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Best film of the 80s - QF4 - Trading Places v the Blues Brothers

Which film is better?

  • Total voters
    26
  • Poll closed .
milo

milo

Jack L. Jones
Trading Places
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v

the Blues Brothers
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The whole of Trading Places would be like the train sequence if they had cast Belushi in Murphy's role.
 
Blues Brothers, much as I like it, is not actually a film really. Just some music vids stuck together.
 
Blues Brothers is a better crafted film than Trading Places. It deploys a mixture of musicians and comedians skilfully enough to disguise the lack of serious acting chops in the cast. Lots of material was discarded, what was used is carefully selected, and the result is well balanced and paced. It's fundamentally silly and the music is not to my taste, but that's by the by.

Trading Places indulges its cast too much and it loses its way as soon as the leads start to cooperate. It's just not that good.

This whole exercise has been very depressing. I'm going to save a splenetic rant about 80s cinema for the final. The winner will deserve both barrels.
 
ShipOfGoldblum said:
Blues Brothers is a better crafted film than Trading Places. It deploys a mixture of musicians and comedians skilfully enough to disguise the lack of serious acting chops in the cast. Lots of material was discarded, what was used is carefully selected, and the result is well balanced and paced. It's fundamentally silly and the music is not to my taste, but that's by the by.

Trading Places indulges its cast too much and it loses its way as soon as the leads start to cooperate. It's just not that good.

This whole exercise has been very depressing. I'm going to save a splenetic rant about 80s cinema for the final. The winner will deserve both barrels.
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Trading Places reminds me of an Ealing comedy
 
milo said:
Trading Places reminds me of an Ealing comedy
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Yes, that sounds about right. Doesn't that damn with faint praise rather? You're administering perhaps one of the most prestigious film awards in Spurs online fandom, and a film which might as well have featured Will Hay is about to go through to the semi finals.
 
ShipOfGoldblum said:
Yes, that sounds about right. Doesn't that damn with faint praise rather? You're administering perhaps one of the most prestigious film awards in Spurs online fandom, and a film which might as well have featured Will Hay is about to go through to the semi finals.
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I like Ealing comedies. Passport to Pimlico, the Lady Killers, the Man in the White Suit and the Lavender Hill Mob are great films.
 
parklane1 said:
Indeed, this thread has reminded how many crap films were made in the 80's.
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And at least we're looking back at it from a distance. We know that the 80s search for the lowest common denominator was succeeded by the indie sensibility of the 90s. Hollywood came to understand that its market was fragmented, that auteurs could be trusted, and that grown-ups were worth chasing. But imagine being there at the time, and not being (as most of us were) precisely in the callow teenage boy demographic that the studios were all shooting for. How bleak the future must have looked. Nothing but Short Circuit, and Police Academy, and Rambo, and electric boogaloo sequels stretching into infinity.
 
ShipOfGoldblum said:
And at least I'm a looking back at it from a distance. We know that the 80s search for the lowest common denominator was succeeded by the indie sensibility of the 90s. Hollywood came to understand that its market was fragmented, that auteurs could be trusted, and that grown-ups were worth chasing. But imagine being there at the time, and not being (as most of us were) precisely in the callow teenage boy demographic that the studios were all shooting for. How bleak the future must have looked. Nothing but Short Circuit, and Police Academy, and Rambo, and electric boogaloo sequels stretching into infinity.
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There were plenty of good indie films in the 80's, some of them got voted out early in this. I think that the 80's blockbusters are better than what followed, the lowest common denominator get very low after this.
 
milo said:
There were plenty of good indie films in the 80's, some of them got voted out early in this. I think that the 80's blockbusters are better than what followed, the lowest common denominator get very low after this.
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The final four in the best of the 90s competition will be better than the semi-finalists we end up with in this contest. Surely.
 
ShipOfGoldblum said:
The final four in the best of the 90s competition will be better than the semi-finalists we end up with in this contest. Surely.
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Would probably be*,

Jurassic Park
Goodfellas
Reservoir Dogs
The Big Lebowski

So, yes better than our final four here, but possibly not the four it should have been.

*Unless we let GG vote on it.
 
galeforce said:
Would probably be*,

Jurassic Park
Goodfellas
Reservoir Dogs
The Big Lebowski

So, yes better than our final four here, but possibly not the four it should have been.

*Unless we let GG vote on it.
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Goodfellas deserves a place, and there has to be one Tarantino, might as well be Reservoir Dogs.

Being John Malkovich and Fight Club would round it off for me pretty well.
 
Would anything British make it through? Gangster nonsense, from Lock Stock onwards, could be eliminated fast. We'd have not truck with the Richard Curtis simpering US-gaze crap, or the feelgood gritty-Northern gonad*s. Trainspotting maybe, which was pretty impressive as adaptations go. But that's only one home-grown quarter finalist.
 
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