Ghostbusters movie by Paul Feig

Re: Ghostbusters 3

Watch any real police chases video show. People don't run from the cops and get away. They get followed by a chopper until they crash and then they get 2 years added to their jail sentence just for running.

But if the setting is several decades ago then all these aspects of it are believable. Not just "we can come up with an excuse good enough to make the audience suspend their disbelief if they want to root for it."

and that's the nail on the head. if you do it as a period piece, you don't have to bring 'realism' into it. That's a pet peeve I have with modern super hero films too. everyone over thinking the fun out of the concept to try and bring it into the modern world.

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It's not just elegance. It's subversiveness that infuses a particular generation of comedy writers' works. Animal House, old school SNL, Caddyshack, The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, Stripes, even up to Groundhog Day, what do all of these films have in common?

They usually feature a bunch of too-smart-for-their-own-good wiseasses who have zero respect for incompetent authority figures and moral conventions. What you've got here, basically, is comedy borne of the protest movements of the 60s and 70s. These were writers and actors who were incredibly talented, and also incredibly disillusioned with finding out that the people who ran their world were phonies, incompetents, or downright evil, that the values they'd been taught always won the day (in their 1950s/early 60s childhoods) were, in fact, completely disregarded by the people in charge in favor of expediency, profit, and power.

The comedies that came out of this were all about basically doing what they wanted, all with a sardonic smile. They were only referential to past films and comedies and such insofar as they were turning convention on their heads (e.g. hiring Elmer Bernstein to write the Animal House score). Nowadays, the comedies simply act like that old Chris Farley sketch where he interviews people and asks questions like "'Member that time you said that funny thing?! 'Member?! That was cool..." You ask me, that's a big reason why these comedies fail.

now we have focus groups, test screenings, lawyers, executives apon executives, and people who's star power lasts maybe 6 years before they fade out and go into obscurity. I think the days of people with decades long careers are long since gone.

and elegance is a good way to describe some movies of the 80s. Looking at trading spaces, you'd never get a movie with that kind of slow, simple setup pacing that takes time to build up to the plot today. the first 5 minutes alone are basically music and images and very little dialogue, and it's gloriously done. those days are long gone..
 
Re: Ghostbusters 3

In terms of the storytelling itself, I agree. But in terms of the kinds of stories being told, I think the people who were telling them brought a particular attitude to their stories that comes through in a large portion of their writing, and it's something that, I think, makes the humor have a kind of soul to it that's lacking in a lot of newer stuff. I mean, to be fair, there were plenty of comedies in the 70s and 80s that were just straight-up ha-ha-funny comedies, but the ones that seem to have stuck around include a decent number that are downright subversive. My sense is that it's that subversive quality that's missing from a lot of comedies today, even as the people making them reference back to the subversive films themselves.

Like, Super Troopers is a terrific film, and it references the vibe of Animal House and other similar films, but it doesn't really come across as having that kind of counter-culture sneer behind it that Animal House did.
 
Re: Ghostbusters 3

I think what you are getting at is that the older comedies felt like they were coming from comics. Stand-up comics include a lot of deeply troubled people who joke about the most painful stuff as a coping mechanism. That tone leaked out in the work. They were laughing about things because they were tired of crying about them.

Nowadays it's all so infantile. Even the R-rated "adult" comedies are liable to get that way with sexual bodily-function jokes as much as anything else. It's basically poop & fart jokes aimed at an older audience. And when it's not infantile these days then it seems like more of a showcase for some impossibly-witty & cool character/actor. Somebody is basically showing off their attitude & wit (or their delivery of the writer's wit!) the way another actor would show off their sex appeal or martial arts skills. In both cases these are more of the cool people doing comedies now. Not as many of the genuinely soulful (troubled) people of the past.
 
Re: Ghostbusters 3

I actually liked the Dukes movie for what it was. Loved the TV show. I know people complained the movie was dirty etc but go back and watch the pilot of the TV series. Bo was basically a ***** based off of his own words. I see several similarities to the movie and the pilot. I seriously think thats all they watched to base the movie on.
 
Re: Ghostbusters 3

I actually liked the Dukes movie for what it was. Loved the TV show.

I have to admit to this as well and DoH was my favorite show as a kid. If 69 Chargers weren't so damned expensive I would have had one (but I did at least own a Bandit Mobile, albeit briefly). A few years ago I re-watched the first few eps and to my surprise, the show held up a lot better than I expected- certainly moreso than the original Galactica or (YIKES) Buck Rogers. I also thought the A-Team movie was a lot of fun.
 
Re: Ghostbusters 3

I'm not even a NASCAR fan. I couldn't take watching all that corporate sponsorship in my face all the time, never mind the racing. But its an example of the coastal culture bias in Hollywood. They make movies about open-wheel european racing periodically too, which IMO is at least as boring as NASCAR onscreen. The sheer money involved in NASCAR is more than enough to be justifying Hollywood's attention. It's been that way for a long time.

Hollywood actually tried making a NASCAR movie some years ago back in the 90s, it's called "Days of Thunder" and starred Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and Carey Elwes and, if memory serves, it didn't do too well. With the way Hollywood usually works if a particular type of movie doesn't work it says to them that nobody is interested in that genre/subject matter and so they avoid making those kinds of movies like the plague. But then again, given how much time has passed since "Days of Thunder" first came out and how huge NASCAR has grown in that time some aspiring screenwriter somewhere or some enterprising studio exec might decide that it's past time that they gave a NASCAR movie another try. On other hand, with Hollywood studios becoming ever more risk adverse preferring to either adapt well known books, make sequels/prequels/spinoffs, or remakes/reboots a NASCAR movie is pretty unlikely especially given how poorly received the last one was.
 
Re: Ghostbusters 3

My favorite part of this thread is the time it turned into a NASCAR and DoH discussion thread. It helps me forget this massive pile of garbage is actually being made.
 
Re: Ghostbusters 3

Sounds like a plan to me.

Picture evil Matt McConaghay, sort of glowing, in a racing firesuit, on a temple atop a skyscraper . . . one of the GBs says, "Aim for the mustache!" . . .




IIRC, Days of Thunder made decent money. It was critically panned as a quick & dirty Top Gun retread (which it was). The public enjoyed it and then forgot about it 5 minutes later.

But that was nearly 30 years ago. What if pro baseball had basically never showed up in a major movie again after Major League?

Like I said, I'm not even a NASCAR fan. I just point this out as a symptom of how severely Hollywood under-serves the rural interior states in general.
 
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Re: Ghostbusters 3

I'd much rather Paul Feig rebooted Days of Thunder and ruined that.

Actually one of the few movies I'd like to see rebooted. Batguy is correct: it was hurt by having Tom Cruise in it and by timing which made it way too obvious that they were jsut trying the Top Gun formula. I think I remember rolling my eyes and I was just a kid.


But a few decades later, the idea of bringing back the Top Gun formula sounds pretty damn good to me. So does a Nascar movie.

The real problem is: someday someone will make a decent nascar movie and it will be timed right, and be good, and then it will be followed by 423342342 crappy car movies trying to cash in.
 
Re: Ghostbusters 3

LAtest rumor I heard is that the IDW Ghostbusters comic was cancelled to make way for this new movie so they could have a focused product effort.

god how I hate sony right now.
 
This is a panic reaction from all the bad press from Feig's movie, I'm guessing. Because what we really need is ANOTHER "cinematic universe". This is getting pathetic.
 
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