12/30/2006
Blooper: Spielberg
Here’s the unheard secret ending to Episode 13’s Top 6 Movie Openings segment.
12/29/2006
Rocky and Growing Old in the Movies
In our discussion about Rocky Balboa in the Episode 12 thread, Dave mentioned that part of the reason he’s excited for the movie despite its silly plot is because he associates Rocky with his childhood. If Rocky’s too old to fight, then Dave must also be old, and that’s not something Dave wants to be the case, so he’s happy to see Rocky out there fighting one last bout. That discussion got me thinking about how Rocky Balboa really has a lot to say about the way movies deal with the whole concept of getting old.
12/29/2006
Blooper: Beginning
For some reason, this blooper makes me laugh every time I hear it. It’s from Stephen’s introduction to the Trivia Question segment of Episode 13.
12/28/2006
Vintage: Ballyhoo, Part 1
One of the most hilarious and entertaining things about the film industry in the 1920s is how completely unbridled marketing and publicity were at the time. Today, movie marketing has fallen into familiar patterns. X months before release, we get a teaser trailer. Y months later, we get a full trailer, and over the course of a few days, maybe we get different edits of the trailer that cater to different demographic groups. Toy merchandising starts Z weeks out, with toy stores and a designated fast food chain hard selling co-branded plastic junk. It’s familiar. It’s boring. Not so, the advertising practices of the old days.
In the 1920s, there were no familiar patterns. The movies were still new, and businesses were less hampered by advertising laws. Studios and exhibitors could be innovative — in fact, they had to be innovative — to get the word out.
Interestingly, the onus of advertising was mostly on the theater owner to sell movies to the public. Today, when movies almost always open nationwide the same day, the burden falls on the studio to advertise. But way back, movies didn’t open everywhere all at once, and theater owners had to make more independent decisions about what to project in their houses. The burden was on them to get the word out, and they pulled out all the stops to do it.
12/27/2006
Alas, Poor Lady of the Waters
Way back in Episode 4, Stephen assured us all that not even I could possibly like M. Night Shyamalan’s latest dark fantasy, Lady In the Water, released this past summer and hitting DVD just recently. I cannot tell a lie. Stephen was wrong. I liked Lady In the Water.
12/26/2006
All Movie Talk, Episode 13
Show contents, with start times:
- Film Style Spotlight: French New Wave (1:49)
- Trivia Question: Fanfares of Love (17:49)
- Best of the Year: 1980-1989 (18:32)
- Film Buff’s Dictionary: Cold Open (31:27)
- Top 6: Movie Openings (38:20)
- Famous Frame: Singin’ In the Rain (52:29)
- Closing: Trivia Answer, Preview of Next Week (57:17)
Press the Play button below to listen to the podcast, or the Download link to save it. Here’s how you can download new episodes automatically.
12/26/2006
Top 6: Movie Openings
Our Top 6 list for Episode 13 is about the best beginnings to movies. It’s strange; some of the very best movies of all time don’t particularly have noteworthy openings. But then there are others that, right from the first minutes, grab you and dazzle you and show you something you’ve never seen from the movies before. Moments like these can make a lifelong impression.
What are you favorite movie openings?
As always, we recommend listening to the episode before reading further.
12/25/2006
Merry Christmas, etc.
No posts of any substance today, but we’ll be back tomorrow with an episode like normal. Until then, Sam and I wish all our readers and listeners a very merry Christmas. If Christmas isn’t your thing, have a happy holiday of your chosing — heck, just in general have a very nice Dec. 25. Your continued patronage of our site and the podcast has been a great gift to us.
12/23/2006
Blooper: Blah Blah Blah
This blooper is actually more of a deleted scene. For the Top 6 Fast-Paced Movies segment in Episode 11, I was expecting my list to be dominated by action movies, and I was somewhat surprised to see most of my short list comprised of comedies. It was an even split in the end, but only because I forced myself to be diverse.
So I wrote some material that philosophized on why comedies seem more likely to work when they’re relentlessly fast-paced, vs. action movies that seemingly more often fall flat if they don’t slow down for a breath now and again.
But when I got around to recording that bit, I suddenly realized it just didn’t fit into the flow of the segment at all. I had a shaky segue into it and utterly no segue out of it. So I cut it. But here it is, the scene the studio didn’t want you to hear, restored and remastered for your home listening pleasure.
12/22/2006
Your Last Movie
An interesting thought experiment: if you could only pick one movie to see again for the rest of your life, which would it be? You could watch that movie as often as you want, but no others.
