I don’t think I ever actually saw a full-length Robin Williams stand-up set. His abbreviated bits on talk and variety shows were entertaining, but I could see a longer, non-highlight run being kind of exhausting. Definitely picking his best stuff out of 16 hours of riffing seems like a winning approach.

I remember renting that when my daughter was a toddler. The grim ending, while fine dramatic tragedy, was pretty much a non-starter for Disney. Given their need to come up with an alternative, I thought ripping off the ending from The Call of Cthulhu was inspired.

They were bracing departures from his usual cloying “straight” acting roles. I think they were kind of uncomfortable for him, though.

The word “memento” literally derives from the Latin imperative/command “Remember!”, which resonates even better with the film.

Don’t live all that far from those, but for my crowd it was generally Willow Grove, or Montgomeryville.

I basically agree on “accuracy”. I think there’s definitely a difference between traditional folklore accrued over centuries, and “urban legend” stuff that develops in a much shorter timeframe, but either way a conventional wisdom gets established. Writers end up having to either “lampshade” diversions from…

Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, whatever other liberties it takes with the original story, finds it necessary to lampshade the Count’s day activity with a voiceover by Hopkins, because deadly daylight has become one of those things that “everybody knows”.

Out here in Philadelphian suburbia, things were a lot less ideologically fraught, and music appreciation was more or less driven by MTV and local radio. We were vaguely aware of those “record store assholes”, but always considered them more of an urban phenomenon (the media stores of the malls being more of a “fast…

They’re effectively craftier zombies, with mythology played fast and loose.

Her initial stage appearance here is one of the only times in movie-viewing where my jaw literally dropped.

It wasn’t the household buzzword it’s become in 21st century genre fiction, but I’m sure Cameron had nanotechnology in mind as underlying the T-1000. Drexler’s Engines of Creation was published in 1986, and I’m sure Cameron is geeky enough to have heard about it in timely fashion. It may even have influenced his…

Lloyd and Christensen were also working with a Director with minimal interest in actually directing performances. He didn’t do Natalie Portman any favors either.

At one point, she abruptly turns into a young woman played by Anya Taylor-Joy.

After we watched Adaptation, I recall my wife and I reading an article about her reaction to it, and it was amusing enough that my wife went on to read and enjoy The Orchid Thief. I’m pretty sure Orlean was sober for the article. Not sure about writing the book.

I’d had similar feelings about Paul Rubins/Pee-Wee Herman back in the day, and had to be kind of dragged to see Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, but that turned out to be a truly inspired use of the character. So, could an unrestrained Short (he was fine in Innerspace and Three Amigos, as noted elsewhere) have really been a…

I think “real” shutters for a triple window fold up extra thick (folded three or four times), or they use a different approach like the “Bahama” shutters shown elsewhere in the thread. I think generally it’s silly to put single decorative ones on a triple window. If you’re really desperate for a contrasting colorful…

I know I’m puzzled. And I don’t know if it’s something people really spontaneously do, or whether it’s something popularized by “professional” decorators who just think of shutters as “decorative objects of contrasting color” and have no concept of their original purpose at all.

Yeah, the Sum of All Fears movie loses all the intricacy of the Palestinian agents, East German scientists, and their fairly complex multiple schemes, and simplifies them into a less controversial and more Bond villainish Austrian Nazi billionaire and his plan for world conquest.

Clancy’s main multi-novel storyline really painted him into a corner geopolitically, but he ultimately escaped the problem by dying.

As I tried to correct myself elsewhere, it’s actually The Sum of All Fears that I consider Clancy’s best, for its legitimately surprising twists, and his peak management of elegantly concise character sketches, multiple plot threads, and techno-description (Executive Orders would be my showcase for his decline into…