From last time.
Coming next, part 3, her movie/show recommendations.
And some miscellaneous other stuff.
I have that one all locked and loaded, it was the reading that was the slowpoke part.
So, here we go!
We shot the shit about a lot of things, and one of the things we shot the shit about, both in PM and on the board, was movies & TV.
So, here's a sample of that.
Everything I can remember, anyway.
The Red Shoes (1948)
It's a meta-movie, and Margaret loved meta-movies.
It's based on the Hans Christian Anderson story, and the producer-guy in the movie bases the ballet-within-the-movie on the story, and tells the story.
She also particularly loved the line...
"Why must you dance?".
"Why must you live?".
"Because I must".
"That is my answer too".
...she thought that summed up every artist in any medium....and dammit, she was right.
Night Of The Hunter (1955)
From here.
Another one with Robert Mitchum playing a creep.
The protagonists are a little boy and his little sister, their dad is a crook who hides his ill-gotten gains in the girl's doll, then gets arrested, tried, and executed for the people he shot in the robbery.
Mitchum is the father's cellmate who gets out, and seduces the mother to try to find the money.
Very frustrating to watch, everyone was a naïve gullible Bible-thumping idiot except the villain and the kids.
It was like watching the Trump campaign unfold in microcosm.
For that reason, I actually recommend it.
Margaret said she saw this as a kid, and it scared the shit out of her.
All That Jazz (1979)
Another meta-movie!
Plays within plays, flashbacks within flashbacks.
My personal take away?
Even the all-time-greats get imposter syndrome.
I wonder if that's what she wanted me to see.
I'll never get to ask now. *sigh* 😥
Oh, and if you didn't get enough naked Sandahl Bergman in "Conan The Barbarian" well, you get some more here.
Her sexy dance number is totally the inspiration for Paula Abdul's "Cold Hearted Snake" video.
Sandahl's version is better.
The Muppet Movie (1979)
Margaret seemed to be an all around Henson fangirl.
See "The Dark Crystal" further down.
She reminded me often of the line about "making millions of people happy" from "The Muppet Movie".
It was her cute way of trying to cajole me into publishing.
Now, random trivia.
"The Rainbow Connection" was written by Paul Williams, who cameos in the flick, and who did the music for and starred in "The Phantom Of The Paradise", and composed the music for "The Secret Of NIMH".
Charles Durning from "Rescue Me" (see below) is Doc Hopper, the villain!!
The Stuntman (1980)
Another meta movie!!
The mother of all meta-movies!!
I see this as the granddaddy of stuff like "The Game" and "Truman Show".
Well....further back is "The Tenant" but I find that overly long, and sloggy, and pretentious.
YMMV on that.
I definitely like "Stuntman" better.
This was Margaret's favorite movie.
I know, because she flat out said so.
I bought it on DVD sight unseen on her recommendation.
Good thing it turned out to be good.
Heh.
Peter O'Toole's in it.
As is Jonathan Railsback straight off of being Charles Manson in "Helter Skelter".
There's definitely a Russian doll thing going on with this, where you never know the periphery of Eli's (Peter O'Toole's character) movie, and if indeed maybe we're watching Eli's movie, and he's making the whole damned thing.
There's a strong anti-war component/layer to it too.
Eli is making an anti-war movie set in World War I, while the main character is a Vietnam vet with PTSD.
They never label it that, but he exhibits all the symptoms.
Course, it probably has even more resonance for me because of knowing Margaret.
I kind of see her as Eli, and me as Cameron/Lucky, and smile.
The director in the commentary of the DVD says he drew a lot of inspiration from listening to "The Windmills Of Your Mind" by Dusty Springfield.
He couldn't get the rights to it for the film, but Dusty sings "Bits And Pieces" which IMO is better than "Windmills".
By way of comparison, here's Windmills Of Your Mind
And here's Bits And Pieces.
I gotta admit, I would probably never watch "All That Jazz" or "The Red Shoes" again, but this one's actually a real winner.
Glad I own it.
The Dark Crystal (1982)
So, Jim Henson's shop makes Yoda for Empire, and he just had to be like..."fuck, Yoda was the star of that baby, and this Lucas is actually a hack now that I've met him...why don't I just make a whole movie like that with these advanced puppets, and kick his overrated ass?".
And...it is pretty good.
The humanoid Gelflings weren't quite there yet, a bit stiff in the face, but all the monster-y things were nailed down.
An under-appreciated little gem.
Shit, it's better story-wise than Avatar.
I hadn't seen the movie since...well, since it was on HBO in '83 I think.
It'd been awhile.
So, I had to re-watch it to re-familiarize myself with the world before jumping into the show.
I don't know what order works best. Movie, or show first.
The beginning of the '82 movie starts sadder for the good guys than Star Wars.
So, when you know the movie before the show, you kinda know going in any victory is going to be as hollow as "The Phantom Menace".
And that's kind of how it ends, TPM style.
A happy end that you know is going to be reversed later.
But, it's the journey getting there, and meeting and caring about the characters, and on that level DC:AOR kicks TPM's ass.
That's the quick run-through version, now I'll ramble a bit.
Seeing the movie again for the first time in ages, wow, it really holds up well!
I reverse my opinion, I declared "Labyrinth", as Henson's masterpiece, and it is great, but "Dark Crystal", has a much bigger world to play with.
Easily as big as Star Wars.
Both in physical scope, and time-span.
And it's not for little babies just cuz it's Muppets, it's dark as a motherfucker.
Movie or show.
Margaret was a big-time fangirl for this.
She even made her self-insertion character in "Ain't Exactly Clear" have the screen-name of Augra.
Working Girl (1988)
Margaret kept recommending this to me, but I could never get ahold of it.
Then, suddenly, it was randomly on TV after she died, so I jumped on it.
Now, maybe this is me playing amateur shrink too much, but I see Melanie Griffith as Margaret, and the douche-nozzle editor of "Star Trek: Probe" (more on that later) as her Sigourney Weaver.
But, to make it more universal, I guess the message is, with talent, and tenacity, and a willingness to bend the rules, you can always triumph, even in an unfair system.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)
The definitive meta-movie!
The titular characters are sneaking around in the background of "Hamlet" but then a troupe of traveling performers act out the basic plot of "Hamlet".
Plenty other layers going on, I'd have to be a Shakespeare expert to catch 'em all.
I already liked this before I ever met Margaret, but we stumbled into that we both liked it.
Wow, 1990?
It feels like 70's.
Early 80's, tops.
But 90?
Damn.
Ghost In the Shell (1995)
From here.
The live-action remake of this just bombed.
Good.
The animes stand alone, they don't need fucking with.
Margaret asked me what are good animes.
Guess she assumed I'd be an expert.
I freely admit I'm not.
I'm good, but we had deeper addicts on the board.
But, she asked me, and I rattled off about 4-5 titles, and she went with this one.
She dug it.
I don't know that she loved it, but she appreciated the animation, and the philosophy of identity stuff.
Men In Black (1997)
Eh, s'cute.
Strikingly similar to Ghostbusters, but...if we're gonna have a goddamned 25-30 year dry spell of Ghostbusters, this will do in a pinch.
Dammit, I can't think of this without the theme song ear-worming on me....
Followed by two sequels, and a cartoon.
Neat little series of films, but its really not in the pop culture zeitgeist anymore.
Sony almost rebooted it with a crossover with "21 Jump Street".
Wow, Sony, you're really bad at this.
I mean, really.
Will Smith keeps almost fading out, and then re-igniting again.
"Suicide Squad", just gave him another boost.
Haha!!
Will Smith just did "the slap heard 'round the world" so...we'll see how that goes for him.
Margaret loved the shit out of this one.
She often quoted the line "a person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.".
"The True Believer" can basically be boiled down to that.
Where she dug this, and "Galaxy Quest" (see below) I tried to talk her into "Paul" but it was no-go for some reason.
Shakespeare In Love (1998)
Hey! Another Shakespeare one that goes meta!
Another one she badgered me to see.
I hand waved her off, cuz I saw this before as a rental, and I hated it.
I dunno what was wrong with me.
Yet another one of those ones where I was in the wrong head-space, and it didn't go in the socket right.
Saw it on TV not long after she died.
I get it now, it's not about the historical inaccuracies, or the corny romance, it's about the writing process!!
I'm such a slowpoke!!
*Slaps forehead*
I was such a crappy pupil.
Galaxy Quest (1999)
From here.
The custodians of "real", Trek neglected to give us a fun Trek movie in the 90's, so the makers of this took it out of their hands.
Thank you!
Margaret loved the ever-loving shit out of this one.
To the point, you could almost argue it was her favorite Trek movie.
After "Wrath Of Khan" which she'd literally seen hundreds of times.
She probably dug it so much because it had so much in common with "Preternatural".
She's lucky she got a GOOD movie that resembled her stuff.
The ripoff of Harry Hembock is "Hancock" and that's terrible.
Dammit, Will Smith!
Why couldn't you have just slapped me instead!?
The West Wing (1999-2006)
From here.
The hugest one of these binges at seven 22 episode seasons.
Good thing it was good all the way through.
Loved it.
One of my all-time favorite shows now.
Quite possibly a masterpiece.
IMO, this show kind of demands to be binge-watched. I can't imagine having to follow all the plot-lines waiting week after week, and then suffering through commercials.
So, how does it stack up against previous favorites?
Tough call, I might even put it up there with "Breaking Bad".
Yeah, somewhere between "Breaking Bad", and "Walking Dead".
Ah, shit, where does that put "Hannibal"?
Um....hmm...
Fuck lists, let's just say it's in the top 5, and those positions shift around depending on my mood.
Anyway, I'd recommend it, but you've gotta schedule the time to get it in there, cuz it's a sprawl.
Yeah, my old review holds.
I binged it on Margaret's recommendation.
Boy, did she badger me into it!
Glad she did though.
She was almost as obsessed with this as "Wrath Of Khan" and "Galaxy Quest".
It inspired big chunks of "Ain't Exactly Clear".
Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)
Margaret recommended this to me for forever.
I finally got to it in fucking 2019.
Here's a snipped down version of my review at the time...
Dunno why I couldn't get into it before. *shrug*
I think 9/11 was still too fresh, or something.
Anyway, to the observations/questions.
Octagons everywhere!!
Seriously, how do they snip all the corners off all the paper goods?
And what do they do with all the corners?
Recycle it back into pulp for more octagon paper, to snip the corners off, to make more octagon paper, to snip off the corners...
Speaking of tech, wait, you're telling me they (BSG humans) can make Cylon eyeballs, but not 1080p digital cameras?
We see their TV shows, and they've got CRT scan lines worse than TVs of the 2000's when the show was on.
Fat Apollo got Jenny Craig-ed awfully quick.
Season 3, episode 14, anti-medicine assholes spread a plague.
Well, that was prophetic.
Why isn't Katee Sackoff a movie star?
WTF happened there?
She should be in a Marvel/DC/Star Wars by now.
(Haha!! She's Bo-Katan now!!)
To which Margaret answered...
RE: Katee Sackhoff, she had a pretty good role in Longmire.
Why isn't she a comic superhero? Because she's not Scarlett Johannson. Big boobs, small butt, perfect teeth are still the H'wood expectation. Also, maybe she ran into a Harvey Weinstein type and kicked him in the nuts. Just guessing.
Rescue Me (2004-2011)
I have her actual review in her own words for this one!!
I binged watched Rescue Me twice. Can't put it in the same category as NuBSG, because the latter, like Trek, is larger than life. Rescue Me *is* life.
I know these goombas. I went to grammar school with wiseasses like Tommy Gavin. Leary was spot-on (despite being from Baahston), and the rest of the cast was amazing. It was also a tutorial in what firefighters really go through.
My one critique would be around Tommy's love life. None of his women come across as worth the aggro (and I love Callie Thorne, but when she set the house on fire...nuh-uh. Too much.).
One final thought: Charles Frigging Durning. Probably the best character actor of his generation. Wowsers. If you haven't seen his turn on NCIS, do yourself a favor.
Not sure I'd watch it a third time (as I have NuBSG), but that could just be the place I'm in right now. Gorging on British crime dramas, which are soooo much more complex that anything the U.S. has to offer. IMO.
The Man From Earth (2007)
From here.
Written by Jerome Bixby, who wrote the "Twilight Zone" where Billy Mumy is an evil little kid who wishes people into the cornfield, and the Mirror Universe one on Star Trek, and "Requiem For Methuselah", with the immortal Flint.
This one is set in modern day, and is about a college professor who at his goodbye party claims to be a 14,000 year old caveman.
No special effects, or spaceships, or explosions, it's all people just talking, and it's an order of magnitude better than most of the drek in the multiplexes.
Brainy sci-fi at last, enjoy.
Margaret really dug this one.
Especially the main guy, and Billie Katt.
She picked up on the subtlety of Katt's character trying to compete with caveman-guy and him pissing him off by not competing back.
She didn't like John Billingsley (Phlox on ST:Enterprise).
Her damning with faint praise was "he has one note, but he plays it very well".
Watchmen (2009)
From here.
Best thing made by human beings.
Oh, okay, thats the book, but this is close.
Saw it at the theater.
Hard nailing down which was more fan-gasm-tastic, this, or "Dark Knight".
I badgered Margaret to read the book, but she watched the movie instead.
She dug it.
She especially liked that "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen played in the love scene, because it also played in a pivotal moment in "West Wing" and she saw that as a cosmic synchronicity thing.
She was into that sort of thing.
Doctor Who: Seasons 8-10 (2014-2017)
She was a Peter Capaldi fangirl.
Came onboard NuWho just for him.
She loved the weeping angels, hated the Daleks.
No, she REALLY hated them!
It would ruin episodes for her.
She binged the Capaldi seasons at least as much as "Rescue Me", NuBSG, and "West Wing".
At least.
Would have been more if she didn't binge NuBSG as much.
She tried to stick with the Whitaker seasons, but she hated the writing.
That's about all I have to say about that, I guess.
Now, I promised way up top that there'd be miscellaneous other stuff.
Well, here's all that!
Her favorite songs to go with her favorite movies.
As mentioned above, it helped inspire "The Stuntman" but also, Margaret dropped a reference to it in "Preternatural 2"!
From "The Stuntman"!
She randomly posted this on WF. Must've liked it to share it.
Mentioned in the "Watchmen" review.
She said she listened to this a lot when writing "Music Of The Spheres".
She said she'd been playing that in her head a lot about a couple weeks before she passed.
The MacLaine version was the best YT could give me. IMHO.
She said on multiple occasions this was Tamar's theme song.
So, I put it here to help her zing Tamar from beyond the grave one last time. 😉
Here's all her video and podcast interviews.
Her website got taken down, but here it is on Archive.org.
And if you rewind a few years, and click the link "Keep an eye on this guy. :)" there's a little surprise. 😉😏
Oh, and you know the bit about "Star Trek: Probe" I mentioned in the "Working Girl" review?
Here's a couple other dedications by her Trek writer friends.
And now, my final thoughts.
From here.
And in a lot of ways, she was kind of my unpaid shrink.
Sorry about that. 😓
I was sorry I didn't learn faster.
I was sorry she didn't get to see me succeed.
Frankly, I felt like I'd failed her.
But, after this year, and how the Preter trilogy, Mere Anarchy, and True Believer have massively helped me, I know our time wasn't squandered.
Not a damned bit of it.
I'm glad in those last couple days, when she was mad at me, I was brave, and broke her dumb rules, so that we patched it up, and had a good goodbye.
If she'd just made it one more stupid day, I know she would have said there's nothing to forgive.
She autographed Preter 3 "for Mike, because someday, you'll return the favor".
I'm working on it.
Heh, she likely would have yelled at me to write the book INSTEAD of any of this shit.
Hey, I've been working on both at the same time.
Why d'ya think this took so long to finish?
Her passing cattle-prodded my ass.
I'll always miss the ever-loving shit out of her.
RIP, Margaret.
4 comments:
She was a big fan of "backstage" stories, so her fondness for such diverse things as All The Jazz and The Stuntman totally make sense.
I watched The Red Shoes again recently. Criterion put out a 4K that's absolutely stunning.
Galaxy Quest is just awesome; I've seen it a dozen times and it still charms me.
I really liked The Man from Earth as well. Only found out recently that there's a sequel with the same lead actor. And William Katt's in it, too.
I glad she dig Watchmen. It's one of my favorite superhero films of all time. It's the last movie I saw four times at the theater
"The Red Shoes" is alright, but spends too much time on scenes that don't appeal to me much. I'm okay with other people thinking it's a masterpiece, at least.
"The Night Of The Hunter": It's the little things Laughton directed into the film that made it strong, IMO. Stuff like Mitchum almost literally turning into a cartoon character near the end. I like it.
Also, the Criterion version has some of their best cover art.
"Watchmen": Congratulations on not getting sick of "Hallelujah" yet! It's become a rather cliched choice for movies by now (any version, Cohen, Jeff Buckley, some guy playing solo piano, whatever)
"Shakespeare In Love": Cute enough little film that Harvey Weinstein bought the Oscar for IIRC? Oh well. I didn't mind it or anything.
Sorry I've been neglecting this place.
My read-a-thons have been the culprit.
I'll be done soon.
Red Shoes-Agreed
Night Of The Hunter- Agreed.
Watchmen/Hallelujah- Agreed!
Shakespeare In Love- Weinstein? Fuck! He smeared his poo on everything!
I didn't realize until this year that his name is sitting right there in the end credits for "Scream." Aaaarrrgghhh.
The Joel Coen "Tragedy Of Macbeth," is fairly good, just FYI.
"Lords Of Chaos" about the church burning Norwegian psycho black metal band Mayhem is...uh, well it's heavily fictionalized. It's okay, but probably not very accurate. You've probably heard of Varg Vikernes at some point in your life, no?
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