Tropical Island Video Vault Draft - ROUND 20 - FINAL ROUND
- Thread starter Jespher
- Start date
To start the next round, I select:
National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
Some say Christmas Vacation is superior to the ORIGINAL Vacation, but they are sadly mistaken... Vacation is the best National Lampoon's film ever made and one of my favorite movies. Anthony Michael Hall will always be Rusty in my heart (side-note, it is interesting to see all they cut out of this movie when it is on regular TV; they even cut-out Rusty chugging that beer; so I will add it below from YouTube. Weak-sauce!) So many quotes, so many laughs... love this flick. Also, the Wagon Queen Family Truckster is the single funniest vehicle in any movie ever. "You think you hate it now, wait 'til you drive it."
National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
Some say Christmas Vacation is superior to the ORIGINAL Vacation, but they are sadly mistaken... Vacation is the best National Lampoon's film ever made and one of my favorite movies. Anthony Michael Hall will always be Rusty in my heart (side-note, it is interesting to see all they cut out of this movie when it is on regular TV; they even cut-out Rusty chugging that beer; so I will add it below from YouTube. Weak-sauce!) So many quotes, so many laughs... love this flick. Also, the Wagon Queen Family Truckster is the single funniest vehicle in any movie ever. "You think you hate it now, wait 'til you drive it."
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As tempted as I am by some of the Pixar offerings still available, if there's a possibility (probability?) I'm taking only one animated film to my island, I'm going Golden Age:
Fantasia (1940) -- As a fan of animation, it's hard not to love this one. I've been lucky enough to see it projected a few times, and this film is insanely beautiful. The backgrounds for some segments were made using charcoals and pastels, rather than paint, giving them the weight and texture wholly absent from modern animation. And the techniques used to create a lot of the visual effects were a) created almost entirely in camera, and b) HUGELY ahead of their time. People who don't like it often cite Fantasia as the most boring of the Disney films, but I say nertz to them. I've watched this one countless times since I was a kid and am fully engaged every time.
Fantasia (1940) -- As a fan of animation, it's hard not to love this one. I've been lucky enough to see it projected a few times, and this film is insanely beautiful. The backgrounds for some segments were made using charcoals and pastels, rather than paint, giving them the weight and texture wholly absent from modern animation. And the techniques used to create a lot of the visual effects were a) created almost entirely in camera, and b) HUGELY ahead of their time. People who don't like it often cite Fantasia as the most boring of the Disney films, but I say nertz to them. I've watched this one countless times since I was a kid and am fully engaged every time.
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"Fish! Plankton! PROTEIN from the sea!"
I remember long ago in the days of USENET that a regular on one particular board who was a big Logan's Run fan was a bit angsty over his impending 30th birthday. But all it took was one quick "The Carousel is a LIE!" to cheer him up.
Fun flick, not a great flick, but a fun one.
I remember long ago in the days of USENET that a regular on one particular board who was a big Logan's Run fan was a bit angsty over his impending 30th birthday. But all it took was one quick "The Carousel is a LIE!" to cheer him up.
Fun flick, not a great flick, but a fun one.
I need some music on my island. One of my favorite musicals of all time. I LOVE this soundtrack.
Hairspray
BTW, never liked the older version.
Hairspray
BTW, never liked the older version.
I will have you know that this slot was originally supposed to go to a very fine dark thought provoking drama for which I have all the respect in the world...but as I have mentioned repeatedly, those are NOT the movies I watch repeatedly. So instead, I have decided to go in a slightly more...colorful direction:
Road House (1989) -- R
One of the all time great so bad its fun movies, as aghast as I was to discover years later that things like Tron and The Goonies had been elevated to cult status when I wasn't looking, this movie's elevation to the ranks of cult high cheese fav made me smile. It was endlessly entertaining back in the day, and has a weird sort of hypnotic quality forcing you to watch snippets of it whenever it passes by on TV. Just make sure you're not drinking anything, because you will be snorting it out of your nose.
So what makes it so brilliant? Well for starters Patrick Swayze, fresh off of Dirty Dancing, is now the world's greatest oiled down badass. You see, he's kind of a world class super-bouncer, and it turns out there is kind of a circuit of super-bouncers, complete with rankings apparently, and every bartender, bouncer, and bar owner in the country knows who the best super-bouncers are and worships them like rock stars, giggling like little girls at the mere mention of their names. Who knew huh? Anyway, Swayze is a super-bouncer supreme. And not only is he a super-bouncer, but he of course also has a philsophy degree from NYU, because of course he would, which allows him to make random stupid little faux zen statements like "pain don't hurt" as he receives surgical staples to close up his various wounds sans anasthesia. And being a super bouncer and a philosopher, there's nothing Swayze likes doing more than riding into a new crappy little town to clean up its bar, and by extension, the town as a whole. This becomes a problem when he stumbles into a town run by evil Ben Gazzarra who practical says MUHAHAHA! everytime he chews his way on screen. He's an evil mastermind who has somehow parlayed shaking down a town which appears to consist of 1 run down bar where every piece of furniture in the palce is smahed every night in a massive ar clearing brawl, 1 auto parts store, 1 used car dealership, and a single horse farm run by an old geezer into enough megamillions to plop down a 50 room mansion complete with his own helicopter and several dozen evil henchmen who run around randomly committing felonies and blowing things up. This makes Swayze mad, in a zen like fashion, and so he responds by repeatedly beating up the evil henchmen, then performing some oiled down homerotic tai chi in his speedos directly across the river from Mr. MUHAHAHA. Things go downhill from there. MUHAHAHA unleashes his greatest weapon, a flamingly gay martial arts expert in skin tight jeans who proudly announces he used to **** guys like Swayze in prison. Hot girls start taking their clothes off (yay!). Swayze starts taking his clothes off (boo!). Sam Elliot shows up to briefly class the joint up as the Obi Wan Kenobi of badass philosophical super bouncers. We get monster trucks. We get bad philosophy. We get one hell of a good striptease. MUHAHAHA gets even madder and destroys the bar, the auto parts store and the car dealership, which seems like a shaky move as it leaves the entire local shakedown economy dependent on a single old guy running a horse farm, but hey, logic is entirely out the window at this point. Finally Swayze becomes so fed up with all the nonsense that he decides the only answer is to blow up his car and go all Rambo on the remaining baddies and commit mass murder. Most importantly a good time is had by all, and whenever I tire of watching actual good movies on my island, I will always be able to whip this one out to give perspective.
Road House (1989) -- R
One of the all time great so bad its fun movies, as aghast as I was to discover years later that things like Tron and The Goonies had been elevated to cult status when I wasn't looking, this movie's elevation to the ranks of cult high cheese fav made me smile. It was endlessly entertaining back in the day, and has a weird sort of hypnotic quality forcing you to watch snippets of it whenever it passes by on TV. Just make sure you're not drinking anything, because you will be snorting it out of your nose.
So what makes it so brilliant? Well for starters Patrick Swayze, fresh off of Dirty Dancing, is now the world's greatest oiled down badass. You see, he's kind of a world class super-bouncer, and it turns out there is kind of a circuit of super-bouncers, complete with rankings apparently, and every bartender, bouncer, and bar owner in the country knows who the best super-bouncers are and worships them like rock stars, giggling like little girls at the mere mention of their names. Who knew huh? Anyway, Swayze is a super-bouncer supreme. And not only is he a super-bouncer, but he of course also has a philsophy degree from NYU, because of course he would, which allows him to make random stupid little faux zen statements like "pain don't hurt" as he receives surgical staples to close up his various wounds sans anasthesia. And being a super bouncer and a philosopher, there's nothing Swayze likes doing more than riding into a new crappy little town to clean up its bar, and by extension, the town as a whole. This becomes a problem when he stumbles into a town run by evil Ben Gazzarra who practical says MUHAHAHA! everytime he chews his way on screen. He's an evil mastermind who has somehow parlayed shaking down a town which appears to consist of 1 run down bar where every piece of furniture in the palce is smahed every night in a massive ar clearing brawl, 1 auto parts store, 1 used car dealership, and a single horse farm run by an old geezer into enough megamillions to plop down a 50 room mansion complete with his own helicopter and several dozen evil henchmen who run around randomly committing felonies and blowing things up. This makes Swayze mad, in a zen like fashion, and so he responds by repeatedly beating up the evil henchmen, then performing some oiled down homerotic tai chi in his speedos directly across the river from Mr. MUHAHAHA. Things go downhill from there. MUHAHAHA unleashes his greatest weapon, a flamingly gay martial arts expert in skin tight jeans who proudly announces he used to **** guys like Swayze in prison. Hot girls start taking their clothes off (yay!). Swayze starts taking his clothes off (boo!). Sam Elliot shows up to briefly class the joint up as the Obi Wan Kenobi of badass philosophical super bouncers. We get monster trucks. We get bad philosophy. We get one hell of a good striptease. MUHAHAHA gets even madder and destroys the bar, the auto parts store and the car dealership, which seems like a shaky move as it leaves the entire local shakedown economy dependent on a single old guy running a horse farm, but hey, logic is entirely out the window at this point. Finally Swayze becomes so fed up with all the nonsense that he decides the only answer is to blow up his car and go all Rambo on the remaining baddies and commit mass murder. Most importantly a good time is had by all, and whenever I tire of watching actual good movies on my island, I will always be able to whip this one out to give perspective.
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I remember a year or two after Road House came out I was driving through CSUS doing my own little shh-boom shuffle and got pulled over. I admitted that I was driving like a prick and how awful awful I was and plead for mercy before I realized that the real reason I was pulled over was because I had a friend's bike in my trunk and the cop didn't think it was tied down properly.
Road House was a fun movie.
Road House was a fun movie.
Still at work with no end in sight. My list is at home. Gonna take a stab at something off the top of my head.
How about.....
Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl
You know, the good one.
pm sent
How about.....
Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl
You know, the good one.
pm sent
In order to satisfy Henkel's complaint above that nobody has taken a Woody Allen movie, I figure I'd use my next pick on Manhattan (1979 - R).
If you know what I would refer to as Woody Allen's middle period (you know, the period where every movie was set in New York City and starred Woody Allen playing a character thinly disguised as Woody Allen), then you would know what to expect from Manhattan. Even so, as his explicit homage to NYC, I think it may be the best of the bunch. It was scored with nothing but Gershwin, filmed in black and white, and reportedly was the first film released on DVD without a widescreen version/option (at Allen's request due to the cinematography). Diane Keaton is fantastic, Muriel Hemingway is stunning, and it all leads up to a basically perfect ending. Can't let anybody else grab this one.
I didn't like the official trailer, as it linearly followed about 3/4s of the plot, so I've chosen a clip to put under the spoiler tag.
If you know what I would refer to as Woody Allen's middle period (you know, the period where every movie was set in New York City and starred Woody Allen playing a character thinly disguised as Woody Allen), then you would know what to expect from Manhattan. Even so, as his explicit homage to NYC, I think it may be the best of the bunch. It was scored with nothing but Gershwin, filmed in black and white, and reportedly was the first film released on DVD without a widescreen version/option (at Allen's request due to the cinematography). Diane Keaton is fantastic, Muriel Hemingway is stunning, and it all leads up to a basically perfect ending. Can't let anybody else grab this one.
I didn't like the official trailer, as it linearly followed about 3/4s of the plot, so I've chosen a clip to put under the spoiler tag.
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Happiness (1998)
This movie is wrong, very wrong. It's about a bunch of social outcasts and their perversions, which are put on screen with an acid and disturbing realism. But I absolutely love it, it's one of my favourite black comedies and it's great entertainment if you're not a guy who gets scandalized too easily.
This movie is wrong, very wrong. It's about a bunch of social outcasts and their perversions, which are put on screen with an acid and disturbing realism. But I absolutely love it, it's one of my favourite black comedies and it's great entertainment if you're not a guy who gets scandalized too easily.
Happiness (1998)
This movie is wrong, very wrong. It's about a bunch of social outcasts and their perversions, which are put on screen with an acid and disturbing realism. But I absolutely love it, it's one of my favourite black comedies and it's great entertainment if you're not a guy who gets scandalized too easily.
This movie is wrong, very wrong. It's about a bunch of social outcasts and their perversions, which are put on screen with an acid and disturbing realism. But I absolutely love it, it's one of my favourite black comedies and it's great entertainment if you're not a guy who gets scandalized too easily.
I've never seen this film, but the only versions that I can find are rated NC-17 (via IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes). Would someone fill me in as to why the film is thus rated (and if there are other "R-rated" versions), and it should therefore be eligible as an exception or if William Blake should re-pick. As it stands NC-17 = re-pick unless you can adequately change my mind...
Don't know American ratings precisely, but Happines sure isn't porn and contains less nude scenes than lots of other movies picked in this draft. Problem is, I think, that there are lots of 'strong' situations and dialogues(e.g.: the ending scene, which can be easily found on youtube). That said, I'm in no shortage of movies so if it's against the rules I'll happily repick as soon as I can.
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re: Transformers, from Wiki, this piece of trivia is awesome:
Spike, putting your entire pick inside a spoiler is kind of an odd choice, no?
The movie was produced by Sunbow/Marvel simultaneous to G.I. Joe: The Movie. The writers of the G.I. Joe film asked for permission from Hasbro to kill the Duke character. Hasbro not only approved the request but insisted that the writers of Transformers: The Movie adopt the same fate for Optimus Prime.[6] However, Optimus' death sparked much controversy and incurred so much backlash that it caused the writers of the G.I Joe film to make changes so that Duke simply ended up in a coma (from which he eventually awoke).
Spike, putting your entire pick inside a spoiler is kind of an odd choice, no?
Time for a bit of whimsy...
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/