I’m all for absurdist humor, especially pigs who can grunt in seven languages. But shows like Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies were built around one joke (or set of jokes). Once you’ve told a joke, how many times can you repeat it before it goes stale?
The Clampetts lived in Beverly Hills for nine years and were just as clueless on the last day as they were on the first. By the time the show went to color in 1966, it had already begun to sink in to me what complete morons they were.
Married … with Children is another example of a basically one-joke show. The only reason it lasted as long as it did was that (like Seinfeld) it was a reaction against all the warm, cuddly, “family-oriented” sitcoms of the '80s.
The next episode in the Avatar series will presumably be about the monetisation of Tree telepathy. Earth could do a lot with that sort of applied biotech.
Agreed. Women with large breasts are sometimes treated as if they’re a separate species.
My example of Iconic But Awful is Unforgiven. What’s the big deal here? IMHO, it’s a standard revenge flick/retired gunslinger western, a plot at least as old as Shane. It ends with a ridiculous 1 vs 12 gunfight where only the 1 can hit anything.
That was sorta the point. Or one of the points, anyway. Unlike the characters of Little Bill and English Bob who took perverse pride in being dangerous men, William Munny wasn’t really part of the “gentleman” gunfighter ethos. He was just a drunken, vicious killer who was both good at killing and very, very lucky. He even says as much. Munny shot the sheriff and the panicked, wildly firing deputies and the rest of the town folk just froze or scattered in terror.
These sort of encounters were rare, but not unknown. In the most spectacular Jonathan Davis shot down seven men and killed four more with a bowie knife in a single encounter. Which honestly IS just kinda ridiculous, but apparently it happened as there were witnesses.
That makes me think you either didn’t understand it or are remembering it wrong. The movie subverted the tropes of the standard gunslinger westerns. The standard gunslinger western stories were in the fictionalized stories that Saul Rubinek wrote in the movie.
Let me introduce you to my daughter. She is 21 right now and was blown away by Avatar when it came out. It remains her favorite movie along with Titanic. We may just be too old.
Unforgiven was a deconstruction of the western genre as a whole though it’s a good western itself. Unlike Shane, where there is a clear delineation between the good guys and the bad guys, no bright lines exists between the two in Unforgiven. Bill Munny is not a good guy. After all, he’s agreed to murder two cowboys for money not because he wants justice for Delilah. Nor is Sheriff Little Bill entirely bad. I think we can all agree that a sheriff should do what he can to prevent murder for hire in his jurisdiction. It’s far from the standard revenge flick here. None of us are happy when Quick Mike and Bunting are gunned down. One dies ignominiously on the shitter and the other’s last few moments are crying out in pain for a drink of water.
The actors did a great job, the dialogue was good, and the characters were interesting. Little Bill spending some serious time disabusing Beauchamp, the dime novel author, of the fanciful stories told to him by English Bob was worth the price of admission alone. Unforgiven is a great movie.
I’m confused. If the link below is the opening scene in question, I’m not seeing the blatant big-boobed exploitation. Maybe there is a different opening like the very real alternate ending to Big?
I’ve never seen the movie, just watched your clip, and I agree with you. The two younger women do have nice-looking breasts, but doubt that I would’ve noticed it at all in a normal viewing situation.
I only thought one of the two younger women had a chest that was in any way out of the ordinary, and I really only noticed it because of a 2-second shot where they were framed.
And you really shouldn’t have been looking at that part of the screen, anyway.
I just rewatched Highlander on Netflix for the first time in a long time. Its much worse than I remember. I remember it being cheesy but watchable, but oh god its awful. Definitely iconic though.
William Goldman seems like a creep who likes to ogle teenage girls. When people talk about the opening part of Saving Private Ryan, they mean the part on Omaha Beach, not the very brief scene in the cemetery beforehand.
