the groundhog day project

I remember the sound mix for this film being amazing. All the music, all the explosions. I remember how exciting this, and a few months later Top Gun were. But, watching it today is harder because our ability to film aerial tricks and dogfights has improved and been augmented by special effects magic. Not that, I'm sure, this movie didn't employ some visual effects. On IMDb, Iron Eagle has 1 credit for visual effects, and 12 for special effects. A lot of the aerial shots seem fairly genuine (though the film very much did not get cooperation from the Air Force once they learned of what goes on in act two), so I'm guessing a lot of the visual effects are really the overlays to put the HUD targeting stuff over the footage, making really footage look like a simulator, blue screen backgrounds*, simple stuff like that. Or, you know, explosions, of course. I mean, it's the 80s. In America. Spare no expense making your movie big and loud... (* speaking of blue screen,...

Sometimes, I see a new movie and I wish I dealt in something more like reviews. Less of this unstructured discussion. This afternoon I saw Black Panther and I wanted to come home and fashion a brilliant review that celebrated the statement the film makes for Africans and African-Americans, and indicted white folks for, well, all of the shit they've done and do, and for their paranoia regarding Black Panther itself. I saw a post this morning--on Twitter I think... Nevermind the vagueness; I looked it up to check. It was the Twitter handle The Trump Train . They posted this: It's very fitting that the same people who claim to support equality and diversity also glorify a movie that idolizes black supremacy and establishing a black-only ethnostate. There was also a line about liberals and hypocrisy but it's that bit about Black Panther that gets me. Even before I saw the movie, and before I saw replies on Twitter confirming it, I knew that Black Panther is quite explici...

"What a wondrous vision "Excalibur is! And what a mess." So begins Roger Ebert's review of Excalibur , and as usual, Roger says it pretty well. "This wildly ambitious retellings of the legend of King Arthur is a haunting and violent version of the Dark Ages and the heroic figures who (we dream) populated them," he continues. "But it's rough going for anyone determined to be sure what is happening from scene to scene." The problem with Excalibur , though, is not that it's particularly confusing. It is just so damn full of, well, pieces of every story about King Arthur that any of its audience are likely to know. There's a reason that The Sword in the Stone offers up next to nothing (though, admittedly, I might be remembering the better part of the film if not the larger part of it) about Arthur as an adult and spent time with that training. There's a reason that the recent King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was born out of a plan ...