Cinéastes assemble! The entire crew is back for this full throttle episode of the Cinecast in which we lather love all over Joss Whedon… or do we? Kurt Halfyard made a last minute decision to check out Avengers just before recording – remember this is the guy that gave Cabin in the Woods a rather scathing review. So thinks might get interesting **(SPOILERS!!)**. After Marvel talk, we get into the homework submissions for the week and I can tell you that thanks to Matt Gamble, the grades are all over the map; no F’s yet, but everything from D’s to A+ are handed out. From there, Kurt wraps up HotDocs, Matt brings up a sore spot in another take on Lockout while Andrew listened to rap and watched Hackers. Lots of “stuff” here – who knew Kurt had a vasectomy?
As always, please join the conversation by leaving your own thoughts in the comment section below and again, thanks for listening!
http://rowthree.com/audio/cinecast_12/episode_257.mp3
Full show notes are under the seats…
IN-HOUSE BUSINESS:
– Donation shout out (Thanks Hans!)
MAIN REVIEWS:
– Avengers **(SPOILERS!)**
GRADING HOMEWORK:
Rick Vance: Style Wars
Sean Kelly (LetterBoxd): Paradise Lost (trilogy)
Robert Reineke: Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages
Nat Almirall (LetterBoxd:) Legong: Dance of the Virgins and Fishing with John
Lennart Andersson: The Arbor
Steven Beckley: Capturing the Friedmans
Courtney Small: When We Were Kings
Darryl Bowen: The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human and Paradise Lost
Dick Japowski: Dig and Overnight
Ryan McNeil: And Everything is Going Fine
Len Fearnside: The War Game
full list on LetterBoxd
full GPA spreadsheet for this semester [UP TO DATE]
THE WATCH LIST:
Kurt
– The Ambassador
– Detropia
– Klovn
Matt
– Lockout
– Hysteria
– Safe
– Game of Thrones
Andrew
– Hustle and Flow
– Almost Famous
– Headshot
– Hackers
– Classic Albums series: Stevie Wonder, “Songs in the Key of Life”
DVDs/NETFLIX INSTANT NOW AVAILABLE:
Jandy’s DVD Triage
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT:
1) send us movies for Matt to watch while he’s on drugs in August.
NOTE: listen to show for caveats (no Pink Floyd!)
2) Also, yes or no: should Matt appear on that episode?
OTHER STUFF MENTIONED:
High and Low Brow
Rashomon review
All of Kurt’s HotDocs video reviews
Post credits scene in Avengers
The War Game podcast at WTLTE with Jay Cheel
KLOVN red band trailer
NEXT WEEK:
Dark Shadows
PRIVATE COMMENTS or QUESTIONS?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section below, or email us:
feedback@rowthree.com (general)
andrew.james@rowthree.com
kurt@rowthree.com
FOLLOW US:
Andrew: Twitter, G+, Letterboxd
Kurt: Twitter, G+, Letterboxd
Matt: Twitter, LetterBoxd
RowThree: Twitter, G+, Letterboxd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfXtOK7eGCQ
Here’s the Avengers scene Kurt missed…
which is not 4 minutes as Gamble just claimed, but 30 seconds. A good fact to keep in mind if you ever wish to sell him 30 acres of land as 150 acres of land.
Also in the show notes above. Yeah, when I watched it I thought, “wait… that wasn’t four minutes.” Which would’ve been even better.
I thought it was a given that people knew I just make up numbers when it comes to time? Much like how Kurt makes up consonants when pronouncing names.
On rewatch, less than a week after release, only 5 people in a full theater long enough to watch this scene
On one hand, you want to say “hey theres one more scene!” but on the other… its 30 seconds with no dialogue or truly big twist, you dont want to hold yourself responsible for that when they have to sit and wait through a lot of credits.
I forgot to mention this but Style Wars is all on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETRa_tx9c2w
It’s funny listening to you discuss when the final cut of Paradise Lost 3 is coming out, since it has come and gone (the recut version debuted at the New York Film Festival in October)
The 3rd Paradise Lost movie aired on HBO in January. It was given a very short theatre release in December in order to qualify for the Oscars where it was nominated but didn’t win Best Documentary.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned Cropsey for the homework. I thought it was a no-brainer. Lot’s of cool stuff I’d never heard of came up though, which is great.
I can’t wait to see The Ambassador, it sounds awesome. I loved The Red Chapel so anything even close to that will be in my wheelhouse, or at the very least up my alley.
Just downloaded the High and Low Brow that discusses The War Game. Thanks for the heads up.
Great show.
I’ve seen Cropsy. It’s solid stuff, but not particularly memorable either….but it would have been right in the zone for that homework assignment.
Some commentary on various elements of the podcast.
Kurt watches Doctor Who but missed the Doctor team-ups?
There was a few of them. The biggest one being the 5 Doctors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Doctors
However, there was also the Two Doctors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Doctors
And the Three Doctors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Doctors_(Doctor_Who)
And if you really want to get geeky, the audio dramas has the Four Doctors (just to fill in that obvious gap):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Doctors
The end of the Incredibles such a HUGE reference to the first Fantastic Four comic that it’s quite lucky that Pixar didn’t get sued by Marvel. So the fact that Avengers seemed like what was essentially a scene from an early Marvel comic makes sense.
How much of the script was Zak Penn? Nothing. It was a complete re-write to the point that it sounded like Whedon didn’t even read his script, as he wanted to do it all himself. Zak Penn gets credit because of WGA (Writers Guild of America) screenwriting credit system.
Also I wouldn’t say Marvel washed out Tony Stark drinking in the first 2 Iron Man movies as Kurt suggests. Both movies have him drinking, with the second one actually has him drunk in the Iron Man suit during a party that it starts causing problems. Marvel seem to have been slowly but surely been building up his alcoholism going towards the Demon In The Bottle storyline.
Season 2 of the Walking Dead picks up towards the end. The first few episodes were really dragging, but then there was a break in the season and it got a lot better when they returned in February. The final episode was just completely amazing and over the top as all hell breaks loose. It almost feels like they spent most of the 2nd seasons’ budget on that final episode.
PC has stickers because each tech companies pays PC companies money to put their logo laptops & computer towers. Apple could put similar stickers for money from companies like Intel and Nvidia which they use parts from, but they refuse such money as Apple doesn’t want promote other companies (especially when they are no different from PC parts) they just want Apple to be the only logo that is known. Apple likes keeping their computers as black boxes that you bring into Apple stores to get fixed.
Gamble,
Whedon and Feige have said that the alien wasn’t the Skrulls because their backstory is too large for the first movie. And that they wanted a faceless villain because the story is really about the team coming together not what villain their facing. Also Feige said that Marvel and Fox share the rights to the Skrulls so either can use them if they decide to.
They should maybe not make them look like Skrulls then. Its tough to be faceless when you are mimicking one of the major races of the Marvel Universe.
I think Feige is being a bit disingenuous about the Skrulls rights. If Fox has joint controlling interest then Fox has to sign off on it, and Fox may not be all that willing, especially since they still control the FF, Silver Surfer, Galacticus, all the X-related characters and all the Daredevil related characters.
Heck, Universal controls Namor so he’ll never be added unless Marvel buys the rights back. Universal has been open to selling rights back in the past (Hi, Hulk!) so that may not be too big of a hurdle.
All that adds up to a very complicated mess when it comes to rights, and its going to cost Marvel a crap ton of cash to get those rights back now that The Avengers has hit big.
I agree with the guy who said that this was the most difficult assignment yet, because I never thought of documentaries being of any genre besides documentary. But the crime/court case movies were the ones I thought of, and I actually considered Dear Zachary, Paradise Lost, The Staircase, and The Thin Blue Line, before settling on Capturing the Friedmans. I kind of figured that most of them would be mentioned. They all feel equally as thrillers to me, if you’re going to attach a genre. I’m still scratching my head on this one, so I guess I’ll have to chalk this one up to “I just don’t get it.” I need to learn to stop thinking so far and just learn to work the system…like the one who submitted The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human- which doesn’t even sound like it’s a documentary! So I can pat myself on the back that at least I know what a doc is.
It’s a romantic comedy told in a documentary format. The War Game technically isn’t a true documentary either, but they both play with the form to tell their stories which both exist squarely in genre.
Yeah. This was really a loosely defined and graded assignment. Thanks to whoever gave me a C after Matt gave me an F.
I thought of another one that might have qualified – The Age of Stupid, the documentary set in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi future where in the future Pete Postlethwaite looks at “archive films” and tries to figure out why we didn’t do anything about global warming when we had the chance.
I submitted Mating Habits as a joke because it’s done in a documentary style, but really is just a romantic comedy. My real submission was Paradise Lost.
All right I’m going in. Pray for me.
Kudos to Kurt for calling out the Harry Dean Stanton cameo. Nobody’s been talking about that that I’ve seen – but boy, it made my day.
A few places have been talking about it linking to this interview:
http://collider.com/joss-whedon-the-avengers-cast-interview/159372/
“WHEDON: I needed to get Banner from the horror of what he had done, almost killing Natasha, to a place where he was prepared to go back into that state. I thought a lot about it and I was like, “He needs somebody who will just accept him.” And, our D.P. was actually shooting a documentary about Harry Dean and was spending a lot of time with him, so I got him stuck in my head and I was like, “Who’s more accepting than Harry Dean Stanton?” So, I got to write this weird little scene that, when I wrote it, was not little. It was about 12 pages long. I was like, “This is great, Bruce Banner falls into a Coen Brothers movie.” The fact that they even let me keep that concept, and that we actually landed Harry Dean to play it, was very exciting. But, the idea was to put him in a slightly surreal situation with somebody who clearly had no problem with what he was, just to make that little transition without milking it too much. Besides, to work with Harry Dean and to quiz him about Alien and The Missouri Breaks, was awesome.”
I wonder if there was any more of Harry Dean Stanton in the original 3 hour cut of Avengers? I guess we will find out when the DVD/blu-ray comes out with all these deletes scenes. I’m also hoping for more funny scenes of Banner & Stark in the lab.
THOR is certainly (and oddly) the most important film in the run-up to THE AVENGERS. Obviously it sets up the main villain for this film (and Hawkeye) (oh – and Thor) but it also establishes the potential for galactic stakes, and the whole magic/science paradigm that these movies can now exploit.
I watched all five Marvel flicks last week as part of my pre-AVENGERS hysteria, and THOR sticks out as the real game-changer of the group.
Well THIS listener was certainly hoping for a big huge fight, Kurt, but oh well, it was still a good listen. Thanks guys.
I’m pretty sure all of our listeners are hoping for a fight.
Glad you made it thru, Matt. For the time being, our filmic tastes are back in Phase! I was surprised and happy that I enjoyed Avengers for what it was. Much of it was due to the comic stylings (and big brain for this sort of stuff) of Joss Whedon, an the Avengers in a very small way was like a super-powered super expensive Serenity 2. And yea , in cool with that.
Does Matt want movies that will cause a good trip or a bad trip while he’s on drugs or does it matter?
Either or. I’m more interested in it being an inspired pick.
More on Hackers: http://www.avclub.com/articles/hackers-may-have-been-of-its-time-but-it-was-also,72249/
Klovn is a spin off from a sitcom in denmark. Haven’t seen either but the film looks right up my alley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klovn
No podcast this week?