Movies (and occasionally face slaps) (Part 1)

2 movies over the last 2 nights:

Sunday night I thought it would be fun to watch National Lampoon’s European Vacation given our recent trip to London and Paris. This was, umm, not well received. The child actors were absolutely terrible–easily the worst Griswold children of any of the Vacation films; Audrey’s character is treated abominably between getting molested by some 60 year old game show host, the overeating “fantasy”, and the stupid fixation on Karate Kid Johnny Lawrence; and the criminal plot is so stupid that it spoils any funny aspects of the movie. It’s just a bad, mean movie with a few laughs that my nostalgia significantly overweighted. My wife hated it so much that she announced that she refuses to ever watch another Chevy Chase movie again, and she won’t allow one to be on even in the background while she’s in the room. (She came into this movie as a staunch Fletch hater.) Everyone hated this and hated me for choosing it.

Last night: John Wick 2. I was late to the JW train, and only recently saw the original. I thought it was a banger and looked forward to seeing the sequel. Holy shit, just an incredible nonstop action movie, and I can’t believe it took me so long to see it. This would have ruled in the theater. RIP Lance Riddick.

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A person of taste and culture I see.

Would highly recommend you watch The Wife, which I affectionately refer to instead as Kingmaker. It won Glenn Close the Golden Globe for best actress and features everyone one else you’d hope to be cast against her.

A wild Christian Slater appears!

Joan and Joe remain complements after nearly 40 years of marriage. Where Joe is casual, Joan is elegant. Where Joe is vain, Joan is self-effacing. And where Joe enjoys his very public role as the great American novelist, Joan pours her considerable intellect, grace, charm and diplomacy into the private role of a great man’s wife. As Joe is about to be awarded the Nobel Prize for his acclaimed and prolific body of work, Joan starts to think about the shared compromises, secrets and betrayals.

Trailer has got me fired up. I’m putting it on for morning coffee.

The 2013 Japanese remake of Unforgiven, which keeps with the tradition of western/samurai exchange, is available on Prime.
I have waited 10 years to watch this movie as it was never released here.
I hope it gets a physical release one day.
A fantastic film.

https://twitter.com/HosteenCholo/status/1683650181332615168?t=8tr8rk4Q8jliwYZgaDVkUA&s=19

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I probably can’t take credit for all that. It was a movie that featured a 1:45 runtime and I was trying to get a quick movie in before bed. Bonus points for contributing to my long-term “watch all the BP nominees” project.

The royal family is not generally of any interest to me, but I did enjoy the original seasons of The Crown, so I know it’s possible for me to enjoy the subject matter when it’s done well.

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Omg ty for posting this wtf is this Pandora’s Box

I enjoyed this movie, but far and away the most resounding memory for me is the way they misrepresented the tone of the moment when Nixon says “when the President does it, it is not illegal.” The movie presents it as the record-scratch moment where the whole room stops, something like right after Jessup says “YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!” In the movie, Nixon has an “oh shit, I really just said that” reaction and tries to uncomfortably stumble his way out of it. Frost’s jaw drops and he says, shocked, “Excuse me?”

In the real footage, the whole exchange is very calm and matter-of-fact, with Nixon not being remotely rattled and Frost not reacting with even a hint of surprise. Nixon: “I’m saying that when the President does it, it is not illegal.” Frost: “By definition.” Nixon: “Exactly.” And then he goes on to make whatever argument he was making.

Granted that this is an example of taking artistic license that I find more amusing than annoying, but the difference between the art and the reality is still always the thing that I remember since it’s a climactic point in the movie.

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No no, that description was based on all of your other posts, of which a short review of The Queen was merely the je ne sais quoi. I mean most people put on something dumb like Idiocracy.

Shats :grin:

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Haha gotcha. Have not seen Idiocracy. Though I suppose at some point I should because it constantly comes up as a pop culture reference and I simply have to assume what the person means through context clues. See also: Sliding Doors.

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Nixon gave some juicy quotes that have been mined for historical drama far out of proportion to what people like Frost contributed to that history, but I guess people are going to eventually do the same kind of film revisionist history to all of the people who interviewed Trump.

To my understanding, the whole thing was a gimmick as much as Geraldo opening the empty vault. As a matter of entertainment, Frost was in on it. But the movie presents him more like “what if Jerry Springer hadn’t switched to shock show” topics. Remember that initially, Springer wanted his show to be more like Oprah than Crank Yankers.

ha

here it is

https://www.amazon.com/Unforgiven-Ken-Watanabe/dp/B085PWXS8C/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22D1NBE15OZ3&keywords=Yurusarezaru+Mono&qid=1690296471&s=instant-video&sprefix=yurusarezaru+mono%2Cinstant-video%2C94&sr=1-1

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Ty but when you said Prime I thought you meant available for subscribers :rage:

I thought I’d seen every Chevy Chase Lampoon movie, but I find myself questioning whether I’ve actually seen European Vacation since that doesn’t sound familiar and I see that I didn’t slap an IMDb rating on it as I try to remember to with everything I watch.

As lesser-achieving Lampoon movies go, I was really quite fond of Vegas Vacation. Clark desperately flailing until he’s finally just playing “pick a number” as a table game is hilarious to me.

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Geez that guy on the right is a casino dealer in every movie he’s in, isn’t he?

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Vegas vacation isnt a good movie but it is LEAGUES better than European Vacation. Just an awful movie all around

I love that the very first game he plays is an actual table game now.

It was at the time too, Vegas Vacation being released in '97. Casino War - Wikipedia

The game was developed by Bet Technology, a small company based in Carson City, Nevada.[4] The patent on the game was filed in 1993.[5] By 1994, the game was offered at five Northern Nevada casinos, beginning with Harrah’s Tahoe.[4]

I edited and mixed the commentaries for Vacation, European Vacation, and Christmas Vacation. I think European Vacation was done in 2002 and it was the first time (before it became common knowledge) I realized Chevy Chase was an a-hole. He was a major jerk in the commentary and I don’t remember how much legal cut out from it because it was so many movies for me ago.

Because of that Chase weirdness, maybe it’s worth watching to see if I was able to remove this edge from it and also to see how much of that stuff was ultimately left in. I don’t remember him saying a whole lot but do seem to remember a bunch of insults of various cast members flying around that were likely cut.

I thought there was a commentary that had him and Beverly D’Angelo in it at the same time, but she wasn’t on Vacation and he wasn’t on Christmas Vacation (I’m kind of wondering if we cut him in that one but I don’t remember it at all based on looking at a review). He said something mean about her in one of them and I’m thinking it was Vacation when she wasn’t there. She recorded in a different place from the others for Christmas Vacation and that’s basically all I remember about that one.

In one of the movies he said something unflattering about an actress and I remember everyone telling him to cool it with that kind of stuff. If he didn’t record for Christmas Vacation it must have been said in Vacation. Details are fuzzy but I think the European Vacation commentary was the first overt indicator that Chase was what everyone found out about him later.

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Sup. Would read again

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I don’t regret my life choices to never have seen European or Vegas Vacations…or Fletch.

Even before knowing Chevy is a douchebag IRL I never really liked his work. His entire schtick is smug overacting.