| Title | Qt3 Movie Podcast: 3x3: bullies |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Movie podcasts |
| When | October 29, 2019 |
Give us your lunch money or we'll make you listen to us talk about bullies in movies for an hour, starting at the 33:09 mark. But first, we've seen a few movies we want to tell you about..
Matt Dillon, The Bodyguard.
Buddy Repperton - Christine
Ace Merrill - Stand by Me
Chris Hargensen - Carrie
Boiler- Dark Star
Was Kelly Wand’s audio also recorded from the airplane?
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was not great and definitely had some shitty CG, but there was a lot of practical stuff in there that I feel deserves some recognition. Troy James’ contortion work as the Jangly Man stood out in particular. He’s someone that I hope starts turning up in proper Guillermo del Toro movies alongside Doug Jones as a top tier dude-in-a-suit performer.
I also appreciated how the Pale Lady sequence made use of the plodding monster trope. Yes, the threat moves slowly and isn’t particularly threatening at first, but no matter which way you turn she’s always a little bit closer. I found that genuinely unnerving. Like It Follows for kids.
On the subject of First Man and Apollo 11 (the docu-film), I was actually disappointed by First Man but completely floored when I went to see Apollo 11 (I have now seen it three times). But I’d like to highlight what each film does with how it portrays space travel. My hope going into any movie featuring space travel is that they will show it to be as dangerous and horrifying as it really is. I have always highlighted Wallace and Gromit’s: A Grand Day Out as my favourite film space launch because I was so scared as a child.
Much like A Grand Day Out, First Man’s Gemini sequence was excellent because it’s claustraphobic and the ship sounds like it was a moment away from falling apart. Whilst the film as a whole didn’t do much for me, that sequence was worth the price of admission. Apollo 11 (docu-film) takes a different approach, showing throughout the whole film the scale and the effort and the difficulty and the absurdity of everything that was being attempted and just how likely it was to go wrong at any moment. I’d also note that Matt Morton’s score during the launch sequence and after was masterful.
Whoa, cool! He played Pretzel Jack in the last season of Channel Zero. I love that guy. I didn’t realize that was him doing the Scary Stores crab walker thing. I just assumed it was all CG, which is one of the drawbacks of CG. It can obscure otherwise impressive practical work. But in Channel Zero, there’s no mistaking that he’s doing everything you’re seeing.
I do agree that the Pale Lady sequence was good. The good bits really deserved to be in a better movie.
Yes! Another great element of the sound design was all that rattling and creaking and groaning. It just shows that things weren’t as solid as we were used to seeing in science fiction, where spaceships were often sound stages with concrete floors. That’s also what I liked about the scene where he’s practicing with the lunar lander in the desert. It highlights how all this stuff was so tentative at the time, and new, and in many ways untested or improvised. It did a great job of conveying the risks involved, even though we know the whole time he’s going to come back safely.
Another thing worth calling out is how horrific but restrained Chazelle was showing the accident was that killed Grissom and crew. The spreading flames were pretty terrible, but then the shot from the outside, of the hatch buckling and a wisp of smoke coming out. How the shot just lingered there for a moment. Really effective without being lurid.
-Tom
A bully not mentioned from Dazed & Confused: Parker Posey.
The first bully I thought of was the Irish(?) “kid” from Rushmore, but I just now thought of a better Wes Anderson bully: the brother in Bottle Rocket, played by Andrew Wilson.
@ChristienMurawski, is the “no horror movies” stipulation official for the 3x3, or a Chick rib?
Also worth highlighting that Chazelle resists the temptation to give any external views of the ship. You’re stuck inside with them and the only way it’s going to end is if it all goes to plan. And until then all you see out the window is fire and the void. Excellent filmmaking. It’s a restraint that he doesn’t keep when it comes to the moon which disappointed me.
I work in and around a lot of people in the space industry here in the UK, so when we went to our screening the Apollo 1 test caused half my row to tense up because we all knew what was coming. We were all quite grateful for the restraint. It was one of the things we discussed most when we came out.
So glad you mentioned that. As a result, I think the moon sequence wasn’t as good as the other “action” sequences. It kind of got more conventional with its finale (although I love the sudden cut to complete silence when the hatch opens and Armstrong steps out of the lander). I suspect the Cinemascore crowd was happy to see so much spaceshippery before it was all over. It was also a bit too maudlin to have Armstrong crying in his helmet while dropping the bracelet into the crater. Chazelle probably didn’t intend to make me think of Rose in Titanic throwing the necklace into the sea, but that’s what happened.
So, uh, I knew that I knew Gus Grissom’s name from something.
Which resulted in me assuming he was the third guy on the Apollo 11 mission, otherwise, why would his name sound so familiar? “Cool,” I figured as the movie progressed, “so Ryan Gosling, Cory Stoll, and Shea Wigham are going to the moon!” So when the sparks started in the test sequence, and then the fire broke out, and then started to spread, my brain was thinking, “Well, uh, they’re going to get out because Gus Grissom is one of the main characters, isn’t he?”
Then there’s the shot of the hatch buckling from the outside. So that’s why I knew Gus Grissom’s name. :(
-Tom
Goddammit! Now I need to change my list.
“Did you see what he had on?”
“…yeah, it was pretty cool.”
-Tom
Oh, and to reply to this, yeah, he was using an iPad. I thought he was too quiet when we started recording and asked him to lean in closer to talk into the mic, but positioning Kellywand is an exercise in futility. The Kellwand bloweth wherever it pleaseth.
-Tom
So excited for this podcast! About to start listening :)
I liked Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark more than most it seems, but I knew I was up for training wheels horror going in. I like the way Øvredal shoots the set pieces, the cast was pretty good, and it had a fair bit of fun monster stuff.
Its big problem for me is that it doesn’t get the balance between the framing device and the anthology entries right.
You need some sort of release after having spent all that time with a character that so interior and bottled up. I thought the moon sequences kinda made the movie worth it. They probably lost a lot of impact outside the cinema though.
-Sören, proud cinemascore idiot
Kelly’s response to this statement – top 5 answers on the board…
Show me “Been on that date!”
“Anne Bowlin’?”
“Divorced, beheaded, strike, divorced, beheaded, spare”
This weekend’s movie is The Lighthouse.
