Tyler and David discuss the movies and TV shows they’ve been watching, including:
Movies SOME LIKE IT HOT
STREAM OF LOVE BLACK CHRISTMAS
GET OUT
HIS GIRL FRIDAY
BALL OF FIRE
THE BALLAD OF LEFTY BROWN
ALIEN
WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO?
SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT
THE GUILT TRIP
THE GREATEST SHOWMAN
Speaking of Marilyn Monroe and Howard Hawks, what’s y’alls opinion on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? As much as I love Billy Wilder, GPB is my favorite Monroe movie, and one of the best musicals ever.
Also, The Greatest Showman was terrible, awful, no good, very bad. One of the worst of 2017. I cannot believe how much praise audiences are lavishing on this piece of garbage (I understand critics are a little more mixed, but even so).
The characters are flat, songs are flat, story beats phoned in, and the whole movie feels like a commercial for The Greatest Showman.
On the show Frasier, the actress Jane Leeves who played the maid Daphne got pregnant in real life and they wrote into the storyline that she just got fat. It was probably right around the same time Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was pregnant.
A random fun fact (that I can’t remember where I heard it from, so ehh whatever) about “Some Like It Hot,” I think Billy Wilder wanted the movie in black-and-white ultimately because the heavy makeup on Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis looked better/less freakish in b&w. And I guess Wilder just managed to convince Monroe to do it that way?
1. Tyler is not nuts. Some Like It Hot also does nothing for me (so far). It’s easy to get why so many people love it, in the way I can recognize that a lot of music is ‘good’ even if it doesn’t mesh with me ersonally, and I’m glad others enjoy it so much. Like Tyler, one element of my disconnect is the kind of comedy being employed not being my type, but it also registers as having some timing issues, and timing is essential to comedy. For me, this is one weirdly inert movie. I have to believe that those who love it (which is almost equal to “those who’ve seen it”) would say that the timing is perfect, and they may be right. Also like Tyler, I’ll give it another chance, maybe a few, as life offers them, especially given the transition The Apartment made with me recently. I first saw it nice and letterboxed, but taped off AMC at the 6 hour VHS tape speed. So, fuzzy. I really disliked it, but I wasn’t aware just how unfair it was to the film for me to see it as a hazy postcard. When TCM ran it in their version of HD, and I could really see the faces, and the nuances in the performances, it hopped out of the dislike bucket, past the like bucket and right into my top favorites bucket. I guess picture sharpness matters, often even more than screen size, for me.
2. Tyler is not sacriligious. Ridley Scott’s musical choices for ALIEN were the exact right ones. I’ll go further than Tyler – the Howard Hanson piece at the end is *perfect* for that film. Part of my not being jarred by the tonal shift may come from living with it; with time, flaws fall away from great movies, but I think it even works analytically. What that movie needs at that moment is a complete shift from any hint of mystery or unsettledness to a tone of absolute relief. Hanson’s piece does that. I wish Goldsmith had done what he did with The Final Conflict, introducing a brand new theme and vibe at the very end of the movie, but he didn’t. He wrote a great piece of music, but one which felt like his opening, and his “The Landing” – like what had come before. I get why Scott stuck with his temp job there. The fact that by 1979, Goldsmith had been composing for cinemas for 20 years, plus 10 years on TV and radio, and knew what he was doing is not a trump card. And I say this as someone for whom Goldsmith *is* my favorite composer, as the 195-ish CDs on my shelf will attest. On the other hand, all of the music written for the film is so good that almost all of the re-scored and rejected cues can be blended right in with the music used in the film and listened to as a whole score. It’s the best way to hear it, especially with the music for the first half of the film.
Speaking of Marilyn Monroe and Howard Hawks, what’s y’alls opinion on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? As much as I love Billy Wilder, GPB is my favorite Monroe movie, and one of the best musicals ever.
Also, The Greatest Showman was terrible, awful, no good, very bad. One of the worst of 2017. I cannot believe how much praise audiences are lavishing on this piece of garbage (I understand critics are a little more mixed, but even so).
The characters are flat, songs are flat, story beats phoned in, and the whole movie feels like a commercial for The Greatest Showman.
Utter trash.
I kept meaning to bring up Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and forgot. I love it.
– David
On the show Frasier, the actress Jane Leeves who played the maid Daphne got pregnant in real life and they wrote into the storyline that she just got fat. It was probably right around the same time Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was pregnant.
A random fun fact (that I can’t remember where I heard it from, so ehh whatever) about “Some Like It Hot,” I think Billy Wilder wanted the movie in black-and-white ultimately because the heavy makeup on Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis looked better/less freakish in b&w. And I guess Wilder just managed to convince Monroe to do it that way?
1. Tyler is not nuts. Some Like It Hot also does nothing for me (so far). It’s easy to get why so many people love it, in the way I can recognize that a lot of music is ‘good’ even if it doesn’t mesh with me ersonally, and I’m glad others enjoy it so much. Like Tyler, one element of my disconnect is the kind of comedy being employed not being my type, but it also registers as having some timing issues, and timing is essential to comedy. For me, this is one weirdly inert movie. I have to believe that those who love it (which is almost equal to “those who’ve seen it”) would say that the timing is perfect, and they may be right. Also like Tyler, I’ll give it another chance, maybe a few, as life offers them, especially given the transition The Apartment made with me recently. I first saw it nice and letterboxed, but taped off AMC at the 6 hour VHS tape speed. So, fuzzy. I really disliked it, but I wasn’t aware just how unfair it was to the film for me to see it as a hazy postcard. When TCM ran it in their version of HD, and I could really see the faces, and the nuances in the performances, it hopped out of the dislike bucket, past the like bucket and right into my top favorites bucket. I guess picture sharpness matters, often even more than screen size, for me.
2. Tyler is not sacriligious. Ridley Scott’s musical choices for ALIEN were the exact right ones. I’ll go further than Tyler – the Howard Hanson piece at the end is *perfect* for that film. Part of my not being jarred by the tonal shift may come from living with it; with time, flaws fall away from great movies, but I think it even works analytically. What that movie needs at that moment is a complete shift from any hint of mystery or unsettledness to a tone of absolute relief. Hanson’s piece does that. I wish Goldsmith had done what he did with The Final Conflict, introducing a brand new theme and vibe at the very end of the movie, but he didn’t. He wrote a great piece of music, but one which felt like his opening, and his “The Landing” – like what had come before. I get why Scott stuck with his temp job there. The fact that by 1979, Goldsmith had been composing for cinemas for 20 years, plus 10 years on TV and radio, and knew what he was doing is not a trump card. And I say this as someone for whom Goldsmith *is* my favorite composer, as the 195-ish CDs on my shelf will attest. On the other hand, all of the music written for the film is so good that almost all of the re-scored and rejected cues can be blended right in with the music used in the film and listened to as a whole score. It’s the best way to hear it, especially with the music for the first half of the film.
I also like David quite a bit.