Crankcast Week 200 – 20090805
Finally addressing the age-old question of illegal aliens…
This week on the Crankcast… Taber’s back to talk about his trip to San Diego, and then squeeze in some movie talk before reading an email or two.
Comment here, mail here and friendship here, or here.
Week 200 – Time: 74:30min. – File Size: 34.2mb
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August 5th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
WOW! Interactive Crankcasting! (still creepy, though)
August 5th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
If it helps you feel less skeevy, none of the lead actresses are underage. I think the youngest of the four is nineteen.
crank!
August 6th, 2009 at 1:01 am
I’m a big fan of Southland Tales, actually, so there’s at least one. I have to say I read carefully the graphic novels associated with the movie after watching the movie the first time, and it just changed a lot of things. Those graphic novels are the first 2 acts of the story, so they introduced all the characters, explain a lot of concepts and set up scenes that pay off in the movie. They also present the script (as a real movie script in between the comic pages) written by the 2 main characters in the movie which is parallel but different to the story and introduce a kind of meta commentary on the characters and on the meaning of the whole story.
Deep down Southland Tales can be summarized as a sarcastic recreation of Southern California (and it helps to live in SoCal to understand it) in the last years of the Bush administration with social, artistic, and political commentary. It is incredibly deep and layered and would probably have worked better as a TV series (echoes of Oliver Stone’s ‘Wild Palms’) overall. I loved it.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:23 am
I really liked Wild Palms.
This movie, as a standalone though, came across to me as nearly gibberish.
Maybe I’d get it if I read the extra stuff, but should I need to do that for a movie?
I dunno, it was pretty.
crank!
August 6th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Congrats on the 200th podcast. That’s a lot of weeks.
Taber, please never say BRAZIL and SOUTHLAND TALES in the same sentence ever again. One is a visionary satire. The other is a turd. A visually beautiful, ambitious, well-intentioned turd, but a turd nonetheless. SOUTHLAND is a mess of tones, incoherent plotting, clunky exposition, painful dialog, and awful performances. The few occasional clever ideas or cool visuals didn’t make it worth it for me. In fact, SOUTHLAND was so bad it made me think less of DONNIE DARKO. That said, THE BOX looks like it could be fun and Kelly came off so well at the Comic Con panel that I’m willing to give him another shot.
As for other stuff, that’s a bummer about THE BROTHERS BLOOM dvd. I was looking forward to buying that movie and watching it again and again. And Taber, what about UP? It didn’t make your list of best summer movies. I haven’t seen one or two of the movies you mentioned, but for me, UP is second only to THE HURT LOCKER as the best movie I saw this summer. Your thoughts?
August 6th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I think I already praised Up in an earlier podcast. And I mean to say the best Live Action movies of the year. Up is definitely in my top 5. The list provided were simply the best movies I’ve seen since the last podcast.
Also, my comparison of Southland Tales to Brazil was simply to show the two sides of overly ambitious storytelling. It’s such a fine line that needs to be treaded carefully. If it’s successful, you’ll have a Brazil, if not, you’ll have Southland Tales.
And thanks to JM Ringuet for proving my point that Southland Tales does have rabid fans.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Also, I just received word that John Hughes just died. My dreams of a Curly Sue 2 are now dashed. Man, I was always hoping for a Hughes resurgence. Thining he went into exile to write 5 more timeless teen classics, but waiting for the right time to make them. I would like to have seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off From Social Networking Sites. Now we’re left with the posers who wish they were John Hughes, like the Can’t Hardly Wait team and whoever made Bratz.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Thanks for the fast reply. My bad on missing the UP review. I’ll check it out.
And no, I understand the BRAZIL/SOUTHLAND TALES point. It’s just that my inner Gilliam fanatic felt the need to rant.
Sadly, Ferris Bueller is now off forever. No more Edmund Dantes either. John Hughes will be missed. Though honestly, I’d rank CAN’T HARDLY WAIT over any of Hughes’ flicks minus FERRIS BUELLER and maybe WEIRD SCIENCE. I loved the guy’s movies as a kid, but man did most of them age badly.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Wait, just remembered Hughes also made PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES. And wrote the first 3 VACATION movies. So let me amend my “his movies don’t age well comment” to only refer to Hughes teen flicks.
August 8th, 2009 at 5:18 am
Wow Brendan you’re a bit of a hater. You know it’s not because you don’t like something that that makes it a “turd”. I know people who think Brazil is a turd. Is it one?
Thankfully there are creators for everyone, including the people who like Transformers.
Taber, thanks for the great job in reviewing movies in a fair and balanced way. We need a 3 hours episode with you.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Or another 24 hour podcast. :)
August 10th, 2009 at 8:54 am
I just started listening, and I’m enjoying the show.
This Michael Q. Schmidt guy that was dancing around obese and naked at comic-con? I wasn’t there, but I’m certain that I drew this guy in a life-drawing session a while back. He was actually a pretty friendly and interesting guy. As for his no-penis, though, I can vouch for its presence — he totally got a boner at one point.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Mike was a major party pooper this week.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Pick up the Walking Dead Compendium, its the first fifty issues for like forty bucks though you may have to hunt for it,