This week on Part-Time Characters we delve into the old movie shelf and pick up some classic movies to talk about. Yup! It is time for our third Retro Reviews episode! Bridget talks about a sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Jenny watched the strangest movie ever made, Fantastic Planet, Sam watched one of the most praised musicals, Sound of Music, and I (Maria) watched the great Mifune in Yojimbo.
We also Comment on your Comments from last week’s episode of Horror Remakes and reviewing IT. There is also an open invitation to our friend Kayla to talk about animes, the good, the bad and the oh so weird.
We end the episode with a quick view of movie releases for the week of September 22nd, including movies like Kingsman: The Golden Circle, The Battle of the Sexes and some LEGO movie.
SHOW NOTES
00:08:46 Retro Reviews – Sound of Music and Mary Poppins [Sam]
00:40:57 The Day the Earth Stood Still [Bridget]
00:51:50 Fantastic Planet [Jenny]
01:05:42 Yojimbo [Maria]
01:24:33 Commenting on your Comments
01:37:00 Movie Releases [Battle of the Sexes, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Stronger, Ninjago]
Quick announcement: We were thinking about starting a new type of episode where we focus on just one movie for 45 minutes and talk about it in depth. We are still brainstorming which movies would be great to talk about for a long period of time. If you like this idea, leave us some movie suggestions in the comments. Next week we will create a poll for you to vote on the movie you’d like to hear us talk about.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments and Sam will read them next week. You can also send us your thoughts to our email parttimecharacters[at]gmail[dot]com. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook so you can send us direct messages and get podcast updates.
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This Week’s Cast: Maria Garcia, Bridget Serdock , Sam Noland and Jenny Pan
MUSIC
Great Days by Joakim Karud
The only movie you listed that I have seen is Mary Poppins. My sisters both really like Sound of Music, but I’ve never seen it. I’ll probably watch some of these eventually, but I’m watching stuff that I want to finish first. Also, I don’t know how easy this would be, but you could watch an old show or a season of an old show, and then review that. Like the Batman TV series, or Gilligan’s Island. That would probably take longer, but Sam could probably do it. For the thing you guys were talking about for the 40-minute episodes talking about just one movie, I think that would be cool.
First I would like to say that cause of the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico I send my best wishes to Maria and I hope that she and all of her family and friend are safe and sound! I hope that she’ll be able to do the podcast.
I apologize about that weird sentence from my comment in the previous episode!
What I distinctly remember writing was that a lot of people (including me) discovered the original Swedish film Let The Right One In cause of the US remake called Let Me In which is a solid horror film but somehow that sentence got autocorrected in a really weird way!
I was never a big fan of musicals but I have seen The Sound Of Music and must say for me that is a great film to play in the background! Now I believe that the time in the film was relatively far from the beginning of the war as it was set in Austria on the eve of the Anchluss (a fancy word for the unification of Austria and Nazi Germany) somewhere around march 1938 and that was full 18 months before the beginning of WWII, so while there were plenty of antisemitic laws in power and the nazis were heavily oppressing the Jewish people, I don’t think that the common folk over there even realized that there will be war and how bad things will get in Europe.
I agree with you on Mary Poppins that the film had some great effect but pretty inconsistent story and I would like to add that if you’d like to get a unique point of view about the making of the film you simply must watch Saving Mr. Banks if you havent seen it!
I said unique because despite the fact I liked the film very much I think that its a bit one sided and it goes a overboard in the attempt to show Walt Disney as the good guy while villainising P.T Travers!
But overall the film depicts Travers’s backstory pretty well, explaining her motivation to write the Mary Poppins books while a good part of the movie is diving in her unhappy childhood in rural Australia!
I haven’t seen Fantastic Planet and last time when I saw Yojimbo I was still in high school which was roughly about 10 years ago so I don’t think that I’m very competent to discuss those films.
Yojimbo!!! Everytime I say that that I kinda feel like I’m yelling for a guy named Jimbo!
I want to share my thoughts and talk about the film Mother! with you
Mother! is one of those films that claims to be smart but suddenly becomes pretty shallow when you analyze it and doesn’t have any real deep message nor meaning except don’t abuse Mother Nature and beware of her Wrath! It’s filled with metaphores about God and the Nature, and the rape of the natural world and basically this film is Aronofsky’s art project about God(Havier Bardem) and Mother Nature(Jennifer Lawrence) in which he is showing his rage and frustration for what we do to mother earth telling an abstract story using images we know about a couple whose peaceful life at their isolated country home is disrupted by the arrival of some mysterious strangers.
This movie has nameless cartboard characters that are screaming and yelling senseless things and basically are biblical allegories representing God, Nature, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, which is clearly spelled out from the beginning and means that Aronofsky tries to tell a story about higher beings using images that we lesser beings are accustomed to!
The thing is… If a certain film can be interpreted in 10 different ways that is probably because the film itself is an absolute masterpiece or a complete dumpster fire that is not structured or written very well and probably even the director didn’t knew what is he doing!
In Mother! you clearly have a film that claims to be way smarter than it is and because of that it has the power to make some really dumb people to think they are really smart for getting all the spelled out quasi religious metaphores! The main argument that some loud fans of the film make against all the bad criticism is that if you dislike the film you are stupid and you didn’t get it, and if you claim that you got it, and still disliked it you are just pretending that you get it to hide your own stupidity!
That is the only argument I seem to be getting in defence of the film!
Oh… that and go watch some Marvel films you stupid paste-eating moron!
Some smaller reviewers that disliked the film even seem to be afraid to give negative scores because they most probably are worried they’ll be called stupid!
A few thoughts about Jennifer Lawrence
As the time goes by I am getting less of a fan of Jennifer Lawrence basically because she is getting all of these praises from the academy and various guilds for her acting in mostly mediocre movies!
The Academy clearly loves her and undoubtedly she’ll keep getting nominated for almost anything she does!
I mean, she did a fairly decent job in American Hustle despite the fact she was miscast because the character was supposed to be a single mom in her late 30s and she was OK in Joy which was pretty mediocre “biopic” where her character was simply made to shine because all of the other supportive characters in the film were basically evil greedy incompetent dumb idiots that were trying to set her back or to profit of her!
Honestly I don’t think that she should have been nominated for these films and it was as if the academy was attempting to gain credibility with the younger audience simply nominating and awarding a popular face from a big YA franchise!
As if they are trying to present her as the new Meryl Streep but if you try to compare J-Law to the young Meryl you’ll get shorthanded very fast cause she’s not even close!
I would like to know your thoughts?
Do you agree or disagree?
Sam, if you don’t like Mary popping for being too much for kids then I recommend The Fiddler on the Roof, its my favorite musical. I say it’s not for kids not in an R rated way but in the subject of the movie. It’s about a Jewish family that lives in either Russia or Ukraine and you follow the family, mostly the father Tevye for about 3 years, as they go through their daughters breaking Jewish marriage traditions, and towards the end of the movie, discrimination from the Russians. also its almost exactly 3 hours long but brings up new conflicts throuought the movie that don’t seem totally contrived
I don’t think I really agree with you about The Sound of Music being able to end about 30 minutes earlier than it does because I’d say that it builds up to it well, while slowly establishing the conflict between the Captain and the nazis. For me, there are stakes with the captain wanting to live with his family as opposed to fighting for the Germans and I think that’s where the tension comes from. I’ve never felt like it needed to end before then because the nazis were established as a looming threat.
Also, the tunes are solid and I think I view this movie in very favourable light because most of my family loves the film. In fact, we have an authentic 1965, full-sized, framed movie poster of The Sound of Music which is always cool to look at.
By the way, what’s up with your rating system. I feel duped and confused as heck. Is a six bad, because for me it’s okay. If so, what do you consider a 2/10? For us an A is 75% or higher not a C. That seems crazy. I feel like I’ve been reading and listening to American reviews all wrong, please explain. Thanks.
Finally, you asked for suggestions and I would easily have to recommend The Castle. It’s a staple of Australian cinema and it’s essentially about a working class guy who has to fight off a local airport from buying his home. It’s underrated outside of Australia and it’s honestly an absolute classic. Also, it’s really, really quotable.
“That’s goin’ straight to the pool room.”