Ghostbusters: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Ghostbusters: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Icon-Cat posted:

I agree that Ghostbusters II is tepidly shot (how did Michael Chapman go from shooting "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" to just giving up on life?!)

After watching Ghostbusters II on DVD for the first time a month or so back and thinking that it was lit like a sitcom, I looked up Chapman on IMDb and was shocked to see that he'd not only worked with Scorsese, but also shot movies like the 1970s Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, two of Steve Martin's early, funny films (Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and The Man With Two Brains) and The Lost Boys, all of which were pretty stylishly photographed. Something obviously happened to him around 1988 that made him stop caring - The Fugitive was the only one of his films after then which I remember as looking good.

The mid-80s was a good time for high-concept movies that delivered on their promises all but perfectly - Ghostbusters, Back To The Future, Aliens, Robocop... It'd be nice to see a return to that kind of form; I doubt that 20+ years from now, there will be a similar appreciative nostalgia for Revenge Of The Fallen, unless summer blockbusters devolve into Nutshot!: The Movie.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2009 09:17

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 23:33

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

One of my favourite minor moments is Venkman getting a blob of slime in his eye when he's collecting the ectoplasm in the library, and his little freak-out to wipe the slime off himself. The "Dah!" when he gets something stuck to his foot always cracks me up.

Fun fact: that entire scene with the slime was improvised - in the script, the first thing that happened in the basement was the falling bookshelf. Reitman decided on the morning of shooting that there needed to be more of a lead-in to seeing the ghost for the first time, so all the symmetrical book-stacking and ectoplasm stuff was made up just before filming. The 'Making Of Ghostbusters' book is full of cool little sidenotes like that.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2009 14:59

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Hmm, I'm glad I've got the original R1 DVD as well as the R2 two-movie 'slime' package.

Incidentally, the latter's Ghostbusters disc is one of only two DVDs I've ever encountered that can't be ripped to media centre/laptop/iPod/whatever with Handbrake - the first chapter has some trickery on it that causes a lockup. (The other was Stealth - also, I'm sure not coincidentally, a Sony/Columbia-Tristar DVD.)

# ¿ Aug 11, 2009 23:04

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

EggsofSteel posted:

For years, my family would sit across from Dana's building and the synagogue steps where the punks get blown down by the wind every year for the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Little me would always yank at my dad's coat and ask "Hey, are the Ghostbusters going to show up this year?" Sure enough, one year Sigourney Weaver was about 10 feet from us in the crowd, prompting my dad to yell "HEY SIGOURNEY" and generally make a huge rear end of himself.

The first time I visited New York, I had no alternative but to walk up to 55 Central Park West to get a photo of Spook Central.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2009 22:05

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

echoplex posted:

Re: the pop soundtrack, that song with the "magic" lyric that kicks in when the Fire Station assplodes is a perfect choice. I don't think there are any duff tracks on there - especially compared to GBII.

Back in the pre-iTunes days, I bought the GB soundtrack CD pretty much for 'Magic'. And what a shocker to hear the whole thing, because the part used in the film during the ghost-escape sequence doesn't come in until halfway through the track, and it's completely different in style from the first half.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2009 08:11

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

mcbexx posted:

For instance, when the male test subject loses his chewing gum after being shocked - just a little detail, but hilarious at the same time. His exit line "You can keep your five dollars" had me in tears.

"I will, mister!"

Then he immediately switches back into smarm mode to chat up the female student.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2009 15:51

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

T-Bone posted:

I always thought the line was:

"This job is not worth another five a year."

As in this job is not worth an additional five thousand dollars a year.

I just checked the shooting script (in the Making Ghostbusters book) to see what it said, but it's not in there at all, so there's yet another improvisation to add to the list.

And while doing that, I found that the whole "cross the streams" solution to the Gozer problem wasn't in the script either - all Egon suggests is shooting the Terror Dogs, and somehow that destroys Gozer. So they were making up great chunks of the movie on the fly... and it all worked. The harmonic forces of the universe wanted this to be a great film.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2009 22:59

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

McSpanky posted:

I believe April O'Neil qualifies for this as well. But it only makes sense, as heroes prefer reds, one way or the other.

loving TV Tropes, or rather the people who contribute to it. The 'Anime and Manga' category of every single trope is invariably about five times longer (and infinitely spergier) than 'Film' or 'Literature' or 'TV'. And the alphabetical ordering of the categories always puts it at the top of the list.

TV Tropes posted:

In Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, the first shown member of every Quirky Miniboss Squad is a redhead (Izuuru, Sheshe, Fuku). Also twisted with Sara, whose natural colour was bright orange, but-

# ¿ Aug 19, 2009 23:32

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Jamesman posted:

The Run DMC song, and the Bobby Brown song, are good songs.

Ghostbusters!
Packs strapped to their back, screaming
Ghostbusters!
Ghostbusters attack
"We are your friendly neighbourhood Ghostbusters"
That's what they said to me
"We are the busters of any G, H, O, S, T."

# ¿ Jun 24, 2016 09:09

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

precision posted:

Kevin Smith says it's good, so it's probably not.

e: "You could take a 1 year old to it." Is that supposed to be an endorsement?

People who would take a 1-year-old to a cinema should be banned from seeing movies in them. And having children. (I say that as the father of a 1-year-old.)

# ¿ Jul 14, 2016 07:38

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

So Hemsworth's character isn't so dumb he doesn't know how glass works because he's really a being from another plane/world/whatever, as I'd thought from the spoilers, but is genuinely worse-than-Joey-in-later-seasons-of-Friends stupid?

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 15:00

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

MisterBibs posted:

That doesn't really excuse the seeming inability to understand that thick things in the atmosphere commonly block light sources, rendering it dark without being nighttime.

That was just the same in the original. I know people who complained about it being morning so soon after the final battle, having forgotten the shots of a weird cloud growing above Dana's building.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 23:05

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Full Battle Rattle posted:

Ghostbusters, in the context of the film, is already basically a franchise, with it's own logo, advertising, merchandising, etc. The idea lends itself to the concept pretty readily - you have other people setting up shop, then eventually there's some kind of mega ghost that won't go down without several million dollars worth of star-power.

I cant wait for Ghostbusters: Miami.

[Finds someone covered in slime] Looks like... [dons sunglasses] ...he got spooked.
YYEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 13:03

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

dog days are over posted:

Definitely. It got really annoying.

It seems to be the thing at the moment. TFA, the Star Trek films, Bond - they're all littered with nods and winks to past instalments, and aren't subtle about it. "Hey, remember [THING]? Look, here's [THING] in our new movie! Isn't it awesome? Aren't we awesome by association? Look! LOOK!" Like the masturbation over the DB5 in Skyfall, even though there was little reason in universe why Bond would have that particular car hidden in a lock-up (it's not the same one from Casino Royale), and none at all why it would be a fully kitted-out MI6 spy car.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2016 11:12

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 23:33

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

The_Doctor posted:

Was that ever actually filmed? I've heard about that repeatedly but it always sounds like it was cut from the script before filming started.

I've seen a still of the scene (one of the gadgets on top of Ecto-1 is 'looking' at the cop), so it was set up at the very least.

EDIT: Pretty sure it was in 'Making Ghostbusters', but my copy's in storage so I can't check.

Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Feb 18, 2017

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 11:47

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Ghostbusters: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.