Sullivan's Travels was one of those films I'd wanted to see for approximately forever when I finally came across a copy (VHS back then, of course) at a nearby rental place back in ... the mid-'90s? Thereabouts, anyway. (I think the same place also supplied me with The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T about the same time.)

I need to watch it again; I remember liking it a lot.

FWIW TCM has shown Sullivan's Travels at least 3 or 4 times in the past year, after not having had it for about 3 or 4 years before that. It wouldn't surprise me if it's now back in a semi-regular rotation.

And while I know that that one's Morty's favorite, I've always thought that The Lady Eve and The Great McGinty were far funnier and less (indirectly) preachy.** If you've never seen McGinty, try this clip, "Pay The Lug", and if you're not hooked, you're not human. And it's playing Feb. 20th on TCM.

**It's all relative, though, and I also love Sullivan's Travels.

But, then, there's The Hobbit. It should take 6 hours to adapt. But the first movie out of announced three is well over the two hours it should be, so it is actually padded. This is historic. Nobody, ever, that I know of in the whole world history of film, has ever done this - spent more film time than it would take to fully adapt the novel. And

That's because Jackson isn't filming The Hobbit, the book. The book was written before The Lord of the Rings was even a gleam in Tolkien's eye.

What Jackson is doing is creating a parallel narrative to The Lord of the Rings, reconciling the inconsistencies between the two stories, and creating a true prequel. He is doing what Tolkien started to do toward the end of his life, but never finished. I think Jackson's The Hobbit is in many ways more faithful to Tolkien's vision than the original book is, mainly because the book was written before Tolkien's vision was fully developed.

I think it's a very bold goal to set, and I think the first movie was largely successful in achieving its goal. I am very very interested to see how the next two movies are handled.

I should also say that filming the book more or less hewing to the existing text simply wouldn't work. We've had three movies drilling it into our heads that The Ring is a thing of dark, ominous significance. And yet in The Hobbit (the book) it is treated as a bauble of minor significance. We know too much for that to work.

Did anyone who has seen The Hobbit see the HFR version?

I did and I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated it. (The technology that is.)

mongoose - Gillen (thanks for correcting the spelling) has just finished a run of Journey into Mystery that I thought was really great, and which is about as far away from mainstream Marvel as it's possible to get in a mainstream Marvel comic. Essentially, Loki dies saving the multiverse (long story by a different writer), but Thor wants his brother back. After some Asgard shenanigans, Loki comes back as a 13-year-old, with a fresh personality trying to change from being evil. The original adult Loki is reincarnated as a raven, named Ikol, who sits on Little Loki's shoulders and gives him deliberately bad advice (actual quote: "What did you expect, Loki? I'm evil you."). Loki also ends up with a girlfriend / companion / sharp-tongued 13-year-old girl named Leah, who is created from the hand of the death goddess Hela. The rest of the series is watching Little Loki's mechinations trying to save Asgard from its various evils, develop a personality as a hero god instead of a villain, and drinking milkshakes (I'm serious; I now call Gillen "The Milkshake Writer"). It's very clever, and VERY teenager, and the plots make sense to the reader, although they often don't make sense to Loki or any other of the characters. I found this absolutely hilarious. It's just ended, and another writer is now writing the adventures of the goddess Sif in JIM. Wait for the trade, of course, but I think you'll like this. There is a noticeable absence of superheroes, except for the occasional appearance by an Asgardian. It was good enough that I will now buy anything written by Gillen, at least until he does a bad story.

I liked the HFR version of The Hobbit, but my eyes have always responded well to the polarized 3D, even back 30 years ago, when I first saw the technology in Disneyland, watching a short film called Captain EO, starring Michael Jackson, at the peak of his career. In short, I've been waiting 30 years for this technology, and I am VERY sad to find out that some people's eyes don't deal with it well. I am sorry that your eyes don't deal with it.

Maranville - This is a VERY good take on The Hobbit; one that I had not considered. I was too interested in the filmmaking technique to worry about where the additions came from. I just wanted to make sure they included a full third of the original novel, which they did. And in any case, it really is a fresh new thing that film has never done before. Of course, after LoTR, you can get any backer to put up almost any sum of money for The Hobbit. He knows he's going to make a large profit (although, using accounting tricks, it will make zero "net profit"). - Brock

-- Tarantino's my favorite director, I love him. Death Proof was pretty annoying, but ok fun if you go in not expecting much.

-- The Bale Batman series is probably my favorite in the comic-book hero genre. Among the recentish stuff, the others I like are the first couple of Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies and the Hugh Jackman Wolverine origins movie. Haven't seen Avengers. By far the worst was The Watchmen. Who watches the watchers? Uh, no one, apparently.

-- I love Tolkien and Peter Jackson's LOTR but I'm dreading The Hobbit. I may force myself to go just so I can catch the 9-minute Star Trek trailer.

well to the Cagney lovefest may i introduce contradictory evidence in the form of one "Oklahoma Kid"? Cagney as a cowboy is a bad idea on its face, but his performance is so all over the map that the claim that Cagney was "always in the moment" seems very very wrong.
Cagney mixes and matches his song and dance past with his gangster roles to come up with something ridicolous, one of the worst performances by a major star of that time you could think of, that isnt an early mis-step but a veteran actor lost at eas.

I watched The Oklahoma Kid while showing it on a college campus over 40 years ago and haven't seen it since. You could well be right, but OTOH the "Western" is such a patently bogus genre** that I'll give any actor a pass for anything they do in one of those.*** IIRC Bogart was a bit out of his element in The Oklahoma Kid, too, and if Cagney actually broke out in a song and dance routine I must have mercifully suppressed the memory.

**As are just about all costume dramas not based on Shakespeare. 90% of them are pure camp, and most of them aren't even good enough on that score to be worth the effort.

**Even Stanwyck couldn't rescue a pair of Westerns I saw last week, and if you ever wanted two examples of why certain genres should just eliminate background music altogether, Forty Guns and The Maverick Queen would be Exhibits A and B. The phrase "lipstick on a pig" comes to mind.

P.S. Obviously this is a YMMV thing, and I realize that John Ford and John Wayne are considered demi-Gods in some circles. So be it.

My 2012 list so far:

Cream of the crop:

Killer Joe - Don't know that I've seen this one mentioned yet. The most shocking, arguably tasteless, and, if your sense of humor is as twisted as mine, completely hilarious movie of the year. Though once it really sinks in what you've been laughing at, you'll probably be totally skeeved out. If you don't already know the plot, just know that it's William Friedkin, NC-17, and that you'll never look at Matthew McConaughey the same way again, and dive in. I would love to see the reaction of somebody who went into this blind.

Django Unchained - A notch behind Inglorious Basterds, which is more tightly plotted and more interestingly subversive, but still top-notch QT, in my opinion. I think he's clearly making his best movies now.

The Master - PTA's most emotionally inaccessible work, but I've thought about it at least once a week since I saw it. Definitely gonna grow in stature over the years.

Moonrise Kingdom - The movie which was most successful in 2012 at putting a smile on my face. My favorite Wes Anderson (though I haven't seen Rushmore, Darjeeling, or Bottle Rocket).

Great:

Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Grey
Prometheus (bring it!)

Very good:

Brave
End of Watch
Haywire
Killing Them Softly
Looper
Magic Mike
ParaNorman
The Raid
Skyfall

Decent:

Argo
Bernie
The Dark Knight Rises
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Premium Rush
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Silver Linings Playbook

Passable:

The Avengers
The Dictator
Jim Gaffigan: Mr. Universe

Bleh:

The Hunger Games

Total crap:

The Devil Inside
Girls Gone Dead (though I knew what I was getting when I signed up for that...)

I won't be rushing out to get The Oklahoma Kid, but it's perfectly fair to say that studio stars made a lot of lousy movies in the 1930s. Even A pictures could have a certain interchangeable pulp quality to them: I notice that The Oklahoma Kid was made the same year as The Roaring Twenties (1939), and also featured Cagney, Bogart, and one of the Lane sisters. To some producers, it was all the same whether you gave these guys sedans and tommy guns, or horses and revolvers. And if the picture was lousy, you'd be wrapping another one eight weeks later.

I don't think the Western is a bogus genre at all, but it's hard to think of a great Western that isn't overdrawn in some way, either with comic relief or epic subplots or silly romance or even more romanticized male-bonding. My Darling Clementine is a wonderful picture, but Victor Mature is IMO miscast and overly florid. The Searchers, incomparable in some ways, is also too long and has too much comic relief. Red River is kind of embarrassed about its central love story (Wayne and Clift, of course). A Western I'd offer up as a great compact powerful picture is The Naked Spur, but there aren't many like it. There are surprisingly few great short hard-hitting Westerns (as opposed to the huge number of great short hard-hitting crime films in and around the noir genre).

Oh, and for 2012 movies, I thought that Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer, was absolutely hilarious. One of the best comedies I've seen in years. - Brock

You may also enjoy the upcoming "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters" :)

I thought "Django" was a similar, but inferior, to "Basterds". My favorite Tarentino film is probably one he didn't direct, "True Romance".

you have supressed your memories of the "Oklahoma kid" because in the first 10 minutes of the film Cagney is in a saloon, belting out a song .

Brock --

Thanks for the JIM recommendation. Sounds somewhat evocative in tone, maybe, to Fred Van Lente & Greg Pak's Incredible Hercules from about 3-4 years ago; I enjoyed that series a helluva lot.

A Western I'd offer up as a great compact powerful picture is The Naked Spur, but there aren't many like it.

Yes, this Mann/Stewart enterprise stays its course. Janet Leigh is miscast, though, and rather out of her element and depth. Really, had it not had that female element "contaminant," it would have been better, more powerful. Still, it's a great movie. So is the Mann/Stewart The Far Country--but again there is an unneeded stereotypical female element (two, actually). It's interesting to compare the Mann/Stewart and the Ford/Wayne take on the western. One is more human and psychological, the other the super-hero archetype. The elements in the two divergent approaches encroach, magnificently sometime, like in The Searchers, but are finally confronted head on in Liberty Valence.

you have supressed your memories of the "Oklahoma kid" because in the first 10 minutes of the film Cagney is in a saloon, belting out a song .

I didn't think anyone took The Oklahoma Kid seriously in any kind of way. It's like remembering Bela Lugosi by emphasizing his performance in Glen or Glenda.

Don't forget "Stagecoach," which is a gem because of how its characters interact (among other reasons). That to me was why "Gunsmoke" worked so well on both radio and TV -- because the writing gave you a real sense of community among the citizens of Dodge City.

A Western I'd offer up as a great compact powerful picture is The Naked Spur, but there aren't many like it.

Totally agree with that choice, to which I'd add The Violent Men with Stanwyck and Robinson. In both of those movies the two lead actors are so damn good, especially Robert Ryan and Jimmy Stewart in The Naked Spur, that they made me suspend all of my prejudices against the genre.

----------------------------------

you have supressed your memories of the "Oklahoma kid" because in the first 10 minutes of the film Cagney is in a saloon, belting out a song.

Jesus, say it ain't so. I hope he got paid triple for that.

But what you say explains why I can't remember the crooning bit. This was a two person enterprise, and the second I started the first reel I had to go back to the front entrance of the room to help my GF with the gate crasher and moocher problems, which at least back then were considerable. I probably never saw the first 10 or 15 minutes of any movie we showed less than half a dozen times.

Before movie stars were paid like baseball players, they clocked in--they didn't wait around for the perfect role, or a tailor-made role. I remember what Robert Mitchum once said to an interviewer who wondered why a great actor like him sometimes was in a shitty movie. He said, hey, if I get a great role, I try to do it justice. If I don't, I go to work, it's my job.

I don't think the Western is a bogus genre at all, but it's hard to think of a great Western that isn't overdrawn in some way, either with comic relief or epic subplots or silly romance or even more romanticized male-bonding.

To me it's the godawful music that so often provides the tipping point from Merely Awful to Downright Dreadful. Again, it's purely a matter of taste, but I had to be chained to my seat to make it past the "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling" opening credits of High Noon, which after that was at least a somewhat bearable film. The music in Forty Guns and The Maverick Queen was even worse**, and beyond the Westerns genre, the onset of saccharine soundtracks is one of the main reasons that so many movies from the 50's and 60's (other than the crime dramas) are to me complete no-starters.

**A sentiment echoed in the TCM forums after they were shown. And I'm probably the biggest Stanwyck fan on Earth, so I don't knock any of her movies lightly.

Funny, but with me, I can overlook that. I just take as part of the adjustment you have to make for the period piece quality of all films. I don't much care for operetta but I overlook it in Lubitsch's early stuff--it's where he comes from and the delights make it worth it. Same with the Capracorn--it's price you pay (and probably the price Capra pays) for the genuine achievement in combination of sentiment and comedy.

Anyone else having trouble accessing this thread from the regular site? Had to go to beta just to view this thread. Is this a special club or something?

I didn't. And no one here would join any club I belong to.

Funny, but with me, I can overlook that. I just take as part of the adjustment you have to make for the period piece quality of all films. I don't much care for operetta but I overlook it in Lubitsch's early stuff--it's where he comes from and the delights make it worth it. Same with the Capracorn--it's price you pay (and probably the price Capra pays) for the genuine achievement in combination of sentiment and comedy.

Yeah, as I said, it's strictly a matter of taste and opinion. I can't get past the saccharine soundtracks in Westerns, and in movies like The Way We Were and The Graduate, even if I can almost always overlook the inane final moments of pre-code movies, where 69 minutes of low life portrayals so often get patched over by forced upbeat endings. The only types of movies that usually seem to escape that sort of stuff are the gangster movies and the noirs, which is probably why those are my favorite two genres.

Anyone else having trouble accessing this thread from the regular site? Had to go to beta just to view this thread. Is this a special club or something?

You think that's bad? I still can't get out of an endless loop of "Login now", "You are now logged in", and "Login now" whenever I try to access BTF on Firefox. I've written several Jim times about it but with no helpful response.

saccharine soundtracks … The Graduate

I can see where actively disliking Simon & Garfunkel would make that film an ordeal, but even then you have the moment on the Bay Bridge when they swing into "Mrs. Robinson," and that's for me one of the best song placements in any movie. "The Sound of Silence" is perhaps overused in The Graduate, but "Mrs. Robinson" is used very sparingly, a great decision.

"Mrs. Robinson" is used very sparingly, a great decision.

It wasn't exactly a "decision". The song was unfinished and intended to be about Eleanor Roosevelt. Mike Nichols changed "Mrs. Roosevelt" to "Mrs. Robinson". All Paul Simon had at the time was the chorus and that's pretty much all you got.

Before movie stars were paid like baseball players, they clocked in--they didn't wait around for the perfect role, or a tailor-made role. I remember what Robert Mitchum once said to an interviewer who wondered why a great actor like him sometimes was in a shitty movie. He said, hey, if I get a great role, I try to do it justice. If I don't, I go to work, it's my job.

In an article about the late Charles Durning - who became a total workhorse for the last 50 years, after what was already an eventful young life - he said pretty much the same thing: the secret to his success was, "I never turned down a part, and I never argued with a director or a producer."
The only survivor from his Army unit at Omaha Beach, and THEN he got hurt in the Battle of the Bulge. It's too much ####### perspective.

saccharine soundtracks … The Graduate

I can see where actively disliking Simon & Garfunkel would make that film an ordeal,

JOSN: Simon & Garfunkel = RDP: Tax Dollars for I-Pads. Give me the likes of Bobby Blue Bland and Dinah Washington every day of the week.

but even then you have the moment on the Bay Bridge when they swing into "Mrs. Robinson," and that's for me one of the best song placements in any movie.

I saw that movie when it came out and almost threw up at the overdose of generational pandering. Saw it again on TCM a year or two ago and had exactly the same reaction. There's no generational conceit like Baby Boomer conceit, and for whatever blessed reason I've always been immune to the marketing of it in every form or format. Even the presence of Anne Bancroft couldn't save that steaming load.

Apologies for the rant, but it's an honest one.

I couldn't stand The Graduate when seeing it for the first time this year. There is never at ANY point a reason to like the protagonist. His attitude toward life has aged incredibly badly. He's like Holden Caulfield but with a completely vacant skull. And all the satire of suburban stuff has been done thousands of other times since then in exactly the same way, so I couldn't stand that either, though that's not the movie's fault. And you never hear in any of the appreciations of The Graduate that the PLOT is basically that Benjamin is being chased by MR. Robinson, a pathetic caricature of a character who has some small-minded objection to his life being repeatedly ruined.

No one involved with that movie was a baby boomer. It's funny how the generation, or sub-generation, between the "greateest" generation and the boomer generation never gets credit (or blame) as a whole generation (like the Boomers and the GG do) for their indispensable efforts in commencing the revolutionary '60s. The boomers were the receivers, the consumers, of what that in-between generation of Lennon/Dylan/Coppola/Scorsese/Hoffman etc. wrought and purveyed.

Having said that, I liked The Graduate well enough, but thought it never really earned its cachet. I thought the musical score innovative if nothing else, and fitted right in to the prep school/ivy league version of folk that would have finally caught up with that class. Bobby Blue Bland and Dinah would not have been appropriate. I had been familiar with Simon & Garfunkel for at least a year. The Sounds of Silence had made the charts in what--late '65? Hoffman was good, Bancroft overrated, as she most always was, and Ross (no boomer either) as lovely as a proto-hippie chick could be. I preferred the other ground-breaking Hollywood film of that year--Bonnier and Clyde.

In an article about the late Charles Durning - who became a total workhorse for the last 50 years, after what was already an eventful young life - he said pretty much the same thing: the secret to his success was, "I never turned down a part, and I never argued with a director or a producer."
The only survivor from his Army unit at Omaha Beach, and THEN he got hurt in the Battle of the Bulge. It's too much ####### perspective.

Yeah, only some really rare cases, like Kubrick later, had the will and the wherewithal to try to get everything in every little detail perfect. And as Jack Nicholson said of Kubrick later, "just because you're a perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect."

By "in the moment" I certainly didn't mean he didn't make any clinkers, or he wasn't (on very rare occasion) miscast. I mean, he didn't condescend to his material--even in The Oklahoma Kid he wasn't looking down on what he was doing. He was giving it all he could. Heston was like that, too--who else at that time could have delivered those concluding lines in Planet of the Apes with the necessary conviction and passionate but that great ham?

The differing reactions to The Graduate here are interesting. I've always seen it (and still do; I watch it every few years) as a picture where everybody involved got everything right. It has never bothered me that Dustin Hoffman's character is shallow and selfish; and I think Anne Bancroft is just terrific. It may be one of those litmus tests for one's tolerance of a particular era or attitude. I also like The Catcher in the Rye, and I liked at least Kevin Spacey's character in American Beauty (other works with shallow protagonists that people feel violently about).

Bonnie & Clyde, though, that's near-perfect as well. I was too young to see either when they were first in theaters, so I have no associations with their immediate context. I didn't even see Bonnie & Clyde till I was in my 40s.

No one involved with that movie was a baby boomer. It's funny how the generation, or sub-generation, between the "greatest" generation and the boomer generation never gets credit (or blame) as a whole generation (like the Boomers and the GG do) for their indispensable efforts in commencing the revolutionary '60s.

Well, then blame me, since I was a 1944 War Baby. But the marketing of The Graduate was aimed like a laser beam at the conceit of the generation then in college, which at that point indeed was the Baby Boomers. The fact that the producers and actors were only pandering to the Baby Boomers, rather than being Baby Boomers themselves, isn't really here or there.

The boomers were the receivers, the consumers, of what that in-between generation of Lennon/Dylan/Coppola/Scorsese/Hoffman etc. wrought and purveyed.

The confusion comes from the fact that while the "Boomers" are a specific age demographic (b. 1946-1965), the initiators of the 1960's civil rights movement, every one of them, were born before the Baby Boomers. My post-college GF was born in 1946 and always felt that she'd missed out on the "good years", since she was only in high school at the height of the civil rights protests.

The other part of the confusion lies in the fact that most information challenged people conflate the nonviolent civil rights and anti-war movements with the splinter groups that later went around posturing like left wing versions of the Branch Davidians. And since there has always been much political advantage in running against strawmen, it's always been easier to take one simple-minded grouping ("Baby Boomers" or "The Sixties") and pretend that it was all just one big mass of acid-dropping rioters. Republicans have always been very good at this sort of thing.

The differing reactions to The Graduate here are interesting. I've always seen it (and still do; I watch it every few years) as a picture where everybody involved got everything right. It has never bothered me that Dustin Hoffman's character is shallow and selfish; and I think Anne Bancroft is just terrific. It may be one of those litmus tests for one's tolerance of a particular era or attitude. I also like The Catcher in the Rye, and I liked at least Kevin Spacey's character in American Beauty (other works with shallow protagonists that people feel violently about).

Bonnie & Clyde, though, that's near-perfect as well. I was too young to see either when they were first in theaters, so I have no associations with their immediate context. I didn't even see Bonnie & Clyde till I was in my 40s.

Funny, but I can tolerate or even like movies like They Live By Night (the 1949 Farley Granger movie), or Rebel Without a Cause, because even though both of them kind of glorify the Misunderstood Outsider, I never thought that films like that were pandering to me, since they both came out well before the time of my high school or college years.

It's a little like my reaction when I hear people talking about D.C., where I grew up: Whenever I hear anyone (mostly in the past, except for Kehoskie) talk about it as some sort of "crime capital", I instinctively defend it. But when I hear others glorifying it as if it were a better city than New York, Chicago or London, I have to roll my eyes. Likewise, I heard so much propaganda during the 60's about how "special" my generation was, I formed an immediate dislike for all such talk, no matter how flattering it was on the surface.

Since a couple of posts have wished for an improved version of similarity scores, I'll post an old article I had on Hardball Times: Season Similarity Scores.

It wouldn't be terrifically hard to gin up an equivalent method for pitchers, although it would be nice if you could separate ground ball outs, fly ball outs, and strike outs.

Since a couple of posts have wished for an improved version of similarity scores, I'll post an old article I had on Hardball Times: Season Similarity Scores.

It wouldn't be terrifically hard to gin up an equivalent method for pitchers, although it would be nice if you could separate ground ball outs, fly ball outs, and strike outs.

A cultural generation does not follow that of a biological generation. As an early boomer, born 1948, I have about as much in common with someone born in 1964, as I do with someone born in 1934.

Does anyone else find the central relationships in The Graduate kind of creepy - banging your girlfriend and her mother. I understand having broad sexual tastes in age range, but a mother-daughter pair is kind of weird to me.

I think it only works because Katherine Ross was actually only 12 years younger than Anne Bancroft.

I tend to get easily annoyed by movie characters who don't realize how good they have it. For example, another Dustin Hoffman character, in the movie "Straight Time". He gets out of prison, he straightforwardly refuses to tell his parole officer what he's doing or promise that he won't go back to committing robberies. He goes to the employment office, he gets a job in a warehouse immediately. He also gets a date with the woman who interviews him, by acting like an overly persistent weirdo. Then he quits that job and she finds him another job immediately, but he doesn't bother to take it. Come on! You have no justification for your life of crime. Someone who gets out of prison in the 21st century has barely any chance of getting any job ever.

Great:

Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Grey
Prometheus (bring it!)

There are people who thought Prometheus was great? Who are these people, and how can we get them off this planet?

sorry to pipe in about the"Oklahoma kid" once again, but Monty it WAS one of those cowboy films that was supposed to be "serious". Cagney goes into a couple of rants about how the natives got ripped off by the white man, and the main action of the film is centered around corruption and scandal in the governmnet, not that that makes it anything but an awful film, and part of why its so awful is Cagney ,

Onion AV Club:

Last year's announcement that the Academy would switch to an online system for Oscar voting was met with skepticism from those who feared the Academy's predominately elderly membership might have difficulty making the transition, unless that new system was just an email forward of inspirational anecdotes. Unfortunately, it wasn't and therefore it's all one big "disaster," to quote one anonymous member, with multiple accounts of difficulties that could lead to the lowest voter turnout in years. Hoping to combat that, the Academy has now extended the voting deadline from January 3 to January 4, giving its members an extra 24 hours to call their children and get angry with them as they try patiently to explain the Internet.

brock--thanks for the details in #109. I'll be looking at Inglorious Basterds and the Batman trilogy with fresh eyes. That was a fascinating take on both.

The first Batman was just so damned serious. I thought Iron Man disabused us of the notion that superhero movies had to be grim and studly throughout, and the character of Banner builds a fallability into Hulk that leavens the affair. Batman missed out on all of that.

Batman Begins came out three years before the first Iron Man movie, which would explain why it missed out on what Iron Man paved the way for.

I should have phrased that better; it's not that Batman should have learned from Iron Man (obviously), but rather the medium was always pregnant with the possibility of "the laughing hero". At the time I found the training and self-discovery sequence in Tibet (?) incredibly leaden, and not nearly as engaging as the comparable section of the original The Karate Kid.

Hey, nice tidbit on TCM--apparently Kirk Douglas was responsible for getting Dalton Trumbo's name back in the credits of films (starting with Spartacus).

Does anyone else find the central relationships in The Graduate kind of creepy - banging your girlfriend and her mother. I understand having broad sexual tastes in age range, but a mother-daughter pair is kind of weird to me.

Well, Ben is only messing with Mrs. R. out of an almost paralyzing ennui, and only goes out with Elaine after being forced to by his parents. Remember that he takes Elaine to a strip club, and it's the moment, as he's doing his best to repel her, where the stripper is behind Elaine and her eyes are filling with tears, that Ben falls for her. So, it really is in spite of himself, which I think the film does a good job of showing.

There are too many terrific comic bits for me to ever dismiss The Graduate out of hand, though Ben's shallowness has made it somewhat less appealing to me over the years.

Veronica Lake, in her prime, was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. I don't know that I particularly want to see her past her prime.

One of my most painful film experiences was seeing the glorious Jessica Lange age. I caught her for some reason in 2007's Sybil after not seeing her in anything since Tootsie and Frances. The change in her looks was literally horrifying. Same kind of thing with Faye Dunaway, whose plastic surgery left her unrecognizable.

Funny, but I can tolerate or even like movies like They Live By Night (the 1949 Farley Granger movie), or Rebel Without a Cause, because even though both of them kind of glorify the Misunderstood Outsider, I never thought that films like that were pandering to me, since they both came out well before the time of my high school or college years.

Well, you may think that--that They Live By Night and Rebel Without A Cause weren't pandering, but that doesn't mean they weren't pandering to some class, especially if pandering is viewed non-pejoratively, merely as trying to attract. You Only Live Once was pandering, too. And indeed, the Cagney movies can be seen as pandering to those who were victims of the depression. Such will be inclined to blame the existing power structure for predicament and perceived misfortune.

Anyway, pandering, however you look at it, is not a aesthetic element. It’s just a way of engaging ad hominem. It is besides the point, critically speaking. All artistic creations pander to an audience in some way. Poor people loved the Astaire/Rogers of the depression era. Those art deco hotel suites could have housed a whole ghetto, but they didn’t care. They were trying to appeal to something in someone—and it couldn’t have been just those who could afford to live in those opulent conditions, as that wouldn’t have filled many seats in theaters.

My ranking of 2012 movies:

1 Moonrise Kingdom
2 Django Unchained
3 The Cabin in the Woods
4 Looper
5 The Dark Knight Rises
6 Haywire
7 Argo
8 Silver Linings Playbook
9 End of Watch
10 Magic Mike
11 Safety Not Guaranteed
12 Jack Reacher
13 Take This Waltz
14 This is 40
15 21 Jump Street
16 The Avengers
17 Brave
18 Get the Gringo
19 Skyfall
20 Hitchcock
21 Chronicle
22 The Dictator
23 The Grey
24 Friends With Kids
25 Goon
26 The Hunger Games
27 Five Year Engagement
28 Savages
29 Safe House
30 Safe
31 Rampart
32 Wanderlust
33 Bernie
34 Jeff, Who Lives at Home
35 Red Dawn
36 Silent House
37 Piranha 3DD

I wouldn't bother with anything below The Hunger Games. In fact I probably wouldn't bother with The Hungers Games either.

Pandering is an accusation, of surrendering aesthetics for audience share. I don't think it's the case therefore that 'all artistic creations pander to an audience in some way'.

I guess I should have emphasized "I never thought that films like that were pandering to me", because that's what I thought I was implying by adding "since they both came out well before the time of my high school or college years." "Pandering" to a Depression era's wish for fantasy, or to a wartime audience's thirst for heroism, or to the current generation's love of cartoon violence, is something I can understand and tolerate, but that's not what I meant by "pandering" here. Perhaps the more precise words would have been "sucking up", which is what was being done by the makers of The Graduate to their target demographic. It's totally distinct from the sort of pandering you're referring to.

EDIT: Partial coke to Jack, whose point is complementary to mine, and also valid.

I forgot to mention that I have rarely been as disappointed in a movie as I was with "Prometheus." I sorta don't get it, maybe I am missing something. To me, you have a great director (one of my favorites), great case, great franchise and turn out this?

You have Charlize Theron, who is not only a great, Oscar-winning actress, she is one of the most beautiful women in the world. Totally wasted. A team of space adventurers terrorized by...black dripping goo. OK. It did feature one of the most shocking, visceral movie scenes I have ever seen, but left my cold.

It's not my term. I didn't first use the term "pander", but if you do, you're stuck with it, unless you retract it, or explain it away. I don't know where you're getting that defintion of "pandering", but it's not the coventional one, #196.

27 Five Year Engagement
34 Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Rough year for Jason Segal. Though I suppose This Is 40 in which he plays a minor role did ok.

I just saw Les Mis on New Years Eve. Russell Crowe seemed to stand out as a singer (in a not good way), but other than that I thought it was great. Though I love the music of Les Mis, so the odds of me not liking it were slim. Though come to think of it I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Sacha Baron Cohen as Master of the House...

It was amazing how different the film is from the theatre production, even though it's all the same songs. Doing it on film (and as I understand it, singing it live) allowed for a lot more subtlety and improvization that almost always made the songs stronger.