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

the floating stuff looked so cool

Been fighting an ear infection and cold team-up so I went straight through the series. Unsetting at just how efficient the reference machine gun works now, but I suppose that's a natural side-effect of getting into film when every movie ever can be dialed up on demand. I was 10-20 years old from 1975-1985 and have every right to be reactionary about what Stranger Things did/didn't get right - but the show did feel like something I would have seen on Z Channel in 1982 or at the $2 Academy Six. By 1988, some vendor at SDCC is selling bootleg Hawkins Sheriff Dept. caps, though I was really hoping that the overwrought Sheriff (did anyone stop to think how dumb and time-wasting his lines are?) would have been consumed in the Upside-Down.

Amazingly good simulacrum. I kept thinking of Life On Mars' simulacrum of 70s UK crime shows. Unsure if I liked it enough to sign on for season 2 - worried that it might go past the event horizon like Welcome To Night Vale did.

HOLY SHIT LISTEN TO DUSTIN SING

https://www.facebook.com/whatsonstage/videos/10153706299800896

What the fuuuuck wow was not expecting that

omgggg <3

wait, you guys never told me that dustin's mom was...

http://cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com/images/146587/146587_full.jpg

now my mind is really blown.

Wait, I know the last name is the same, but I didn't know he's Heather Matarazzo's son!!!

that's cos he isn't. well, he IS Heather Matarazzo's son, but not *that* Heather.

This is his mother: https://twitter.com/HeatherMataraz2/with_replies

Yeah, I just found that out too.

he was in Les MIs on Broadway, that explains why he's good at singing it!

oh jeez sorry someone on facebook gave me the wrong info...

ZOUNDS!

I believed it because it seems thoroughly believable.

it is a pretty big coincidence for the mother of an actor with surname Matarazzo to also share the name of the known actress.

IMO she should apologize to Gaten's fans for not being Dollhouse actress

my favourite of the slight twists on classic tropes is that jock jerk steve is actually a more-or-less reasonable and decent guy like 90% of the time.

one thing that felt like a reference that i couldn't pinpoint was the trail of christmas lights and/or the circle of lamps, reference or not i thought it was a great visual

totally me too

upthread i compared it to the m&ms reese's pieces in ET

late to the party but

a) good show
b) kinda bummed to see so much obsession w/ catching/naming the references. quotes of famous flicks aren't pokemon, fuck. you aren't clever for finding them OR for being annoyed by them. it's part of the grammar of the show?
c) that said, i was pretty transported by the story and stopped caring about references after twenty minutes
c2) el is wonderful, so is winona, all of the main kids were good,
d) this reminded me of the last season of fringe (RIP)
e) #1-10 clearly signposted
f) geography of the show was weird. hard to do on budget and w/o big f/x, but i would've liked some more town establishing shots
g) all matthew modine did was walk quickly into rooms looking pissed
h) the novel i've been writing for the past two years covers a lot of the same ground as ST (dirty supernatural underbelly of 'kids on bikes'), so i feel weirdly protective of this show, but also glad to know it works

a) good show
b) kinda bummed to see so much obsession w/ catching/naming the references. quotes of famous flicks aren't pokemon, fuck. you aren't clever for finding them OR for being annoyed by them. it's part of the grammar of the show?
c) that said, i was pretty transported by the story and stopped caring about references after twenty minutes

OTM

Yeah, same.

looking forward to that novel!

geography of the show was weird. hard to do on budget and w/o big f/x, but i would've liked some more town establishing shots

this is v true!

Funko has gotten in on the hype, and here are their first two figures:

http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/barb-funko-480x600.jpg

http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/funko-eleven2.jpg

Goddamn it, Funko. Every time I think I've tamped down my desire to tread the dark path of starting to buy your shit...

b) kinda bummed to see so much obsession w/ catching/naming the references. quotes of famous flicks aren't pokemon, fuck. you aren't clever for finding them OR for being annoyed by them. it's part of the grammar of the show?

The big things this pulls from are major/iconic Hollywood films and nobody feels impressed with themselves for “catching” them, just maybe annoyed by the fan service/nostalgia pandering that makes up the “grammar of the show”.

xpsts

^^^ dingdingding

I wasn't patting myself on the back for recognizing super obscure films ET and Close Encounters

and it's not that quoting things or using other sources as the "grammar" for a show is an inherently bad thing, it was just irritating how obvious and slavish they were about it.

Not slavish imo

The thing is, you could be 15 and never seen ANY of those movies and still think this was a sick show

regardless i think 80s fetishism has hit peak and maybe should quietly shuffle off now

i can't handle any more of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZu5iDTtNg0

The thing is, you could be 15 and never seen ANY of those movies and still think this was a sick show

haven't met any 15yo that think this btw. it is weird to me that people keep saying "this is a kids show" and yet the only people I know who are *really* into it are 40+. The youngest kid I know that watched it (20) told me he thought the best part was the theme song/opening credits, which reminded him of Goblin's theme to "Profondo Rosso" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You've got another 20-30 years of baby-boomer style self-obsession by millennials before 80s fetishism shuffles off. At least until after one becomes President.

but the cool kids are already into the 90s fetishism, so it might be sooner than you think

First you get the money, then you get the women, then you get the right decade fetishism then you get the power

i haven't really had any conversations with 15-year-olds in kind of a long time so i dunno. maybe the 40-year-olds saying this have kids themselves?

i assumed that the "obsessed with catching the references" was more to do with all the listicles and such out there than anything anybody posted itt.

My sister's in her 20s, dug it a lot.

that simpsons one is pretty lame tho, i agree. partly cause the show itself dates from the late 80s! but also because the same basic gags were all done, better, twelve or thirteen years ago by homestarrunner.

my kids loved it to death. they are 11 and 13.

You could also be a 42-year-old who doesn't really DGAF about The Goonies or ET or Poltergeist and think this was a sick show (ding ding ding ding)

When Foster Gump rides the triceratops in Jurassic Gump and goes "jen-nay" and then gives a long soliliquy about how life is like a box of pterodactyl DNA, I look forward to people understanding the deep grammar of my show

"Ah, yes, I speak this language," all the Gen Xers will say. Meanwhile, 15 year olds will have the same reaction to Jurassic Park as we would have to Méliès' Barque sortant du port de Trouville as this cultural artifact has been lost to time

Life is like a box of chocolate: it breaks free, expands to new territories, painfully, perhaps even dangerously.

Méliès' Barque sortant du port de Trouville as this cultural artifact has been lost to time

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, August 26, 2016 12:22 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you mustve been a weird 15 yr old

sometimes i like chocolate because it's chocolate

sorry, there's a chocolate reference in there

OIC you are alluding to Foster Gump and Sonny the Cocoa Puffs bird and that album by R. Kelly and the food called chocolate and Tay Zonday, I'm pretty clever yessir.

you mustve been a weird 15 yr old

― Pull your head on out your hippy haze (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, August 26, 2016 3:37 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had definitely seen 101 Dalmations and 2001 a Space Odyssey and other time-and-impact analogous movies referenced in, say, Simpsons episodes

at what age would you say you started writing poetry

I once found a used copy of the Violent Femmes solo LP on vinyl and used it for some presentation in Spanish class

Well, don't leave us in suspense. What's the next line?

regardless i think 80s fetishism has hit peak and maybe should quietly shuffle off now

I thought about this yesterday as it's the first week back at school and every year there's a poster sale in the middle of campus for all the kids to outfit their dorm rooms. Amongst all the Justin Bieber and videogames I don't know there were a ton of movie posters for Purple Rain, the original Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Goonies, etc.

Kind of weirded me out because the equivalent nostalgia gap when I was freshman would have meant a bunch of posters for Spartacus, Psycho, West Side Story, Swiss Family Robinson, etc, all of which felt so damn OLD when I was 18.