476

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

It's almost 3 AM, so here's two rather brief reviews.

http://www.cinemit.com/images/coolposters/animalhouse.jpg

Yuck. Not even the combined powers of Marion Ravenwood, Matthew Bennell, John Hoynes, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and a Blues Brother could rescue this. I've no particular inclination to watch a bunch of assholes being assholes for two hours while rooting for them the whole time when the college is completely justified in trying to expel them, and to sue them for all sorts of criminal acts by the end. Not to mention the rape and the racism and the uuuuugh fuck this movie and fuck fraternities. 1 of 5 stars.

https://thatwasabitmental.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/aliens_poster.jpg

Much to my shame, I'd never got around to this one. Goddamn.  Goddamngoddamngoddamn. I know some people think the director's cut drags, but even having been spoiled on the entire film years ago I was completely frantic by the end--I didn't feel any lag at all. Can't wait to pop the DiF for this one in. All the fucking stars.

477

(116 replies, posted in Off Topic)

That's no moon... but it does illuminate things pretty well.

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc517/darthpraxus/Mobile%20Uploads/20160807_214759_zpszmeo0jk2.jpg

Thanks for that!

I'd say that's certainly true for musicals before a certain time, but I don't know if it is anymore. I don't know that films like Sweeney Todd or Les Miserables necessarily assume an audience is there--the characters sing nearly everything, but that's simply the communication present in their world. Then again, in Les Mis there certainly is an addressing of the camera going on at points (though I'm not sure the characters are supposed to be aware of it).

That question aside, this answer makes a lot of sense and is probably what I'm looking for--"theatricality" is a good descriptor of that tonal difference. Thanks so much!

All this got started when someone I follow in Twitter asked the question: what are the three best musical films ever made?

After due consideration, I put down Fiddler on the Roof, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? as my answers. Almost immediately, I had the thought that I much prefer Inside Llewyn Davis to O Brother—it's my favorite Coen Bros movie and in my top ten films of all time—shouldn't it be my third answer instead? But upon further reflection I realized I don't consider Inside Llewyn Davis to be a musical in the same way I think O Brother Where Art Thou? is.

This has had me puzzling for the last day trying to figure out—what is the difference between a musical and a film with a lot of music in it? (Spoilers for both O Brother and Llewyn Davis below.)

My first thought was that O Brother, Where Art Thou? contains music that isn't motivated by anything—the sirens' rendition of "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby" and the Klan rally's cry of "O Death" to name the two most prominent examples—while every song in Inside Llewyn Davis is accounted for because it's a film about folk singers plying their trade. But then I realized that this distinction really isn't particularly useful, because that's not in fact the case. There are two songs in Inside Llewyn Davis that are played "just because", without the backdrop of a stage show, an audition, or a recording session as justification—Llewyn plays "Green, Green Rocky Road" in the passenger seat of the car he's taking to Chicago, and later plays "The Shoals of Herring" for his aging, institutionalized father. And the two songs I listed as examples of musical numbers without justification in O Brother in fact do have  justifications of sorts—the sirens are, well, sirens, and the Klan would very likely have music as part of its rituals. But for some reason Llewyn Davis feels stubbornly non-musical while O Brother feels stubbornly musical.

That got me thinking about tone. O Brother, Where Art Thou? could be considered a magical realist film depending on one's reading. There's a blind prophet whose predictions turn out to be remarkably accurate, a guitarist who's sold his soul to the devil, and literal sirens to reckon with. Those sirens are shot in such a way that there seems to be something unearthly about them—the genuinely do feel otherworldly, rather than simple con-women looking to get our heroes drunk and steal from them. And while the Klan rally could be based in reality, the way it's staged, both exaggeratedly comic and somehow still intimidating, reeks of fantasy rather than any attempt at a grounded depiction of historical events. Inside Llewyn Davis, on the other hand, is about as grounded as it's possible for a film to be—it throws out allusions to Greek myth same as O Brother, but they're far more subtle and remain allusions rather than any sort of fantastical intrusions on a mundane reality. So, is that it? Does a musical require a tinge of fancy?

But no, I growl to myself, that can't be it either. There are plenty of musicals about the mundane, from Company to West Side Story. And there are plenty of completely grounded musicals that supply a real-world justification (however flimsy) for every single one of their numbers that nevertheless are musicals.

Is it a matter of the songs in O Brother carrying important character beats and information in contrast to Llewyn Davis? Fucking NO, I grimace, because if anything the inverse is true. O Brother Where Art Thou? has pretty much one song that's about informing us as to its singer's relationship to the rest of the world: "Man of Constant Sorrow" and its reprises. It forms the "I Am" song near the opening of the film and the emotional climax near its end. Apart from this, I suppose one could argue that "Big Rock Candy Mountain" forms an "I Want" song as it plays over the opening credits, but most of the rest of the songs featured in the film are for color—they're designed to set the tone for scenes and to communicate how important music is to the world of the film, but not to really reveal much about character.

Inside Llewyn Davis, by contrast, is pretty much nothing but character-building songs. "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me" is the "I Am" number, establishing for us who Llewyn is and what he feels; the LP recording of his "Fare Thee Well" duet with his dead partner Mikey serves as an "I Want" number, showing us what he's lost; "Five Hundred Miles" communicates Jean's character; "The Death of Queen Jane" is a means for Llewyn to express his anguish and uncertainty over having unknowingly fathered one child and preparing to help his ex-girl abort another; and his final "Fare Thee Well" represents an emotional catharsis that the entire film has been building toward. Some assorted numbers aside, the songs are pretty much all character-centric.

So, by that logic, Inside Llewyn Davis is totally a musical, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? kinda isn't.

But it isn't, goddammit, and it most definitely is.

I would leave it alone, but Inside Llewyn Davis isn't the only film like this. Pink Floyd—The Wall, Walk the Line, and Amadeus, to name but a few, are all movies in which music plays a primary part (the only part, in the former) but that I don't feel comfortable dubbing "musicals". Inside Llewyn Davis is just the most frustrating one, as I have no good reason not to call it a musical but I still don't feel as though it belongs under that label.

And so, I'm turning to you guys for help. First of all, am I even right in thinking of O Brother as a musical and/or Llewyn Davis as not a musical? And second, if I am right, what the hell is the distinction that eludes me?

480

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

http://www.impawards.com/2000/posters/pay_it_forward_ver1.jpg

Ahh, movie night with Mom.

Time to watch an entire season of Archer to scrub the vile Sour-Patch-sweet aftertaste of this off of my tongue. What condescending, artless, moronic, paternalistic, bigoted, racist garbage.

I present you, good people of DiF, with the entirety of the notes I took while watching this film. I gave up on them about halfway through and moved on to other boredom-reducing techniques. Fuck this movie.

SPOILER Show
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481

(21 replies, posted in Episodes)

Writhyn wrote:

That's....not Matt Smith. Nor does it look anything like him.

A.) Yep, 'twas merely joking.
B.) I'm gonna pull a Kyle and insist that you're wrong while we stare at the same picture. wink

482

(21 replies, posted in Episodes)

Just noticed that whoever was in charge of casting for the new play apparently agreed with Kyle's note that Matt Smith should be old Harry.


http://cdn3.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/scale_crop_768_433/2016/05/harry_potter_jamie_parker.jpg

483

(10 replies, posted in Off Topic)

The glare on those art prints during live recordings was always just wrong enough that I couldn't tell what they were and assumed they were vinyl album art. This clears up a years-long mystery.

484

(108 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Haha, telling it is the one way I salvaged anything positive from the incident.

Fear and Esteem-Bottoming doesn't have quite the same ring to it but is more than adequate as an answer!

485

(116 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Sweeeeet. All ready to tromp off to Hobbiton.

486

(10 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Pretty self-explanatory! Feel free to throw in info about why it's organized the way it is, any particular significance attached to part of it, etc.

Mine's the simple setup--fiction and nonfiction, each alphabetized by title. Woefully incomplete, of course.

Titles to the lower right that are glared out of visibility: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street; 12 Years a Slave; Two Days, One Night; Under the Skin; Vanya on 42nd Street; The Wall.

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc517/darthpraxus/Mobile%20Uploads/20160727_181901_zpsrzqzsthq.jpg
http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc517/darthpraxus/Mobile%20Uploads/20160727_182031_zpsxqhvygf8.jpg

487

(108 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Teague wrote:

What was happening at the moment in your life where (so far) you've been the most sure you were gonna die?

So a few years ago, I'd flown out to Maryland for half a week to visit with my grandparents. Had fun, etc. The night before I left, we ate some leftover Arby's that they'd had for a few days and reheated. Not the best, 'cuz lukewarm Arby's, but it tasted fine and nothing seemed amiss.

The following day, I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight back to Minnesota to open up for boarding, and my stomach is feeling progressively queasier. Finally it gets to the point where I have to ask the guy sitting next to me to watch my luggage (didn't remember at the time that leaving luggage unattended is a total no-no), and ran to the nearest bathroom just in time to throw up rather spectacularly into a toilet.

Well, that sucked, I think, realizing at this point that I most likely have food poisoning from last night's secondhand Arby's, but hopefully it means I'll be fine on the flight back.

So, I get on the plane, feeling pretty much okay. I settle into my seat, ignore the passenger adjacent to me, and go back to reading It, which I have a few hundred pages of left. Plane takes off, we're in the air for a while, everything seems like it's gonna work out.

Then we get the warning that we're gonna hit some turbulence. I don't think too much of it—I've had that happen before on flights and it wasn't particularly anything to write home about. But when we do hit said turbulence, my stomach starts acting up again.

I realize that we can't get out of our seats with the turbulence happening, and I really don't want to vomit into a paper bag with someone sitting next to me, so I'm fairly anxious right now. And that anxiety spikes by a huge margin when all of a sudden I realize I'm not breathing particularly well.

On top of that, I can't even fucking open my mouth—my jaw is clenched shut. And my hands have formed these clutching claw-like shapes and I can't pull my fingers back to normal.

So here I am, not breathing and holding my claw-hands up like a demon-possessed person and struggling to make noise from between my clenched jaws. The guy next to me doesn't seem to notice that much is wrong, and I'm getting more and more panicked. Finally, the woman across the aisle from us notices that I'm in a fair amount of distress and asks what's wrong.

Turns out she's a doctor, and after a few minutes of calm instruction on her part, I'm able to unclench my mouth and my hands and can breathe fairly easily. Which is good, because at that moment I finally throw up again. The latter happens a couple more times over the rest of the flight.

What basically happened as far as I can tell from what was explained to me upon landing is that my anxiety about the turbulence's causing me to throw up led me to unconsciously hyperventilate, which isn't a great thing for the human body what with the weird air pressure things that happen on a plane. This hyperventilation led to my not being able to breathe very well, and somehow (I wasn't paying much attention to the details in the moment) caused my motor functions to lock up and my jaw to not move. Had Oblivious Seatmate continued to ignore me and had Serendipitous Doctor not looked up at the right time (or been on the flight in the first place), I very well could have thrown up while in this panicked semi-paralyzed state and choked on my own vomit.

So yep. Fun times were had by all. Food poisoning was gone by the end of the next day, though.

Who is a person who you used to admire a great deal and now unabashedly loathe?

488

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

http://www.impawards.com/2002/posters/frailty.jpg

A lot of people view this one, Bill Paxton's directorial debut, as an underrated gem, so when I spotted it at the Half Price Books clearance sale for $2 I snatched it up.

To my disappointment, it's an unfortunate instance of a screenplay that is degraded rather than elevated by its realization as a film. Nearly every element—the flat cinematography, Bill Paxton's two-note performance, McConaughey's bored narration—conspires to take a reasonably clever premise for an ambiguously supernatural thriller and tamp it down to the equivalent of a made-for-television movie. Paxton's bizarre refusal to show any sort of blood in the course of the film's numerous murders adds to this effect—it comes off not only as cowardice but as a weirdly artificial constraint, as if he were shooting the film to be broadcast on a network station and could only go so far.

The film isn't incompetent to the point of badness, and both McConaughey and the film's child actors bring enough to the table in terms of performances to keep the viewer mildly entertained, but Frailty, alas, never rises above mediocrity. Had it been given to a proper director, and had a different actor been cast in place of Paxton, it might have been considerably more successful.

Boter wrote:

Very cool - you'll have to let us know if it keeps the same effect with the Spanish audio.

Will do! DVD is apparently out of print here in the States (or at the very least not available on Amazon), but tracking down a copy is near the top of my list of movie priorities once the Criterion sale winds down.

489

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Rec_poster.jpg

I can't quite review this one fairly, because I had the misfortune of renting it from Amazon unaware that what I would be provided with was not the original Spanish audio but a fairly awful English dub. That said, even the cheesiest of overdubbed line readings ultimately couldn't detract from this film.

[REC] is a fantastic bait-and-switch of a motion picture. The first half lulls the viewer into believing they're watching a fairly mediocre piece of found-footage hackwork, and goes out of its way to form an atmosphere that isn't conducive to scares or tension—bright lighting, fairly telegraphed moments of violence, overly broad performances (though again, can't quite rate that aspect fairly—dub). But when shit hits the fan, it hits it hard, and from that moment on the film is a completely different beast. Moments of tension are dragged out unbearably long before the inevitable occurs, the directors start playing with the geography of the tenement building and the possibilities of the found-footage medium, and the relatively expansive atmosphere takes a tight turn to the claustrophobic. It's a blindside of a transformation, and all the scarier for it.

In fact, the incredibly shitty dub may have even helped with this effect (mind you, I'm double-checking that the DVD has the proper Spanish audio before purchasing it). I spent the first half of the film resigned to the fact that any tension I could have felt was going to be smothered by the hamfisted English audio, and the latter half completely on edge in spite of it. It takes compelling film-making to do that.

490

(51 replies, posted in Episodes)

Well shit. The Woods is actually a secret sequel called Blair Witch.

I'm actually gonna be cautiously optimistic about this one. Because fuck it, I gotta be optimistic about something besides Star Wars this year, and 10 Cloverfield Lane wound up my second favorite of 2016 so far.

491

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I was merely uninterested in Suicide Squad until Leto's antics drove me to an active antipathy toward it. (Plus if this one underperforms, it's another handful of dirt over the DCCU, which is only a good thing.)

492

(670 replies, posted in Creations)

I don't usually share non-movie-review essays here, but I'm pretty damn proud of this one: "The Shadow Over Cleveland: Donald Trump as Supernatural Horror". A semi-tongue-in-cheek but also-completely-serious piece that consults Harry G. Frankfurt's On Bullshit and the horrific philosophy of S. T. Joshi, Thomas Ligotti, and Stephen King to answer the question: is Donald J. Trump in fact bent on destroying the fabric of reality itself?

493

(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Voyage of Time is finally happening and I am beyond ready.

494

(0 replies, posted in Movie Stuff)

Cross-posted from my blog.

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The phrase “style over substance” is pretty well bankrupt when it comes to art. In dealing with aesthetic mediums, style and substance are inextricable—the substance of Shakespeare would be nothing without the words with which he wrought that substance, the meaning of Under the Skin would be nonexistent without its choices in cinematography, to name but two examples. The people who have no patience with a film unless it’s plain and simple in its meaning—who would strip away all artistic artifice and just get to the point already—are the worst kind of critic.

In light of all that, I don’t want to write The Neon Demon off for being slight, because its artistic elements are second to none—its cinematography and score are easily the best of 2016 thus far. However, I can’t get over the nagging feeling that those artistic elements aren’t there for anything—or rather, they’re there for something, but that something is so slight and indeed banal that the grandiosity of the manner in which director Nicolas Winding Refn chooses to convey it is almost humorously arrogant. It’s there right from the opening credits, in which the initials NWR are prominently emblazoned below every title card—The Neon Demon is a work of art, but it’s also an ego trip, one in which the director’s ambitions exceed his profundity.

Refn wants the world of his film to be a sort of Mulholland Dr. for the new decade, a nightmarish hellscape that tears down the world of fame and glamour, but he possesses neither Lynch’s sense of humor nor sense of humanity. Mulholland Dr. is certainly ambitious in its goals, but it balances this with a midnight-movie atmosphere of schlock and absurdity that restrains its director’s artistic vision from becoming an Oh-So-Serious sermon. It also absolutely depends on its cast, especially Naomi Watts and her ability to perform a gradual slide from Stepford-wife-perfect caricature to damaged, embittered wreck. The Neon Demon, on the other hand, has absolutely no sense of humor about its increasingly absurd take on the world of modeling—its overlap with Hannibal in terms of subject matter and cannibalism-as-metaphor serves only to emphasize how important the black humor of the television show is and how much it’s missed here.

Worse than that, however, is its decision to spend its entire runtime with each of the characters in a relatively static, emotionless state. Elle Fanning is a truly gifted actress, which is why it’s so painful to say that her character, the protagonist Jesse, could have been played by anyone—the same goes for Abbey Lee, who was arresting in her supporting role in Mad Max: Fury Road and is utterly wasted here. Through a self-important screenplay and what I can only assume is Refn’s direction, these two and nearly all of the other performers are trapped into giving flat line readings and static smiles for nearly two hours. A breakdown from this sterility into something more human, or the inverse, would have made this stilted quality mean something emotionally—as is it’s simply dull. A movie that’s about the damaging effects of the fashion industry can’t begin with its characters at the same point they are when they reach the end, but that’s exactly what Refn does.

The only exceptions to the above are Keanu Reeves, who breaks type as an over-the-top shitheel who runs the motel Jesse stays at and is clearly very much enjoying himself, and Jena Malone, whose smile-plastered makeup designer does indeed mirror Mulholland Dr. in her gradual unraveling. They are bright spots in an otherwise joyless exercise of smashing the audience over the head with the rather banal thematic statement “The fashion industry will chew you up and spit you out,” this metaphor eventually turning literal in unintentionally comedic fashion. (I will note that more movies should feature lovingly shot necrophilia—the obnoxious people who’d spent the entirety of my showing talking to each other walked right out of the movie.)

All this said, I can’t give the movie anything less than a three-of-five rating, because while it’s undeniably arrogant and egomaniacal to pull out all the aesthetic stops on such a slight screenplay, pull them Refn does, and it’s glorious. Nathasha Braier’s cinematography delivers everything that the movie’s title promises, bathing each frame in frozen blasts of harsh blues and reds—one early sequence turns the film into a flipbook, colored strobes against a black background recreating and obliterating the characters’ visages frame by frame, and is nothing short of jaw-dropping. This pulsing frigidity is matched by Cliff Martinez’ synthesizer score, reminiscent of It Follows‘ soundtrack—simultaneously lush and dead, rich and completely artificial, it fully commits to sonically communicating everything Refn wanted to say with his screenplay. Art direction, production design, and costuming are, naturally, second to none.

The overwhelmingly good and the disappointingly bad collide to form a whole that’s by turns compelling and vapid, repulsive in ways both intentional and unintentional. One could argue that that’s the point—the film’s very shallowness is a reflection of its thematic concerns—but where American Psycho recognizes, expertly utilizes, and ultimately undermines its narrator’s banality, The Neon Demon is fully convinced of its own deep importance. What we’re left with is a mediocre screenplay filmed with artistic perfection, populated with actresses who at times elevate their material but are often directed into a corner.

I can’t write off The Neon Demon, nor can I give it a fully negative review, because it is one of the most visually and aurally engrossing movies of 2016. I only wish those arresting qualities had been placed within an equally arresting context. As is, it’s a tale told by an egomaniac, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—but what entrancing sound and fury.

495

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

http://dl9fvu4r30qs1.cloudfront.net/9d/fb/b997c65a4eacab7190c9221c9f8b/the-neon-demon-fanmade-poster-1.jpeg

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but what entrancing sound and fury. Also, it's a joy to see Keanu Reeves apparently having the time of his life playing probably the least wooden role in the film.

Also (minor spoilers),

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TIL that more movies should feature necrophilia. The obnoxious people who'd been talking through my entire showing walked right out.

The Birth of a Nation. I'd rather not have conflicted feelings about a piece of vile racist garbage also inventing a huge chunk of cinema.

This year's The Birth of a Nation, however, I'm psyched for.

497

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I definitely agree that the fuck-it insanity is the only way to end it, I just wish we'd had more buildup to it. If we'd had a Magnolia-length cut of three hours Anderson could have given us another half hour showing Plainview's disintegration from highly disturbed man to the gibbering freak we see at the end; instead, we just time-jump hard from one point to the other, and you feel the lack of a transition. If we'd had even a five-minute montage to link the two I'd love the ending unreservedly.

498

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

@Squiggly, I'll have to rewatch his films with an eye for your scene analogy.

For me, his films are just such treats to get lost in. The Master and IV especially could've been four hours and I would've gladly sat there in the theatre drinking it all in. The performances, the cinematography, the dynamism of the camera are all so commanding of your attention. And he's excellent at constructing tone too, and then inverting that tone for a gut punch.

It's funny, the endings may be something I consider a weakness of his. Not always, to be sure, but the endings of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood kept the former from being five stars and the latter from four and a half for me.

499

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/dc/Hardeight.jpg/215px-Hardeight.jpg

Oof.

In the year and a half since I discovered Paul Thomas Anderson through Inherent Vice, I've been watching his films in reverse chronological order. He's become my favorite director (neck and neck with the Coen Bros.), with Inherent Vice and The Master occupying spots 11 and 12 on my list of favorite movies, and one of the things I love about him is that his films have been on a pretty consistent upswing. Boogie Nights upsets that somewhat, coming in just behind IV and The Master, but otherwise, everything from Magnolia to the present has just been a continuously ascending climb in excellence (I'd call Punch-Drunk Love a more perfect film than There Will Be Blood, but the highs of the latter are stronger).

So I went into Hard Eight knowing it would probably be my least favorite PTA film, and I was okay with that. After all, of the six I had watched over the last eighteen months Magnolia was my least favorite and is still a wonderful film. But as I watched the film, I found myself frequently checking the timecode on the DVD player after a while and felt a glum sinking feeling descend. Yep, this is the only PTA film I haven't loved. And worse than that, it's not a particularly *good* movie, either.

As ever, the performances are the strongest part of the film--Philip Baker Hall has a wonderful dignity about him, and Sam Jackson is in full motherfucker mode. But they can't compensate for a plot that's too ludicrous and patchy to buy (the Vegas wedding between Clementine and John I can buy, but add to that

SPOILER Show
the last-minute revelation that Sydney killed John's father, with no explanation as to whether he then stumbled upon John by accident, which is unlikely, or somehow found him when he was homeless outside a diner, equally unlikely

and my suspension of disbelief is overcome.).
If the film made emotional sense, I wouldn't care about the contrivances, or at least wouldn't care nearly as much. But the other problem is that I have no idea what PTA is trying to say thematically or emotionally. Bad people turn good but can get pulled in again? ......okay, that's it? Without the emotional power of Boogie Nights or The Master or the madcap energy of Punch-Drunk Love or Inherent Vice, such a relatively banal theme can't hope to carry the film, and indeed it doesn't.

So, yeah. Inherent Vice and The Master get five stars, Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love get four and a half, There Will BE Blood and Magnolia get four. Hard Eight gets two and a half, as much as it pains me to say.

500

(670 replies, posted in Creations)

In my current situation of being on summer break and having the misfortune of remaining unemployed, I've got a lot of free time. This means I get a lot of random thoughts floating through my head, and occasionally some of them mash together in interesting ways. Today, in the midst of my going through the Criterion Collection catalog in preparation for their July sale, it occurred to me that it had really been too long since I rewatched The Formula and Sad Max. And one thing led to another, and inspired by a Star Wars fan who did something similar with the OT...

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc517/darthpraxus/formulacriterion_zpspgbh346z.png

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc517/darthpraxus/sadmaxcriterion_zpsfu1wg0el.png

They ain't perfect—I wasn't gonna blow a couple hundred bucks to get the right fonts package, and the colors are off in a couple places where I couldn't get the grading right—but on the whole I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out. I'm buying a pack of five Criterion Blu-Ray cases in order to house my copies of the Star Wars Trilogy Despecialized Editions, and I think I might use the leftover two to house these along with their respective movies.