Mark's Movies

1996's The Long Kiss Goodnight is a Shane Black screenplay on the Renny Harlin luge. What is the deal? Is it a spiritual successor to The Last Boy Scout? What is going on? I don't know. I've been sick for months at this point. I thought I was better well after recording but I can feel the sinus infection coming on. Everything all the time.

Kicking off season 6 with a good one! Let's talk a bit about this very fun very slept on movie.

Yes, it's finally here. Over a year late, but better than never? Maybe. Maybe not. Like the guy from Matchbox 20 said, man it's a dense one. Definitely don't listen to this one in the car with the kids. I don't have links or anything here. Things have changed since most of this was recorded. I didn't necessarily go back and update things. Be nice to people.

Quick update on Season 5 which is.... a year overdue.

Yes, it's Network. Could you expect anything else after Medium Cool? Maybe. But you'd be wrong. It's Network. Let's look at this documentary... errr fictional satire from the mind of Paddy Chayefsky and executed with the deft touch of Sidney Lumet. I realize there's an entire laundry list of things that could have been touched upon which I did not. Again, an injury is limiting my computer time. Computer time includes recording and editing so I need to be economical with both. The character of Diana Christensen is probably one of the most interesting because of how she's written but, also, because the romance plot is actually a larger part of the movie than I sometimes realize. So she's got screen time and there's plenty of time to examine her. And I think that, choosing her, to represent what she represents is maybe a bit... biased. Hackett could have easily been that, too, or there could have just been a dude. I know that they, for economy, combined Max's love interest with Max's rival and it works but she's one of the very precious few women in this movie--which is also probably documentarian as well. Maybe bringing this lens to bear on this specific point is fruitless. But it wasn't brought in the podcast. I think I did completely forget to mention the other two academy awards. Faye Dunaway takes it and there's a really good photo of her the next day looking real blase. It's called "The Morning After" and it's the kinda photo that would make me want to be a magazine photographer. Getting to wake up in the morning and do shoots like that is the dream. The other Academy Award was given to Chayefsky for the screenplay which, if you've seen the movie, is no great surprise.

If you have the opportunity to watch this prior to listening, I would want that for you. But it's probably not streaming anywhere. I mean, someone might have uploaded the entire film to YouTube but you never know. Yeah, I'm just digging through my own movie history at this point. Finding the origins of the origins. I've had some physical issues that prevent me from being on a computer for extended periods of time so yeah, there were some things that made it through the edit, and yeah, there were some things that I would normally talk about that I didn't. But I think I get to the heart of the matter well enough.

Yeah, it's back. It's an episode. Check it out. Definitely had a hot take on this one.

Hey everyone, just looking back on 2022 for a second. Just taking a breath. "Late Night Radio" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ I think I only mentioned Hearts in Atlantis for 3 movies this year? That feels like a low number but that's what my data is telling me. Dazed and Confused, Bull Durham, and High Fidelity. Maybe the transcriptions are off.

The squad from High Fidelity are at it again? in what is the kinda prequel, in a meta production sense, and a really great movie in my eyes. It makes me feel good. The cast really brings it, the movie is fun, and I think it set up some conventions or archetypes that carried forward into movies we see today (I think, at any rate). This is the first time I actually make something that sounds like it's in car so if you're in a car it's double messed up. A bold strategy, Cotton. I didn't talk about the action at all. I realize that. The action isn't huge but it's good. They've got Cusack doing the most he possibly can which might have actually been all of it (I can't remember at the moment--it's been absolutely nuts this entire past month and the month before). Makes it feel good. It's not too serious, not too goofy. Groundedly whimsical. There's a lot of daytime in this movie. I think they intentionally wanted it to feel more like a high school reunion movie that has an assassin in it than an assassin movie taking place at a high school reunion. The big action scene is set in the middle of the day. It's cool. It really genuinely is. If I had to choose a favorite little shot I would choose the one set in Debi's bedroom when Martin is leaving. She tells him "you're a fucking psy-cho" and does like a hand talking thing. That was an improvised gesture--she previously saw John and Joan doing that to each other between setups. That's one great part but the opposite shot, John's kinda manic wild "don't rush to judgement on something like that" is just very unique and fits perfectly. Unhinged but just under the surface. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgGTP5Cevrs - (2948) Benny "The Jet" Urquidez • Highlight - YouTube "Cool Rock", "Blue Ska" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ I love the movie. It's worth a look. A lot of nostalgia for this one. Check it out. I'm @coolmarkd on twitter for as long as it lasts.

Top 5 hackiest tropes in media analysis and presentation: * Cribbing aspects of the media itself * Talking about how you can do a thing but haven't and then, in the edit, do the thing. * Not actually organizing thoughts into coherent and structured form * Being late and making it rushed * Starting a Top 5 list and then running out of things so you have filler Yeah, I'm Mark and this is 2000's High Fidelity. Let's get this Hamletesque Annie Hall-like romcom on the road. To be fair the Annie Hall comparison brings a lot of baggage with it that is undeserved. But it's more the deconstruction from a male-centric point of view that I mean. And also the main character slowly losing their mind. The Hamlet link is a reach--I just like alluding to it. Makes me feel like I learned something in school. I feel like I really had Things To Say here but this month has been absolutely destructive to me. No thoughts head empty. So I'll leave you with it. Oh, right! I didn't mention how "High Fidelity" is the opposite of the infidelity that occurs and how that concept is defined. I won't though. I'm exhausted. Smooth Lovin' Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ If you want to reach me, I'm @coolmarkd on Twitter.

What could go wrong when you convince a mathematician at a prestigious university that you're a genius, with the help of geniuses, just to go on a date with her? Not much, right? Right. This is I.Q. and, when I write it out this way, it seems wild. It is wild. Leave your practical brain at home and enjoy the performances, Matthau especially, and conceits of this movie as they come. Do your thing. Odds are you haven't seen and cannot easily see this movie anyway, so stay a while--and listen. @coolmarkd I want to point out that Princeton at this point in time was an absolute pop off of technology and research. I don't remember placing the exact year that this movie was set in (nor do I think that it particularly matters--it's roughly mid 50's) but at Princeton you could have run into John von Neumann who is, arguably, more important than Albert Einstein in a lot of ways. Check him out if you get a chance. This man's biography is where I learned that I do not like reading the biographies of people wildly more interesting than I am. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

This is it. This is the pinnacle of baseball movies. As it is the pinnacle of baseball movies, it is the pinnacle of sports movies. Not in a sports way but in a movies way. This, like THE SANDLOT (which you listened to that episode, right? It's back in season 2 or whatever), has no big game. It's about more than baseball but baseball is both the frame and the delivery mechanism. Baseball teaches us about life so often--as a sport where succeeding 1/3 of the time is hugely successful will--and it has more than just baseball. This is BULL DURHAM. There is a lot going on in this movie. There is a lot that I talk about--it's one of the longer episodes that I've recorded and that's that I already know that I should never record longer episodes. And there is just a ton that I left out. I'll look at some of that here as is my way. Ron Shelton slaps. That's that. Dude is a gangster and lives in a similar space as Linklater. I don't exactly know how to communicate it but I would say it's the writer/director that fully understands their niche and understands themselves and, regardless of whatever copious life experience they may have, understands how to distill these concepts to something that really works in a movie. For more, you can check out my episode on DAZED AND CONFUSED. Sarandon, Costner, and Robbins were almost picture perfect. Costner does this sarcastic chuckle thing that I'm sure seemed cool on paper but it's a little less successful in practice. Other than that he was made for this role. I've heard that Costner is not necessarily the best person to be around while being a mere mortal but you cannot fault him in this role whatsoever. This was also "before he was famous" and that's weird to me because fuck Untouchables or whatever--this is what made Costner for me. Robbins knocks it out of the park. I love watching Tim Robbins--like everyone with cable I've seen THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION only a few dozen times and I still eat it up every time. But he was always that Tim Robbins--even in BULL DURHAM. Even in HIGH FIDELITY. Susan Sarandon was aces in this. She goes on from here to do THELMA & LOUISE which co-starred Gena Davis (yeah, you thought she was going to come up but I said this was the last baseball movie.... for the moment) and was directed by Ridley Scott. She's top-tier. She's stellar. She's in peak form at all points in time--there is zero phoning it in. Sarandon's performance was my favorite as a character in this movie. I only say that because Costner is 100% an actual baseball player while playing a baseball player and knowing the mind of a baseball player because he is an actual baseball player while playing a baseball player ad nauseam. Yes, this movie does have some exploration into homophobia of some sort. It's not as bad as this might make it sound but it does happen. It's probably better than average for a movie coming out in the 80s and is not outright hostile. There is a point where a character questions their sexuality and that's actually interesting--not offensive. This is all relating to the academic paper that I mention in the podcast (at the end). I think it comes from a very reasonable place where the ideal set for masculinity isn't complete domination but instead security and support. The characters themselves are trying to figure things out at times. There's another time where it's just an insult but, to quote Ralph Maccio--politics aside because his views are bad--"hey, it's the 80s". That's actually quoting his character, Daniel LaRusso, who isn't the bully but becomes able to defend himself. I realize that COBRA KAI might take that view a little differently when extrapolated however I'm reading from the text of THE KARATE KID and haven't watched COBRA KAI because, when I tried to cast it to my TV, YouTube wouldn't let me watch it fully. When you watch BULL DURHAM just think of that statement. Not about Ralph Maccio but the statement about masculinity. I've seen several ways to present the titles of movies but my favorite is in ALL CAPS. I'm trying that out. Does it lend me more credence... clearwater? Revival? Lookin out my back door? I'm sure I'm leaving things about but I 100% apologize for all of the wikipedia scholastics about religions. Journalism (if you can call what I do that), or academic research (if you can call it that), takes a lot of time and these people deserve a living wage like so many others. The economy for that is so upside-down that it's ridiculous. I don't know the answer to solve that problem--IF I have an answer for a problem then that problem is probably dumb as fuck and y'all politician-ass motherfuckers need to sort that shit out because I'm a guy that watches movies and waxes pedantic about them in his spare time. I have no business having solutions for any social problems. I'd be eager to understand what Crash Davis' life might look like in the era of Sabermetrics and the all-knowing internet. Would he have been passed over? There is no telling because, somehow, the story feels the same. You work really hard in the minors and maybe fortune smiles upon you. I think that Chris Carter was a baseball player as well. He was also an author of flowery speeches. Was this influence from Bull Durham and Ron Shelton or was this direct action? Was Ron Shelton a ghost writer for The X-Files? Probably not, but I'm trying to manufacture some type of actual relationship there. Their stories don't feel too different. Perhaps, if I had just been better at baseball, I'd be a screenwriter now. That's overly simplistic and reductionist and I don't know where I'm going with it. Nowhere, most likely. Actually, I think I've narrowed down where I'm going with it. I throw out these half-assed theories and it's not that I want to be right, but that I want the people to read or hear the theory and be like "yeah, that's the one" in their own vacuum. Perhaps that is a bit forward but if that happened I'd just be totally OK with it. Links (2138) Bull Durham the Musical - YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btVHsQIrDZY (2138) Melissa Errico - "A Little Time To Myself" from Bull Durham: The Musical (Live) - YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJoHlceoybI So there's a YouTube comment in there from 8 months ago saying that the music will go to Broadway. I may actually bend that motherfuck of a corner to go see it if that's the case. My wife will not understand. But I am compelled. Realistically, that's the only link. The academic paper mentioned is behind some type of paywalls so walk into your local public college or university's library and search for it there. You can likely print it out or save it to a USB drive. This is what public institutions are all about and I'm 100% for it. You can also potentially rent movies and music from the library. That's intense. Support your public universities and support your libraries. Whatever I'm sure I left things out. I've spent enough time working on this that I've lost notes that I've taken. I'm not angry I'm just angry at myself but it's not going to stop this show. It's happening. The file is already uploaded before I even begin typing this. You'd think I'd feel liberated by this loose format and you're correct@! I do. It's great. I recommend bucking the system and just being yourself to everyone who can afford to do it because, the reality of the situation is, not everyone can just be themselves and continue living their lives. There are 100% people who should not be able to be themselves and also live their lives and they're mostly falling under the banner of racists so fuck them. Be nice. Check out the paradox of tolerance. Play some baseball. Watch some baseball. Watch a movie. Do something nice for someone. Contemplate existence. Actualize yourself in a way that elevates everyone around you. Tap that untold power of the ever-expanding cosmos. Play Dungeons & Dragons, or another tabletop RPG that allows you the freedom to create and inhabit a character--it's great! Try at something you think is pointless because it probably isn't.

Yeah, this one didn't stand the test of time. It's unfortunate but it happens. You can tell just from the poster. See what this Cleveland baseball team is up to, again! Wow. My lack of enthusiasm is apparent. But it's 1994's Major League 2 and hopefully some folks made money off of it. This is the second at-bat for the baseball trilogy, and it is... not good. Ground ball to short and a throw out at first, perhaps. It's fine. It was fine for the time. There were a flood of kid-oriented baseball movies coming out that were doing numbers. I get it. But it's not worth going out of your way for in 2022.

Let's dig into one of the most influential sports movies of... the history of movies, I guess. Major League was a stone whose ripples in the pond of American culture are still seen to this day. The late 80's, but especially the early 90's, were rife with baseball movies and the continued success of Major League definitely pushed studios to green light them. Links Brockmire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M95P3DTYxqgMark Hamill doing a Harrison Ford impression https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onMm0DLg8CEDavid Blaine at Harrison Ford's House https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB0wzy-xbwMLocus of control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_controlWade Boggs drinking a metric fuckton of beer https://fanbuzz.com/mlb/wade-boggs-beer/ and to be fair when I first heard this story it was like 40-50 beers but, like any good story, it's grown into myth and then, later, it will be immortalized as legend. I am pretty tired of Sublime. Superstition in Baseball There's a lot to superstition in baseball. Well, there's a lot to the psychology of baseball. The actual mental processes are intense, visceral, and at the lowest level of human performance. This is catching arrows in the air type shit. However the superstition is maybe less impressive. To read about the impressive shit check out this link Going, Going, Gone! The Psychology of Baseball – Association for Psychological Science – APS. If you can't see it go to scummbags.com and view the show notes HTML. Or change your podcast app. I use Pocket Casts and it shows the whole HTML type thing. It doesn't show images, sadly, (and it fucking used to) but you get the links. I hypothesize that the superstitious nature of baseball is more akin to the superstition of gamblers. Baseball has a mostly random reward schedule and it definitely depends on the frame of data that you're looking at to determine how "random" it may be. That's a data science thing. But as a human, having that imminent possibility--nay, the likelihood--of failure and then associating a ritual with success? That's power. Gamblers do the same thing but, in gambling, it's much more a mechanical probability. There's a lot to baseball, as per that previous link, But sometimes you associate power to a ritual and it enables all of those other things to fall into place to the point that you are performing at your peak against the other players doing the same. But even at peak you're losing 7/10ths of the time as a batter. It's wild. Superstitions brace the players for what is to come. Ritual in gambling is not only about winning--it's often about being in the zone. It's about getting into that flow state. At 162 games a year you may need to use that boost to get through. Then you think about the players who have gone back down to the minors and then back up to The Show. It's an ecosystem that promotes this type of... categorization? Correlation? Calling it "thinking" is a bit much but it's definitely an association with the ritual and winning or, more likely, just getting through and surviving.

What do you do with 24 young actors? You make a movie, of course. This is Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused and it's capping off the American Graffiti Sequel Trilogy (that is two episodes) that kicked off Season 4 of Mark's Movies. I said I was going to make a diagram. I didn't. I thought I was going to have something super deep to say here. I don't. Enjoy the episode.

Revisiting things a few years later can be perilous and More American Graffiti is maybe a very good example of this. Even lacking most of the creative team from the first movie American Graffiti still manages to spawn a weird alternate reality sequel to American Graffiti (1973) that comes out a year later called The Hollywood Knights. Knight Time is the Right Time Of the two, The Hollywood Knights is the much more beloved. In writing this episode description I finally cracked the code. I was shocked that an uncredited writer for Two-Lane Blacktop and Aloha, Bobby and Rose would end up making this movie however Floyd Mutrux worked at Second City and, realistically, The Hollywood Knights feels like a very produced graduation improv show where they find a story somewhere in there among all the antics. This movie 100% has Hot Rod credentials. I mentioned Project X and I had known it mostly as a Hot Rod Magazine car because Popular Hot Rodding was on the decline but it, indeed, was the car of Popular Hot Rodding for some time. All of these brands have been eaten up by Motortrend, it seems. The T bucket "rail job" was a cool and very authentic car that rarely shows up in movies. More Isn't Better I wish it was, though. There was some heart and thought put into this movie but I think that the hand of Lucas weighed heavily on the steering wheel of development and production. We can, in hindsight, see that it was inevitable as we've seen the saga of Star Wars but it's unfortunate that it had to be that way. Bill Norton didn't have a prolific credited writing career but was a journeyman TV director. He wouldn't necessarily show up on the list of people who would push back on that as More American Graffiti was at an early point in his directorial career. In a weird tie-in to car movies in general, Monte Hellman was assistant director to Bill Norton on Cisco Pike (1971). Milner was racing what we, today, call a "sling shot" and wearing those masks to not die from the nitromethane fumes was definitely an eye-catcher. Racing was wild back then but these racing scenes, for the most part, are very staged and slow. Other movies have done racing much better (even American Graffiti) but I guess they saved it up for that one last shot. Filming everything for Milner at the track makes it basically a "bottle episode" so I guess that was one way to save some money. Music Matters So the commonality here is the music. A ton of hits. An actual ton. More American Graffiti definitely goes into the later protest songs and hippy movement music while The Hollywood Knights stays in the pockets with The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean (the other The Beach Boys), The Four Seasons, The Chiffons, The Supremes, etc). I think THK shows a bit more range, culturally, than More American Graffiti (which very dedicated to Vietnam and its protests) especially when Newbomb Turk farts "Volare". Interestingly, and I hope it was intentional because I, in my head canon, really want this connection to be real and strong, The Hollywood Knights ends with Martha & The Vandellas' "Heat Wave" and More American Graffiti opens with Martha & The Vandellas' "Heat Wave". For the Audio Enthusiasts Used the WA-47 Jr (cardioid pattern) on the UA Volt 276 with the compressor and vintage modes on. No additional compression was used on the main part of the episode (there was limiting on the whole thing but it was fairly conservative). Stereo section was Rode M5s into a Zoom F6. There was severe wind noise so I cut out a lot of the low end. I did need to run a little bit of voice de-noise because I guess I wasn't speaking very loud and the noise levels around me were wild. The errata part was a Rode VideoMic Go II and I did get rid of some room tone on that one as well. Thanks for listening. Rate, like, and bell that smash for subscribe.

The final entry into Noirvember 2021. Private Investigator? I barely even know her! The 1973 entry into the annals of detective movies by Robert Altman starring Elliott Gould. There's a lot to talk about and I won't mention any of it. I'll try not to. This one is coming out hot so keep your eyes peeled for any updates here. This movie definitely has some content warnings that the 70's just didn't have. Marty Augustine is huge on that. He's the prototype for the Heath Ledger Joker, pretty much. He's like "what if the Joker was a chill dude within the system versus outside of it?" It's wild. High Tower Court is a wild place. Really. https://www.laweekly.com/high-tower-court-what-its-like-to-live-in-the-famous-hollywood-landmark-from-the-long-goodbye/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpgm7SVRws0 High Tower Court like overlooks the Hollywood Bowl (or is super nearby). This area is pretty magical to me. Coming from flatland the elevation changes alone are wonderful. But it's mysterious. It's fascinating. I saw a musical at the Hollywood Bowl and it definitely felt like something. A Simple Favor, starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, feels like an update version of The Long Goodbye. It's an interesting movie. I liked it a lot more than I initially thought I would although it's maybe more inspired by the text than the film. Still, worth mentioning. Also, Michael Connolley's second Bosch book, The Black Ice, is inspired by a mix of the book and the film. I liked that book quite a bit as well. I feel like "el porto del gato" inspired the "GATO!!!" in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Shane Black isn't above that. "El Porto" is an unusual way to say "the door" in Spanish. I'd go for "la puerta" but I learned not too long ago that "porton" was an older word for a door based on the name of a restaurant. So I'll accept it as being fine although, in the book, the Spanish isn't always exactly on point. Chandler was born in Chicago and grew up in England so the actual fuck did he know about Spanish. That doesn't detract from the story or anything but he's such a picky little bastard about his hoighty toighyt literary references you'd think he'd spend a little more time getting that right. But Chandler had a lot of his own issues. I didn't mention Dr. Veringer at all and I'm sure there's a lot to mention there but he's played by the Illinois Nazi from The Blues Brothers, Henry Gibson. Wonderful character actor. I also didn't mention the kid working at the grocery store or Marlowe subsequently seeing him in jail. Good stuff. There's a lot of that. I also didn't mention dogs. But there was the one white dog in the middle of the road that Marlowe calls "Asta". He's got a cigarette in his mouth so it sounds like Astor as if it was a rich person or an Iranian prophet but it's definitely Asta the dog from The Thin Man. The director and screenwriter(s) definitely know about Film Noir and detective movies and books and they consciously chose to not quite do that. The Thin Man movie slaps, though. Super good. I think that Roger Wade was an insert for Chandler but also a reference to Hammett. I organically compared Hammett to Hemingway in that last episode but it turns out that was far from an original thought. He's a tall (6'5" or 195-196cm) bearded man who is wildly alcoholic which is a dead ringer for Hemingway. In Cuba tall men are referred to as a "Hemingway". Or were. Chandler, probably, had a bit of an inferiority complex with regards to Hammett who was the originator--the creator from which Chandler modeled his work. But Chandler also probably used that character as an insert himself--being problematically alcoholic. David Carradine has a cameo that focuses on the prison industrial complex and the impending "war on drugs". That was wild. The car that Marlowe drives in this movie was Elliott Gould's actual car at the time. It was a 1948 Lincoln Continental. Really wild. I maintain that cars got cool in the 50's. If you come at be with "but uughghgugh t-buckets and '32 fords" yeah those didn't look like how we think they look like now until the late 40's and early 50's when the GIs came back from military service and had fabrication and mechanical experience and few outlets to get that programming out. But that's when hot rods really took flight. And then the Tri-5's and the Barracuda came out. It's a whole cascade of cool cars around that time. Apropos of nothing, F1 is really cool. If you haven't ever really been into it you can check out F1: Drive to Survive on Netflix. It'll bring you in and explain things along with giving you the stories. Expecto Petronas. Lennox calls Marlowe a "born loser". Lennox and Marlowe weren't friends quite like that in the book--it was more chill and Marlowe was more taking on a charity case as well as sticking to his principles and finding another misfit to get along with. When I said it was a reverse The Great Gatsby I meant it. Just Lennox wasn't the Gatsby. Elieen Wade was the Gatsby and she was murderous. It felt stupid after a while but the writing was compelling. Vilmos Zsigmond is a gangster. The free-roaming camera of this movie was wonderful. I didn't talk about it enough and I didn't inspect this enough but I was short on time and energy. Being sick sucks, team. It really does. I know there were some flubs and yeah, there's not images in this one. Sorry team. I just didn't have the fuel for it. I'll see you sometime next year. I'm still on twitter @coolmarkd feel free to tweet @ me. I don't think DMs are on because I'm not really up for receiving communications from strangers that they wouldn't be OK with saying publicly.

The Maltese Falcon That's all I wanted on the first line. If you don't know, now you know. Definitely watch this one before listening. Housekeeping stuff: Yes, I didn't mention Arthur Edeson at all. I mentioned the cinematography but the cinematographer went unacknowledged. The fact of the matter is that, at the time of this writing, which is actually the time before the recording because I'm sick again but in new and different ways, but I know I'm not going to mention him because, to be honest, he needs an episode for himself. And I will aspire to do that. But I need to get watching because he's worked on a bunch of movies. Just the fact that he worked on this and Casablanca makes him an All Star but when you look at his filmography--wow. But it looked like I had more than enough to talk about this episode so instead of getting into all that I'm going to defer talking about him until I can do so in another episode. I was going to prepare some images. I guess I should do that now. And in the process I wanted to use a cool Photoshop 3D arrow (I've used the 3D stuff in Photoshop before and it was pretty cool). I got alerted that the 3D stuff was going away because of Technology and now I can't see anything from the file that I'd spent some time already working on. I don't have the constitution for this right now. Should have been using Paint 3D, amirite? Ok, I just had to close it and open it twice. No big deal, right? One down, and ?? to go. I'll see what tier of Photoshop I can undertake. Oh! Fun fact. That poster image that I have up there is the one from the Blu-ray. The Blu-ray also has several radio adaptations of the Maltese Falcon with the stars of the movie themselves. Very cool. The original movie posters (or original-looking at any rate) where a bit boosted. One has Bogart holding two guns like he's going to use them. Hilarious. One thing I don't think I'm going to mention is just how gross Sam Spade is with women in the 1931 movie. I told you it was definitely hornier and it was. He had something obvious going on with Effie, and then with Wonderly, and with Iva, and who knows who else. But the Effie one really got me. She's just there working and it's all touchy and feely. Yikes. In the 1941 movie Effie is his wingman and I'd like to think that she just knows better. Give her credit. She's young but she isn't an idiot and doesn't confuse Spade's attention with a relationship. I used the AI colorization from Adobe to color in that frame. I really do think the AI colorization is 100% on the money and they did, indeed, wear makeup to make them look better in black and white. I shot exclusively black and white photographs for a few years and life is a little different when you see it that way. I mean it could be off--a pink shirt on Humphrey Bogart might not have flown too far in 1941 but whatever. Probably don't watch that version. The makeup is unnerving. Just a quick search and yes, their makeup was unusual. These images are decently large, btw. Feel free to zoom in. If you're reading this in your podcatcher, well, I suggest a larger screen for the images. I realize that I used several types of arrows. I apologize for that. Just trying out which ones felt right. Turns out it was none of them, a little bit. And that 3D arrow was such a pain in the ass. Why that shade of blue? It's calming. I'm sure you've seen it before. I flubbed the phonofilm explanation--it's a sound on disc system. I probably flubbed some other things. That Willie Mays Hayes reference is from Major League if you didn't pick that up. If you haven't seen Major League... well you should. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/mystery-of-the-maltese-falcon This story is so good and so wild. I also really hope people 1. like the orchestra hit joke and 2. get that it's a joke. I don't take myself that seriously but I just didn't have another transition to work with. Again, super hoping that you saw the movie before you listened but also before you even read this. The book, compared to the movie, leaves much less to the imagination. I don't know that it's better or worse--just different. In the book some of the questions that I posed are just straight up explained. And perhaps they were explained in the movie as well and I just missed the forest for the trees--that happens to me, too. But O'Shaughnessy basically, yes, did exactly hire Spade and Archer exactly to get got by Thursby. She improvised and shot Miles with Thursby's gun and that was a frame up--she was trying to keep Thursby on ice at least until La Paloma came in to port. The other thing about the book is that it had a couple of red herrings that didn't amount to anything. The dangling storyline of Iva not being home long before Effie showed up was, honestly, better left hanging. It didn't amount to anything. There was also a thing with Miles' brother and we don't even see him. It's meant to gum up the works but, in a movie, you can't fuck around too much. A lot more latitude for that in a book. Also, due to various issues (mostly health), I had precious little time to record and edit this. No time for pickups. I'm positive that I said some incorrect things and I apologize but you probably know what I meant. I left out a lot about the personal lives of the actors. I touched on Bogart's a little bit up until the point of The Falcon but there was more to it than that. Like how, Bogart meets Lauren Bacall who is like 20 years younger than he is (and also a knockout) and they get married. That's controversial. But by all accounts that I've seen it was a happy marriage. No return of the "Battling Bogarts" from his previous relationships. Mary Astor was going through a lot on her own. There was a significant sex scandal attached to her name and things like that were not easy to get through in those days. Honestly, it seems pretty cruel and unfortunate so it's not necessarily worth reading about but understand that this was a big movie for her. I deleted twitter from my phone but if you send me a message or @ me I may get the email and reinstall it. Why, you ask? Just tired of it. Tired of the "a lot of people like this but it's actually bad and they are bad too" takes. I normally missed those but I've been on my phone a lot more since I've been less mobile and it just got to me. I did have a lot of fun putting this episode together and I got some really cool music from Cloud Road Music but life, uh, finds a way to mess me up. They were really hip to the idea and got back to me right away. Good times. Be nice to people. Keep your eyes open for people co-opting what you work for and what you believe in. Stay safe.

Yeah, the way this movie was advertised is a bit different from how I took it. That happens. This is a detective x magic crossover event that might get you your fill of both (or not!) and it's called "Cast A Deadly Spell". My DVD copy is "Hechizo Letal" as it's in Spanish. I realize now that I didn't do a great job at relating this to Halloween (as it's actually release on the 31st of October as opposed to November 1st or, as I have so hackishly declared, Noirvember 1st). At the time of this writing I'm actually really sick and coughing out a lung or sleeping most of the day. It's not COVID, thankfully. I did need to record this in various sessions (re-record it at that--I could have nailed it the first time but I figured all I had to lose was time, ironically enough, and it is irony because I'm considering it from the point of an omniscient narrator with knowledge of the future but choosing to not intervene or change the events). But that means there is zero latitude to record pickups or just do it over for the third time. So there is some errata and missing pieces. "Mulholland Drive", the David Lynch picture, came out in 2001. I got "Mulholland Drive" vibes from "Witch Hunt". I wonder if he caught "Witch Hunt" (1994) at some point and it rattled around in his brain--there were two Lynch alums in it so it's quite possible. "Lost Highway" didn't come out until 1997, so my timeline of these movies is wrong, by the way. I don't know if I stated a timeline in the podcast but the way I was thinking about it was a little backwards. "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" had already come out so the aesthetic was there but the main points of my Lynch influence had not taken shape just yet. That's a wild fact check for my dumb ass. I misquoted Lovecraft in this movie. He says "show it some water.. but be discreet". Whoops. I didn't talk about the music in "Cast A Deadly Spell" at all. It actually won an Emmy. A Primetime Emmy. For this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQm7ZAkfkYI. It was also nominated for sound editing. That's pretty rad. Curt Sobel did the music on this movie and it was good. I liked it. He's also done a ton of other work. His most recent credit was for "Rumble" and I was very much hoping that it was a movie about Link Wray & His Wray Men but it was not. Disappointing. Here's the link to a live stream from Sound Speeds Allen Williams about the IATSE stuff. He's also got a ton of sound capture stuff on his channel which is super useful or super interesting--depending on how you approach it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFTEWvejXY. I know that I talked about "Yojimbo" being an adaptation of Red Harvest but Kurosawa went on record as saying it was actually The Glass Key. I haven't read The Glass Key (just yet) but it lines up pretty good with Red Harvest so.... shrug. I probably also got the timetable wrong there, too. The advertising material paints it as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" but with witches and zombies and that's honestly not a connection I would have made. I really overlooked that completely, but I also really like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" quite a lot... it's just the shoe scene. Wow the shoe scene really messed me up. H. P. Lovecraft was a bit of a weirdo but I did learn, coincidentally, between the recording and the publishing of this episode that his father was committed and died in an asylum which what might have been late-stage syphilis. His mother was also committed at one point and died shortly thereafter. Lovecraft, himself, was plagued with mental health issues for most of his life and I can't help but think that it's linked to early tragedy combined with an intelligence that allowed for learning with out the life experience to contextualize information. That's an incredibly unscientific theory but it feels like it could be true. He also apparently didn't marry his cousin? I don't know. It seems that she was a fiction author. I did finish watching "Witch Hunt". I felt compelled. It wasn't that bad but it also wasn't that good, either. It lives in the middle. They definitely went for it with CGI that was of dubious effectiveness. There's also a trans madame in a magic brothel and a really loose analogue of magic use for The Red Scare which is really just cover for homosexuality or non-cishet or nontraditional (and I know that traditions vary wildly from what we think they are so I mean puritanical American traditions--I took a class on sexuality in college. I'm hip. I'm cool. That was like 15 years ago. I'm so old) sexuality which was also how HUAC was used in blackballing Communists and homosexuals in Hollywood. We do see a very young Clifton Collins Jr. at the brothel which is located in the Millard House, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house that has shown up in more than a couple of things--most lately that I can remember it's in Westworld (which might have an entire season that I haven't seen yet--yikes). I started to feel better about the plot and the mystery but then, after a little bit, I didn't? Does that make sense. Maybe it was illness and medication. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention. Doesn't change my opinion of the movie. I also found out the name of the other theater in the Hollywood hills (or in the hills at least, not sure what exactly defines the "Hollywood" hills)--it's The Ford. I've been to the Hollywood Bowl and that was actually really cool. I think, in the animated movie "Sing", when their theater collapses (spoiler) the stage they end up on is an homage to The Ford but I could be wrong. Ward is wearing a really cool Hamilton watch, though. Hamilton Watch Company is an American company that got swallowed up by Swatch in 1969 and now, I guess, they are Swiss. But sir, ve are Sviss! ....them too! God bless Eurotrip. I went looking for and and, with the help of Bandrew Scott I found it to be a Piping Rock. That's a 1928 model, however, those were seemingly all gold. Watchcastage sleuth Bandrew then found that there was a reissue of the 1928 Yankees World Series version which is pretty cool. Check out the very fun podcast Boars, Gore, and Swords. Red Scott also has another podcast that I listen to called Failure to Adapt which is a good time if you read books and watch book movies. I talk good and stuff. Neil Gaiman's A Study In Emerald as a PDF exclusive on his website. I was unable to find the link that leads to the PDF at the moment (and it may have been lost in the website redesign shuffle) but the standard rights apply--don't resell or reproduce this story it's Neil's property, etc. There is a graphic novel that is available if you want to support the author. Support local booksellers if you can. There's also a board game which is, roughly, a deck builder. Check out Austin Grossman's work. Soon I Will Be Invincible is where I jumped on that train and I haven't jumped off. He's also a game designer and the list of games he's worked on include System Shock, Deus Ex, and Dishonored which are very much my shit. I think a really good representation of Lovecraft's work--but in a visual medium--is Polish painter, photographer, and sculptor Zdzisław Beksiński. Apparently his style is characterized as "dystopian surrealism" and holy shit is this Lovecraftian. Zdzislaw Beksinski - 707 artworks - painting (wikiart.org) gabe on Twitter: "don't want to go through whatever Zdzisław Beksiński went through https://t.co/CNcgVfERFe" / Twitter

1993 was a transitional period. We were slowly, ass a country, shedding the action movie template of the 70's and 80's while experimenting with some headier notions on how we relate to media. Last Action Hero was, is, seeming, a product of this time. Woefully misunderstood or, at the very least, disliked and, probably, mostly unexamined, this episode is really going to try to dig in a little more. I'll drop a quick link here for Patrick (H) Willem's Plot Holes video to set the level. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9HivyjAKlc And additionally, if you would like to just be unhappy with other people on the internet, you can check out the reply or reaction videos. Not my favorites. However the Willems video touches upon the exact concept I was thinking about as I had recorded this episode: verisimilitude. The "joke" is that the movie world of Last Action Hero has a very loose grip on verisimilitude and logical consistency. There are some movies that do exactly that and the Jack Slater series takes that up a notch. Well, several notches, to be honest. To completely ridiculous with a wink, and a nod, and an elbow to the ribs, and a "eh? eh?" and I actually dig that. It's possible that audiences were expecting a more straight-forward movie world. That means that the movie isn't going to be enjoyable but it doesn't make it bad. Those are two different things. There are people so caught up in the verisimilitude of the media they consume that they watch 20 seasons of procedurals who rarely, if ever, deviate from their structures and concepts. They're invested in those worlds. It's quite often that those worlds are ridiculous parodies of our own "real" world--especially when technology is involved--but that doesn't make them "good" or "bad" qualitatively. We all watched The Social Network (2010) and we were not terribly concerned with the inconsistencies with our own reality but, in contrast, immersed in the verisimilitude of that movie. It felt more real than reality in some ways. And maybe that was the part of the execution that didn't land. How do you make falling into a very over-the-top and ridiculous action movie feel real? Movies where cars explode into huge fireballs in a display of exhibitionist pyrotechnics. Heroes who are impossibly wounded still performing at the level of an Olympian at their physical peak. We, as an audience (and by "we" I mean "I"), get into the action movies like that. They're internally consistent, sure, and definitely entertaining and engaging to varying degrees, but they aren't "real". But when you put this in a Picture-in-Picture frame and have something much more consistent with our "real" world (even if it's gone past realism into just pessimism with realistic physics) it can all look very silly. There is a huge contrast in the color palette (if you've seen a US vs Mexico color grading it's about that jarring) and that type of action movie wasn't always quite as bright or childish while, to a certain extent, still being marketed to young boys. Perhaps that's what Shane Black was talking about--maybe it wasn't William Goldman giving the movie "heart" but instead having a cartoon cat voiced by Danny DeVito. Maybe those frames, layered on top of each other, were too different. Perhaps the original intent was lost. Maybe I'm just a fan and forced it to work in my head but, in thinking about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and believing that this was a dry run for that type of movie, I think that Shane Black could have pulled it off. It just would have been more like Lethal Weapon or The Last Boyscout and I don't have a concept in my head of how that would have worked. I'd love to read the fully Shane Black pass, though. Where he took the Faustian blood-soaked morality tale. The movie still has a message. Would it have kept it? Would it have doubled down on cynicism? Would Danny have actually used the gun on THE PROJECTIONIST? Perhaps that was an empowerment fantasy; the world had already challenged Danny in big ways (even the thief challenges Danny) and this was Danny rising to meet and over come it. Anyway, there are some other links. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-05-05-we-8540-story.html https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/last-action-hero/ https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/last-action-hero-1993 https://youtu.be/w5p99bhPnOQ Yes, it became obvious to me at some point that I missed using just about every catchphrase. I am probably more disappointed than you are. I also was recording outside and I just had some weird terrible noise that I had to remove. The result is an eerily silent(ish) recording that is punctuated by birds. I do not keep birds. The Last Action Hero: Official Moviebook is also incredibly cool. Tons of behind the scene content and essentially took the place of a making-of featurette (or various making-of featurette's). If you're interested you can probably find it used for a few bucks. I don't remember how much I paid for mine but it was in good condition. Not incredibly cheap but also not expensive enough to be weird about. I also wonder how influential this movie was to the Captain America: Winter Soldier glass elevator. That one obviously was executed with just more... everything but they don't feel too dissimilar. @coolmarkd on twitter. markd20 on Letterboxd.

1989 saw Stallone and Russell team up as Tango & Cash. Let's talk about this movie as there is a lot of hidden depth here. Sounds intriguing, yes? That's how I get you. Description bait. If you want the link for the Kevin Smith video I mention it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2KB1dEDdk @coolmarkd on Twitter (best way to reach me) MarkD20 on Letterboxd

Sometimes you're looking for the heat but you get the breaking ball. This was one of those times. Marnie was not what I expected and this episode travels down some roads that may be upsetting to some people. Sometimes The Greats aren't all that great. Sometimes they just don't show up. It can be attributed to a variety of things, both personal and/or professional. Creative or practical. You name it. We can never truly know the people we look up to. New microphone, who dis? I don't think I'll keep using it long term but I'm also still in the feeling it out phase. The difference between suspecting and knowing is... wide. It's a gulf. I'm not going to lie--I'm still mulling over what I'd learned for this one. So the first impulse might be "yeah there's all these people coming out with stories now" but, to put that into perspective, many of those instances happened years ago and, furthermore, it has been happening for years longer than that. It's not a "right now" or "trend" thing--that is just the public become aware of it at scale. But it has happened. In isolation. Or not in isolation but under the shroud of a "powerful director" who could and would (and did) ruin a career if denied or crossed. It's happened for years. To all types of people. So many people knew and many probably weren't quiet about it but nothing was done. At most the people talking about it were threatened into silence. Maybe that's how you get "open secrets". It's really telling that there are people who are distinctly not like this. There's a wide gamut as to how people are treated and it's explored in this really great video by Maggie Mae Fish (who is super great you should watch her stuff). But that's always been one thing that I did think to be true for some time--that art and genius is suffering and causes suffering. I don't know that this specific situation is that more than it's the inverse--a man trying to live out his dreams through movies while also trying to live out his dreams with the cast of said movies--but it deserves to be examined. @coolmarkd on Twitter MarkD20 on Letterboxd And what the fuck is a "sex mystery" anyway? The fuck outta here with that shit.

Speak "friend" and build an atomic bomb with a precocious genius in this 1986 movie that, from the poster, looks like a paranoia thriller--and it almost is! Or it is, partly. But yeah this is another Saturday TV matinee movie from my youth and it's kinda good. There is a lot more to unpack in this movie than the average matinee. There's definitely some interesting attitudes towards things in the movie. Paul is very obviously down on smoking. In '86 smoking on airplanes was still a thing. There were smoking sections in restaurants. It wasn't until the late 90's and early 2000's that smoking in public areas really started to go away but this movie was already taking that stance. It's curious to see this overt anti-smoking protagonist in a movie as early as 1986 as the next time I can think of an example of this it's in Attack of the Clones (2000-whatever) where Kenobi is offered, and declines, a Death Stick. Thinking back on it, it seems foreign, but cigarettes and cigarette advertisements were everywhere. Literally and figuratively. NASCAR, every damned magazine, bus stops, grocery stores, the whole nine. I really need to think back on it because there has been legislation limiting the avenues for advertisement of cigarettes for a few years now and, honestly, seeing a cigarette ad in 2021 would be somewhat of a shock to me. Paul is also turbo judgy about alcohol. Like damn kid, did a glass of wine kick your dog? It is a very weird situation though because Paul is legit 17 years old according to what I've seen and while there were places that still had a drinking age of 18 in the US around that time New York state was decidedly not one of them. New York state had been raised to 19 in 1982ish (maybe '83 i can't find the tab--sue me). Then, in 1985, it was raised to 21 which is just the normal age in the U.S. at this point in time. Matthewson is out with Elizabeth and Paul and it is just very weird that Paul has a glass of wine poured out for him. He's really not receptive to Matthewson's attempt to get him and his mom to drink more and I think I just cracked the code on that scene. Paul is a bit of a dick when he says, "I don't drink wine. It impairs my judgement." That was actually aimed at his mom who had just said her "head was spinning" and I guess is aimed at Matthewson, as well, because of the implication of getting his mom sauced up to then, later, smash. Yeah, that's probably it, and I'm just bad at picking up on some things but, also, what the hell is Paul doing with a glass of wine? He's 17. The hell is going on here? The scene with the other science nerds mounting a rescue of Paul and Jenny against actual trained killers is really just sublime 80's adolescent adventure fantasy. They have synchronized watches. It's everything a kid could want with just that much more heart than you expect. They start out adversarial and, through their desire to learn about and sabotage Paul, learn about the military's detainment of Paul and Jenny and ultimate band together to help their fellow nerd aside from actually stealing an atomic bomb so that it can't be collected by The Government. Sometimes you really need to think these things through but the 80's was not one of those times--let's do some reckless shit! It's that optimistic outlook shining through, again. Let me also talk about why you should never try to build an atomic bomb and, especially, not using this movie as a template. Everyone is just walking around like "it's hot" with geiger counters popping off. That's bad. That's very bad. All of those 5-leaf clovers? Very bad. That's cancer and death bad. Using a clear sports water bottle to hold the most plutonium that ever plutoniumed in the history of plutonium is very ill-advised. Outside of the suspension of disbelief that this movie requires that kid would be dead and everyone he knew would maybe be dead, too. It's real bad. I like that they use the cool plastic box with the gloves, though. That's one of my favorite things ever. I want a media blasting station just so I can use the gloves with the thing in the box. And also sandblast things. But I don't work on things that require sandblasting and, subsequently, powder coating so it would be a rather pointless and cosmetic purchase that would ultimately be more trouble, to me, than it's worth. There was a time where I seriously considered going down this route, though, and it's a really badass accessory to metal fabrication professionally, or as a hobby. Anyway, don't do anything that Paul does in this movie. Like, not a goddamn thing. It's all pretty much things that should not be done in the interest of life and limb. Speaking of green goop, bringing up Alberto VO5 was very good. I miss those days of endless shampoo and hair product commercials. Alberto VO5, Vidal Sassoon, and Samy. Now I know most of you have no idea who Samy is but Samy, celebrity hair stylist, was steady on TV in the South Florida market at this time. I've been looking for a commercial from that era and I can't actually find one but just know that Samy was the stylist for two First Ladies among other famous people. His commercials really worked, too, because he always signed off with his catch phrase, «¡Si tu luces bien, yo luzco mejor!» and that is burned, indelibly, in my brain alongside the theme song for "Dos Mujeres, Un Camino", Sabado Gigante, and Walter Mercado. I used the chevrons because that's a fun relic of older books--Spanish, especially in the Americas and even more especially on the Internet, seems to have fully adopted the double quotes used regularly in English. Additionally, the upside-down antecedent punctuation has also mostly gone away. It's just a pain in the ass to type. But that's a great catchphrase. "If you look good, I look better!" would be the direct translation but the implication here is "If you look good, that makes me look better." with the implication that your radiant appearance is advertising for his salon and hair products. Samy is still out there--still going. Living the dream. I also realized that I misnamed "The Day The Earth Stood Still" but I also recorded this quite late at night and in parts so I'm sure that wasn't the only thing I slightly flubbed .The movie is pretty great though and is one of the earlier "classic" science fiction movies. It is a very legitimate allegory for nuclear weapons and MAD. This film is in the Library of Congress and it should be. I didn't see the remake, actually, but the 1951 version is very watchable IMO. The original Ocean's Eleven, on the other hand, is not as good as the remake. The remake really streamlines and focuses everyone and everything in the movie. They legit use guns in the original. Chi McBride's character in Gone in 60 Seconds (2001) got it right when he said "Any asshole can pull a gun on somebody!" It really undercuts the whole thesis of the movie that these are the heist guys. These are the people could steal anything. Anyway. Above is "The Writer Speaks: Marshall Brickman". It spends a lot of time talking about Marshall himself--his life and who he is as a person. Then they spend a decent amount of time on other movies and, while that's super fun, we do only get like 3 or 4 minutes on The Manhattan Project. Again, this movie didn't land opening weekend and just disappeared is what it feels like. Roger Ebert gave this movie a 4/4 and I can get behind that. I may have undersold the movie a little bit--I do like it and I think it's good. I don't think it will change anyone's life in 2021 but, in 1986, this might very well have been a 4/4 movie (indeed it was to at least some people--Roger Ebert himself said so). It's really interesting to see how it has fallen away from popular thought but I think it might be streaming on HBO Max at the moment so go ahead and check it out. As always you can reach out to me @coolmarkd on Twitter with any questions, comments, or interesting insights.

Hey, sometimes we say the wrong words. This time I said a few wrong words. No, I did not go back in and pick those up. Let me know if I need corrections. House and House 2 are, apparently, comedy horror "cult" movies from the mid-80's that live rent-free in my mind (I hadn't heard about "rent-free" until maybe two years ago so I'm trying to use it more to seem relatable. My life isn't unique but it is different. Or maybe it isn't different but it is unique. Depends on how you look at the broad strokes of American life and what that entails--indeed what even "American" entails--and where it entails). This feels like a continuation of the Saturday Matinees series that kicked off with My Science Project. What is comedy horror? What does any of this even mean? Where do you want to go today? Perhaps not that many answers in this episode but it's been a fun time. I'm sure I had plans for these show notes but here we are. If you can't click the links go ahead and visit https://scummbags.com/series/marks-movie-collection/ OTS: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me — Geeks Rising Yeah, it's On The Subject. Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No. 9 — Night Vale Presents Available where you get podcasts @coolmarkd on Twitter MarkD20 on Letterboxd

Hey, everybody. Mark D. IT Guy. Generally bad spy here. Just talking for a few minutes about what's to come on the podcast. We will be jumping into the prolific James Bond franchise but not all at once and not right away.

Let's take it back to the good ol' days and grab some UFO parts to turn in as our science project. Yep. That's the movie. I'm pretty sure I had things to say about this here but I can't think of what they are presently--I reserve the right to update this in the future. I'll be on On The Subject pretty soon. On The Subject is a really cool movie and TV podcast with them Subject boys: Malcolm, Zach, and Logan and you can find them on geeksrising.com but I didn't want to end that sentence with a period so I'm going to keep typing because it does frustrate me when sentences end with a URL and then a period--it's ambiguous. The current theme is movies that came from TV shows. I am excite. I'm not sure when that episode will be released but I do know what we will be On The Subject of--I'll leave it as a bit of a mystery. Additionally, I'll be on the Not Just Heather's Podcast. You can't really hear the possessive when I say it. It's still in an early state but you can find more info at justheathers.com/podcast and I'm also not going to end this with a period for clarity's sake. It sounds like if there's a Just Heathers and Not Just Heathers podcast I'd, obviously, be on the Not Just Heathers podcast however the Just Heathers podcast would be really great. Heather Welch is the host and there could be a lot of guests:Heather... Locklear? the model and actressHeather Anne Campbell, the hilarious improvisor, podcaster, and games journalistWinona Ryder, star of "Heathers"Calluna vulgaris, the actual heather flower. Although sometimes flowers have very foul mouths and based on the name this one might not be an exceptionHeather Wallace, Canadian squash playerHeather Mason, the character from Silent Hill 3Heather Wilde, one of the founders of EvernoteSean Heather, the cricketerReally, the possibilities are endless. The only rule is Heather. I'm a fan of heather gray, the color, so I could potentially sneak in with that one, too. But I feel like this bit has run its course--it's obviously not just Heathers but it is Just Heather's (and Not Just Heather's) so check that out.

Lucas Black is not from Arkansas. The roar of the crowd. The thrill of the cliché and the agony of defeat. These are just a few things I've typed into this episode's show notes. This isn't the first sports movie I've done but it is the first (American) football movie and the first one based on a true story (I think) (I think it's the first movie on the show based on a true story because I haven't bothered to check but I know that this movie is based on a true story) and it's the 1990 book's 2004 film adaptation: Friday Night Lights. None if the preceding had much to do with the movie except for the title of the movie. There are definitely some hanging chads in this episode that likely came from the temporal disparity of how it was created. Initially I stated that "I don't wahnt yer laf" was the thesis of Friday Night Lights but I don't know that it was so much accurate as it was convenient for the Varsity Blues tie-in. I think that some, probably many, of the children in Friday Night Lights do, in fact, "wahnt [this] laf". To be a football player is the greatest achievement that many of them know and probably the greatest achievement that they've been presented with. There are also lines in the trailer that don't even sound like actors in the movie--I think those might have been soundalikes by the trailer house because I don't actually remember some of those lines in the movie. By some I mean like one or two. I also don't know what song that is in the trailer. Spy Game – SCUMMbags Lucas Black is from Alabama. Not Arkansas. I don't know where I got Arkansas from. Maybe I was thinking about Billy Bob Thornton and just got confused. It was 2AM. The relatively coherent intro, however, was recorded the day after watching the movie and at noon. A reasonable hour. If you're thinking about the dangling concept from the intro regarding who would set that straight you might have made the connection about me not talking about the half-time speech at the championship games that Coach Gaines makes. That's basically it. That's who does it and that's where he does it. And it is probably the actual thesis of the movie. That and the curses speech are the two most important pieces of dialogue. I didn't talk about the half-time speech because I'd love for you to watch it--if not in the context of the movie then look it up on YouTube because I'm fairly certain it's available. Allan Graff is an accomplished second unit/AD director and stunt coordinator. He also worked on the football sequences for Any Given Sunday and that was readily apparent to me when watching the movie. I didn't actually look that up to confirm it until now which is why I didn't pop off like i told you i was right im always riiight aaaaghghahgahaghah. That's typically not a good look. But it feels great. I'm not always right, though. Thinking back what's up with the part they gave Connie Britton? She did 100 episodes on Spin City and she ends up with 5 or 6 lines? Then goes on to do 76 episodes of Friday Night Lights because c'mon team. Then goes on to do 98 episodes of Nashville. Let's put some respect on her name. There's an embed on the page for the Patrick (H) Willems video "A Complete Guide to Pop Music Needle Drops in Movies" below. If you can see it you do have enough information to search for it on YouTube. The photos below are my copy of Explosions In The Sky's pressing of "The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place". It did have that inscription on the back of the second disc and it's really something beautiful and unexpected. I don't know that my second disc has ever seen the turntable but I did take these photos at 3AM and it really did resonate with me. I thought the watermark would be an interesting way to get some search traffic but ultimately it looks terrible and I apologize. On another day I'll probably update the images with something less hideous. I really am a sucker for good packaging on a record. If you don't believe me check out the episode of Mark's Music Collection on Foxhole's album "We The Wintering Tree". And when I said "The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place" was featured in its entirety I actually meant "every song shows up". And when i said "repro", like reproduciton, I meant "reprint". The music used in the recording is from a sound library--it isn't an Explosions In the Sky song. The entire album doesn't play but every song makes an appearance. It is an album of love songs, according to the band, and I would go out on a limb and say it's love that's maybe been lost. And that's difficult. But the earth is not a cold dead place. In a way these kids in this movie lost the loves of their short and brilliant little lives--football. Youth. It's leaving them at every minute and they just don't know it yet--and least not until the end of the movie. And it's on them to accept that and move on but they are still listening. They are still breathing. As always you can find me on twitter @coolmarkd and on Letterboxd @MarkD20

2008's Apatow-produced Segel-written Segel-acted adult comedy hit me like a guided missile. In this third calendar year of this podcast I've really come to just pick movies that I like and, by golly, do I enjoy this movie. I genuinely think I covered the majority of the ground on this one. No random 15-page notes on this episode. Disappointing even to me. Maybe I've turned a corner. In my, simultaneously, disorganized and pedantic mind I do see the web of influence sourced in this movie but it dovetails into the web of influence sourced from Judd Apatow and it may be better to think of it as interference patterns of stones thrown into a still pond. It's both beautiful and complex once we start thinking about Jason Segel, himself, and Jonah Hill, and Kristen Bell, and Mila Kunis, and Bill Hader, and Nick Stoller, and I'm certain I've forgotten someone in this haphazard slapdash excuse for show notes or a show description as I'm watching Gary Whitta play "Among Us" with folks from "The Guild" and "Hello, From The Magic Tavern" who also work at Jackbox Games which is an already surreal matchup but now paired with an incomprehensible arrangement of nouns that could plausibly exist on a space ship. Listen, nothing here is going to reflect on this podcast episode. I think I've gotten it all out. It took me three months to watch this movie. I could have but I didn't track positions in frame or eyelines or blocking. I could have and, in my smooth memory brain, I would guess that Jason Segel is placed in frame on the left looking towards the right in points of optimism (like a lot of scenes where Mila Kunis is around once they've established their... whatever it is [labels are so messy]) and on the right looking left in low points (like the breakfast buffet where he sees Kristen Bell and Russel Brand eating breakfast just outside and he sits so close to the buffet). But I didn't. I did not. I shall not. Not this time, at any rate. I am however in the process of watching "Dispatches from Elsewhere" and it's both unusual and unusually charming. There's definitely a good amount of prior work that could potentially be considered influences on it but that doesn't take away from it. I watched the first four episodes apparently out of order (based on the order of the titles on the blu-ray and the order that IMDb has them listed) and I actually really liked it that way. The way that the episodes are set up still gets you setups and pay offs but you get them in maybe a different order that is less casual and perhaps intended. I started the fifth episode and now I'm worried that it's too out of order. But maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe I should go to sleep. I will acknowledge that there is some shenanigans with de-breath happening. I need speech coaching or something. The end result is some words will get completely flattened by the de-breath plugin because I'm just a boosted animal and I get tired of listening to my own voice after a point. Keeping these shorter is helpful. I do have a ridiculous fantasy where I get Jason Segel to play me in a movie and Joe Manganiello to play me in the post-apocalyptic alternate timeline of that movie and then Steve Agee to play me in the alternate alternate timeline. But that's mostly focused on how these actors are tall and not how they resemble me in any respect. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd.

Just checking in with everyone for 2021. Full normal episode coming... at some point! Catch me on Twitter @coolmarkd.

Hey everyone! Mark D here and we're watching some Anime! Cowboy Bebop is a universally beloved series and we're going to go ahead and check out the movie which takes place near the end of the series--so we get all of our favorite characters. There's going to be a lot of links in these show notes so check it out on scummbags.com for easier browsing. First off--I made more than a couple of mistakes in this recording. Even after adding in the correction I think I made another mistake somewhere that was really dumb. I forget what it is at the moment. But I know it's there. So please forgive me. I'm dumb but I also acknowledge that I'm dumb and constantly working on it :) Not being dumb. Working on not being dumb. Not working on being dumb. That wouldn't be productive but it certainly would be easier. Edit now I remembered. I said "Toonami" when I meant "adult swim". What an idiot. [adult swim]. I really love the art direction of adult swim. It's great. Links Cowboy Bebop The Movie: Revisiting A Classic (ANIME ABANDON) - YouTubeA Fistful of Woolongs - A Cowboy Bebop Retrospective - YouTubeCowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) - in-depth movie review - YouTubeThe Man Behind Cowboy Bebop - YouTube and The Man Behind Cowboy Bebop [Part 2] - YouTube but the first video focuses and Bebop and the movie. They're just good videos and I'll confess I didn't watch the second one all the way through. Cowboy Bebop and The West - YouTube So the above are all Cowboy Bebop videos that are pretty good to great. Give them a shot if you want to get a little deeper into the show. The STEVEM piece on Watanabe, "The Man Behind Cowboy Bebop," videos are extremely thorough and will lend a lot of context to *waves hands* everything. The Steak Bentley video, "Cowboy Bebop and The West," is also really interesting however it's made in the style of YouTube so it takes a bit to get going and there's some jokes in there that are visual in nature and distinctly idiosyncratic. Just as an aside, Tim Rogers' non-fiction film ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS PAC-MAN - YouTube is great. This has exactly nothing to do with the show notes I just like it. I've been home for basically 9 months at this point. If I was a baby I'd be born. It's wild. I realized, visiting a doctor's office, that I've forgotten how to navigate in-person interactions. It's really weird. So just check in with yourself a little bit. There's a lot of impact happening here that isn't visibly obvious but hopefully we'll be improving soon. <3 Also, John Cho Talks Upcoming Cowboy Bebop Netflix Series - YouTube. I was very not excited for this but I do think that John Cho would be the one to pull of Spike Spiegel. I think he's a good actor and he definitely has a brand. He did get injured and this paused the production of the movie and now pandemic and all that but I'm definitely going to give it a shot. I think that trying to do it 1:1 might be a massive mistake because--being animation--you can definitely defy the medium of the motion picture that it is simultaneously projecting to you in delightfully inconsistent ways but when it's live action it's live action and when you get cute with the mechanics of the world or use excessive CG to replicate it that's when things can go sideways. So I'm cautiously optimistic.

Join Mark D as he clambers down the cliff's edge and commences The Descent. If that's not a whole mood I don't know what is and maybe you're sexists but this is definitely an undercover girl-power chick-flick that absolutely slaps. Check it out streaming on Amazon (US, probably) and don't hit the spoilers because it will 100% change your experience watching the movie. I'm not going to say anything more about it. Twitter is @coolmarkd Tweet @ me for more... things? I guess? idk. The Dark Knight Doesn't KNow.

We're right in the thick of spooky Halloween day (because I was literally just too busy yesterday to finish editing this even though it had already been recorded days ago and I had planned for a Halloween release--I'm a complete fuckup) with the 2010 Joe Johnston remake "The Wolfman". It's definitely a movie and there is absolutely a werewolf so be ready to be jumpscared. That's a Drake song, right? Jumpscare Jumpscare Jumpscare Therewolf acting real were (AWOO!) I'm sure there's some corrections and comments. Hit me up @coolmarkd on twitter and let me know what I did wrong. I'm sure it's plenty. Slash, dismember and impale and don't forget to hit that gore icon for alerts. Trying to do a YouTube thing but scary? Did it work?

Rip and tear with the Doom-inspired remake of the Doom-inspiring original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That stuff about Doom? I made it up. Seems legit, though, right? There's definitely some corrections and things I want to make so I'll make there here. Also, some weird stuff going on so there may be a couple of sound issues. Not sure what that's about just yet but I'll be working those out as I go. Something good The feeling of absolute isolation and a fucked up backwater ass Texas town does work. That type of thing scares the shit out of me. I went to Alaska and that was singularly one of the most remote locations I've ever been to and driving out to see a glacier was terrifying. It was like this movie in some ways but with the addition of the terrain actively being antagonistic and posted signs warning of such antagonism. The editor on the movie was Glen Scantlebury. He was the editor on Dracula ('92), Con Air (this movie makes me laugh every time it's mentioned), and Transformers among other things. Think about that. I didn't even find his name and I was like "this is some Transformers-ass shit". He's done a bunch of other stuff, too.The screenwriter was Scott Kosar. I just couldn't come up with his name. This was his first movie iirc and I'm not trying to shit-talk him I just didn't love the majority of the screenplay and can imagine that there was a lot of "influence" from a certain someone. He was a writer on The Haunting of Hill House which I really liked and really lives in the "horror" space having written on Bates Motel and The Machinist and Amityville Horror ('05) among others. There are some gnarly practical effects in this movie and I would have loved to have seen some special features on them but I have the Blockbuster rental-version of the movie so it's just the movie disc--no special features at all. I'm sure there's something else I forgot to talk about. As always, @coolmarkd on Twitter. Mard20 on Letterboxd.

It's a spoOoOOooooOKy Zach Braff-written-and-directed post-coming-of-age pre-having-a-real-life intestitial-liminal-human-space examination. Not going to lie--I didn't prepare at all for this. It was extemporaneous. Spontaneous. Uranus. Check out the podcast though. It was supposed to be a horror movie but, clearly, that didn't happen. That won't stop me from assuming you just have my super badass podcast on auto queue and you forgo looking at the episode title to ensure that you get maximum surprise. Maximum Derek. There is no Derek in this episode. No Dereks were harmed in the making of this episode. Twitter @coolmarkd Please forgive me I forgot how to make a podcast. I'm not listing this as Season 3 it's really too boosted IMO.

Hey, everyone! In this episode I rank things! That's what people like, right? Rankings? Well, I do that here. This is also the Season 2 finale. I didn't really think about that until now but that's what it is. So there you have it. Season 3 coming at some point. Thanks for listening @coolmarkd on Twitter @markd20 on Letterboxd

Humor is ALIIIIIIIVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEE in 1974's Young Frankenstein written by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks; and directed by Mel Brooks. A bold and controversial choice that maybe cemented both artists in the Hollywood hall of fame (metaphorical--I don't know if there is actually a Hollywood HOF but there is one in my heart). This is the last movie in the 9-disc 9-movie leather belt Mel Brooks Blu-ray collection. It's been a ride. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd.

This is a lesser-discussed Mel Brooks movie that centers around the McGuffin of a set of dining room chairs in the early Soviet Union. It's definitely... different. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd

Let's just send up Star Wars and science fiction adventures in general in Mel Brooks' 1987 film Spaceballs! That's really it. That's the whole show notes. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd.

Want to send up anthology movies but unsure how? Maybe History of the World Part 1 can help. Mel Brook's 1981 historical... something is a laugh riot but audiences and critics seem to be split on it. I messed up a little bit on this one too in that I "read the comments". The comments that critics had on this movie. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd.

Let's forget about robbing from the rich and stealing from the poor and instead go on a bit of a romp in Sherwood Forrest with Mel Brooks in his 1993 Robin Hood: Men In Tights. I don't remember if I needed to add any links in here... I reserve the right to update this at a later date. Twitter @coolmarkd Letterboxd @markd20

"Reach for the skyyyyyyyy" that's not from this movie. This 1974 Mel Brooks movie is Blazing Saddles and there's a bunch of other things from this movie but that's not one of them. There's a lot going on in the production and the legacy of this movie. A lot. A plethora of posts. A cornucopia of controversy. You can definitely get on the internet and read all about it. If you have 18 minutes and 26 seconds you can check out some thoughts on it here. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd. MF DOOM - One Beer interestingly enough the "official video" leaves out the part in question. I'm sure there's a link for more things but we're on a truncated timetable here. Timeboxing like I'm chrono Mike Tyson hit the arcade for Punch Out but get in a street fight to air juggle Mike Bison.

Let's check out Mel Brook's take on a spoof of a riff on a Hitchcock paranoia thriller. It was definitely A Choice. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd.

I actually have zero idea of what this movie is even about. There are movies in the Mel Brooks collection that I've seen many times and there are others that I've seen not at all. This is one of the latter. Let's get into it. This one actually wasn't written by Mel Brooks and is, in fact, a remake of a 1942 film of the same name so that probably does a good job of explaining why it is so different. Not doing research really gets my personal reception of the movie to the forefront but also makes mistakes like this happen. I didn't call out all of the jokes, there were several and they don't all land, but there's a good one in the movie poster. I also found out that Mel Brooks made a Hilter Rap. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd.

It's not a description, it's the title of Mel Brook's 1976 film which is, more or less, a silent movie. Perhaps is was a case of creative stagnation. Or perhaps it was a case of creative excellence manifested in will imposing it's untamed and dark desires upon a major motion picture production. Stay a while and listen. Not forever, though. This one is short. @coolmarkd on twitter. @markd20 on letterboxd.

1985's John Landis-written John Lynn-directed Clue is a wild take on a board game. Sometimes problematic but always goofy as hell let's revisit it. I can't find a working link for the director's commentary that Kevin Smith did. Unsure if it's taken down because of Reasons or if it's behind a paywall. So that's disappointing. As always @coolmarkd on twitter and @markd20 on Letterboxd.

Korean director Kogonada's 2017 feature debut is a quiet and introspective film set in Modern-architecture-laden Columbus, Indiana. Jin and Casey meet and slowly learn about themselves and each other. Spoilers in this one as always. @coolmarkd on twitter. @markd20 on letterboxd.

2020 has been an awful year and I can only do my part and make it worse. The way I do that? Another rapid fire podcast episode. That's right. Zero prep. Minimal thought (that's actually normal). We'll talk about the Wachowski's 2008 movie Speed Racer at a very quick and very surface level. This is a real quick episode. Give it a listen if you're not into pedantry. If I manage to be pedantic I deserve an award. @coolmarkd on Twitter and @markd20 on Letterboxd.

What a ride. Mandy is wild movie. Release in 2018 and written and directed by Panos Cosmatos of Beyond the Black Rainbow fame or notoriety. This is another one that just shocked me so I hurried up and just made an episode. Stick around I remember now what I wanted to put in here. Nic Cage's character, Red Miller, wears a raglan with 44 on his chest. I felt like that was a reference to "44-inch Chest" a movie starring Ray Winstone which also has Ian McShane which is... a lot closer to a stage play than a movie, but was really interesting in that it takes that cerebral look at masculinity upon the circumstance that a former gangster finds that his wife is having an affair. That's a huge mood. And that movie was really interesting. I watched it thinking that it was going to be a legit gangster movie and it was just a really interesting and pleasant surprise. @coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd.

One word: "oooooooof". This is a doozy. 2010's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, based on the series of Scott Pilgrim graphic novels written and illustrated by Bryan Lee O'Malley, directed by Edgar Wright and screenplay by Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall is a movie that did not find commercial success, initially, but has become a cult classic that is near and dear to so many hearts. I know you're all here for the veritable cornucopia of links but for that, and more, use a podcatcher that supports rich show notes or check out the podcast page at scummbags.com Links The Scriptnotes Podcast https://johnaugust.com/podcast. I don't have an exact episode link for you but they have talked about credits and yeah, some of their older stuff might be behind a paywall so really it's up to you. But if you want to start listening to what's available now it's still worth it. Anamanaguchi - Endless Fantasy Video on YouTube. They send a slice of pizza to space.Scott Pilgrim vs. The World cast reunion table read on Entertainment Weekly. It benefits Water for People. It's also on YouTube. This table read fucking slaps but it's not a substitute for watching the movie--it's a completely wonderful companion to it. Social Media, gaming, and addiction links:https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/social-media-addiction/https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2019/05/podcast-47-lootboxes-and-gambling/https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2019/06/podcast-48-lootboxes-part-2/https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2016/08/podcast-19-habit-forming-games/It's really based on the reward schedule. When you're scrolling for posts you get that random reward schedule. Facebook is notorious for shaping your feed based on an ebb and flow of positive emotions that is difficult for you to predict which. They use machine learning to estimate sentiment and emotion from various posts as well as engagement history. And when your metric is engagement well I guess you could do just fine on enragement. There's a good book called "The Tyranny of Metrics". Check it out. Support a local bookseller if possible. Entertainment Weekly's article "Scott Pilgrim: An Oral History" https://ew.com/movies/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world-oral-history/ It's quite good.Scott Pilgrim vs The World Honest Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95Q6gcw3iTkScreenJunkies YouTube Channel (it's amazing) https://www.youtube.com/user/screenjunkiesShonen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dnen_mangahttp://got-a-girl.com/ Dan the Automator and Mary Elizabeth WinsteadScott Pilgrim Soundtrackshttps://open.spotify.com/album/3q1e0dxZARuaHxZkLzgErK?si=a4Y8zlFdRKGnPifWFZTKew the Original Motion Picture Soundtrackhttps://open.spotify.com/album/5fQ4tDLM2FfesO66R9nDF9?si=-ELssPZlRfe5_ntDjgLFkA the Original Score composed by Nigel Godrichsi=8FeMdeJ1TOOTQUc0yECYlw This is the playlist that will make you question why I made a playlist. It makes no sense at all but more on that later. It gets its own section.Bill Pope's IMDb Page https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0691084/Team Deakins podcast with guest Bill Pope https://teamdeakins.libsyn.com/bill-pope This is a fantastic listen. The Team Deakins podcast really is very entertaining if you like to really get into it with filmmaking. Mindhunter VFX Reel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di4Byf1EzREPsych Major by Lex the Lexicon Artist on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErA2fEZmxKsThe Rewatchables Podcast on The Ringer https://www.theringer.com/the-rewatchables They just did The Sandlot so I'm definitely going to check that out. Josh Rivera/transitFM on YouTube and on Spotify and joshrivera.com. His cert is invalid on his website and the hero video plays weird the first time around. It happens. No one wants to maintain a website anymore and who can blame them. Have you seen mine? But this is about as indie rock as it gets. Using quirky devices to make quirky music in the absence of any oversight and contrary to major cultural tastes and popularity. He, also, was in a band in the late-90's and early-00's. I hope you didn't think these notes were over because they're just getting started. Consider this part 2 of the podcast. They probably won't be this long or this involved ever again. The podcast, not the notes. The notes might get longer. Who knows? We'll just have to wait and see. The Playlist Ok, so the playlist is a whole vibe. A whole mood. The amount of characters in the description doesn't count. It doesn't allow anyone to go into anything. But I'll start out with the obvious: my playlists and mixes have always been a bit chaotic. Not to me. To me they make perfect sense and are a reflection of what I am trying to listen to, to experience, to feel. But to others they seem a bit nonsensical. I'm released from that responsibility, a little bit, as Spotify makes it difficult to reorder things (or they did last I checked--it's 160 songs that this point I'm not going in there to try to make sense out of it). Just hit random on it. Accept what comes. Learn to let go a little bit. There are many aspects of this playlist and, I'll spoil the ending for you, they will all fall short. The music in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and the Scott Pilgrim books even more so, are the playlist of an actual human being named Bryan Lee O'Malley who has taste and musical experience that I will never, at this stage in my life, experience or fully understand. Whatever I attempt to project or extrapolate from the music present in the movie is just a straight failure of a basic ass dude from somewhere-the-fuck-else that didn't even know that those bands existed prior to seeing the movie. So just know that it's a failure of trying to be more of the same. The music selection was totally rad, and I think that Edgar Wright had a part of play in that. He also makes some rad playlists on Spotify. My musical taste is different, in the broadest strokes, from either of theirs. That's not to say that I am better (I'm not) or that their taste sucks (it doesn't) but that on any given day those songs aren't necessarily what I would want to listen to. That's changed a bit since some of the songs in the movie really hit with me but I'm speaking in generalities here. I wasn't an indie kid, I was a metal kid that still listened to rap music and grew into prog, math rock, and post-rock. I started out on punk and grunge like O'Malley but ended up on a totally different path. But "hipsters" of today, of now, of 2020, might be into math rock and post-rock and prog. Maybe it's just a different slice of the same pie. That's how I'm going to justify it to myself. I played Grand Theft Auto 5 for a bit. On the X360 because I didn't have a next-gen console at the time. NBD I loved the game. I've played them all except for GTA3 and GTA:SA but I remember renting GTAs 1 and 2 on the PSX and just being blown away by it. Vice City threw me for a loop because it was Miami. How fucking cool was that? In my house you couldn't speak while Miami Vice was airing. So I played 4 and it was cool but 5 really got me. GTA5 was probably as much of a toxicly-masculine-wannabe-macho power trip as it was a therapy session and a "fuck you" to the idea of wealth and celebrity from people who were really being dicks with regards to their employees in search of wealth and, maybe, celebrity. But one of the things I liked about Vice City, GTA4, and GTA5 was the radio stations. Yes, the radio stations. The driving physics were awful but the radio was great. Essentially playlists with some commercials and some DJ spots. I listened to a lot of V-Rock in Vice City. I can't recall what I listened to in GTA4 but in GTA5 I pretty much exclusively listened to Radio Mirror Park. GTA5 is based on Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, and to an extent California in general and Radio Mirror Park factors into that quite a bit. There's a neighborhood called Echo Park which is clearly the inspiration for Mirror Park and it's been called a "hip" neighborhood but in the bad way. The radio DJ is snide and sarcastic but he talks about how the station is what rock and roll has evolved into and it's mostly electronic dance music that I would call, for lack of a better term, casual. But I think it has that nugget of truth in there. Electronic music is somewhat the new DIY punk or rock and roll aesthetic. Music technology has improved by leaps and bounds and having a "garage band" is more like just having Garage Band. I hate myself for saying it but there is some truth to it--yes I know that's why it's named that way I acknowledge my failure. There are supremely talented individuals who can basically make an album by their damn selves. There is no record deal necessary. No studio time to book. Your marketing is Facebook and Instagram. These are truly independent creators who may not even be touring but are putting out some really great music. I think I included some of that in the playlist because, really, it just made sense to me. O'Malley was in a band in the early 00's where a bedroom studio was pretty rare, even with the digi001 being released, still had a high barrier to entry (see digi001), and really had this fucking garbage gate keeping mentality of old dudes who cut tape and looked down upon everyone who didn't or couldn't. That's changed a lot and you can still find some people like that but you can also find people from that era who have grown and expanded their worldviews to include just new shit in recording. If you think that indie is an acoustic guitar and abstract lyrics that's fine but that's not the only indie. So, taking that into consideration, there are some selections like that in there. The books touch upon this, not specifically per se but I guess touches around this with Stephen Stills and Joseph, who has a home studio. I don't know if O'Malley meant that to signify the changing of the guard, so to speak, about music production as well as other things, thematically, but it certainly was the advent of a new generation. I'm out here like some dumbass making a podcast but I could definitely record demos or a backpack album with what I have and this whole technology-making-content-creation-accessible thing really showed up from 2010 and onward. I also threw in some video game music. Gotta have some video game music. Young Neil's DS probably has the Four Swords A Link To The Past GBA game in his DS Lite and he's rocking it consistently throughout the movie as part of the environmental soundtrack. The movie opens up with the opening of the main screen right after the narration if I recall correctly and it keeps it up from there. We get all types of environmental game sounds so it's great. So I threw in some VGM and tried to be varied in my selections. The way that the movie uses sound is so fucking great and I just had to throw that into the overly long podcast. The Party Scene Remember that I said I made a graphic? I totally did. Here it is: There's a lot to look at in this amateurish attempts at a jpeg video essay--and I need to say that I have the utmost respect for video essayists. As a matter of fact I'll drop some massive links for some right here: Patrick (H) Willems https://www.youtube.com/user/patrickhwillems (there's a lot of really good ones here)Folding Ideas https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyNtlmLB73-7gtlBz00XOQQ (the cooking show video is so fucking good)Lindsay Ellis https://www.youtube.com/c/LindsayEllisVids/videos (manufacturing authenticity video for fun and profit was eye-opening and dovetails in with the cooking show video from Folding Ideas. They talk to each other)Nerdwriter (duh) https://www.youtube.com/user/Nerdwriter1 (these are somewhat bite-sized in comparison)Adam Neely https://www.youtube.com/user/havic5 (he's evolved from bass lessons to video essayist on music and wow)Tim Rogers https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjKSoJlPgcK6BmoSqXpj5xQ (An amateur Video Game Liker who turned professional Video Game Writer who ended up creating his own style of criticism in a unique voice that has subsequently, upon becoming independent of Kotaku, turned out two three hour "game reviews" that I think I actually like a lot more than I would like to actually play those games. They're not just reviews anymore. The content is insightful and the style is so engaging that I'm almost there just for the metagame at this point. You can also see the review for Hyrule Warriors on the Kotaku channel to get a taste of what Tim Rogers might do in about half an hour. That and the story about stepping on a rat in the subway from Vermintide. I can't tell if he's serious about Diary of a Tennis Monster or if that's his riff on Infinite Jest. I also don't want to be certain--the uncertainty is too good) Ok so that done I'll get back to the thing. When Scott and Ramona are standing next to each other that shot gets me every time. Everything is so synced up. If you can zoom in and see the faint lines I drew that's to signify the balance between objects. He's wearing a blue shirt with red shirt peeking out and she's wearing a red shirt with a blue pocket. Holy shit, team. Holy. Shit. He red hair stands out on the drab green wall like the red cup stands out against Scott's shirt. Come on. This is masterful. And I know that the actors gave Edgar Wright a hard time about blinking and I'm sure he did several retakes when someone blinked because I get it--no one blinks in a comic book or a manga--but they do blink. Just not often at all. Saying that no one blinks on screen is hyperbolic but not without a nugget of truth. Apologies for the bad arrows but I do need to figure out a tablet at some point. I probably would have rage quit trying to do this on my iPad and I don't have an Apple Pencil so I would have been double pissed. Additionally the video blogs for the movie are on Vimeo and here, specifically, is the video blog on the party scene. Ingrid Haas is legitimately hilarious. The aspect ratio thing happens a few times and when he dies it goes super-wide. Fun fact: this movie was shot on anamorphic for only parts of it. The fight scenes and when things need to be a little surreal is when it was shot on anamorphic. That's wild, right? Galaxy Quest also has a really fun aspect ratio change that didn't really get translated to home video as well because it goes from square--the original TV show--to letterboxed for the con, to then go full 2.3 when he sees space from the ship and the really hot ticket there was that movie theaters would need to actually open the curtains on the sides of the screen to accommodate that image format which must have been wicked to experience. This is a really really good page on aspect ratio changes: https://tadleckman.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/shapeshifiting-films/. Screen Junkies also made a documentary which is available on Amazon Prime called Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary. I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is the exact cover I was thinking of on that last shot: https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Nick_Fury,_Agent_of_S.H.I.E.L.D._Vol_1_4. Jim Steranko did a run on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. that had some wild and badass 60's paranoia covers. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is also streaming on Amazon currently. I think it's a fun movie. If you're an adult in full pandemic-stress-depression then you'll either really like it or really hate it. Again I was close to the age of the characters in the movie when I saw it so I dug it. Other Things My friend Heather is going to be starting her Sunshine Summit from August 9th to the 13th and there are some really cool guests on there. Check it out at https://www.sunshinesummit.live/. Shout out to my boy Luke from Luke Who's Talking :D Samba Stings by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4008-samba-stings License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ None of the other music used as a stinger or under me talking appears in the movie. All of that stuff is from a sound library that I paid up front for a year for and I just really feel that I need to get my money's worth. I also really wanted to see if I could get the vibe that the movie has where the music is just around in the world. I don't think I quite captured it. I know that it's just the service that has won the service game but Spotify really does not provide viable compensation to the artists. I realize it's a difficult market to be in and I believe that other services handle their subscriptions differently but I'm just saying. I'm out here like half protesting Spotify while dropping various links to it. It's not just them but they're the biggest one on the block, so to speak. I had already forgotten that I took the time to write a script to randomize the voices from macOS to say "link in the show notes" because I got tired of hearing myself say "link in the show notes" or, much worse, "link in the description". I also don't have terribly original stuff for stingers and bumpers. But I've had the experience of working with them and it's... annoying. I counted 17 links to put in the description and I'm pretty sure I forgot at least one. I made three First Man jokes the same day I recorded this. That's the space pizza thing. In my head it was "first pizza in space" and that made total sense. I'm sure that joke is landing fucking nowhere. The way the SNES makes music is so wild. It's all sample based, right? So you can get like a random synth sample like the SNES LoZ:ALTTP kinda deal which is pretty basic and you can do some really basic digitization, like TMNTIV:Turtles In Time as I mention and demonstrate, but I didn't talk about the specifics of that. That audio comes straight from the game and what they would do with samples, to save space, was to record them high-pitched and then play them slower to save space. Not every sample but the ones they could get away with, I guess. "Pizza Time" was legit but the "awww, Shellshock" needed to be slowed down and I did that based on memory. I believe that is what it sounded like when played on the hardware. But then it evolves to Donkey Kong Country, as seen in this Nerdwriter video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvIzIAgRWV0 and the music in that game messed me up. I felt like shit just got real. Then you get fucking Tales of Phantasia which what the hell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psahbJJCPuU. Apparently it was thousands of sample files to create this? Fun fact: the SNES is capable of playing "Red Book" audio (fun fact: you know someone is an asshole when they say "Red Book" audio and there isn't really a technical reason for them to say that other than to try to make you feel stupid for not knowing it just means CD audio) and you can see what that might be like in this article. In my list of systems the SNES is somewhat soundly at the top because it was actually my first video game console and coming up hot on its heels is the PSX/PS2. There was a bit of a dynasty there broken up by the Xbox and that was a fun time. If I think of anything else I meant to put in here (I promise you I forgot stuff--I've had countless thoughts lost to the responsibilities of adult life in the past few weeks. Yes, I can write them down but no, I could not have written them down in that moment. 2020 is a bit of a dumpster fire. Be nice to people. Wear a mask. Black Lives Matter. And there's some stuff going on that maybe you should take a look at, while you're at it. I haven't been extremely on top of the news because it's been a lot of bullshit lately but this seems to be getting a lot less press than I would ordinarily expect. Serious jouranlist/critic/writer: You know, Mark, you're a bit too attached to the em dash. Me: e m I?

This was a rough one. It was unplanned. It was almost spontaneous. Because this movie just got me. It hit me. The poster above is actually a Mondo Tees poster by a very talented artist named Jay Shaw that probably will never exist again but it's amazing. There's a lot to go on about with regards to this movie but I'll break down some stuff real quick here. I don't like the official artwork for the Blu-ray. Watch this movie. It's on Vudu and Tubi for free (ish? I think they may have commercials). It might actually be on Amazon Prime Video right now? You can definitely rent or buy on YouTube, Google Play, iTunes, Microsoft, and Roku.Try not to be sleepy. It's a whole mood. There isn't a lot of talking. Put your phone down. I know it's challenging--it is for me too. I don't always succeed but I try. You should too. After watching it you should definitely study the Wikipedia page for it. Panos Cosmatos has given more than a couple of really great interviews and they're collected here in the references. None of the music used in this is from the movie. I actually bought a year's worth of a sound library in a very impulsive moment and I need to feel like I'm getting my money's worth. You can give it a listen on YouTube and it's also on Spotify. I just know remembered the link to Carpenter Brut's Turbo Killer directed by Seth Ickerman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er416Ad3R1g for the folks whose app doesn't handle links (they exist). And if your app doesn't handle links or images... well. Maybe it's time for a change. @coolmarkd on Twitter @markd20 on Letterboxd If I made errors or omissions--sorry. It wasn't on purpose and I'll try to correct it. Be nice. Wear a mask. Black lives matter.