Adam Levenberg @StarterScript

@Johnny_photog @lxeagle17 You can if you consider the trajectory of Democrats from 2009-2024. Picking up white collar voters in suburbs but an ever deteriorating relationship / branding with blue collar, rural, and male voters. 2024 was when D's ran out of suburban college educated votes to offset them.

@CertDoc @JosephKahn The conversation though is about LLM's ability to work with screenplays and evaluate them.

@Johnny_photog @lxeagle17 CA residents who moved to NV, AZ, and NC tend to vote more R than D. That's what everyone was waiting to see in 2024. Even the former NC governor was like "we don't know how all these new people will vote." we found out.

1989: The cast of "Ghostbusters II" went on Oprah to promote the film. In the audience was a young Chris Farley.

@TheCinesthetic Love the strings at 1:00 and the introduction of horns at 1:14. Creates an epic, cinematic sound for a rock song.

@Clip_Station_ She has an excellent sense of humor. Gets the jokes and how inappropriate they are.

@CertDoc @JosephKahn They claim to be reading the entire thing. Then they can't re-create a solid summary without errors if you're familiar with the content. What type of material have you been trying out with LLMs?

@james_f_thomas Siskel had no critical training. He'd latch on to an idea or two and just repeat that and if he liked it. His main purpose was to bully/interrogate Ebert. He did love movies and was open to enjoying a WIDE variety of them though. They were a good match for 90 second convos.

@MuseZack Almost every Jonathan Lynn movie features large ensembles that build tension through sharp dialogue and occasionally explode into hilarious comedic violence. Not sure what Eddie Murphy or Lynn were trying to do with that movie.

Will probably never watch the Cape Fear series, but it must be said: Mitchum to De Niro to Bardem is all time great lineage for a single character

That was never filmed. They did film 1 hr of footage at a real BDSM club including hardcore content. The plot is meant to ask questions "When you play a role, do you become what you are playing or possibly lose yourself in the process". It is an examination of the concept of identity that offers no firm conclusions and instead is a journey into abstraction. Watch the movie and then James Franco's Interior Leather Bar and I'll elaborate more. Also, watch Friedkin's only music video SELF CONTROL which also plays with the idea of masks and identity.

@Fair_and_Biased Might want to check out the voting records of Jared Golden, Marie Glusenkamp Perez, Marci Kaptur, Chris Pappas, Henry Cuellar, Gottheimer, Costa.... Pretty sure you'll find a healthy amount of votes recently putting R's over the top.

@Jamellbell Can't stop myself from terminally white takes. Before I got out of bed this morning, I'd already shared thoughts on Siskel and Ebert's DONT BE A MENACE review clip.

Harlem Nights opening provided me with a foundational insight about Hollywood cinema and filmmaking that I used as a reference dozens of times in conversations with screenwriters. (I think it contributed to the negative reviews too.) Opening has young Eddie shoot a guy in the forehead. We see an indentation but no blood (?). Then the guy falls face down on a green felt pool table. They drag his body away. Zero blood. Not even a little smear. In two shots, zero blood in an R rated movie. Murphy wanted the violence in Harlem Nights to vibe like 30s/40s gangster movies. Very little graphically shown--lots of explosive machine gun fire, no bodies being ripped apart. They just fall to the ground. It's very similar in this respect to the PG-rated Dick Tracy one year later. I'd argue this moment fails through decisions in cinematography and editing. Murphy (who directed this too) chose a closeup of the guy's head when he's shot and chose to show us the green felt table not be smeared with even a trace of blood. If he didn't want to show blood, they could have used a different angle. We didn't need to see the man's face as the bullet entered. But he showed it. On a personal level--From the day I saw this movie, it stuck with me as "Wrong". I never understood it. It just bothered me as unrealistic. I get it now but still think it was a stylistic mistake... Critics didn't like this movie. They couldn't get beyond the idea of Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor in a comedy that doesn't consider how their personas and styles might play together to create humor, friction, and more humor. It's low on laughs overall. But the screenwriting/filmmaking lesson is: Don't throw anything but purposeful, calculated ambiguity at your audience in the opening or closing unless you're asking a question you want them to hang with into the broader story. It informs everything else--how they view everything that follows or how they walk out remembering the film. Here, critics thought they were looking at a giant glaring mistake instead of a style choice. (And the style choice doesn't work). They took their knives out before adult Eddie ever stepped on screen. If Murphy had this moment anywhere else in the film, it would have created a "huh?" moment and we'd move on because we're already at home in the world. Here, I'd argue it prevented a lot of critics from ever relaxing enough to enjoy what followed. This movie has real problems that are worth examining independently but when your first stylistic choice can also read as sloppy filmmaking, the critics will find more. And they did. Ultimately, Eddie Murphy had earned studios enough money during the 80s he had a blank check to write, direct, and star in whatever he wanted to. It more than made its money back.

Cora Harrington @CoraCHarrington

16 hours ago

Absolute madness for this to be rated so low. One of the best movies ever.

2 17 85 8K 6

@Jamellbell I think critics were mainly responding to having Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor on screen together where there's no thought put into the expectation of how their characters/styles/personas might play off each other. But it's still enough of a comedy to not ignore that.

@Jamellbell Assembles a ton of comedic all timers, but doesn't think about how to use them as characters or how to interplay them against each other to create humor. Wastes Richard Pryor. Arguably low on laughs overall. Beautifully shot, still an enjoyable watch.

@LaInaMinute Went to a Shakeys lunch buffet a few years ago and the food was repellent. No idea how a chain could be that deficient in quality control. I wish I could remember more details but the food was so unappetizing I took WTF photos. How do you screw up pizza? Or get return customers?

A subtle detail that few noticed in The Shining.