mrbellamy

2006-2010 are the years where I really felt JW's absence and so I would have especially liked to see him score a few more releases in there. Apart from the obvious Harry Potter and the aforementioned Agora, I think 2006 has four movies from previous collaborators that would have been right in JW's wheelhouse: World Trade Center, The Black Dahlia, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. Black Dahlia would probably be the most interesting, WTC strikes me as the most realistic for him to get offered and say yes.

Nothing wrong with a friendly tanglewood

Well it reminded me of this post: So Williams has cited him before as one of his favorites and they have apparently been friendly at Tanglewood. I guess mutual respect lead to an opportunity to perform together. Maybe Williams started writing letters to Tommy Baby.

John Williams really turned 90 and decided he wasn't fucking around anymore.

It's definitely the fact that it's the lead in to their first kiss and that he uses "soft and smooth" as a way to get physical with her. It's supposed to be Anakin being charming and seductive but it's just awkward, but not in a way where the awkwardness is real and endearing. When someone makes a move in an erotic or romantic movie, the best versions make you think "Damn I wish I could say stuff like that" or "Damn I wish someone would say that to me" and this very famously had that effect on almost nobody.

Bo Welch: The Cat in the Hat

Anyone else remember Thor's old Jack Torrance avatar?

These are the ones I definitely really love and feel like I could write about why I love them, whether I've seen them multiple times or only once. Chronological order because individual rankings are annoying. Mean Streets Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore Taxi Driver After Hours Goodfellas The Departed The Wolf of Wall Street Silence These are the ones I think are great or I'm pretty sure are great but I'm less confident in my opinion because I haven't seen them a lot, or in awhile, or there's just something else holding me back from being one of THE guys in their corner. I would readily admit to taking Raging Bull for granted, that and The Age of Innocence I have especially been wanting to refresh my memory having seen only once, easily over a decade ago. I have a real soft spot for The Aviator. Raging Bull The Age of Innocence Casino Bringing Out the Dead The Aviator The Irishman Killers of the Flower Moon These I really like but just not as much. "Marty! Kundun! I liked it!" enthusiasm basically applies to the other three too for me lol. I wanna rewatch Gangs for sure. The Color of Money Kundun Gangs of New York Hugo These are the ones I struggled with and even though I admire a lot of things about them, I would definitely be a faker to hop on the unsung masterpiece bandwagon. King of Comedy is the one I'm most interested in revisiting. I would call them remarkable movies, maybe a little backhanded. The King of Comedy The Last Temptation of Christ Cape Fear Shutter Island These I did see and I think I was like "Okay." I do not recall them too well and they're just not priority rewatches. I remember really wanting NY NY to be right in my wheelhouse and it def bounced off me and sort of just left my brain. I liked that shot down the long table with all the guys clapping. Who's That Knocking at My Door? Boxcar Bertha New York, New York I love the docs I've seen, the Dylans and George Harrison are beautiful, Last Waltz of course. I even liked Shine A Light in IMAX. A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies made a HUGE impact on me. I think that movie is so fucking magical. I still gotta check out Italianamerican and all the other stuff like New York Stories. In general I think he is of course a brilliant director but I rate him even higher in my mind as film educator. He is just an absolute treasure, I probably run quotes from his interviews through my head more frequently than his movies, the way he talks about the elements of cinema and loving motion, light, color, sound, performance, music, how two shots impact each other, how one frame greater or fewer changes the whole thing, and how beautiful these are for their own sake! I even think in run-on sentences like he does when I think about him. And so much of my love of cinema of all kinds stems from him. He is like my charging station. When I'm feeling a little burned out on movies, I watch Scorsese interviews and I'm rejuvenated. Like I don't think my appetite for cinema is more curious and more varied than during a Scorsese press tour, it happened again last autumn with KotFM. I wish I could give him a great big hug.

Idk about that first one, it's attention grabbing! To reverse the point, if Zardoz was renamed Star Wars, I think we still just have a weird cult movie with Sean Connery called Star Wars... The second one is changing something about the movie. Replace Harrison Ford or James Earl Jones, it might not be as good either. I'm taking issue with the hypothesis that "If Star Wars was a flop in 1977, it wouldn't be talked about" because it is impossible to wrap my head around the circumstances in which Star Wars exactly as it existed comes out in 1977 with a fair release and doesn't do business. To me this is like the "If my grandma had wheels, she would have been a bike" joke. Star Wars had plenty going against it at the time and still nobody anticipated the appetite for it. I'm not actually sure if bad marketing would have even been enough to change its fortune. I think it would have to have been actively buried by Fox, virtually no release and never made available in any home format, withheld from the public. In which case it's not a flop, it's a legendary Hollywood injustice, and would still definitely be talked about today.

Technically that first one could also be VI This should really be I III IV VII? IX

This is sort of a weird thought experiment, though, because under what conditions do we believe that Star Wars would have gone unnoticed and been a flop in 1977?

I think it's probably safe to say Oppenheimer needed Barbie more than Barbie needed Oppenheimer, but yeah I think Oppenheimer would still have exceeded expectations. The whole basis for the Barbenheimer phenomenon was that they shared demographics who were legitimately excited to see both. Many of the same people who were down for a crazy Barbie comedy were also interested in an IMAX thriller about creating the atomic bomb, and that's not even considering the name recognition for the actors and directors. It was just a great example of people trusting that they were gonna get their money's worth from Hollywood for a change, and by and large walking out of both theaters feeling they did.

Does anybody else hear Jaws?

The album thread reminded me of this and nobody ever made it so I had to

Yeah, I get the mournful argument, but I think the association with noble Americana is possibly too strong. It's a key moment I always consider in terms of that question whether this movie is ultimately glorifying war or not. I think the film wants you to sympathize with Upham, regardless, but I think Williams edges it past a quiet mournful sympathy (which again, I think silence would have achieved) into reverence. And it's where I think the movie is in a tough spot because Spielberg identifies with Upham, and he wanted this film to be a tribute to those who fought. And so I wouldn't classify this as a "pro war" film, but it is unquestionably "pro veterans" and I think that's sometimes where the film can feel torn in its perspective, especially the ending. Because it's trying to express "thank you for your service" while also wanting to be brutally honest about war atrocities, cowardice, and that's a difficult but necessary thing to reconcile. I think that's why the movie is both flawed and valuable.