OMG Cinema Paradiso....

It's a little confusing at first, but the 2nd time I saw it, it really clicked. Brilliant, funny, horrifying movie.

DISNEY RESETTING STAR WARS; ERASING LAST JEDI

Interesting rumor that Disney and Jon Favreau are planning on making the final Star Wars trilogy "not canon" and placed in a separate "alternate universe," and that they will begin again and replace The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and Skywalker with a new series of movies, as they think the JJ Abrams/Rian Johnson trilogy effectively stops Star Wars in its narrative tracks.

Kathleen Kennedy, who produced the last trilogy, is against this....so you have a Favreau vs. Kennedy conflict happening at Disney. Favreau, remember, is the main creative force behind The Mandalorian.

This is interesting. And the article is an interesting read.

since we're talking internal disney politics let me just mention one of my fav books is disneywar and you all should read it.

I mean, the last three were at least better than the middles ones. THOSE are the ones they should remake. "I hate sand."

guessing that guy was wearing a tin foil hat when he wrote that article.

Heh, it turned out pretty good after all. Quite a ride!

^ ^ I was hoping you’d come in here with that

Rewatched Doubt for the first time in ten years. It's a good movie blessed a truly great script.

John Patrick Shanley at the height of his powers. His directing, however, is a tad flat. But that's okay, when you have words that good and actors like Streep, Hoffman, Davis, and Adams to say them, might as well just put the camera on sticks, turn it on, and let them go to town.

It's an incredible view into 4 characters with deep, complex internal lives - but lives that we barely get to glimpse.

Doubt, intolerance, compassion, love...all BIG topics with big questions. Shanley does a helluva job thematically while not short-changing the straight-forward narrative.

It take it back, it's a great movie, not just a good.

Doubt has the same problem lots of film adaptations of theatre do - it's too stagey. People in a room talking a lot is the stuff of stage, not cinema. The translation to the screen often feels a bit awkward, which isn't helped by the somewhat stilted dialogue in Doubt.

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King of Staten Island was just ok. Some scenes and characters were pretty goofy. One of Apatow’s less polished and fleshed out movies, which is surprising at this point.

Had its moments, but I found Pete Davidson’s character to be a little annoying and not that funny. And I liked his last standup. Doubt he’s a lead again anytime soon. Jeff Who Lives at Home did a better job telling a similar story.

They are going to make stupid Star Wars movies until the world ends.

so....30 years?

You're an optimist, Dom.

October.

but the election is in November

Molly's Game - got around to finishing this bc people in here liked it, glad I did. Seems like a hollywood-ized version of what really went on but when she finally dropped the act, I started to enjoy it more, and the stuff with her and her dad at the end tugged at my strings a bit. That one scene where the guy blows up completely and loses everything he had was tough to watch, can't help but think how many times that's happened to people in big games. Scary. Overall an entertaining movie.

Killing Them Softly - I really enjoyed this. Gandolfini is up there with the greats imo, so believable and charismatic. He plays this type of character (this & in True Romance) amazingly, and gives it that real-world-psychopathic spin that few actors are capable of. Brad Pitt plays Brad Pitt as always, but the rest of the cast is A+

The Disaster Artist - Franco-as-Wiseau was too unlikeable for me, I finished it but only barely.

pretty sure Wiseau was supposed to be unlikable

When I lived in L.A., I was at a friend's party, who was celebrating a movie deal. It was all very Hollywood. Tommy Wiseau was there, but no one knew why or who had invited him. He just showed up.

His act is funny on the screen, but in person, he's a very scary dude.

Rewatched the Godfather trilogy with the old lady, she has not seen a large volume of classic cinema.

I didn't remember how much of a part the Mary-Vincent relationship played in Part III, to the point of it being so cringeworthy. Why was anyone entertaining it as rational? Every other characters motives for them not being together is for her safety... not that they are cousins. lol?

I realize that it has been a couple of weeks since our discussion on remakes that were as good or better than the original, but I just found out last night that the classic 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart was itself a remake of a 1931 version with somebody named Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade.

I learned about this from an older Youtube series I've recently come across called Trailers From Hell, which is hosted by various directors. This one on The Maltese Falcon was hosted by John Landis. (Curiously, Landis goes on and on about how the trailer never mentions the author of the book by name, but at the 1:50 mark of the video it's there in big bold letters across the entire screen: "It's Dashiell Hammett's Greatest Novel.." Well, I guess nobody's perfect.)

I was pretty disappointed by Before Midnight and I loved the first two. Has some great scenes, including the opener, but the magic between the leads is gone. And I get that was sort of the point, but it was depressing to watch. Delpy especially was a lot less charming and often just mean. I guess the point is marriage and children are really hard but I thought they could have shown the bright side of that more.

I listened to a whole bunch of The Rewatchables podcast over the past couple months, AKA The Ringer's Bill Simon's take on mainstream movies going back 3-4 decades. I mean, Filmspotting >>>>> The Rewatchables and it's not even close in regards to the depth of the analysis and The Rewatchables formulaic approach can be cringe-worthy at times, but Simon's pop outlook remains entertaining, if tilting.

If you like Bill Simons, you'd probably like Bill Simmons even more.

I used to like him quite a bit, his basketball book for instance. All the way back to his Sports Guy heyday on the ESPN Page 2 website. More for sports than for his pop culture takes though. Kinda given up on him at this point, we had a good run.