I know, I know, I'm doing a terrible job of keeping up... but I've been busy fixing the layout of this blog. :) Well worth it so far, no? This is the end of phase one. In phase two, I'll be fixing the layout of the sidebar and reorganizing some of the bells and whistles.
I rediscovered Ghostbusters not too long ago. I never really realized the quality of the writing before. Almost every single line in the movie is either funny or just plain good. The commercialization around this movie really made it cheesy, but if you go back to it years later, its actually a fantastically written movie. The humor is often subtle and I don't think you pick up on half of it unless you see it a few times.
"Do you have any hobbies?"
"I collect spores, molds, and fungus."
The other thing I like is how genuinely New York the movie is. So many of the extras couldn't get any more Gotham, from the unsuspecting Upper East Sider who walks into the corpse's cab, the Mayor, and all of the wiseass cops.
"You do your job, pencilneck, don't tell me how to do mine."
Nice cameo by local anchorman Roger Grimsby, too... I remember Grimsby and Bill Beutel every night at dinner on Channel 7. Little details that just make the whole thing a little more authentic...well, as authentic as you can get a movie about catching ghosts.
"What are you supposed to be, some kind of cosmonaut?"
"No, we're exterminators. Somebody saw a cockroach up on 12."
"That's got to be some cockroach."
"Bite your head off."
This is also a movie that never should have had a sequal, and I think the cheesiness and commercialization of the franchise really detracted from the original. But, you know, Ivan Reitman's got to put some food on the table... which, if you've seen him lately, doesn't seem to have been an issue. Same with Ackroyd.