Isegoria (he is a daily read, right posts a review of an article about the science fiction classic Dune. The excerpt is pretty interesting but also includes a link to an episode of historian Tom Holland's podcast The Rest Is History, in which Holland talks about just how much of both science fiction and Hollywood is about Rome.
Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Dune, and all sorts of less likely films explicitly (or sneakily) include all sorts of Roman motifs. It's a fascinating listen. Highly recommended.
Lots that's predictable, but a lot that's new. Christopher Lee makes the list, but as we all know he was a badass. I hadn't known that Clark Gable flew combat missions. Oh, and Jimmy Stewart wasn't on the list but should have been.
The Queen Of The World and I watched Scrooged, the 1988 Bill Murray Christmas flick. It's a quite fun film but it has a fair amount of depth as well - not to mention an all-star cast including Robert Mitchum, John Houseman, and Carol Kane among others.
And the "among others" was the fun part of watching. You see, the ghostly taxi driver (Ghost of Christmas Past) is played by David Johansen, a.k.a. Buster Poyndexter. Yeah, that Buster Poindexter:
Notice the cameo by Bill Murray in this video? The video was made in 1987; Scrooged was filmed in 1988.
Astonishingly, The Queen Of The World had never watched this video before. Her reaction? Buster Poyndexter is a really good actor, both in film and in the video. About right, there.
This scene was ad lib, with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye reprising the song from Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen. It started as Bing goofing around and everyone thought it was funny so they filmed it. They filmed it several times because people were laughing so much that it was hard to get a clean take. The laughter you see here is genuine.
It's almost August, which means Hacker Summer Camp — the confluence ofBSides Las Vegas,Black Hat USA, and DEF CON — is nearly upon us. If you're going to Las Vegas to take part in the annual celebration of probing every system for any possible weakness, we've got a wide selection of documentaries to get you in the investigative mood.
And even if you can't make it to the desert this year, you can console yourself by looking at theweather reports for Nevadaand streaming these examinations of cyberattacks and the people behind them. Most of these are available either free on YouTube or as a standard offering on a streaming service, but we note which ones require rental or purchase fees.
Full disclosure: I haven't seen any of these, but each of them looks far superior to the execrable Hackers. Unknown if they live up to Sneakers, but that was the best computer security film of all time.
Chinatown may be the ne plus ultra of Film Noir. Scoring 11 Oscar nominations (including for best Score), it has memorable quotes ("Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.") and great acting. Uan Rasey's haunting trumpet on this piece mostly exceeds our ability to describe it: "lush" and "romantic" are both true but fall far short.
Glen Filthie doesn't seem to think too highly of the cult classic film Army Of Darkness. Just how much of a cult classic? People make crazy good homage films to it.
Anyhow, it made me think of this classicly bad horror flick from the 70s:
There are a number of things that are cool about this flick. It is bad enough that it was shown on Mystery Science Theater. It also stars Barbara Hale, who portrayed Della Street on Perry Mason. It also starred Alan Hale, Jr. (no relation to Barbara) who was the Skipper on Gilligan's Island. And it predicted the future for Georgia, seemingly. Here's the trailer (note that the entire film is on Youtube):
Next, Peter points out the cutting edge of feminism in space:
A German feminist art group has revealed a vulva-shaped spaceship concept, which it is encouraging the European Space Agency to help realise in order to better represent humanity in space and "restore gender equality to the cosmos."
He's not joking, so click through for the hilarity. But this made me think of this scene from the original Austin Powers movie:
Like fart jokes, johnson jokes never go out of style. No report as to whether the ladies were joking or not ...
Glory. What I think is best about this film is how the Fort Wagner scene captures the how the troops knew they were likely doomed, but fought anyway. This scene transcends the obvious "racism bad, mkay?" that hits you between the eyes all through the film - and for once the black soldiers were just soldiers. And yeah, Denzel was pretty awesome.
Stripes. Comedy doesn't get any respect in Hollywood (scan through the list of Bet Picture winners if you don't believe me). But the Queen Anne's Drill scene in this film makes it the best military comedy filk ever made.
Band Of Brothers. Not a film, but made for TV - but simply the best made for TV military show ever made. It's so epic that people make Lego stop action scenes from it. Srlsy:
And if we are talking "epic", we need a shout out to John Banner for his portrayal of Sgt. Schultz in Hogan's Heroes which has become part of the modern vernacular. Sure, it's TV and it's comedy, but it's still epic.
As I said, these are quibbles and you should go read Aesop's list. I agree 100% with his choice of Zulu as #1 - and ASM826 posted a great review of that film last year.
UPDATE 30 May 2021 23:09:Adam Piggott also weighs in, and brings in some films that others hadn't. I have to agree that Ran should be on the list. And comedy gets if not respect, then at least a head nod from him with Kelly's Heroes.
I missed the Dad Joke for today so this joke is a twofer:
The CIA has three candidates, two men and a woman, for one assassin position. On the final day of testing, the CIA proctor leads the first male candidate to a large steel door and hands him a gun.
"We must know that you will follow our instructions, regardless of the circumstances," he explains. "Inside this room, you will find your wife sitting in a chair. Take this gun and kill her."
The man is horrified, "You can't be serious! I could never shoot my wife!" "Well," says the proctor, "you're definitely not the right man for this job then."
The CIA proctor leads the second male candidate to another large steel door and hands him a gun. "We must know that you will follow instructions, no matter what the circumstances," the proctor explains.
"Inside this room, you will find your wife sitting in a chair. Take this gun and kill her." The second man steadies himself, takes the gun and enters the room.
After three quiet minutes, the man exits the room with tears in his eyes. "I wanted to do it I just couldn't pull the trigger and shoot my wife. I guess I'm not the right man for the job."
Finally, the CIA proctor leads the female candidate to yet another large steel door and hands her a gun. "We must be sure that you will follow instructions, no matter what the circumstances. Inside this room, you will find your husband sitting in a chair. Take this gun and kill him." The woman takes the gun, enters the room, and before the door even closes completely behind her, she's fired off six shots. Then all hell breaks loose behind the door cursing, screaming, crashing.
Suddenly, all goes quiet.
The door opens slowly, the woman exits, and wiping the sweat from her brow, she says, "Did you guys know the gun was loaded with blanks? I had to beat the son of a bitch to death with the chair!"
Take this joke and wrap it with the current political situation in this country, and then spice with a generous portion of American suspicion of government, and you have the 2007 film highlighted here. Ignore the CIA-Superkiller-Agent thing; this film is packed with government secret agency gone bad vibe.
ASM826 has posted two outstanding westerns, Tombstone and The Outlaw Josey Wales. Today's selection is a shift in gears from serious, life-and-death issues to light romantic comedy. Now the term "light romantic comedy" is the kiss of death to some, but there may not be a better example of the genre than Moonstruck. It was nominated for six Oscars and won three - Best Actress (Cher), Best Supporting Actress (Olivia Dukakis), and Best Original Screenplay. It was a commercial success, costing $15M (1987 dollars) and grossing $80M.
It was also a critical success. Rogert Ebert has it in his "Great Movies" collection. His TV partner Gene Siskel said that it was the funnoest movie to come out in a long time. Both had it on their top en lists for films from 1987. And it's not just funny, it's memorably funny. The line from this scene - I love ya awful/Aw, that's too bad - is heard often around Castle Borepatch.
Performances are great throughout the entire cast. John Mahoney (you'll remember him as Frasier Crane's dad) was hilarious as a lecherous professor, and Nicholas Cage showed his funny side throughout the film. But what strikes me is how brilliant the musical score is. Yes, the music is about opera, but it is fiendishly difficult to write a score around some of the greatest opera arias ever written. I posted about this early this year:
Continuing the film soundtrack theme suggested by The Queen Of The World, an interesting compositional challenge was for the 1987 filmMoonstruck. It was a surprise critical and box office success, where the romantic comedy story was hung around some serious classical music (to wit: Puccini's opera La Bohème). The music he had to compose needed to fit in with and enhance this:
This is one of the most famous arias in history. How do you top that? Dick Hyman was trained not only classically but in jazz. He combined classical/old world themes with light jazz throughout the film score which fit in perfectly with the light romantic comedy. It's actually quite an achievement, and in fact similar to Puccini's master work: you wouldn't listen to most of the opera bits by itself, but they connect the grand arias. The theme to the film gives you a distinct flavor of the soundtrack:
The Queen Of The World and I love this film. It's funny and smart and a great way to fill a cold and rainy winter weekend afternoon.
Or a hot and rainy summer weekend afternoon. The Queen Of The World and I give this film two thumbs way, way up.
