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Author Topic: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song  (Read 2617 times)

pixote

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In music writer Steven Hyden's provocatively titled new book "Your Favorite Band is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life," he writes about The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones as a prototype of a certain kind of rivalry - the ubiquitous cultural behemoth vs the reactionary alternative. It's true that few movie rivalries can compete with a rivalry as epic as Beatles/Stones, but Adam and Josh have come up with five memorable cinematic battles - and they've invited Hyden to go into the trenches with them. That Top 5, plus a review of Terence Davies's SUNSET SONG, and Alison Willmore's Cannes Film Festival recap.

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colonel_mexico

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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2016, 02:16:34 PM »
Star Wars vs Star Trek springs to mind

Have to go with the Beatles every time, though Angie is such a great tune.
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1SO

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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2016, 03:25:56 PM »
A great topic, but the Oscars is full of years where what did win and what people believe should have won have raised the same level of rivalry.
Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction in 1994
Citizen Kane and How Green Was My Valley in 1941

Adam

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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2016, 07:30:52 PM »
A great topic, but the Oscars is full of years where what did win and what people believe should have won have raised the same level of rivalry.
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jim

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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2016, 12:29:21 AM »
I was tickled by your comment that Pauline Kael was the first movie podcaster.

I enjoyed reading about movies for many years before the world wide web.  But I never cared at all for 3/4 of the print critics I've read -- critics that focus on, shall we say, high-minded political matters with some relation to the film.  There were three critics, though, who wrote about their own personal experience of the film, who managed to convey their human reaction to it.  The three were Paul Kael, Richard Corliss, and finally (it took me a long time to find this guy, maybe you've heard of him), Roger Ebert.

What a wonder it was.  I was particularly struck that Pauline Kael disagreed with my take on many, many of the movies that were most important to me, and so many movies I thought were lame, and yet her reviews still did a wonderful job of telling me, if I hadn't seen the film, whether I would like it.  Pauline Kael got straight to the heart of the human reaction to a film, in a way that was universal.

Finally it got to be 2005 and I found not one but two (!) more critics who had something of Kael's magic touch -- Adam and Sam.  And I was surprised again on that sad say when Sam left the show and was replaced by yet a third critic who spent his review time talking about human reactions in a clear way.  "Action is character" I learned much about how movies work from Matty.

Fast forward to 2016 and we have an entire Filmspotting family of interesting critics, and other interesting film podcasts too. Yes, Pauline Kael was the first podcaster, or, really better, film podcasters are her children.

Thanks for all the great shows.


verbALs

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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #5 on: June 07, 2016, 12:56:52 AM »
The first Stones hit was a Lennon/ Macca number. They helped create that part of their own myth!

I'd say the third side of the triangle is The Who rather than The Kinks.
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Junior

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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2016, 12:58:32 AM »
That's a really wonderful post, jim. I guess I should look for some Kael books, eh? Any recommendations? Just some collections of her reviews?
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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2016, 07:11:25 AM »
A great topic, but the Oscars is full of years where what did win and what people believe should have won have raised the same level of rivalry.
Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction in 1994
Citizen Kane and How Green Was My Valley in 1941

1994 was a loaded year though, which I think makes people even more perturbed that Forrest Gump ended up winning, as opposed to it winning instead of one movie in particular. Those familiar with me, however, know that I am not.

The Shawshank Redemption
Pulp Fiction
Quiz Show
Chungking Express
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Hoop Dreams
The Lion King

even Ken Burn's Baseball, though it would not have been eligible of course
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sdb_1970

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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #8 on: June 07, 2016, 09:04:20 AM »
The first Stones hit was a Lennon/ Macca number. They helped create that part of their own myth!

Hmmm, I seem to remember the singles collection starts with another track ... "Come On" (a Chuck Berry cover) was the first hit single for the Stones (peaking at #21 in U.K., released 6/1963).  And the release of the Beatles' first top 10 single in the U.K. ("Please Please Me") only preceded the Stones' first top 10 single ("Not Fade Away") by about a month (January/February 1964).

In this particular context, I love these quotes re "I Wanna Be Your Man" (released by the Stones in 11/1963, peaking at #12):

"It was a throwaway. The only two versions of the song were Ringo and the Rolling Stones. That shows how much importance we put on it: We weren't going to give them anything great, right?" - John Lennon

"They said they had this tune, they were really hustlers then. I mean the way they used to hustle tunes was great: 'Hey Mick, we've got this great song.' So they played it and we thought it sounded pretty commercial, which is what we were looking for, so we did it like Elmore James or something." - Bill Wyman

My introduction to the rivalry (as a child in the '70s) was through my dad, who grew up in small town Texas in the early 60s and signed up for Vietnam the day he turned 18 and used to say "the Beatles were for girls, the Stones were for men."  Hmmm, come to think of it, I'd like to follow up with him on this for some further clarification; but first, I need to send him a link to this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G4jnaznUoQ
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verbALs

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Re: #588: Top 5 Movie Rivalries with Steven Hyden / Sunset Song
« Reply #9 on: June 07, 2016, 10:18:30 AM »
For a long time it was only the Stones early stuff for me. The Beatles were only songs they had us sing in music class at school.

I thought I'd turned anecdote to fact and that anecdote would have come from Keef's book so unreliable narrator of all time.  ;D I couldn't even remember the name of the song but Wikipedia has it as I Wanna Be Your Man with Not Fade Away on the same single. It then says the L&M song is the single but I don't see it that way either.
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore. - Banksy