anybody, but nobody makes it very long. Nobody's making it to the end in this, but that's because that's the way this is constructed. We're going to bring you in and we're going to kill them off quick. That's what's going on.
01:36:26
Speaker
And then we got a couple of animated series that could not be more different. The complete 2003 TV series and television movie of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is the original series that basically started everything and it's perfectly fine.
01:36:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's perfectly fine. It's a certain kind of animation. I think it feels fresh in ways that the 27 other series that they have done since have not. The voice casting makes sense. So, you know, it's worth for nostalgia buffs. That's a good one to hang on to.
01:37:02
Speaker
And South Park seasons 21 through 25 in a box set. They're doing this now, apparently five seasons at a time. I think it kind of makes sense. You know, you can it's just this thing's been on the air for two decades. Nobody's going to know where to find the episode that they like. So.
01:37:21
Speaker
You know, might as well buy five seasons at a time and throw it on, let it play out. Put it on during parties, put it on during the day. Just enjoy the jokes as they roll by. It's a smorgasbord of pop culture madness and they somehow keep it going. Lots of commentaries, lots of commentaries and fun stuff.
01:37:42
Speaker
All right. We'll save the rest of the stuff for the next time. Strikes are still going on. I think I'm probably going to go join a friend of mine. As of this taping, there were talks. Was that today or yesterday? That was yesterday. But who cares? I mean, it's not going to go anywhere. They're going to put it out next week. I mean, by the time this show is up, they'll be putting it out to the membership. And the membership will say no, and the strike will continue.
01:38:07
Speaker
Do we have any word on the offer was made? They have not talked since May and they've spent three months putting together what they, this is my prediction, they put together three months worth of divide and conquer proposals.
01:38:25
Speaker
So, they're trying to figure out what can we offer certain smaller constituencies of the writer's guild that will peel them off so that the guild will not be on strike anymore. They're going to try to peel out so that, you know, show runners will give them a little something and then these writers will give them a little something and these writers will give them a little something and that way everybody will feel like they're getting something but they'll cave on the AI. They will cave on the pension fund and the residual and the data stuff.
01:38:55
Speaker
to divide and conquer. That's my prediction. I don't think it's going to work. All right, interesting. We'll talk about it next time. All right. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Awesome. All right, Tim, have a good week. We'll see everybody else next time. OK, brother.
01:40:12
Speaker
Bye!