It's the Man on the Moon @ItsTheManOnTheMoon@laserdisc.party

The balrog is still one of the most effectively scary/awe-inspiring uses of CGI I've ever seen, I guess maybe the creature being mostly obscured by well-rendered flames helps a lot.

The Argonath scene always gives me chills too

Orgy of the Dead is on Vimeo

(CW: everything the title implies in the context of 1963 grindhouse exploitation film.)

Jodorowsky’s Lord of The Rings (Featuring Frank Zappa as Saruman)

Hmm, gray winter Sunday afternoon? it might be time for my annual Lord of the Rings rewatch

Folks, I know I was enthusiastic early on but this is a bad movie and I'm not going to watch the rest of it https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/39-thoughts-we-had-while-watching-transylvania-6-5000

I hadn't seen this in a pretty long time. It's pretty good overall and worth watching to see Michael Mann honing his chops. Plus you get Dennis Farina, Tom Noonan, and Hannibal Lecter played by Brian Cox.

Also, a wildly out-of-nowhere appearance by Chris Elliot that I completely missed in previous viewings. He's just a regular guy with one or two lines in one scene

All you need to know about Transylvania 6-5000 is that it was written and directed by a guy who collaborated a lot with Mel Brooks, but without Mel Brooks. There's a sensibility and rhythm to a lot of the bits that felt familiar and I wasn't at all surprised when I saw Rudy De Luca's other credits

The Mild Bunch

#ruinamoviewithoneletter

Frustrating movie. I want to see the Touchstone version.

Imagining being an animator working your dream job at Disney circa 1989-90, and called into a meeting where you're told told "The good news is: You get to work on an old-school 1930s style short!

The bad news is: You're going to spend the next however many weeks/months of your life making nazi propaganda"

The second half picks up a bit but it's really too bad they couldn't have done this is a slightly more grown-up movie with more grown-up dialog and action. Instead you get that trademark Disney-style "nothing is too intense except for that one shot of Sinclair on fire and screaming just before he crashes into the hollywoodland sign in a ball of flame, which probably traumatized a lot of five-year olds" action.

I'm a little over halfway through a movie called "The Rocketeer" and there's been exactly one scene where he uses the jetpack

ah, I just read that The Rocketeer (and two planned sequels) was originally going to be a Touchstone picture, but Disney ultimately decided to make it a Disney™ movie, thinking they could sell a lot of toys, so that explains a lot.

Other than a Cliff Secord action figure with jetpack, double-breasted jacket, and cool-ass helmet, what the hell toys did they think any kid would want from this movie?

- this mf'er actually ended the film with the train going into the tunnel

- Eva Marie Saint was 35 and the line about her being 26 always bugs me, like, was it a weird Hitchcock thing or a general Hollywood ageism thing or what?
- I wonder how salacious the train tryst was for 1959 and how much that influenced the audience's read on Eve's character
- I'm trying to think of the most recently released film I've seen that came anywhere near close to having the patience and restraint to set up and pay off anything like the crossroads scene

- One thing that always strikes me about this film and Rear Window is how Hitchcock portrays close physical struggles, it's really effectively upsetting and I think maybe it's the sound design? Like, there are vocalizations but not the loud shouting you usually see in a movie scene where someone is being pinned down

- How absolutely great was Martin Landau

- Cary Grant was 55 goddamned years old

Watched this for the umpteenth time last night and I'm not sure there will ever be a better opening credit combo than Hitchcock, Hermann, and Bass (See also: Psycho, plus honorable mention for Donen, Mancini, and Binder)

- As always, It's hard to tell where Hitchcock's casual misogyny ends and the overall casual misogyny of the 1950s begins. 😒

In general it feels like a story set in 1938 was a tough needle to thread in 1991; too early for boomers to really care about, but maybe a little too late for the silent generation?

It's a pretty period piece but story and action-wise it feels like it would be kind of boring for younger kids.

It feels like it had most of the right pieces but put wasn't quite able to pull them together.

This list of people they tried to cast first is an interesting thought experiment.