StrangeScaffold

Little Shop of Horrors (2003 Broadway cast album) = Finished

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEYMOUR

I WAS WRONG ABOUT SEYMOUR

It's amazing how much listening to the stage version (specifically the 2003 Broadway revival recommended by Mike Bithell, natch) changed how I viewed the movie. I still love it, but decisions I previously saw as sacred or intentional are now revealed to be...something else.

Let's recap some changes in the stage version:
- The dentist gets a song begging Seymour to help him before asphyxiating
- Seymour lures Mushnik into Audr...

Father of the Bride (1991 film) = Finished

The old cliche of "she's still my little girl" is represented, but for some reason, it comes off as less infantilizing and more...emotionally resonant, here?

We get to see Steve Martin's point of view actually change in real time, to acknowledge the woman his daughter has become.
It's nice.

I will also never stop laughing at this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdQb7p3FQOg 

INCR...

9 to 5 (1980 film) = Finished

Yes, 9 to 5 is a comedy. Yes, Dolly Parton is awesome, as ever. Yes, the boss does get his comeuppance at the end by getting sent to Brazil and *checks notes* kidnapped by an Amazon tribe...but lord is the reality presented grim.

Think about a world where the boss still getting the credit for work performed by the women around him is a good outcome, because he's now seen as TOO successful, and so gets carted away to a far-flung location.
This was escapism in 1980.<...

Repo Man (1984 film) = Finished

Repo Man is SqualorPunk.
It's poverty made cosmic.
It is the exact kind of story of sex and religion and mysticism and rampant consumerism and meaningless crimes and meaningful coincidences that you'd expect to read from someone trying to be a punk in New Mexico.

A lot of folks talk about a world having 'texture', because there's a prostitute on a corner speaking an alien language, or grafitti on a nondescript wall. That is texture, in a classic video game sense. It's color on t...

Little Shop of Horrors (1986 film) = Finished

Let's talk about Seymour.

We've seen the "nice guy" in movies and TV shows - a lot. You get the sense that there's a lot of so-called nice guys behind the scenes writing these characters. And usually, once you dig past the self-awarely quirky surface and conga line of explicitly presented personality flaws, the nice guy isn't very nice at all. This can usually be seen in how he relates to his storytelling pair: the dream girl. AKA the girl next door, AKA the manic pixie. The nice guy laments t...