For a second I thought “why no Morty and Summer fighting the Agents in bullet time in the Matrix scene” but then I remembered this is motherfucking Rick and Morty and that is the most obvious gag so they are NOT going to do that and are instead going to go at least four levels deeper.
Wonderful Summer focused episode!
Also: “Osama bin Chargin’” 
I saw a couple of them. Jungle Book was more faithful to the book’s conception of the elephants, Dumbo was less cringeworthy to modern eyes, Little Mermaid was better than the original, I can’t really remember which others I saw though we had considered Lilo and Stitch just for nostalgia.
Big shout out for Cruella which we loved. It’s very Vivienne Westwood coded and my daughters loved it as they got older (Aristocats was more a touchstone in our house than Dalmatians - also if you like Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle from 20+ years ago was great).
My daughter and I watched the OG Twin Peaks series and the movie, and now we are moving on to the updated series. Wow, it’s fantastic. I’m so impressed. It’s definitely more weird in the weird bits, but also insanely beautiful. David Lynch’s ability to use light and music to create mood are unmatched.
What’s a little nuts is that even though they aren’t great the audiences still keep coming. In the case of the new Lilo & Stitch that film wasn’t even originally intended to be released in theaters in the first place. It was meant for Disney Plus, but, partially as a result of Hollywood strikes and subsequently scrambled production schedules, they ended up doing a theatrical release and racking in a ton of money. I didn’t see it, but I did see Moana 2 in the theater and came away very much unimpressed. That was another one that was originally going straight to Disney Plus but ended up doing huge box office numbers despite being inferior to the original.
I don’t like the fact that Disney and the other big studios will clearly come away from this with a strong incentive to just keep pumping out more low-effort remakes and sequels.
Oh yeah Moana 2: that was shit. My kids wandered off and we turned it off. Big fans of the original. Can’t remember what the problem was but it was just boring and unengaging.
That’s quite a coincidence, as I was just coming here to post this:
FIX YOUR HEARTS OR DIE: A TRANS CINEMA CELEBRATION
Trans, non-binary, and gender variant people have always existed and will always continue to exist. Their presence in film, in front of and behind the camera, can be traced all the way back to the early 1900s. FIX YOUR HEARTS OR DIE is a celebration of the many decades of work that trans, non-binary and gender variant folks have contributed to cinema: from Edward D. Wood Jr.’s groundbreaking GLEN OR GLENDA to new and incredibly exciting work from filmmakers such as Glamhag, Alice Maio Makay and Henry Hanson.
Co-curated by the brilliant film historian, programmer and filmmaker Elizabeth Purchell (with contributions from Film Programmer Shayna Maci Warner), this program will take you on a journey through various genres from teen comedy, thriller, horror, animation, XXX, documentaries and everything in between, all made special by trans people. All ticket purchases include an optional donation to Advocates for Trans Equality.
From Glen or Glenda to Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers to Sulka’s Daughter must be some kind of gamut.
Anyone seen the original Maltese Falcon?
It looks like you can download it at various places.
Nope. Couldn’t find it so far (or the other version, Satan met a Lady, for that matter).
I did see (and read) The Falcon’s Malteser, though.
Internet Archive
Thanks!
I’m not sure that I find exploitation films all that edifying for equality. Glen or Glenda over say the Christine Jorgensen Story or A Fantastic Woman for a trans equality fundraiser?
Haven’t heard of Sulka in ages. She was straight up porn rather than classic exploitation. She was one of the first to do porn after Vaginoplasty. Wonder if she’s still alive? She advertised doing makeovers for crossdressers back in the day.
We weren’t allowed much in the way of employment opportunities back in the day.
Silence of the Lambs says Buffalo Bill isn’t really transgender.
It didn’t help.
It’s almost exactly the same (Heuston stole the script I believe) except it’s pre code so has the strip search scene from the book a bit more accurately and it’s somehow kind of shit?
It’s Spade is almost jokey IIRC rather than Bogart who was wry but dark.
Just watched this:
Fantastic if you felt that Boiling Point and The Bear portrayed restaurant kitchens as far too chill and lacking in realistic drug abuse, macho violence, and extreme stress.
To that heady mix they added a blistering critique of racism, Kid Rock getting rich off your gruelling kitchen work while gleefully sending in the GICEtapo to round you up, the nickel and dimed precaritynof hard work under modern capitalism, a performance modelled on David Thewlis’s prophetic turn in Mike Leigh’s Naked (as elegised by Natasha Lyonne in the closet above) and a great regard for Eric Rohmer.
They will keep doing it as long as it is profitable. There are 6 films in Sony’s Spider-Man adjacent universe. The three Venom movies are, at best, okay. The other three films are terrible. And yet, the only film so far to not turn a profit is Kraven the Hunter. These movies are terrible, but people watch them. Making good, original films is risky. For every Sinners, you’re probably going to have 5-10 flops like Argylle.
ETA: Speaking of good, original films, I just finished Mickey 17. And it’s good. But it’s not great. I don’t know what, but it feels like it’s missing something to me. It does make me want to read the book, though, because I’m sure the book is much better.
So here’s a question – why is this multibillion dollar industry so bad at making its product? You would think someone would figure out how to reliably get and produce scripts of at least potboiler quality, but it seems like they have no idea how to make sure any of these end up watchable.
Well…that costs money, though. Good writers cost money. Plus, producers tend to have big egos, and so they interfere, and what may start off as a good movie gets butchered by producers who think they know what audiences want, when they really just know what they want. But mostly it’s that first part, which is why AI was such a big issue in the last writer’s strike. If they can hire shit writers on the cheap and turn a profit on some shit installment in an established IP, why spend more money on better writers and maybe end up losing money on a risky original idea? This is why the really innovative films tend to come out of indie outfits.
Ok writers cost so little money compared to the budget of a movie, it’s insane to me that that’s the part they would decide to cheap out on, the part needed for all the rest to have any chance of turning out…but I suppose all of capitalism is like that now, huh? 