Tabbycat's Replies


You had nothing to say, and still don’t. I’ve had that experience too. Spent $30 on the recent “Defending Your Life” Blu-Ray — bloody awful. Instead of joy in sharing one of my favorites with a gf I just felt embarrassed. What does any of that have to do with your empty eight-word post? Friend? Men and women cannot be friends, especially when the woman is as attractive as Marie. They had an affair, likely a long-running one. And the intelligent ones actually supported their opinions with enough detail that we might care. Without that forum posts just become votes for an election nobody held. ‘Is being "happier" to you more important than being right?‘ Yes. Strangely, because I am known for stressing the importance of being right. If you let enough decades pass, your mind can change. As an adolescent I found Altman synonymous with “boring” but after rewatching “The Long Goodbye” and “California Split” years later I came to admire both. It’s hard to grasp some ideas when young, and back then I just didn’t get Altman at all. Eating that rotted pig would have killed them both. I thought “X” was a huge nothing, yet the poster for this is a virtual Xerox of that one. Seriously curious why any of you would think we care. - Goth’s performance getting us to actually feel empathy for an axe murderer. So did Mitsy. That was the whole idea. Does there have to be an “X” in every movie of hers (at least on the poster)? Pattern detected. Her attitude sucked. Her life philosophy sucked. Her life sucked, and she wanted her daughter’s to suck as bad. She was no good at all. “horror is looked at like its smut” Not really so much anymore. Slasher flicks are mainstream now: “Saw XVII” now plays to teenagers in the mall next to Applebee’s. In my youth, I had to brave downtown all-night theaters alongside Quentin to see my favorite genre. None of my friends joined me. I’ve said many times that back then, horror was regarded as one step above pornography. Major studios *did* release horror films, but were embarrassed enough to hide it by inventing a phony releasing entity, as 20th Century Fox did for even highlights like “Suspiria” (International Classics) and “Halloween” (Compass International). I guess they were hoping “International” gave things an arty, European flair. Google “Missing Tile Syndrome” and find a way to get happier. Absolutely. I was 13 in 1974, and 1959 seemed impossibly far in the past. 2009 does not, and not just because I’m older. Speaking of 1974, I went to the fourth largest US casino recently on a Saturday night. The bar was packed with “kids” drinking and dancing to … a hit song from 1974, Redbone’s “Come And Get Your Love.” They knew the song, knew the lyrics, probably a few sang along. In my youth, the very idea of even tolerating a 49-year-old song was unthinkable. Is that because culture changed so much more between, say 1925 and 1974, compared to 1974 vs 2024? Or is it simply that 50- and 60-year old hits sound great because the recording technology was there (if you could afford pro studio time), and we can now hear those same recordings in master quality, straight from the original tape, on digital disc or streaming, whereas in 1974 all we’d have had were squeaky old 78’s? Either way, it’s an astonishing social phenomenon no one could have predicted. Another post in this forum asks whether the Godfather series would be interesting to today’s 20-year-olds. I’d say that depends: have they got a 77-inch OLED with Dolby Atmos surround sound and blackout curtains? Some films do better than others. Comedies like ‘Airplane!’ and ‘Stripes’ seem universally loved, at least by men, while minor classics like ‘Dirty Harry’ and ‘Bullitt’ are not. Family-friendly fare like the original Willy Wonka are universal, as evidenced by the recent several slot machine series found in casinos. So it seems 50-year old hit films are not as universally loved as 50-year-old hit songs. The 1972 paperback edition includes stills from the film, one of which shows Tattaglia’s bedroom massacre with the caption “The end of a white slaver don.” In the film Michael refers to him as a “pump,” not smart enough to set up Sonny’s hit. II is not as good as the original. The Vito backstory scenes in Sicily are compelling, but the whole thing with Hyman Roth isn’t really. Plus it’s nearly a half hour longer. 3 is a big step down. Pacino is nearly a self-caricature (“It vas not vat I VANTED!”) The story of the new corporate Corleone structure and the corrupt Catholic church isn’t very interesting or credible and seems to belong in a different film series. I don’t really care for it. It was very aggressive and to Moe, insulting. Michael was tired and obviously not in a good mood, but he gets even more aggressive and insulting with his offer in II. Unclear whether his father’s tact would have helped.