4 Things We Didn't Get Around To Saying This Week...
Saturday, April 30, 2011 at 10:00PM Which we really meant to. It was a sorry week in time management. So... Let's cover them right quick now.
1. The cast of Moulin Rouge! will be reunited on May 3rd on MTV for the 10th anniversary. The movie's exact anniversary is kind of confusing, so I'm choosing to celebrate the 10th anniversary on June 1st which is the date it went wide. May 30th through June 3rd is MOULIN ROUGE WEEK!
2. Congratulations to Darren Aronofsky for his Venice Film Festival Jury gig. I've always said that artists aren't necessarily the best judges of art so you can't really tell if a brilliant person at any one particular thing will have any brilliance at recognizing the brilliance in others within that same thing (hi sentence. You are too long). Nevertheless, it's always interesting to see which film luminaries the prestige festivals choose and who their jury ends up being.
3. I would pay good money for a way to watch old sitcoms with the laugh tracks removed. Why is this not an option? I literally can't watch anything with a laugh track -- with one or two exceptions -- it just takes me right out of what I'm watching.
4. It was 18 years ago this week that the death of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow was proclaimed "negligence" That was such a sad creepy movie story back in the early to mid nineties but me and my friend Kevan, who I went to every movie at the time were really obsessed with the movie.
I have a soft spot for the movie (it's set in my hometown on a holiday I always had to explain to people "Devil's Night" once I left Detroit) though it's not exactly a great movie. And I love Brandon Lee in it. So I've been sad to hear about the rethink these past couple of weeks (to star Bradley Cooper?). Although technically a revival of this franchise isn't at all sacrilegious because it's a resurrection myth and there's no reason why the Crow can't keep raising the dead, you know?
Reader Comments (9)
1. I'm glad you're expanding it for the entire week! I wasn't around when 'Moulin Rouge!' insanity hit The Film Experience, but I want to be fully present for this nostalgic trip back to the musical movie event of this decade!
2. I hope he does better than Tarantino last year. Sofia Coppola's 'Somewhere' was visually stunning but it seemed to lack something. I would love if Aronofsky crowned Cronenberg King of the Lido (assuming he'll premiere there, since it won't in Cannes - although I guess he can opt to premiere it in Toronto instead). I want that movie to succeed so badly (more than 'The Tree of Life', as I am sensing too much expectations crushing that film) - and I want Fassbender to win Supporting Actor - or Actor, for Jane Eyre or Shame, I don't care.
3. You're dead on about the laugh track. I can only stand to watch 'Will & Grace' and 'Friends' reruns that way. I love 'How I Met Your Mother' but that laugh track ticks me off. And it has the same effect when I watch 'The Big Bang Theory'. It's just... upsetting. It's like it's telling me when to laugh. And I often laugh because of facial expressions, not the jokes... It's annoying as hell.
4. I remember reading that both him and his father died during the filming of their fifth movies. It's like the Kennedy curse, it is SO bizarre. I liked 'The Crow' but yes you're right it's not a great movie.
Sorry for writing a lot but I was feeling chatty ;)
I can't wait for the Moulin Rouge! week on here. That movie rocked my world so hard.
Anyone else hear that Madonna's "W.E." will be at the Venice Film Fest?
Nathaniel: any chance of her in your Best Director contenders?? :-)
If you remove the laugh track from these shows, you get a lot of silences. Remember, a lot of this is the laugh of an audince watching the show being filmed, so the actors often wait for the people to finish laughing to continue. Once this is removed, you get those dead spaces and it would be kind of weird. Those shows were made with the laugh track in mind, so I think it might be hard to remove it. It doesn't really bother me that much, and I like to stop and listen to some of the individual laughter of the audience (it's fun). I get what you mean, though. I know a lot of people who are bothered by the laugh track (I'm more into Modern Family and Commnity anyway, but I love watching The Big Bang Theory and Friends re-runs).
I am so looking forward to Moulin Rouge-bonanza, one of my favorite movies ever!
I agree that "The Crow" could do with another outing, but I think that it needs a core of darkness to work. Bradley Cooper and darkness? Sounds kind of oil and water to me.
Yesss @ the Moulin Rouge! week. My favorite film of all time.
Woohoo, Moulin Rouge! week.
I'll get the velvet curtains up and dust off the suit. It's gonna be fantastic.
Moulin Rouge Week? Oh my, yes....
I also remember the death of Brandon very vividly - I was in college (my home state is also Michigan but I was in Greensboro NC) at the time. My brother in the Navy, who was not a Brandon Lee fan or a fan of the original graphic novel that I was aware of (but is a movie buff) surprised me by being livid about the incident; he felt that he could have prevented it, that ANYONE with an iota of knowledge about firearms could have prevented this. I think it's his outburst more than anything that really pinned that tragic death to my memory. (It seems to me it was a typical warm spring in Greensboro that year, that everything was well in bloom, which only underscored the tragedy as I read about it.)