Movie Details
| Title: | Baby Driver | |
| Director: | Edgar Wright | |
| Year: | 2017 | |
| Genre: | Car Chase | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 06.24.23 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (6)
- Hot Fuzz
- Last Night in Soho
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
- Shaun of the Dead
- The Sparks Brothers
- The World's End
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 06.24.23 | Internet | The opening scene set to Bellbottoms by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion popped up on Youtube and reminded me that I've really only seen this movie once and it was during that Alamo throwback night that was so cool for many reasons. It put me in the mood to watch it again. I liked it still. Probably not as gushing as my recounting of that original viewing, but still quite a bit. The choreography and alignment to music is really cool. It's definitely more intricately laid out in the beginning scenes both with Bellbottoms and the credits song where the words are graffitied on the scenery, but even pretty deep into the film the gunfire is still in synch. You have to admire that attention to design. I do think it suffers... I don't know if "suffer" is the right word. I think I'm just not a big fan of most third acts. When things escalate to stand offs and fake-out deaths and explosions it feels less in form with the rest of the film, but I also understand why most people probably like that stuff. It's also a shame that Kevin Spacey turned out to be a bad guy. I think this is the last movie to come out where his name in the credits got a solid nod from most folks instead of vocal disgust. The other supporting cast here is pretty great so it's a shame Spacey's presence has to throw a shadow on it. I guess Ansel Elgort's performance is also not super great but it kind of fits the role |
| 05.25.17 | Alamo Ritz | Ok... it's been a long time since I've been to a really special Alamo Drafthouse event and it's been a long time since I've written a really long note on here so let's get into it and do both right now. This night started with an email from Kayla forwarding an invite from Tim League to an Alamo 20th anniversary party. In the note, he said he was trying to track down as many old staff members and "OG409ers" as he could. I sent him an email asking to be included and got an invite in return. The seat selection also asked for a t-shirt size. Oh, Austin traffic really sucks now. Like, people were complaining about it 12 years ago when I moved to town and I was like 'yeah uh huh i can still get downtown in like 20 minutes during rush hour' but I was trying to be downtown today at 6:15 and I think it took 45 minutes? that officially sucks. Sorry, back to good stuff. So right off the bat, I park in a lot and Zack spots me on the street corner. All of the Alamo crew I always felt like I was friendly with but never quite friends. Especially Zack who feels to me like his life is running on fast forward compared to mine. But still, he's super nice, I think he's great, it was great to see him, made me realize I was about to probably see A LOT of familiar faces. He had this crazy horn in his hands. Not a horn like a trumpet but more like that of an ox or a goat hollowed out. "You aren't supposed to be seeing this," he says to me. I offer to hide it in my shirt or down my pants. Stepping into the Ritz, Zack immediately disappears and I see Daniel and Chris: two best movie buds who I was sad I didn't get to see at this year's Fantastic Fest. Deeper in the lobby, Tim and Karrie League drink champagne and hold court greeting guests. Already I'm seeing a host of people I kinda sorta know. Old wait staff, old managers, old friends, old stalwarts of the Austin movie-going scene. But also many who I did not recognize. Folks hanging about, talking in clustered circles. After a few minutes, the three of us decide to head into the auditorium to check out the seating situation. After a whiff of familiar scent from the stairway, we were inside where even more people hung out. I spotted David Strong down in front, Daniel and Chris were both sitting in the front row, right next to John Carpenter as it turns out. I spoke with him a bit, asked after that Kevin guy he used to hang out with: major bummer of the night #1. Kevin died suddenly just shy of two months ago. My mini eulogy for Kevin: a guy I knew just shortly ten years ago but left a lasting memory for his open warmth and general excitement for all things cinematic. I don't remember when I first met him... maybe at the screening of The Descent out at Longhorn Caverns? Maybe before that at some random event. What I mostly remember him for is once Rodriguez and Tarantino started shooting Grindhouse. He was an extra on Planet Terror and regaled me with a few stories from his day or two on set. He played a zombie victim getting eaten in a toilet stall. The fake blood splashed into his eyes and I guess the sugar crystalized and scratched his cornea. He took it in good spirits - he was going to be eaten by a zombie in Grindhouse after all! - and had also somehow made friends with Josh Brolin during a smoke break. I saw him one night at South Lamar and he told me to show up downtown at midnight; that something cool was happening that he might be able to get me into. I'm sure I wrote all about this in a previous entry, but it ended up being the cast and crew screenings that Tarantino ran for a few weeks for those first few weeks of shooting. Sneaking into those are some of my most favorite 409 Colorado memories. So while I haven't been in touch with him for probably 10 years, it was a shock to hear of his passing and I'm sure I'm just a small pebble in the massive stone mountain of loved ones that have been grieving him. Back to the good stuff. Pretty soon Micah appeared and came down to say hi. Kayla appeared and greeted us. Megan popped up, said Emily was somewhere in the building. I caught sight of Aaron, Kaela, and Eric from across the room but they were too far away to talk to. Along the side were a bunch of old crew... people that I knew their names for some reason even though I had barely if ever talked to. Andrew the old IT guy, manager John, manager Mike, Kristen, chef John, along with a BUNCH of old wait staff that I found their names hazy and original rolling roadshow crew. It was really amazing. Really there were only a couple notable absences: Jarrette and Kier-la. I settled down in my seat to find that I was sitting next to Burnie. A moment of deja vu hit. The last (and maybe only?) time I met him was during the last Butt-Numb-A-Thon that I attended back when the Ritz was brand new. I sat next to him for that night, very close to where we were sitting now. To my other side, A fellow Brian (Brian Kelly) darted in to drop his stuff before disappearing to help with the introductory festivities. I didn't recognize him because he was so skinny. In each seat was a sword. At first glance I thought it was some plastic toy wrapped in plastic, probably for some pirate-themed thing. Upon closer inspection however, I found a heavy steel sword sheathed in thick leather brandished with the Alamo logo. Why the fuck do we all have swords!? Oh yeah, we also got shirts with the original Pam Grier BADASS CINEMA design along with a little "20 years..." text underneath. Also, on the table, are printed booklets for the night with a special menu made up of old throwback dishes of days past, gone but not forgotten, along with an anecdote from Tim about where they came from, why they went away, and why they're back tonight. Spanish Olives with Fino Sherry, potato skins, fresh-baked cocaccia with tapenade and red pepper dip, Enter the Dragon, Poultrygeist, original chocolate cake, La Dolce Vita, Black and Tan, and Veuve Clicquot were all back. Some of those dishes pre-dated me! I was unsure of what to get until Burnie ordered potato skins and the smell drove me to do the same. I know they're frozen but they're still pretty damn good theater food. Finally the lights go down. A spotlight rises and David Strong is on stage in only a black speedo and a viking helmet labelled with a "Chaos Reigns" sticker holding the goat's horn. He mimes along to an audio track and blows the horn. Dance lights come up, smoke has filled the room, confetti cannons spray over the entire theater, people with rolls of toilet paper attached to air blowers drape entire rows with TP, a pyrotechnic bar blazes with fire stage center. It was crazy. In the span of what felt like 15 seconds, they had thrown every party favor at us and added forty minutes of cleanup time to the staff. After everyone picked the confetti out of their drinks, Tim and Karrie took the stage wearing giant animal masks. Tim, in his trademark baby blue suit, had to manually move the jaw of his mask to match him speaking. Karrie said that she spent most of her time trying to avoid being up on stage but they both wanted to celebrate this occasion with a big thank you to everyone in the house for helping get to where they are today. Tim then admits that the bit might not be working and takes his mask off, revealing that he was dressed as Karrie! They both kind of laughed it off for a bit, Karrie mentioning that they had rehearsed for like three hours and Tim ruined the bit too early. It was funny and totally felt 10000% Tim League charm. Then the pyro bar sent another sheet of flame up and for a second we were all scared for his safety. Then Tim invited the very first Alamo employee up on stage (he was wearing the original uniform which I had never seen before including a tie with the old Alamo marquee on it(!)) to participate in an ongoing Tradition that Tim had of christening any new venture by opening a bottle of champagne with a sword. I remember someone on the wait staff saying he did this in a not-quite-ready-to-open Ritz during Fantastic Fest one year and apparently glass went everywhere and cut people. This time I think it went a little more smoothly. Hector cut the bottle on his second try and it was by all accounts a clean opening. Thus begins another twenty years of prosper and success for the coolest theater in the world. After the screening, Tim had us all hold up the swords and swear to never open champagne by mortal means again. Pretty soon Edgar Wright came up and, after a few jokes about watching Boss Baby, he introduced Baby Driver. Tim said he built up a nice trailer reel (later admitting that he had to cut it down three times since the original running length was fifty five minutes) from the AGFA archives... hmm.... I think that's not right since the A stands for archive. from the AGF archives? from AGFA? whatever... To the best of my memory (and Micah's) the trailers were Gumball Rally, Eat My Dust, Moving Violations, Grand Theft Auto, Death Race 2000, Watch Out We're Mad, and ending with Stunt Rock (along with the little interstitial bits like "coming attractions", "and now our feature presentation" and the like). The Stunt Rock trailer still gave me a few goosebumps. Baby Driver the movie. I thought it was great. Write referred to it as a musical but it's perhaps better described as a mixtape movie because something like 98% of the film is set to diagetic music that the world quantizes to whatever song is in the main character's headphones. The example that comes to mind most recently was the Suicide Squad trailer with Bohemian Rhapsody. Except this was the WHOLE movie. Usually I feel like people get that idea, do it for one song and figure out how much of a huge pain in the ass it is, then let it slide as the movie goes on. With this film, every scene had that musicality which is about as far up my alley as the alley goes. Couple that with a soundtrack that I could conceivably come up with myself because it so closely matched my tastes and you almost don't need a story or dialogue or anything else. I mean the movie starts with Bellbottoms by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (off the album Orange which is in my car RIGHT NOW). Bongolia from Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band, Hocus Pocus by Focus, Bear Witness 2 from Handsome Boy Modeling School, Easy by the Commodores (although in that case I'm more familiar with the cover done by Faith No More), and an Ennio Morricone track with some Italian title that I don't know, which I was just listening to three days ago! All of these feature pretty heavily (along with about 80 other songs along the same vein) and they are all sitting on my hard drive right now. So I loved the music. The cast was great. The editing and photography great, really the only thing I didn't absolutely love was what they're unfortunately calling the most attention to in the marketing which is this gimmicky thing where the reason why the main character listens to music all the time is because he has tinnitus and the music helps drown out the constant buzzing in his ears. This convention is not needed in my opinion (just have him like music? There are enough other reasons why he has an emotional attachment to music that you don't need some superhero kryptonite device) and brings an already stylized movie toward the realm of fantasy and works against the gravity of danger and violence that the film also deals with. But that's it. I loved it. Granted, there's about 5000 words of setup here which should firmly establish my bias. This was about the best possible situation to see ANY movie. I bet anything halfway decent would've gone over very well for me. After the movie, Edgar Wright gave a great Q&A. He talked about the logistics of shooting and planning such complicated scenes set to music (short answer: very carefully), getting Kid Koala to help out with some new music used in the film, the origins of the idea itself (when he first heard Bellbottoms, he got this vision of an action scene to accompany it and through the years he'd find similar songs that conjured similar scenes in my mind, so he started with a collection of these and framed a movie around it, careful to find the song he wanted for each scene before writing it). The most interesting answer for me was when he talked about consulting with real ex-cons for research. He had one great anecdote of talking to two guys who didn't know each other before and asking them if they play any video games like Grand Theft Auto. One guy said no but then the other guy says "oh you really should. It's the closest thing to the buzz," at which point Wright wondered if he wasn't triggering some regression in these guys. At the end of the meeting, Wright said that they bid him adieu then added "we have some stuff to talk about so we're gonna go hang out." Oops! The next step in the evening's agenda was to adjourn across the street to Parkside where the "after party" would continue on into the night. I went back to drop off my shirt and sword at my car. On my way back, I overheard one hobo yell over to another "Hey what's up with all these goddamn blades, man?" The other hobo looked back questioningly and the first continued "Haven't you seen all these assholes with the civil war confederate swords!? They're walking all around, they all got em! What the fuck is going on!?" I met up with Micah and accompanied him to his room at the Driskill to do the same. It was my first glimpse anywhere other than the lobby of the Driskill and I have to say the room was pretty small and the hallways smelled kind of old. I guess the fanciness of that place is all about the lobby. On the walk we got into the new Twin Peaks and how great it was to have new David Lynch material. Back at Parkside, we took in the lay of the land. A weird jungle/woods photo booth set up with "CHAOS REIGNS" painted in red on the backdrop. Upstairs, a fancy set piece of a fox eating itself that I didn't realize was a cake, and what I thought was a DJ booth playing loud music. For a while we tried hanging out there, yelling to each other over the music. With Twin Peaks on my brain I couldn't help but think of Fire Walk with Me and the scene at the bar in the pink room. Our conversation was considerably less unnerving. We ran into Lars and Sonja, talked with them for a regrettably short time before they meandered away and we went outside in an effort to cool off and hear each other. Micah and I wound up around the corner on the balcony behind the dance floor where we caught up for a while. Kayla found us, Marcus found us, Joe found us among others. Pretty soon this dude named Silvero started performing. We looked through the window and saw Nacho let loose. Silvero's music was kind of like punk meets dance music but more in spirit than guitars. It sounded a lot like typical euro-dance stuff to me but he was very energetic, slowly shedding his silver suit until he was just a sweaty latin body in a red speedo. He also had all his gear wrapped in plastic so people could throw drinks at him. I admired the frenzy but I was also kind of glad to hang outside. I meant to stay until midnight or so. Around 1:30 I started saying it was time for me to go. I finally got to my car at 2. There was a general buzz in the air for me of having this one night where everyone was back together like the old days. I remembered the one random night where the staff when to Beerland for karaoke after a music monday or whatever and Kier-la sang some country tune, or closing the theater down and moving to the old Ginger Man to talk movies for another few hours before heading home. Or just the countless times that we'd loiter in the lobby, form a conversation circle, and revel in what we'd just seen. Wednesday nights filtering out into empty streets, walking up to Ninth for my car, giving rides home.... how I lived to give Lars or Kier-la a ride home and get a little casual one-on-one time with them. The last night! With John Carpenter carrying out sections of the seating while the truck came by to take the marquee off the wall. Going backstage and Sonja stepping in a glue trap. Standing on the sidewalk across the street and palpably feeling the end of an era for myself at least. David Strong's gigantic digital camera from like 1998. This is when the sadness started to creep in, because for as much fun as I was having, I also knew it was just one fleeting night. Some friendships, once raging fires, had gone out. I barely talked to Aaron and Eric at all... just a hi. There was a time I was pretty close to both of them. Kaela, Jarrette, Aaron, Eric... late night meals at Jim's. Now just a hi. I guess when you stop hanging out for ten years that stuff happens. Other fires still had embers, just waiting for a little more oxygen to reignite. Micah, Kayla, Chris, Daniel... Sonja... I really feel bad for not talking to Sonja more. Old pre-terror-thursday coffees at Halcyon! Our David Lynch weekend where I passed out from low blood sugar while listening to him shill Transcendental Meditation at a Barnes & Noble. Sitting through the unique experience of Inland Empire, watching him interviewed in the old ACL Live studio. The third Fantastic Fest making an impromptu last minute change between the Moebius doc to see Mirageman instead... her idea of someone using a potato peeler to defend themselves with. For part of me - the part that pays bills and gets the oil changed in his car and worries about 401ks - much has changed in the last ten years. But for another part of me, i'm kind of still back in 2007. In stasis, wondering if i'll ever re-activate or if things will ever be that way again. It's sad to realize that they won't, but it's also heartwarming to fall back into these memories every once in a while and roll around in them for a moment. I'm thankful for these notes and being able to go back and read my typo-riddled tired ramblings after those old screenings... stuff like Turkeython where almost no one showed up and Tim was the projectionist for Ultra-Man. The blaxploitation series where I really got to know David Strong and Thomas just because we were all super early and were the only ones in the theater for a while. Meeting Micah at QTfest 6 because he was sitting next to Blake and I was reading both of their accounts day by day as I wrote my own. I saw Thomas tonight from across the room but didn't say hi. That happened a lot. I don't really know a great way to wrap this up. In reality I drove home, took out my contacts, and went to sleep. But the sentimental nature of this note seems to demand something a bit more romantic and grandiose. In my email to Tim asking to come to this, I went back and looked up my notes on my very first Alamo experience. It was Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D. It was a pretty rowdy crowd that night... I have several notes about how funny some of the stuff people were yelling out and about how I threw out an aflac joke when a duck appeared on screen (classic). I'm sure today-me (or even ten-years-ago-me) would cringe at how much talking there was. But Among that stuff there was also some terribly sappy proclamations about how amazing it was and how it felt like a new home and all that. I copied some of it out and included it to Tim because, while I have not by any means been the longest fan or the most hardcore fan or most omnipresent fan, for about two years there was in it 100%. Every day, every moment I was soaking up. One of the reasons why I wanted to move to Austin was for the Alamo. It has fulfilled all of the wishes I had growing up in smaller towns with only mall theaters and multiplexes where smaller movies never even opened. All the hopes I had in college of finding and falling in with movie fans who were as avid as I was. All of the dreams of a place where people congregate to enjoy and respect and discuss the medium and all that it gives us. I found all that and more with the Alamo, and it has forever changed my life. For that, I thank Tim, Karrie, Lars, Kier-la, Zack, Henri, and everybody in the room tonight. |
