Jeremy Dauber

Tune in next time for another indifferent March movie, but - in a pun you'll get when we talk about it - one that tries to stitch together some genres intriguingly!

(In a few weeks, btw, we'll get to an example of a movie from '79 that's much, much worse than STARCRASH, but is also trying to *do* something, kind of. You'll see.)
So, overall, blah. Mostly interesting as a reminder - not that you needed it - that STAR WARS was an industry-changer.

that I would make that argument here - there's room for it when, say, the people involved are trying to say something interesting but fail utterly in execution (I actually think some of Ed Wood's films fall into this category), but I think this is a movie you laugh and point at, not with.

I mean, there's a plot, but it doesn't really bear repeating; the special effects are pretty ludicrous, even by Seventies standards; the acting is fairly wooden, the robots giving the actors a run for their money...I guess you can make the argument that it's so bad it's good, but I'm not sure

I accidentally almost typed STARCASH on the last post, which would have been apt, since the movie is clearly designed to make some money off the success of STAR WARS; it....didn't, but look at the bright side: at least in my opinion, it didn't really deserve to.

And here we are, with a brief thread on movie 16 of 1979 to be released in the US - March '79 - and it's...well, not great. But it does have David Hasselhoff! Welcome to a brief thread on....STARCRASH!

that's wonderful news -congratulations!

Guilty as charged!

Press 1 for Invasion A kid who just wanted a cell phone ends up being responsible for saving the world from an alien invasion in this hilarious, action-packed new middl...

My MG debut, PRESS 1 FOR INVASION, comes out in exactly 1 month and 1 day! Children biologically related to me have given it high marks, in contradistinction to my jokes at dinner. Your children or friends' children might feel similarly, so pre-order now!

www.simonandschuster.com/books/Press-...

Debut album title: BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

Poster, I groaned

This is a nuclear-level assault on US graduate study. Almost every single international student in any field considering coming to America to study for a PhD, and, as OP points out, even an undergrad degree, will be radically reconsidering their choices immediately - and many will choose elsewhere

This is the name of your prog-rock concept album

I think it will catch on, enough - and I say this as:

a. a glasses wearer

and b. someone who is not, inherently, a tech skeptic for certain purposes these glasses could be put to! (like remembering people's names....)

I have been thinking about this in terms of the classroom - I've been toying with the idea for some of my seminars with going tech-free (printouts of texts, etc), but have been considering that this...certainly will provide an interesting perspective.

Are Movies and TV Shows Missing the Magic of Tech? Netflix’s 'Adolescence' is just the latest drama to paint a bleak picture of kids warped by smartphones and social media. But that's only part of the story.

I'd love that - let's!! Are you in NYC any time soon? It would be lovely to meet up and discuss!!

And don't know if you saw this that just came out recently, which takes a slightly different angle, but is in the same ballpark:
www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-featur...

I don't want to cavil, but not all of these states have the letter R in them

Have been thinking a lot recently of Paul's much better formulation of my formulation of what goes on in a lot of social media - "dunking for dopamine and leverage" is really good

Man, if you are not subscribing to @zeitchik.bsky.social's weekly newsletter about AI, tech, and the future, you are missing out - it's tremendous. Give him a follow, and check out what he has to say; it's a report from the ever-changing virtual front!

An extremely brief thread on the 15th movie to be released in chronological order in 1979 (we're still in early March), limited to a few observations on....TAKE DOWN!

The movie was not a hit at the box office, which suggests that contemporary viewers agreed with me, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend except for, well, Herrmann or 1979 completists.
Sadly, our next entrant makes this one look more like Citizen Kane....but that's our thread!

...put it in those terms, of course. Still, it's kind of heavy, and I never felt the movie tonally worked, wanting to have the kind of lighter tone of a Herrmann Disney-type joint (the movie was distributed by Buena Vista) with something more serious and adult, which they weren't quite equipped for.

...especially one young man, but he gets those lessons - about humanity - taught right back at him, learning people have real problems, in this case socioeconomic problems related to the hollowing out of blue-collar life in industrial manufacturing in the Carter era, although the movie doesn't....

...played an eager basketball coach). Herrmann excels at stuffed-shirt roles, and this is the stuffiest of shirts, in which he finds such athletic endeavors as wrestling beneath him (he's an English teacher, but, apparently, no fan of the classical period). He attempts to teach lessons to the squad

TAKE DOWN is a movie in which Edward Herrmann, who has already appeared as the lead in one of our earlier threads and seemed to have a thriving career in front of him as a kind of unconventional lead, played an unwilling wrestling coach (in contradistinction to our earlier thread where Gabe Kaplan..

An extremely brief thread on the 15th movie to be released in chronological order in 1979 (we're still in early March), limited to a few observations on....TAKE DOWN!

Press 1 for Invasion A kid who just wanted a cell phone ends up being responsible for saving the world from an alien invasion in this hilarious, action-packed new middl...

THE INVASION ARRIVES IN ONE MONTH AND TWO DAYS

PRE-ORDER NOW

www.simonandschuster.com/books/Press-...

didn't see it - sorry!!

As Paul definitely knows, Romero really name-checked I AM LEGEND, which is a great read, in thinking about NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. (My personal favorite underseen precursor to NOTLD is the 1959 movie THE INVISIBLE INVADERS fwiw).

It really is