Hola, Sneakers! This week you can get your kicks with Episode 366!
Sigh…
Anyway,on this week’s show: moving recap; kids said the darndest things; Ian REALLY liked a movie; what Solo could have been; isn’t it a PETA?; unfair criticism; outrageous attention seekers; provokers; you can’t self-gloss; affectionate names; chips ahoy; Sleeper hold; Idle chatter; wit is shit; be funnier; keepin’ it hacky; showbiz memories; apostolic teachings; gassy smells; testing family times; enemies list; bad Beatles; Mostly Marmaduke; and, finally, Ken Holtzhouser’s Top 10 movie list!
- Inherit the Wind
- Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
- A Hard Day’s Night
- Nicholas and Alexandria
- The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance
- Evil Roy Slade
- Superman: The Movie
- Wuthering Heights
- Billy Jack
- The Baby
Thanks for listening.
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Bronte Sister Spoilers: Dave, I’m far too chicken-hearted to take you up on your double-dog dare to come on the show. But you are right about the character of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. In the book, he goes from a rough, wild and passionate youth to a ruthless, cruel, vengeful and manipulative bastard. Some film adaptations only dramatize the first part of the novel and play up the star-crossed lovers aspect of the story. In the book, Heathcliff’s obsessive love for Cathy is more destructive than romantic. (But maybe your prof was into that kind of thing.) In the second part of the book, after the death of Cathy in childbirth, Heathcliff attempts to get his revenge on the Earnshaw and Linton families who shamed and abused him by trying to gain control over their estates and lives of the next generation. Kind of like a Gothic Yorkshire version of The Count of Monte Cristo. I thought Tom Hardy did a pretty good job of being bad Heathcliff in the 2009 TV mini-series of Wuthering Heights.
You’re also right that Rochester in Jane Eyre is a real jerk, at least to begin with. He was inspired by a real-life married man Charlotte Bronte fell in love with when she was a young governess. Some readers of the time didn’t think that Rochester deserved Jane because of, y’know, the whole attempted bigamy thing. But he is redeemed in the end after the proper amount of suffering and sacrifice, unlike Heathcliff.
For the record: Fanny and Alexander (1982) is the Bergman movie. Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) is the fine Oscar-winning movie about the last days of the Romanov family during the Russian Revolution. Alexandria is a city in Egypt.
Since it’s coming up on Christmas, have you guys done a top 10 Christmas movies list before? Is there even 10? I feel like you’ve done Christmas songs, maybe? But since you’ve been on the movie streak… maybe you guys could rattle off your own lists?
‘The Old Bi-curiosity shop’ – bravo, sir! That would make an excellent New Yorker cartoon…
Hey guys! I think you missed my top 10, unless I missed an episode somehow! I posted it on Facebook a few episodes after you started doing them, I think. About half of mine have been discussed already, but there are a few that haven’t been mentioned yet:
Original post:
I’m in the same boat as… was it Lezah? who said they had a well established top five, but I really had to think about the next five. I came up with something I can live with, for now.
Consistent Top Five, probably in order:
All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
A Hard Day’s Night
Robocop (1987)
Penn & Teller Get Killed
The Great Dictator
Next Five Panic Picks in no particular order:
Major League*
Wag The Dog
This Is Spinal Tap
Clue
Harry Potter (all 8 of ‘em, but if I absolutely had to choose one, I’d choose two: Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince)
*Disclaimer on Major League: I am not a fan of the Cleveland Indians’ name and mascot, but the movie came out (and I fell in love with it) almost 30 years ago, so I cringe occasionally but give it pass on the grounds that it’s otherwise a great baseball movie made for baseball fans.
Current Addendum:
I’m still okay with my Panic Picks, but since most of the others threw extras in there, I have to give honorable mention to Tim’s Vermeer, which was fighting with Clue and Wag The Dog for placement in the bottom 5, but since you guys already talked about it years ago and Ian didn’t like it (or rather didn’t like the idea of it – I hope maybe you gave it a chance and saw it at some point!), I was hesitant to include it. But screw it… I love it so much, and it brings up great questions about art vs technology, where the line between them is drawn, and how much the line really matters. I’m a musician and I’ve seen some pretty amazing technology become widely available and change the art form between when I started recording (early 90s) and today, so it’s somewhat directly relatable to my life. It’s also a fascinating historical mystery possibly being solved before our eyes. You don’t have to talk about it again but dammit, I’m putting it on my list.
Got beat to the correction, but I can mention that Fanny and Alexander will be on TCM at the end of this month. Trying to figure out which of the kid’s shows I can afford to delete from the DVR to make room for it.