You're goddamn right two grown men in their 30's saw the newly released MY LITTLE PONY movie via Hasbro's production company ALLSPARK! You have no idea how much Jack was chomping at the bit to go see this and fall in love all over again with... oh, wait, sorry, read the notes wrong, that's Andrew, yes, Andrew was the one going for this one, and... Well, how is it?

You'll just have to listen to two grown men who saw this movie on a weeknight at the local cineplex with no one else in the theater to find out.. and no, it's not dirty quite like that (though if you stay till the end of the episode, there's a bit we've included to explain what the term "Clopper" means, via the now late Spill.com site). So join us, won't you, for our dissection into the art that goes into Twilight Sparkle and Applejack and all those other fruffru names and... yeah, My Little Pony. We made it to episode 99!

Clip from Spill excerpt taken from YouTube, as is the trailer for the film, and the 1980's commercial at the 41 minute SPOILER mark!

up front - SPOILERS at 39:04 in.

So, now we have this little movie that no one's paid attention to and has got little fanfare and has absolutely no previous cult status appeal or a rabid fanbase that has... oh wait, wait, I just got the cable in from the telefax and it tells me that this is a... long awaited follow-up to a rather popular "Classic" film, and we don't throw that word around lightly. Blade Runner (1982, about the year 2019) is often looked at as one of those objectively great films (we encourage you to go back to listen to Andrew's CINEMA IMMERSION TANK #8 to possibly hear a contrary opinion), but how dare one try to make a follow-up/sequel/soft-reboot?

Well, Denis Villeneuve, one of the more exciting and daring filmmakers of this decade (INCENDIES, PRISONERS, SICARIO, ARRIVAL, this being his first movie with more than one word in the title) is daring to try to tackle that subject from the infamous White Zombie song: What does it mean if one is MORE HUMAN THAN HU-MAN? And what happens if your hologram falls in love with you, and you with it? And what's up with all those shots of Ryan Gosling walking around surrounded by orange? We have some questions...

Jack is joined not by Andrew tonight (he may be having some eye operation or something, I dunno), by wife Korey and Guest-Star Matthew Catania, of the https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/ blog to discuss this 165 minute behemoth work of science fiction-noir-existentialism that was made for 150 million and has the density of a senior college year philosophy class. The question is, did we LIKE it? Listen on, friends.

https://www.facebook.com/wagesofcinema

https://www.facebook.com/mattthecatania

Take Tom Waits, put him into an average/oddball crime drama, and... well, there's Tom Waits at least, and he waits for no man!

We watched the obscure British crime film BEARSKIN: AN URBAN FAIRYTALE, and... well, there's more to talk about than just Waits!

This episode Jack and Andrew travel the world, from America to Vietnam to Germany to Japan and back to America again. There are certainly a fair share of enemies of the US in history, but that doesn't mean we can't look back at the history and see what is there to... well, be seen and experience! The large part of this episode, for about the first 40 minutes (after an initial discussion of Happy Meal toy tie-ins to movies), is about Ken Burns & Lynn Novick's THE VIETNAM WAR epic 10-part event and looking at all of the things that make this such a unique piece of documentary filmmaking. After this, Andrew catches up on Fritz Lang's second sound feature, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE from 1932; Jack revisits Hayao Miyazaki's adventure drama NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND; and Jack also talks about the latest in the series of adaptations from "Uncle Stevie" King (story, Stephen King, okay, got it) on Netflix, GERALD'S GAME.

Songs:

"Are You Experienced" - Jimi Hendrix Experience

"Whiter Shade of Pale" - Procol Harum

"Jubilee Stomp" - Duke Ellington

So, a movie from 1990 by the Batman Forever/Batman & Robin guy (but before he was known for that! this was post-Lost Boys, pre Falling Down Joel Schumacher, prime Schum!), and a movie from... this year by the Dragon Tattoo guy (no, not Fincher, the other Dragon Tattoo from Sweden, the one people pretend they saw but actually didn't because subtitles). How can they face off against each other? What will win out, if at all?!?! And the bigger question: what happens when you actually get a remake where it's not even a remake of a particularly *good* original?

Jack and - wait, no Andrew this time again - Korey(!) saw both the 1990 and 2017 Flatliners movies. What'd we think? Listen below. Also, there are some spoilers for both movies... you'll have to listen to find out where they are. You might say you will want to... stay alive for them! (If you want to go right to the 2017 review portion it's 27 mins in).

This just in, people who follow things happening in movies: the seventh feature film by director Darren "Black Swan Requiem for a Dream Pi Wrestler Fountain Noah" Aronofsky featuring a perplexed Jennifer Lawrence just got an 'F' on Cinemascore.

First question is: what the hell is Cinemascore, and second one is, who cares? What matter is what the Wages of Cinema thought about this movie that is getting only a LOT of talk (and this time, unlike in recent political talk, it's fair to say there's opinions on many sides, on many sides).

Jack, Andrew, and guests Korey and Matthew Catania (of the https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com blog) saw this movie so you do or don't have to. Which way will we side? Listen and find out.

SPOILERS at 42 minutes in.

(Song: "Take a Piece of my Heart" by Janis Joplin)

Who can pinpoint the exact reason - that uncanny clown scare that happened last year with clowns randomly appearing in people's towns (no really, look it up); the StephenKingaissance (or ReckonKing?) as many of his works are getting adapted this very year (including one which we touch upon in this review, THE DARK TOWER and that didn't do too well); uh... politics (re: that meme of Trump in the sewer asking to come down to float since it's tremendous, believe me) - but somehow IT is one of the major blockbusters of the year, and the horror film that got the box-office back into a somewhat respectable shape after a slump (again, Dark Tower). People are going to see this movie and getting the hell scared out of them.

But... how is it as a *film*? Does it reflect the book well, which has never gone out of printing and is one of King's most popular books - maybe the one that, like Alan Moore with Watchmen and comic books, set out to reinvigorate the form it was in with a massive mythology and the most memorable characters in horror literature - and can it possibly hold a candle to what is a ... not without flaws 1990 mini-series (which many call a movie itself, though it was only ever released on television and home video)?

Jack went to see the movie and, in one of the rare times this has happened on WoC, without Andrew - instead he's joined only by wife and Floater-of-Hugs Korey, which is the 2nd adaptation of King's epic chronicle of Derry, Maine, and that irrepressible rapscallion Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Stay scared!

(Spoilers at 59:41)

Clips include the trailer for IT (2017), a clip from that film, a clip from the 1990 series, and from a King Q&A

Don't you just love long-as-hell titles? Things like The Cook, The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, or Me and You and Everyone We Know or Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice (in the Hood)? It takes some chutzpah to put a title for something that will take a deep breath to get out at once. But so we have another case here (which, unbeknownst to us while recording, Jack only found out after the fact, is a *remake* of an even more obscure 1970 movie) is THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN (or in French, La dame dans l'auto Avec des Lunettes et un Fusil).

This movie is so French (How French is it!? I hear someone yell from the back as if this will be a joke) that it features a fork in the road where paths will diverge for either Paris or Cannes. There's a little bit of wine too, not as much cheese as I can tell. But the most French thing about it is how much artist Joann Sfar takes on cinema as a whole, from Hitchcock to De Palma to Godard (one should mention Chabrol but it didn't come up) and mind-f***s like Lost Highway and Alice in Wonderland. This story of a young woman who gets the keys literally to a Thunderbird in the 1970's and decides to take it for a trip to the sea (which she's never seen before) takes more twists than a pretzel factory. It's NOIR as hell.

What'd we think of it? Listen on.

(FYI: there is a clip that is is all in French, an excerpt from the film, at about 16:14 in. If you understand French, good for you. If not, you can listen or skip a minute ahead when we pick up the conversation).

facebook.com/wagesofcinema

twitter.com/wagesofcinema

We start of with Dali, of course, because he is DALI! This leads Jack to remember LITTLE ASHES, which brings to another detour to talk about LITTLE BUDDHA, and somehow we wrap back around to GOOD TIME which stars Pattinson (he plays Dali in Ashes); Andrew brings up how tired he is of STAR WARS in popular culture and how it may be *dangerous* after all this time (ROGUE ONE comes up again especially, with a shout-out so to speak to RED LETTER MEDIA's reviews); Jack talks about seeing THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE in the worst 35mm print ever... which makes it one of the most memorable screenings of his life; Korey Hughes makes a guest appearance to talk about her boredom with horror movies' usage of rural settings; Jack sees Steven Soderbergh's return to film with LOGAN LUCKY.

Trailer: Good Time

Song: JUBILEE STOMP by Duke Ellington

So, what's on the menu for the month of July (posting a little late, yes, we know, sorry)? How's about a.... rock N roll musical with Christian AND hippie/flower-power overtones (riding off the coat-tails of Jesus Christ Superstar) that stars Richie Havens as... Othello(!?!) What? How have we not heard of this before? And why is it's aka "Santa Fe Satan"?

Tune in, drop out, and get something groovy with the FREEDOM of checking out this episode of this boldly going where few have cinematically gone before; WHAT THE DEVIL IS THAT? (This time it's a little more interesting a concept too).

Richie Havens: "FREEDOM" from Woodstock (1969)