Episode 222: Updates from last week’s show, shout-outs, movies (Stennie: Inglourious Basterds), Pet Story, Japan, What’s Up With That?, fuck offs and you rules, Five Influential Fictional Characters.
Music: “The Hucklebuck,” performed by Sierra Rein, Lee Rocker and Frank Sinatra.
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I have always found Brad Pitt is a much better actor than one would suspect from all the hype surrounding him being “Brad Pitt!!!!” He doesn’t really float my boat, but I usually enjoy movies he’s in and I don’t spend my time thinking “oh, it’s Brad Pitt”.
On Japan, I was just reading about the 50 people who stayed behind at the plant. While I don’t necessarily want to see it become the Chile miners, where eventually you knew their shoe size, we should at least know their names, so they can be remembered. They are going to die a miserable death, and they know it, and we know it. From the vantage point of when I’m typing this comment, it seems like we may have turned a corner with the reactors — hopefully it’s not gotten worse since then.
Influential movie characters is a good topic – thanks Mike. For me, Father Perrault (played by the awesomely wonderful Sam Jaffe) in Lost Horizon would have to rank up there. His simple philosophy “Be Kind” captures it all doesn’t it? Not sure you could ever improve it.
Jaffe’s death scene ranks up there with the all-time greatest scenes in movie history.
There’s another topic for you. Your list of greatest movie moments.
I haven’t seen the Kill Bill movies (yet), but I still have to take issue with the Stennie’s characterization of JACKIE BROWN as a merely “meh” Tarantino work. It ranks among his better efforts–if not as his best work, period–because (I believe) his reverence for the source material serves as a kind of restraint on the usual Tarantino-isms that, for better or worse, characterize the movies he writes himself.
With JB, you get the benefit of things Tarantino does better than just about anybody: the unexpected casting of forgotten and/or under-appreciated actors (Pam Grier, Robert Forster), the use of music (see, e.g., “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind” by The Delfonics’ (“they’re pretty good!”)) to advance story and character development, and some very clever–but reigned in–touches in the screen-adaptation process. Namely, making Jackie black and 40-something instead of younger and white, moving the setting from Miami to LA, and the Rashomon-esque multiple-POV technique applied to the of the money-drop con at the mall. Yet, there’s none of the usual self-indulgent stunts from his other movies. Granted, as you said, even Tarantino’s self-aggrandizing wankery is usually pretty entertaining, but it gets pretty tiresome, too.
For me, JACKIE BROWN is the baby-bear entry in Tarantino’s filmography: neither to much nor too little; it’s just right.
I don’t like Tarantino – I’ve watched his work, and it all seems familiar to other works that have done what he does better. He doesn’t affect me very much – too cool, or he doesn’t go far enough. Kill Bill made me want to scream.
Thanks for the other Kickstarter plug!
That is all.