Mark's Movie Collection

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 … Continue reading Marnie

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 … Continue reading The Manhattan Project (1986)

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 … Continue reading House and House 2

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 … Continue reading My Science Project

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 … Continue reading Friday Night Lights

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 … Continue reading Forgetting Sarah Marshall

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 … Continue reading Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

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 … Continue reading The Descent

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 … Continue reading The Wolfman (2010)

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 … Continue reading The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003): Colon: Scary Movie For October

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 … Continue reading Season 2b – Ep 30 – Garden State

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 … Continue reading The Mel Brooks Collection: A Retrospective

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 … Continue reading Young Frankenstein

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 … Continue reading History of the World: Part 1

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 … Continue reading Robin Hood: Men In Tights

“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 … Continue reading Blazing Saddles

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, … Continue reading To Be Or Not To Be

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 … Continue reading Silent Movie

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. … Continue reading Clue

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 … Continue reading Speed Racer

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 … Continue reading Mandy

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 … Continue reading Scott Pilgrim vs The World

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 … Continue reading Beyond the Black Rainbow

This is probably the first sports movie on the show. It’s really great, though, and it’s called The Sandlot. There are a lot of great moments and a lot of great actors and a lot of great stuff and a lot of great balls of fire! No, that song actually doesn’t appear in the movie … Continue reading The Sandlot