TV/Movies Megathread

[Duque de Bragança]

Blazing Saddles (1974)

What the hell is this?  Those people clearly aren't laying track, they're just milling around with pickaxes.  This film has absolutely no credibility.      

 

(Actually if you go to IMDB you'll see "Goofs" not so different than that one.)  One of Mel Brooks finest.  I haven't seen this since college; I get a lot more of what he's parodying now (especially Madeline Kahn's impression of Marlene Dietrich.)  I think having the railroad foreman named Taggart (as in Atlas Shrugged) was clever.

I think it's obligatory to say this film couldn't be made today, but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.  (I think it's more of a concern that films like "Dog Day Afternoon" or "The Last Picture Show" couldn't be made today; Hollywood wouldn't take chances like that.)  I saw it at a theater, and there was an awful lot of nervous laughter at the beginning, until the audience started to realize it wasn't a racist film.

The pretentious film critic which introduced the film gave a quick explanation of Hedy Lamar (as I think the Hedley Lamar joke would be lost on most younger people) and called her the mother of WiFi.  That was another      moment for me.  Hedy did invent spread spectrum technology (as an anti-jamming technology during the Second World War), but a different sort of spread spectrum technology called frequency hopping (WiFi is an OFDMA technology).  Bluetooth is probably the most well known technology that uses frequency hopping.  (Not to belittle Hedy's invention; it was about 40 years ahead of its time.  That's Bell Labs level innovation.)

I guess Savonarola can comment for Criterion since he managed to beat the pretentious critic at his own game.  Seriously, try audio commentaries by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, quite a different vibe from Criterion.
Speaking of which, Blazing Saddles being released by Warner Bros., not licensed to Criterion, makes no difference. 

[Savonarola]

The Jewish museum in Vienna had a Hedy Lamarr exhibition a few years ago.

She spent her final years here in central Florida, in Casselberry.  I don't know what it was like when she lived there (she died in 2000), but today it's a suburb of Orlando, all housing developments, strip malls and freeways.

[Savonarola]

I guess Savonarola can comment for Criterion since he managed to beat the pretentious critic at his own game. 

 

Lamarr comes up in a lot of articles and books on radio frequency engineering since there's not a lot of women who made contributions to the field, much less Hollywood actresses.  So I'm familiar with what she invented (and it's part of my job to know how different radio technologies work.)

Seriously, try audio commentaries by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, quite a different vibe from Criterion.
Speaking of which, Blazing Saddles being released by Warner Bros., not licensed to Criterion, makes no difference. 

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll see it if I get the chance.

[Darth Wagtaros]

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

A fine cops and robbers feature about a group of armed men who hijack a subway car and demand one million dollars to release the hostages.  Robert Shaw is one of the hijackers and Walter Matthau is the lead transit cop.  It's an interesting view of New York in the 1970s and (to me at least) the train technology.  A lot has changed (there weren't personal computers back then, they didn't have loudspeakers on trains, the doors were automatic but controlled by the conductor, no CCTV), but some things are the same, the giant board in the command center is still the standard and conventional signaling still works the same way.

I haven't seen the Denzel Washington remake; by it's low ratings I'm guessing it's a lot more explosions and gunfire and a lot less suspense.  At least that seemed to me to be the most obvious way the film could have gone wrong.

I think Warriors is a better view of New York in that era.  

[Savonarola]

Space is the Place (1974)

Sun Ra, after finishing his 1969 European tour, has been exploring outer space.  He's found a new world and has returned to earth to teleport black people (to create a separate, but equal planet) through the power of music.  Then he goes back to the 1940s and he and a pimp start playing card games with the entire black race is at stake.  Each card played leads to a vignette in the then present era.  Plus there's a concert, Sun Ra starts an employment agency and NASA is trying to assassinate him.

It's Sun Ra, so of course it's going to be weird, but this is weird to the point that I think you would have to had been there at the time and on an awful lot of drugs for this to have made any sense.  The best I can describe it is a Blaxploitation Afro-Futurist 2001.

[Savonarola]

I think Warriors is a better view of New York in that era. 

I've never seen it; but there are a lot of films shot in New York in the 1970s.  Mayor John Lindsay had set up a Mayor's Office of Film, and The Criteria Channel has a collection of films that were supported by that office (which is how I saw the Taking of Pelham One Two Three.)

[celedhring]

I love the movie, but Warriors is a pretty cartoony film, all in all. I would expect to be mugged if I wandered through 1970s Riverside Park at night (hell, I would even in 2010 when I lived a couple blocks away), but not by a baseball-themed gang in clown makeup

Anyway, the quintessential 1970s NYC movie has to be Taxi Driver for sure?

[Syt]

I love the movie, but Warriors is a pretty cartoony film, all in all. I would expect to be mugged if I wandered through 1970s Riverside Park at night (hell, I would even in 2010 when I lived a couple blocks away), but not by a baseball-themed gang in clown makeup

Anyway, the quintessential 1970s NYC movie has to be Taxi Driver for sure?

Abe "Knuckleball" Schwarz finds your lack of faith disturbing.

[Admiral Yi]

Anyway, the quintessential 1970s NYC movie has to be Taxi Driver for sure?

French Connection? Shaft? Serpico?  Midnight Cowboy?  It's a crowded field.

[celedhring]

Anyway, the quintessential 1970s NYC movie has to be Taxi Driver for sure?

French Connection? Shaft? Serpico?  Midnight Cowboy?  It's a crowded field.

That definitely merits a poll

[Josquius]

Watched 'The Hunger Games' for the first time; OK teen adventure, but then I'm not the intended audience, but refreshing for it's lack of OTT violence.

The best thing about that movie was the Pitch Meeting it inspired:

This is funny.
And reminds me of Battle Royale.
Gosh that was a good film.

[Savonarola]

Anyway, the quintessential 1970s NYC movie has to be Taxi Driver for sure?

French Connection? Shaft? Serpico?  Midnight Cowboy?  It's a crowded field.

That definitely merits a poll

You should include Escape from New York

 

Seriously I'd suggest Manhattan and Dog Day Afternoon as well (and maybe Mean Streets, but you do already have Taxi Driver.)

[Darth Wagtaros]

Anyway, the quintessential 1970s NYC movie has to be Taxi Driver for sure?

French Connection? Shaft? Serpico?  Midnight Cowboy?  It's a crowded field.

That definitely merits a poll

You should include Escape from New York

 

Seriously I'd suggest Manhattan and Dog Day Afternoon as well (and maybe Mean Streets, but you do already have Taxi Driver.)

Yes, Escape from New York is definitely a true to life portrait of what living in NYC was and is like.

Warriors' Baseball Furies merely predicted the Juggalos. 

[HVC]

At least it's not a remake. Also, I guess there some voices they had to recast, or just got rid of them.

[Razgovory]

The guy who did Dale Gribble died.