Sept. 25-Oct. 1: Dolph Lundgren fights space pushers, Christopher Walken in king of New York, the next-to-last picture show, don’t rent to Michael Keaton, America fails to learn from the Civil War, Denzel remembers the titans, two explorations of Facebook, and should you let in the vampire remake? All that and more this week on Thirty Twenty Ten, your weekly look back on the week that was 30, 20, and 10 years ago.
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Black Books apologist here! Well, okay, less apologist, more just I hate Graham Linehan because everyone should (god, I could go on a years long tangent, but you don’t deserve that grief) and would like to take as much credit away from him as possible: Linehan helped Dylan Moran write the first season because Moran had self-confessed zero knowledge about writing for TV. He isn’t credited on the second or third series for this reason. (Isn’t it a shame how we will never know who wrote Father Ted or The IT Crowd etc etc.)
Black Books was my Spaced, I guess – very “holy shit what is this and how is it on after Friends?!” and I was 13 when I discovered it, which helps with all favourite shows, I guess. It’s weird, has cameos from the entirety of the British comedy scene in 2000 and had some excellent DVD commentaries. If nothing else, I can definitely think of worse lives than being an alcoholic bookshop owner.
Also, the actor who plays Manny is gonna be on Strictly Come Dancing this year because the world is insane.
The Social Network and being in an exclusive university, joining an exclusive club, and then wanting to be in the exclusive club within that exclusive club reminds me of Tahani in The Good Place:
Tahani Al-Jamil : In 2007, Blake Lively invited me to a birthday party held for Leonardo DiCaprio aboard Paul Allen’s mega-yacht.
John Wheaton : I see we’re dropping names three at a time now.
Tahani Al-Jamil : The guest list was one hundred of the wealthiest, most famous members of the glitterati. Once aboard, I discovered there was a VIP deck. And within that area, there was an even more exclusive room that you could only access with a secret PIN, which I promptly entered. And guess who was waiting for me.
John Wheaton : I hate to admit it, but I have to know. Who?
Tahani Al-Jamil : No one. I was the only one there. The party raged on outside, but I was so obsessed with status that I never left. I spent the entire night talking to no one.
John Wheaton : Riveting story. If only it were longer and sadder.
Tahani Al-Jamil : The point is, if all you care about in the world is the velvet rope, you will always be unhappy, no matter which side you’re on.
Dead Rising 2 is part of the, “No you don’t get to play this, you’ve got a new baby” collection of games for me. My daughter had just been born and I was swamped. Like super swamped. Like people who have never had a newborn just don’t have a clue of the adjustment period of what I call, “The Blur” Anyways, I didn’t have a PS3 or a PC capable of playing it and I have bigger financial obligations so I put it and pretty much all new and shiny games out of my mind for about 6 years. At that point things had calmed down and I was able to think about gaming again so I started discovering and playing all the amazing games from 2010-2015 for the first time and virtually everything seemed amazing to me. I think this was because I only played the games from that period that stood the test of time and that people were still talking about in 2016 onwards. It was quite an interesting experience and really fun in a way. I thought about doing the thing where you only play five year old games but quickly the allure of the New and Shiny overcame me and I was back to the old habits of playing new games instead of games that have proven themselves in other people’s memories. The human mind is weird. I probably would have gotten more enjoyment only playing the best of the best, even if they were all five years old, but I didn’t because…. why? I play video games for fun so why didn’t I go with the strategy that maximizes that fun?
Dolph Lundgen’s Dark Angel / I Come in Peace where he’s a cop fighting an intergalactic drug trade sounds amaze balls. It’s one of those bad movie ideas that seem like it would be perfect for a remake where they take the interesting idea but make the film based on the idea interesting as well. What Bad Movie With a Cool Idea would you most like to see remade so the idea could be explored well?
Man the “old-timey-letter-writing-about-podcasting” was comedy gold! Gold I tell you! And Ken Burn’s Civil War was one of the chief things that got me interested in history so it’ll always have a special place in my heart but I should probably use my precious precious viewing time to watch something new like “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War” which is for rent on prime.
What was the smallest video game change that got you really excited? Because honestly, 1990 me was SUPER excited for the introduction of the slide in MegaMan 3. I know it seems like such a nothing today, but back in 1990 even the smallest of new mechanics was amazing. Hell, Mario being able to run to the left in Super Mario 2 was amazing. What was the smallest video game change that got you really excited?
Regarding the view of crime and cops as seen in Cop Rock, I don’t think you can view a single film or TV show from 1980-2000 that covers the cops or crime except through the lens of keeping this chart in mind:
https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/violent-crime-rate.jpg
Virtually everyone producing film and TV in 1990 grew up in US where crime was around 1/8th of what it was in 1990. And (and this is the chief point) in 1990 they had zero idea crime was going to stop dropping. That drop was not predicted, it wasn’t expected and even a crime rate of holding steady ( at the highest crime had ever been in the US since the introduction of police forces) would have been seen as optimistic as crime had been rising, very fast, for 30 years at that point. A 30 year trend is a very long time for most people and they were understandably scared it would keep rising. This is not to say that 30 years later you have to agree with a 30 year old pop culture view of crime and cops ( far from it; new data means you SHOULD change your views) but if you want to understand WHY 1990 made films with certain views you have to keep in mind the previous 30 years they had lived through and how they did not expect the 30 years we have gotten since then.
Nelson – (Can’t Live Without Your) Love And Affection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvwndnZXu7A
Remember the Titans. What are some sports films primarily focused on an African-American character(s) where the central focus/conflict is not racial in nature? Race can play a part in who they are as people, but it can’t be the main driving of the drama. Creed would qualify for this, for instance, I think. Others?