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running commentary

The internet is filled with things. Here are some of them.

#movies

2025

The FBI warning on tapes/DVD is because of porn 2025 Jan 4
During that weird time in the 70s when porn became... not quite art, but something more than just porn, the San Francisco pornographer brothers Art and Jim Mitchell used their legal expertise to place restraining orders against everyone bootlegging their infamous Behind the Green Door video (the title a reference to a 1956 pop song about a private club). A Texas judge ruled that porn was for some bullshit reason exempt from copyright law, and therefore the Mitchell brothers had no case. They appealed. Quoth the SF Gate in 1999:
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Mitchells, a decision that led to the brightly colored FBI warnings seen at the start of rented videotapes today, a contribution to our national culture for which the Mitchells are rarely thanked.
Well then. Thank you, Mitchells. Also Jim later shot and killed Art for being a drunken belligerent mess, so there's that, too.

2024

Casual Viewing 2024 Dec 30
This long n+1 article tells the history of Netflix and how it has destroyed impactful movie-making, removing the cultural importance of films.
“Apparently for Netflix, Ryan Reynolds has made $50 million on this movie and $50 million on that movie,” Quentin Tarantino told a Deadline reporter last year at Cannes. “Well, good for him that he’s making so much money. But those movies don’t exist in the zeitgeist. It’s almost like they don’t even exist.”
Toto, David Lynch, and Brian Eno: Dune 2024 Nov 20
Steve Lukather, from the band Toto, on sharing a credit with Brian Eno on the soundtrack to David Lynch's 1984 Dune:
I’ve never met Brian. Love his work, but he wrote a 30-second theme and basically got the same credit as us. They used him because of his name value, so people attributed our work to him and his work to us, and it was confusing. It was much hipper to say Brian Eno wrote the score than Toto at the time. If they didn’t like the movie, they’d go after us. If they liked it, they’d give Eno all the credit. I have no beef with Brian Eno, I have no beef with David. That’s what he wanted so he should have it. I love Brian Eno.
And later in the interview, David Paich, the primary songwriter for Toto, on visiting David Lynch's home:
I remember when I went to his house, he had this haunting, low, whistling sound. I said, “What is that?” He said he went to Scotland up into the hills where there was supposedly a haunted castle. This was the wind whistling through the castle, and he recorded that. He puts it on all of his movies. This low wisp of a sound. It’s almost like a foghorn.
Office Space: An Oral History 2024 Oct 22
This is a 2019 article which tracks down and interviews dozens of people who helped create "Office Space", the 1999 Mike Judge cult classic about the absurdity of cubicle life. I've seen the movie a lot. So nostalgia like this is interesting, to learn what the creators were doing and why they were doing it, long since freed from having to promote the movie and sing only its praises.
Too Old To Die Young 2024 Sep 27
In 2019, Nicolas Winding Refn and Ed Brubaker created a beautiful, beautifully long and drawn out, enigmatic, brutal, horrific 13-hour neo-noir masterpiece. I just found out it existed two weeks ago, and finished watching it two days ago. Now I'm struggling to understand what I saw, to tie together the threads that the narrative does not make explicit. Linked is my rambling thought process; it is not a review; there are massive spoilers.
Bruce Arntson's "Tree Climbing Shoes" 2024 Sep 11
This ridiculous song from Ernest Goes to Jail has been living rent-free in my head for thirty years. "Don't make me climb the coconut tree, these aren't my tree-climbing shoes."
Every Best Picture Winner Ranked by How Good a Muppets Version Would Be 2024 Aug 3
The headline is the premise, and the article more than delivers on the premise. And here I was thinking journalism was dead. Prove me wrong, Hard Drive, prove me wrong!
Heavy Metal Parking Lot 2024 May 12
Step back in time to 1984 in this seventeen-minute long VHS-quality video of footage edited together by Judas Priest fans interviewing each other in a parking lot prior to one of their concerts. Apparently this used to be traded around in bootleg copies only before eventually making its way, as does everything, to the internet. Now you can pay $1 to watch it on Amazon. And should, because it is simply amazing.
The Hobbit Duology 2024 May 9
This feature-length documentary analyzing what's wrong with The Hobbit movie trilogy is fascinating, very well done, and gripping enough to have me watching it's entire running length despite never having seen any of The Hobbit movies. Peter Jackson's LotR trilogy wasn't perfect but it at least felt like a fair adaptation. Whereas The Hobbit turned me off – and you'd think I'd be its target audience – from its promotional material alone. I think this is another case where the movie analyzing what went wrong with a movie is more watchable than the movie in question (see: The Phantom Menace).
Working with Uwe Boll 2024 Apr 3
My guess is that most people have probably forgotten about the world's least competent major film director, Uwe Boll, but for some reason I have not. And so I stumbled across this Something Awful article from 2005 (with writing so smug and hyperbolic you should already be cringing) but what it does purport to shed light upon is what is it like to actually work with Uwe Boll. The author is Blair Erickson (who later went on to make some movies I've never heard of) who says he was asked to submit some scripts to Boll early in the development of Alone in the Dark. What amount of the tale is true versus Something Awful's typical dramatic inflation I of course cannot say but it does shed some interesting if not surprising insights.
Nestflix 2024 Jan 5
The platform for your favorite nested films and shows.

2023

The Ellison Dispute 2023 Jul 1
Did James Cameron rip off a Harlan Ellison story when he made Terminator? So claimed Ellison back in 1984 when the movie came out. And considering that Ellison didn't just get paid, but also got his name added to the credits, it'd seem that the lawyers agreed with him. But did Cameron really rip off Ellison? Or did the famously litigious Ellison just outmaneuver a young, naive, newly successful filmmaker?
Aliens: How Burke takes his coffee 2023 Mar 11
I'm always a fan of appreciating the details in a movie I love. But as a quick analysis of how cleverly Burke's subtle villainy was crafted, this is a fun journey back into the universe of the xenomorphs.