A thread for Stranger Things, the "Goonies meets X-Files" new Netflix series (with SPOILERS!)

i think that kid kind of looks like river phoenix!

otm

well... I certainly have more thoughts on this, but in the interest of not shitting on an ILE tv show thread, will board them up

xxxp he reminded me, in style if not in substance, of jean-ralphio from parks and rec

Everyone's so good it's hard to pick out people no one's mentioned yet, but I would like to rep for the Chester Rushing (real name!) who does an amazing job of being an even bigger shithead than the up-until-that-point principal shithead Steve (aka Jean Ralphio).

I would also like to rep for Steve's Christmas sweater in the final few minutes.

My school was *full* of fucking cackling Iagos like that guy.

x-post: Nah, it's you righteous fuckers certain that genuine concern is not possible and taking my expressions of it as a controlling diagnosis that made the last few lines of this thread shitty. There are no pathologies, everything is ok except thinking not everything is ok, which is really not ok. God bless you all.

xxxp he reminded me, in style if not in substance, of jean-ralphio from parks and rec

― geometry-stabilized craft (art), Monday, August 15, 2016 1:40 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I saw that someone said this upthread (maybe you?) and it's the exact thought I had when I first saw him.

the other boyf is the river phoenix one. the one who looks like river phoenix.

right! sorry to be unclear. steve is totally jean-ralphio.

it's a fainter resemblance but to complete the 80s yearning package natalia dyer does have a bit of mia sara about her

Uhh, just learned that Finn Wolfhard, the actor who played Mike, is Richie Tozier in the upcoming IT movie.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJCA1gVjzdq/

this whole deal is so immensely well cast, it's still p astonishing to me. what a bunch of lucky picks.

what a bunch of lucky picks.

are we still talking about the skinny girl's arm musculature?

somewhere, probably

Uhh, just learned that Finn Wolfhard, the actor who played Mike, is Richie Tozier in the upcoming IT movie.

That reminds me, Time Out had an "if you like that you might like this" for Stranger Things where they recommended IT, with the caveat that the show improved on it by not having a scene where the kids had group sex in a cave.

Have any of the recent editions of IT improved on that scene by excising it entirely? I know King has gone back and changed elements of The Stand and the Dark Tower.

yeah, it's all done via Snapchat in the latest version

IT could use a better adaptation than the one that currently exists, but I can't help but think that, even with the inclusion of Finn Wolfhard, this show is going to be hard to top re: a well-cast group of kids who will have to pretty much carry the remake.

great show

i know i said that ages ago but i felt like reiterating. i actually watched it twice through.

just want to repeat

Finn Wolfhard

It's the best actor name I've encountered since learning that Armie Hammer's real name is (seriously) Armand Hammer.

My two favourite actor names: Mimsy Farmer and Randy Mantooth.

Thank you for adding substance to my life.

are we still talking about the skinny girl's arm musculature?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, August 15, 2016 12:03 PM (1 hour ago)

skinny girl = cocaine

I was rooting for Steve to get horribly beheaded, but once he saw the monster & got the living shit scared of him I found him hilarious & ultimately kinda likeable

i dont know what that says about me

also i like how all of the attractive ppl are attractive in a Canadian public television /Degrassi Jr High kind of way where they still look like ppl you kinda know irl

It's the best actor name I've encountered since learning that Armie Hammer's real name is (seriously) Armand Hammer.

Pre-wiki, i had an argument that lasted for about a year over whether the tycoon Armand Hammer (who is Armie's great-grandfather) was a real person or some kind of made-up Col. Sanders style corporate avatar which was only resolved by me finding a photo of his tombstone.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cnct06yUIAAzUFB.jpg

also i like how all of the attractive ppl are attractive in a Canadian public television /Degrassi Jr High kind of way where they still look like ppl you kinda know irl

totally, and unlike the british children's tv of my youth, where everyone looks they've been locked under the stairs for a decade

Srsly. I've seen dangerously skinny people before. I never once thought this was that while watching the show. Did you guys not ever know a gawky angular teenager before?

― how's life, Monday, 15 August 2016 17:46 (3 hours ago) Permalink

More than one!

xpost oh god that is otm

lol if you pause the title sequence at just the right time, you get a bit of subliminal advertising

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpzBMK8WgAA4Sum.jpg

no you don't

no two H's or a W in

I just laugh at what twitter tells me to laugh at.

It's been about a month since I binged the whole thing, so I'd forgotten that the title pretty much comes together in right angles. It's obv shopped. Now I must fall on my sword.

i was gonna say

fp'd u Johnny Fever for being gullible

it's a pretty good shop, tho!

solidarity - it got me too

hey guys i just heard that today is the day mikey mcwheel travels back in time to in "stranger things," pretty crazy stuff huh?

Haha, I just remembered this: https://twitter.com/PFTompkins/status/754010500279566336

Paul F. Tompkins ‏@PFTompkins Jul 15
"Time's almost up, you two. Those stage names ready yet?"
"Almost there."
You have 5 seconds left."
"SHIT."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnbIit7VYAE0HQJ.jpg

joining the cast next season: art vandelay, bubba bo-bob brain, and joey joe joe junior...shabadoo?

Just popping in to say this is OK so far - I'm on episode ... 5? - but it's pretty overwhelmingly Stephen King to me, with a modicum of other obvious stuff. Don't get any Goonies or X-Files, get a good deal of ET, at least in passing. Thus far (again, episode 5) doesn't really justify taking 5 episodes to get to where I am now, but as a mood piece it's cool enough. Super worried it'll be all mystery, no payoff.

The music cues this far have irked me a little. This is set in 1983, right? Big brother dude namedropping the Smiths in podunk USA 1983 probably makes him the coolest teenage in America. Got some podunk USA midwest friends who grew up in the same place/era, and their big irk is the kids having movie posters for The Thing and Evil Dead. They noted it was hard enough to get movie posters in 1983, period.

Like the kids in this, they're pretty good kids-kids, not Hollywood kids.

Yeah, we've discussed the Smiths a fair bit itt, but I was thinking the other day about the movie posters thing - feels like contemporary people just thinking backwards from a world where movie posters are really widely available and popular as room decor, big dealers hawking Scarface and Pulp Fiction standards on every college campus, etc.... but was it like that back then? I mean obviously I know posters were a thing, but movie posters specifically... would Jonathan have needed to be like, lurking around at the local cinema and bribing the box office attendant for posters after the movie wound up its booking or what?

From said friend:

See also: movie posters of The Thing and The Evil Dead on kids' walls. Neither was a big hit, so how they got those posters is a mystery. Speaking as a kid raised in a similar podunk, I was very plugged into new developments in genre cinema in the early 80s, and did not hear of The Evil Dead until I went to college in 1986. I was keenly disappointed not to be able to see The Thing when it was new in 1982, so it's entirely possible that they could have heard of it, but are not likely to have seen it. And as far as acquiring movie posters - that was pretty hard to do as a tween in the early 80s, I know because I tried! Unless you had access to movie collectible dealers (exclusive to much larger, more cosmopolitan areas than the one on the show), the only way to get them was to beg them off of the theater after the movie's run ended.

His friend:

Though so many movies passed us over, I did see The Thing in tiny Anna, Illinois in 1982--a milestone movie for me as a jr. high aged horror fan. I thought same thing about The Thing poster in ST though and agree '82 seems early for access to movie posters. Maybe by 85 or 86 as video stores begin to shed theirs--maybe. In Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse from 1981, the kid brother has generic Frankenstein and Wolfman posters on his wall. Even they seem "placed" in the scene, to me now anyway.

Agreed - actual theatrical movie posters were like gold!

Anyway, no biggie, just sort of short-cutty.

the only way to get them was to beg them off of the theater after the movie's run ended.

This was still common well into the 90s, but most people at the theater didn't give two shits and would gladly put your name on a list and give you a call when the poster came down. Especially if you were a regular patron.

Great info. Yeah, ultimately it's a pretty harmless shorthand, plus obviously a shoutout to a movie that they like, but it might have been cool for them to go another step further in the set-dressing of "what would they REALLY have had on their walls"? Oh well. I think it's a testament to the generally high quality of the props/sets/costumes that the ones that feel a little forced stick out, as opposed to a show where everything just kinda feels fake and forced.

he totally could have gotten posters from a friend who worked at the movie theater. maybe he even worked at the movie theater. everyone knew someone who worked at the movie theater.

my best friend in high school had a huge horror movie poster collection in the early 80's, but he was freaky and obsessive like me. this is his website:

http://www.kindertrauma.com/

he wrote about stranger things too:

http://www.kindertrauma.com/?p=39014#more-39014

Your friend's website is super fun, I like his take on the show too.

Let's just say the temporal inconsistencies in the show are a tribute to the extended version of The Stand.