It took me a while to notice the cast connection between the movie High Fidelity (2000) and the current tv series. Zoe Kravitz, who plays the lead character in the tv series, is the daughter of Lisa Bonet, who played a main character in the movie.
I have probably heard the Rolling Stones song “Paint It Black” more than a hundred times. But I never really noticed what it meant. I always figured the singer was expressing a generic sense of alienation and depression.
It was only recently that I saw somebody who pointed out that the song is about how somebody close to the singer recently died and the singer is expressing how their view of the world has changed since that loss. Which is really obvious from the lyrics once it’s pointed out.
We just saw that!
We’ve been working our way through an episode or two of Monk every evening, and it was on my mind as I was reading this thread.
It was handled well, with the viewers just waiting for some kind of call out, and Tony Shaloub playing it at his most Monk-esque (annoyed that anyone would pay attention to something as unimportant as a celebrity).
Next, I’d love to find a Galaxy Quest reference…
I was watching one of those “Where are they now?” videos and I found out something I had never realized; Kelsey Grammer was younger than everyone else on Cheers.
Grammer joined the show in 1984 (the series’ third season) as a recurring guest star. He was 29 years old. The ages of the other cast members in 1984: Ted Danson - 37, Shelley Long - 35, Rhea Perlman - 36, George Wendt - 36, John Ratzenberger - 37, Kirstie Alley - 33. The only regular who was younger than Grammer was Woody Harrelson, who was 23 in 1984. (But Harrelson wasn’t part of the cast when Grammer joined the show.)
“The Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett is one of the all-time great novelty songs. But why the Mash? 58 years and I never knew. Turns out that James Brown introduced a dance called the Mashed Potato in 1959, a twist-like song. Dee Dee Sharp had had a big hit with “Mashed Potato Time” earlier in 1962 and Pickett wrote a song with the same beat.
“Casablanca” of all things, there’s still something new to me. Remember at the end, where Captain Renault says “There’s a free French garrison over in Brazzaville?” He throws that out so casually, "over at " Brazzaville. I finally got around to looking at a map. Brazzaville is over 7000 km away from Casablanca these days, it might have been further to travel then with patchy or non-existent railroad lines. This is no short jaunt Renault is offering, and if they are going to be friends, that friendship would surely be tested on a journey like that.
Unless, of course, they were going to fly. I guess that’s possible. I guess they’re not really fugitives yet, so they would be able to get on a plane. It might even be easier for Rick than for Renault, who might have a tough time explaining to the Gestapo why he doesn’t want to be a police captain any more and wants to go to the Congo, so soon after the Major is killed.
When I last saw Casablanca, I spotted one thing I hadn’t noticed before.
Everyone remembers the scene with the young couple who go to Rick asking if Renault is a man of his word and implying that he asked her to sleep with him in exchange for an exit visa. Rick has the husband go to the roulette wheel and tells him to bet on a number several times. It comes in, giving them enough money to buy the visa.
In the opening scene, you see the same couple. They are watching the plane leave and have a couple of lines about leaving Casablanca. You have to know the movie pretty well to realize who they are.
Guns and Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is not a romantic love song. He’s literally singing about his daughter. It’s right there in the title for Pete’s sake. 
I thought I spotted that when I watched the movie the one time I’ve seen it.
I can see this, but the line ‘her hair reminds me of a warm safe place where as a child I’d hide’ is an odd sentiment for one’s daughter. But, yes, the rest of the lyrics scan to this interpretation. Good one!
“Release the Krakken!” they ordered, only to see it destroyed by douchey ponce Harry Hamlin inside of 30 seconds.
Obvious realization: the Krakken just sucks as a monster.
Well, it is a bit odd for any interpretation.
Yeah, but it works better as a romantic line, imho.
There aren’t very many good father/daughter songs, to be honest. My song for my daughter is ‘Your Song’ by Elton John which is also works better as a romantic lyric, but the (slightly modified) lines
“… I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind
That I put down in words
How wonderful life is now you’re in the world”
… is something I sung to her since she was a baby, so 
What do you base this on? The lyrics are pretty generic and could apply to a daughter or a girlfriend. The story I’ve always heard is that Rose wrote the song about his then-girlfriend, Erin Everly (who appeared in the video). Rose doesn’t have a daughter.
Yeah, Grammer just has a presence and appearance that makes people think he is older than he really is.
He was 38 when Fraser came on! No way I thought that back in 1993.
And what is the Monster Mash? The song is about the Monster Mash, but isn’t the Monster Mash itself. It’s just a story about it.
If anything, the show seemed to imply he was older (or at least more mature) than the other characters. I don’t recall any lines in the show that pointed out he was younger than the others, like a joke about Diane dating a younger man. Any lines about youth seemed to be directed at Woody.
I’ve been playing Xenoblade Chronicles X for a while now and it just occurred to me that calling the ship The White Whale is a reference to Moby Dick. Because one of the plot lines is their search for pieces of the ship.
Well, not the first time he gets released. Then it simply swamps the city of Argos with seawater, destroys buildings, and kills untold numbers of people (including Acrisius, but I think Zeus himself offed the king).
It was only the second time the Kraken (one “k”)* got released that Perseus turns him into stone. But it takes longer than 30 seconds. Admittedly, that’s because Perseus is a klutz (in the service of making the scene last longer).
For what it’s worth, it probably took him longer in earlier versions of the myth, because until relatively late in the game Perseus didn’t use the gorgon’s head to turn the sea monster into stone. In the earliest artistic depiction we have, he throws stones at the monster. It’s not clear how he kills it in most other cases – you usually just see Perseus approaching the sea monster, or else it’s quietly expiring in the background. The written sources aren’t any help – they tell you that he killed the monster, but not how. I suspect he used his harpe (his classic curved sword).
It was in late antiquity that some clever person shrewdly realized that Perseus was already carrying the thermonuclear device of the day, and could save himself a lot of work by simply pulling it out of its kibisis (carrying case, essentially) and get rid of it effortlessly. Except, goes the story, it remained as a rock in the harbor, blocking sea traffic.Being a Hero is never easy.
*“Kraken” was a Scandinavian monster. The sea monster in the myth of Perseus was Ketos, latinized as Cetus, the root of our word “Cetacean”. Ketos was also the mother of both the Gorgons and the Graea, and was the name of the monster that Hercules supposedly killed near Troy. Greek mythology is a wonderfully convoluted mess.
Man, if someone in antiquity (even late antiquity) figured out that, they must have been very clever indeed.
Re: Casablanca
They also appear briefly in the scene where Victor and Ilsa go to Renault’s office as ordered, to talk to Major Strasser. One of the French officials tells the girl “I’m sorry, Madamoiselle, I cannot help you” or something similar. It’s possible, although it’s never explicit, that she is the woman that Renault is going to see after Victor and Ilsa leave his office, where, of course, he propositions her in the way that comes out later that night at Rick’s.
One of the things I like about this film is the tight timeframe. The whole thing takes place over three days.