Mark's Movies

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)

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 to a variety of things, both personal and/or professional. Creative or practical. You name it. We can never truly know the people we look up to. New microphone, who dis? I don't think I'll keep using it long term but I'm also still in the feeling it out phase.

The difference between suspecting and knowing is... wide. It's a gulf. I'm not going to lie--I'm still mulling over what I'd learned for this one. So the first impulse might be "yeah there's all these people coming out with stories now" but, to put that into perspective, many of those instances happened years ago and, furthermore, it has been happening for years longer than that. It's not a "right now" or "trend" thing--that is just the public become aware of it at scale. But it has happened. In isolation. Or not in isolation but under the shroud of a "powerful director" who could and would (and did) ruin a career if denied or crossed. It's happened for years. To all types of people. So many people knew and many probably weren't quiet about it but nothing was done. At most the people talking about it were threatened into silence. Maybe that's how you get "open secrets".

It's really telling that there are people who are distinctly not like this. There's a wide gamut as to how people are treated and it's explored in this really great video by Maggie Mae Fish (who is super great you should watch her stuff). But that's always been one thing that I did think to be true for some time--that art and genius is suffering and causes suffering. I don't know that this specific situation is that more than it's the inverse--a man trying to live out his dreams through movies while also trying to live out his dreams with the cast of said movies--but it deserves to be examined.

@coolmarkd on Twitter

And what the fuck is a "sex mystery" anyway? The fuck outta here with that shit.

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 this movie than the average matinee. There's definitely some interesting attitudes towards things in the movie. Paul is very obviously down on smoking. In '86 smoking on airplanes was still a thing. There were smoking sections in restaurants. It wasn't until the late 90's and early 2000's that smoking in public areas really started to go away but this movie was already taking that stance. It's curious to see this overt anti-smoking protagonist in a movie as early as 1986 as the next time I can think of an example of this it's in Attack of the Clones (2000-whatever) where Kenobi is offered, and declines, a Death Stick. Thinking back on it, it seems foreign, but cigarettes and cigarette advertisements were everywhere. Literally and figuratively. NASCAR, every damned magazine, bus stops, grocery stores, the whole nine. I really need to think back on it because there has been legislation limiting the avenues for advertisement of cigarettes for a few years now and, honestly, seeing a cigarette ad in 2021 would be somewhat of a shock to me.

Paul is also turbo judgy about alcohol. Like damn kid, did a glass of wine kick your dog? It is a very weird situation though because Paul is legit 17 years old according to what I've seen and while there were places that still had a drinking age of 18 in the US around that time New York state was decidedly not one of them. New York state had been raised to 19 in 1982ish (maybe '83 i can't find the tab--sue me). Then, in 1985, it was raised to 21 which is just the normal age in the U.S. at this point in time. Matthewson is out with Elizabeth and Paul and it is just very weird that Paul has a glass of wine poured out for him. He's really not receptive to Matthewson's attempt to get him and his mom to drink more and I think I just cracked the code on that scene. Paul is a bit of a dick when he says, "I don't drink wine. It impairs my judgement." That was actually aimed at his mom who had just said her "head was spinning" and I guess is aimed at Matthewson, as well, because of the implication of getting his mom sauced up to then, later, smash. Yeah, that's probably it, and I'm just bad at picking up on some things but, also, what the hell is Paul doing with a glass of wine? He's 17. The hell is going on here?

The scene with the other science nerds mounting a rescue of Paul and Jenny against actual trained killers is really just sublime 80's adolescent adventure fantasy. They have synchronized watches. It's everything a kid could want with just that much more heart than you expect. They start out adversarial and, through their desire to learn about and sabotage Paul, learn about the military's detainment of Paul and Jenny and ultimate band together to help their fellow nerd aside from actually stealing an atomic bomb so that it can't be collected by The Government. Sometimes you really need to think these things through but the 80's was not one of those times--let's do some reckless shit! It's that optimistic outlook shining through, again.

Let me also talk about why you should never try to build an atomic bomb and, especially, not using this movie as a template. Everyone is just walking around like "it's hot" with geiger counters popping off. That's bad. That's very bad. All of those 5-leaf clovers? Very bad. That's cancer and death bad. Using a clear sports water bottle to hold the most plutonium that ever plutoniumed in the history of plutonium is very ill-advised. Outside of the suspension of disbelief that this movie requires that kid would be dead and everyone he knew would maybe be dead, too. It's real bad. I like that they use the cool plastic box with the gloves, though. That's one of my favorite things ever. I want a media blasting station just so I can use the gloves with the thing in the box. And also sandblast things. But I don't work on things that require sandblasting and, subsequently, powder coating so it would be a rather pointless and cosmetic purchase that would ultimately be more trouble, to me, than it's worth. There was a time where I seriously considered going down this route, though, and it's a really badass accessory to metal fabrication professionally, or as a hobby. Anyway, don't do anything that Paul does in this movie. Like, not a goddamn thing. It's all pretty much things that should not be done in the interest of life and limb.

Speaking of green goop, bringing up Alberto VO5 was very good. I miss those days of endless shampoo and hair product commercials. Alberto VO5, Vidal Sassoon, and Samy. Now I know most of you have no idea who Samy is but Samy, celebrity hair stylist, was steady on TV in the South Florida market at this time. I've been looking for a commercial from that era and I can't actually find one but just know that Samy was the stylist for two First Ladies among other famous people. His commercials really worked, too, because he always signed off with his catch phrase, «¡Si tu luces bien, yo luzco mejor!» and that is burned, indelibly, in my brain alongside the theme song for "Dos Mujeres, Un Camino", Sabado Gigante, and Walter Mercado. I used the chevrons because that's a fun relic of older books--Spanish, especially in the Americas and even more especially on the Internet, seems to have fully adopted the double quotes used regularly in English. Additionally, the upside-down antecedent punctuation has also mostly gone away. It's just a pain in the ass to type. But that's a great catchphrase. "If you look good, I look better!" would be the direct translation but the implication here is "If you look good, that makes me look better." with the implication that your radiant appearance is advertising for his salon and hair products. Samy is still out there--still going. Living the dream.

I also realized that I misnamed "The Day The Earth Stood Still" but I also recorded this quite late at night and in parts so I'm sure that wasn't the only thing I slightly flubbed .The movie is pretty great though and is one of the earlier "classic" science fiction movies. It is a very legitimate allegory for nuclear weapons and MAD. This film is in the Library of Congress and it should be. I didn't see the remake, actually, but the 1951 version is very watchable IMO. The original Ocean's Eleven, on the other hand, is not as good as the remake. The remake really streamlines and focuses everyone and everything in the movie. They legit use guns in the original. Chi McBride's character in Gone in 60 Seconds (2001) got it right when he said "Any asshole can pull a gun on somebody!" It really undercuts the whole thesis of the movie that these are the heist guys. These are the people could steal anything. Anyway.

Above is "The Writer Speaks: Marshall Brickman". It spends a lot of time talking about Marshall himself--his life and who he is as a person. Then they spend a decent amount of time on other movies and, while that's super fun, we do only get like 3 or 4 minutes on The Manhattan Project. Again, this movie didn't land opening weekend and just disappeared is what it feels like. Roger Ebert gave this movie a 4/4 and I can get behind that. I may have undersold the movie a little bit--I do like it and I think it's good. I don't think it will change anyone's life in 2021 but, in 1986, this might very well have been a 4/4 movie (indeed it was to at least some people--Roger Ebert himself said so). It's really interesting to see how it has fallen away from popular thought but I think it might be streaming on HBO Max at the moment so go ahead and check it out.

As always you can reach out to me @coolmarkd on Twitter with any questions, comments, or interesting insights.

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 about "rent-free" until maybe two years ago so I'm trying to use it more to seem relatable. My life isn't unique but it is different. Or maybe it isn't different but it is unique. Depends on how you look at the broad strokes of American life and what that entails--indeed what even "American" entails--and where it entails). This feels like a continuation of the Saturday Matinees series that kicked off with My Science Project.

What is comedy horror? What does any of this even mean? Where do you want to go today? Perhaps not that many answers in this episode but it's been a fun time. I'm sure I had plans for these show notes but here we are.

If you can't click the links go ahead and visit https://scummbags.com/series/marks-movie-collection/

OTS: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me — Geeks Rising

Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No. 9 — Night Vale Presents

@coolmarkd on Twitter

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 be on On The Subject pretty soon. On The Subject is a really cool movie and TV podcast with them Subject boys: Malcolm, Zach, and Logan and you can find them on geeksrising.com but I didn't want to end that sentence with a period so I'm going to keep typing because it does frustrate me when sentences end with a URL and then a period--it's ambiguous. The current theme is movies that came from TV shows. I am excite. I'm not sure when that episode will be released but I do know what we will be On The Subject of--I'll leave it as a bit of a mystery.

Additionally, I'll be on the Not Just Heather's Podcast. You can't really hear the possessive when I say it. It's still in an early state but you can find more info at justheathers.com/podcast and I'm also not going to end this with a period for clarity's sake. It sounds like if there's a Just Heathers and Not Just Heathers podcast I'd, obviously, be on the Not Just Heathers podcast however the Just Heathers podcast would be really great. Heather Welch is the host and there could be a lot of guests:

• Heather... Locklear? the model and actress
• Heather Anne Campbell, the hilarious improvisor, podcaster, and games journalist
• Winona Ryder, star of "Heathers"
• Calluna vulgaris, the actual heather flower. Although sometimes flowers have very foul mouths and based on the name this one might not be an exception
• Heather Wallace, Canadian squash player
• Heather Mason, the character from Silent Hill 3
• Heather Wilde, one of the founders of Evernote
• Sean Heather, the cricketer

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 on a true story (I think) (I think it's the first movie on the show based on a true story because I haven't bothered to check but I know that this movie is based on a true story) and it's the 1990 book's 2004 film adaptation: Friday Night Lights. None if the preceding had much to do with the movie except for the title of the movie.

There are definitely some hanging chads in this episode that likely came from the temporal disparity of how it was created. Initially I stated that "I don't wahnt yer laf" was the thesis of Friday Night Lights but I don't know that it was so much accurate as it was convenient for the Varsity Blues tie-in. I think that some, probably many, of the children in Friday Night Lights do, in fact, "wahnt [this] laf". To be a football player is the greatest achievement that many of them know and probably the greatest achievement that they've been presented with. There are also lines in the trailer that don't even sound like actors in the movie--I think those might have been soundalikes by the trailer house because I don't actually remember some of those lines in the movie. By some I mean like one or two. I also don't know what song that is in the trailer.

Spy Game – SCUMMbags

Lucas Black is from Alabama. Not Arkansas. I don't know where I got Arkansas from. Maybe I was thinking about Billy Bob Thornton and just got confused. It was 2AM. The relatively coherent intro, however, was recorded the day after watching the movie and at noon. A reasonable hour.

If you're thinking about the dangling concept from the intro regarding who would set that straight you might have made the connection about me not talking about the half-time speech at the championship games that Coach Gaines makes. That's basically it. That's who does it and that's where he does it. And it is probably the actual thesis of the movie. That and the curses speech are the two most important pieces of dialogue. I didn't talk about the half-time speech because I'd love for you to watch it--if not in the context of the movie then look it up on YouTube because I'm fairly certain it's available.

Allan Graff is an accomplished second unit/AD director and stunt coordinator. He also worked on the football sequences for Any Given Sunday and that was readily apparent to me when watching the movie. I didn't actually look that up to confirm it until now which is why I didn't pop off like i told you i was right im always riiight aaaaghghahgahaghah. That's typically not a good look. But it feels great. I'm not always right, though.

Thinking back what's up with the part they gave Connie Britton? She did 100 episodes on Spin City and she ends up with 5 or 6 lines? Then goes on to do 76 episodes of Friday Night Lights because c'mon team. Then goes on to do 98 episodes of Nashville. Let's put some respect on her name.

There's an embed on the page for the Patrick (H) Willems video "A Complete Guide to Pop Music Needle Drops in Movies" below. If you can see it you do have enough information to search for it on YouTube.

The photos below are my copy of Explosions In The Sky's pressing of "The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place". It did have that inscription on the back of the second disc and it's really something beautiful and unexpected. I don't know that my second disc has ever seen the turntable but I did take these photos at 3AM and it really did resonate with me. I thought the watermark would be an interesting way to get some search traffic but ultimately it looks terrible and I apologize. On another day I'll probably update the images with something less hideous.

I really am a sucker for good packaging on a record. If you don't believe me check out the episode of Mark's Music Collection on Foxhole's album "We The Wintering Tree". And when I said "The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place" was featured in its entirety I actually meant "every song shows up". And when i said "repro", like reproduciton, I meant "reprint". The music used in the recording is from a sound library--it isn't an Explosions In the Sky song. The entire album doesn't play but every song makes an appearance. It is an album of love songs, according to the band, and I would go out on a limb and say it's love that's maybe been lost. And that's difficult. But the earth is not a cold dead place. In a way these kids in this movie lost the loves of their short and brilliant little lives--football. Youth. It's leaving them at every minute and they just don't know it yet--and least not until the end of the movie. And it's on them to accept that and move on but they are still listening. They are still breathing.

As always you can find me on twitter @coolmarkd and on Letterboxd @MarkD20

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 on this episode. Disappointing even to me. Maybe I've turned a corner. In my, simultaneously, disorganized and pedantic mind I do see the web of influence sourced in this movie but it dovetails into the web of influence sourced from Judd Apatow and it may be better to think of it as interference patterns of stones thrown into a still pond. It's both beautiful and complex once we start thinking about Jason Segel, himself, and Jonah Hill, and Kristen Bell, and Mila Kunis, and Bill Hader, and Nick Stoller, and I'm certain I've forgotten someone in this haphazard slapdash excuse for show notes or a show description as I'm watching Gary Whitta play "Among Us" with folks from "The Guild" and "Hello, From The Magic Tavern" who also work at Jackbox Games which is an already surreal matchup but now paired with an incomprehensible arrangement of nouns that could plausibly exist on a space ship. Listen, nothing here is going to reflect on this podcast episode. I think I've gotten it all out. It took me three months to watch this movie. I could have but I didn't track positions in frame or eyelines or blocking. I could have and, in my smooth memory brain, I would guess that Jason Segel is placed in frame on the left looking towards the right in points of optimism (like a lot of scenes where Mila Kunis is around once they've established their... whatever it is [labels are so messy]) and on the right looking left in low points (like the breakfast buffet where he sees Kristen Bell and Russel Brand eating breakfast just outside and he sits so close to the buffet). But I didn't. I did not.

I shall not. Not this time, at any rate. I am however in the process of watching "Dispatches from Elsewhere" and it's both unusual and unusually charming. There's definitely a good amount of prior work that could potentially be considered influences on it but that doesn't take away from it. I watched the first four episodes apparently out of order (based on the order of the titles on the blu-ray and the order that IMDb has them listed) and I actually really liked it that way. The way that the episodes are set up still gets you setups and pay offs but you get them in maybe a different order that is less casual and perhaps intended. I started the fifth episode and now I'm worried that it's too out of order. But maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe I should go to sleep.

I will acknowledge that there is some shenanigans with de-breath happening. I need speech coaching or something. The end result is some words will get completely flattened by the de-breath plugin because I'm just a boosted animal and I get tired of listening to my own voice after a point. Keeping these shorter is helpful.

I do have a ridiculous fantasy where I get Jason Segel to play me in a movie and Joe Manganiello to play me in the post-apocalyptic alternate timeline of that movie and then Steve Agee to play me in the alternate alternate timeline. But that's mostly focused on how these actors are tall and not how they resemble me in any respect.

@coolmarkd on Twitter. @markd20 on Letterboxd.

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 notes so check it out on scummbags.com for easier browsing.

First off--I made more than a couple of mistakes in this recording. Even after adding in the correction I think I made another mistake somewhere that was really dumb. I forget what it is at the moment. But I know it's there. So please forgive me. I'm dumb but I also acknowledge that I'm dumb and constantly working on it :) Not being dumb. Working on not being dumb. Not working on being dumb. That wouldn't be productive but it certainly would be easier. Edit now I remembered. I said "Toonami" when I meant "adult swim". What an idiot. [adult swim]. I really love the art direction of adult swim. It's great.

Links

• Cowboy Bebop The Movie: Revisiting A Classic (ANIME ABANDON) - YouTube
• A Fistful of Woolongs - A Cowboy Bebop Retrospective - YouTube
• Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) - in-depth movie review - YouTube
• The Man Behind Cowboy Bebop - YouTube and The Man Behind Cowboy Bebop [Part 2] - YouTube but the first video focuses and Bebop and the movie. They're just good videos and I'll confess I didn't watch the second one all the way through.
• Cowboy Bebop and The West - YouTube

So the above are all Cowboy Bebop videos that are pretty good to great. Give them a shot if you want to get a little deeper into the show. The STEVEM piece on Watanabe, "The Man Behind Cowboy Bebop," videos are extremely thorough and will lend a lot of context to *waves hands* everything. The Steak Bentley video, "Cowboy Bebop and The West," is also really interesting however it's made in the style of YouTube so it takes a bit to get going and there's some jokes in there that are visual in nature and distinctly idiosyncratic.

Just as an aside, Tim Rogers' non-fiction film ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS PAC-MAN - YouTube is great. This has exactly nothing to do with the show notes I just like it. I've been home for basically 9 months at this point. If I was a baby I'd be born. It's wild. I realized, visiting a doctor's office, that I've forgotten how to navigate in-person interactions. It's really weird. So just check in with yourself a little bit. There's a lot of impact happening here that isn't visibly obvious but hopefully we'll be improving soon. <3

Also, John Cho Talks Upcoming Cowboy Bebop Netflix Series - YouTube. I was very not excited for this but I do think that John Cho would be the one to pull of Spike Spiegel. I think he's a good actor and he definitely has a brand. He did get injured and this paused the production of the movie and now pandemic and all that but I'm definitely going to give it a shot. I think that trying to do it 1:1 might be a massive mistake because--being animation--you can definitely defy the medium of the motion picture that it is simultaneously projecting to you in delightfully inconsistent ways but when it's live action it's live action and when you get cute with the mechanics of the world or use excessive CG to replicate it that's when things can go sideways. So I'm cautiously optimistic.