It's certainly off-putting. Watching the movie yesterday, I was kind of shocked that the gag was used twice.

This is a big important piece of Lin Lore and hanging out in a video store during summers in Puerto Rico as a kid sounds sick.

I miss video stores deeply. The used book store near me + the NY Public Library Lincoln center branch with a big dvd section don’t quite hit the same…..

Saw this mural of the 1999 box office bomb The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc recently and have not been able to get it out of my head since.

Really enjoying this new Seth Rogen series. Martin Scorsese's part in particular--specifically the party scene--felt like real self-aware comedy and I am so hungry for that. Ron Howard is also very funny in his episode and I am wondering what other directors will take a turn as heightened, hilarious, or cartoonish versions of themselves. Would love it so much if in some dream scenario ELAINE MAY could be tempted to participate. Anyone else watching and have a director they'd love to see?

Being millennial goofballs, my friends and I wrote, directed and produced an actual two-act Rufio origin story musical at our college. We did it half as a joke, but ended up taking the story VERY seriously and it did surprisingly well, sold out every performance of its three-week run. It wasn’t even all students, a bunch of townies came in to see it with their kids. It was a fun time. The basic pitch was Peter Pan has abandoned the Lost Boys and they need a leader/protector to survive the pirates. Rufio starts out a wimpy outcast who develops a tough exterior to become the Rufio we all know. Very “Wicked.”

We move to LA and one of our friends meets Dante Basco at a slam poetry show. She tells him about the musical at our college and he’s interested in hearing the songs. We send him a few and he loves them. He wants to produce this, thinks it could work as a movie or a broadway show, but needs the okay from Kennedy/Marshall, who has the rights. He sends the songs to an established production designer who’s trying to break into movie directing, he also loves them. We put together a pitch meeting with a creative executive at Kennedy/Marshall and the guy seems to be into our pitch.

Of COURSE it goes nowhere. My buddies had more hope than me that it might move forward, but I know Spielberg himself doesn’t fondly remember Hook, and I know Rufio nostalgia only appeals to people born between 1980 and 1992. We get a polite “no thanks” from Kennedy/Marshall and that’s that. But it was a wild experience!

Edit: Some folks asked to hear the songs. Found some demo-quality recordings in my hard drive, thought I'd share them with the class. Here's the link!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ig76i0wp3n2nftu0adhg2/AMTL8r5fl1QilnTeDxDOwBY?rlkey=xo1p8hlv7ewd5bloz59595ee8&st=qzeg1a1d&dl=0

As a millennial I remember only having a couple of videoclubs in my small town: meaning only access to the newest most mainstream titles and a handful of leftovers from the last 3/4 years. To watch any classic or older film, you’d either have to go to the library and pray some other library in your area had it and wait 3 weeks for it. That and set up your VHS to record a 2AM showing on some tv station.

Right now, if a movie isn’t on a streaming platform, you can just digitally rent/buy with a couple of clicks. And in the rare case it isn’t available legally anywhere, there’s the high seas.

I love heist flicks, don’t get me wrong. But I feel those belong into its own category.

This would be titles like “Seven Samurai” or “The Dirty Dozen” will all those wonderful tropes of putting together a team, setting up a plan, the execution when something goes wrong… I love everything about it.

It's the early baseball scene intercut with Peter at the office and it's this horrible generic late-80s / early 90s-sounding smugly playful piano schtick. Something that feels like it could have been dragged out of any film from that era, ranging from family comedy to light dramedy.

It only stands out because it's Williams whose bar is so high and because the Hook score is otherwise fantastic. But stand out it does.

https://youtu.be/3PrE9yJOqLQ?si=he-93QbMT_oKH94h

After first becoming enamored with Korsmo as an actor in ‘Can’t Hardly Wait,’ I checked his IMDb page to see what else he was in, and of course the answer was nothing. Then, when I saw ‘Hook’ and ‘What About Bob?,’ I realized he had been a talented child actor as well. Every time one of those three movies popped up on cable, I would re-check his IMDb and wonder how he was doing.

Well, when they mentioned him in this episode, I decided to check the page again and - lo and behold - he has been in two projects since the last time I checked (which must have been before 2018)!

What I found interesting is that they are both projects with Adam Pearson (‘Chained for Life’. 2018. and ‘A Different Man’. 2024.). I wonder if that is just a coincidence, but to have zero acting credits for 20 years, then two in a row with the same actor - all while having a fully separate career as a law professor - makes it seem like he only took these roles as a favor to someone/because there was a pre-existing relationship.

I still haven’t watched ‘A Different Man,’ nor have I seen ‘Chained for Life,’ so I did not read the IMDb trivia to see if there’s an answer in there, but I do wonder what the connection to Korsmo is and I’m excited to see that he has dipped his toe back into acting, even if only in smaller roles.

The upcoming Blood Simple is one of mine. Just feels like a "classic coens" even though it was their debut.Visually stylish,nicely paced,Tex Noir,Walsh is a brilliant scumbag.Really strong first film,what are other great debuts?

Also if I had a penny for every coens movie that has an ominous opening monologue set over b roll of rural texas....

“Give us the podcast, dickwad!”

My favorite Kilm (Val Kilmer Film) is Real Genius (1985) for the record.

When he passed the other day, I (like many film aficionados) went through his kilmography to see what I have in my collection, or what’s streaming.

Browsing through the Free YouTube Movies, this flick ‘The Salton Sea’ caught my eye: The directorial debut of DJ Caruso, produced by Frank Darabount (and….Eric La Salle?), and a stacked cast of character actors such as Luis Guzman, BD Wong, and Vincent D'Onofrio in yet another memorable villian role.

This movie honks, and I have zero idea why I’ve never heard it mentioned anywhere before. It feels like the definition of a film that doesn’t exist.

The entire time I was watching it, I could only think to myself how it feels like if only it was made in 1992-1995 it’d be much better known.

I loved the movie, but there’s a detail tripping me. How does Mickey remember his deaths? His memories aren’t getting uploaded constantly to “the cloud”, right? Only at specific times with those cables. So he’d only have memories up until those specific “save points”.

I know airtight sci-fi logic isn’t the point here, but this feels kinda major, so I wonder if I’m missing something.

This is an ongoing look back at the episode released 10 years ago

This week Griffel and Simsbert discuss the Jedi Order. What are these mystical warriors all about? What is the Force? Why is Qui-Gon Jinn rigging chance cubes so that he can steal a child and casually take his blood?

Their ongoing investigation reveals new insights into many aspects of these robed street people, including: explaining the ridiculousness of midichlorians, the poorly designed “revolving-restaurant” headquarters, and why love is forbidden for all Jedi.

“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” - Yoda, confusing everyone

Reddit thread from 3 years after: https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/fmJxfU20vv