Deadlines? What Deadlines?

He had an interesting life.

I recently watched bits of a documentary called Sense of Scale. I was shocked to learn that Shutter Island used a lot of miniature and green screen effects.

Misery. C'mon.

So was I. It's all good. Metallica famously is one of the few bands that doesn't use backing tracks. I suspect Volbeat is the same. I haven't seen them live but I've seen plenty of footage. They're amazing live.

And his dedication to tiny trapezius muscles. 'Loved him in The Way of the Gun. The only admirable character in the film.

So salty. What do you mean, "sort of"? I agree that it was great scene. I wrote exactly that in a previous post. Sheesh. I wasn't introduced to them until after just after Garage Days Re-Revisited came out. Since then I bought everything and saw them live twice. It should've been 3 times but things got messed up on the "Justice" tour. I go back to to the MoS album fairly regularly. That might be the last record I played through start to finish. Except Master of Puppets is about drug addiction. Each to their own. The opening verses to NotB sound a lot like Eddie's situation. I also think it syncs well with the satanic panic elements or season 4. That album and that band featured much more prominently in that controversy than Metallica did; as they weren't as big at the time and their their general image tended to avoid occult imagery / themes. This was just last year!

A few posts back I was chastised for such indecisiveness. LLOOOOOOOL!!!

...and Lars heard a bootleg...

Interesting.

An amateur; That song; in two weeks; with Eddie's commitments? Not likely. Totally true. I would have been super jealous of Eddie. Not just the guitar; the Hellfire club, the small business entrepreneur thing, the hair. I could go on. Lyrically NotB fits better too. I just have this vision individual bats getting more and more animated until the entire hoard comes over the hill like locusts when Bruce Dickinson does his, YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHhhhhh!!!! Bowels evacuated. Shit stained couch. Hole in my ceiling. Probable spinal chord injury. For real.

Eddie wasn't a frontman in a band for 12 years. Those guys are both professionals. The first guy is a guitar teacher. Is it too obvious to point out that online guitar tutorials and youtube playthroughs also didn't exist in 1986? Nevahs! I thought it was a great scene too. I just think it would have been cooler with 'Maiden. Exactly 10% cooler in fact. Number of the Beast has a slightly more upbeat opening riff. It also would have resonated well with the other aspects of the '80's satanic panic that was shown this season. The whole "D&D is the occult" thing was totally a thing back then.

None of which helps Eddie master the down picking in the chorus without his arm going all...

Also,

They were at the bottom of the bill in both those festivals. Kirk Hammett commented that he got more sun than he had in years and the guys weren't used to getting top that early. ETA: and they were probably included at Day on the Green because they were the biggest Bay Area band, where the '80's thrash scene had its start. Very far from the mid-west.

I have yet to hear one. All the bootlegs I've heard were concert goers with tape recorders. The one I was referring to sounded really bad. In the USA, In early '86 Metallica was the support act for Ozzy Osborne. They played the north east and mid west like this starting in late March '86, after Eddie was dead. By the time they made it to Winnipeg, they were headlining. They played the Playhouse theater, which seats about 1,500. My mom used to drag me there to see my little sisters ballet recitals. I could not imagine 1500 metalhead packing that place. It's pretty easy these days to understate just how disconnected small town North America was from the rest of things. No internet. No streaming. No national radio chains. No simultaneous film releases in 4500 theaters all at once. The local DJ largely dictated musical tastes in those days. You could probably count on one hand the number of times Metallica got played on the radio in the entire United States prior to the black album. I can't remember if Eddie had a vehicle or not, but a trip to Indianapolis is far enough that one might question whether or not they trust their car to make it there and back. My friends and I (those of us that had cars) all drove beaters in those days. We might consider a trip to the lake, but any more than that and you'd have to ask yourself just how robust your vehicle is. They don't build them like they used to, and that's a good thing. Oh, and that shitty VW van making it cross country in two days with no breakdowns? Whatever you say Stranger Things. There's one shot where Jonathan smashes the throttle and the speedometer maxes out almost instantly. Sorry, that thing couldn't do that wet grass. I'll allow th... A'HA! Isn't Reefer Rick in jail, smart guy?

Lies Lies Lies Lies Lies The earliest complete-ish recording of that song was a demo recorded in a garage in El Cerrito, California in June '85. The first time that ever saw the light of day was on the a 3 disc special edition that was only released a few years ago. There is zero chance Eddie would have heard that. The earliest live performance was December 31, 1985 at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, CA. Could a bootleg have made it to small-town Indiana in under 3 months? Doubtful. And the audio quality is so terrible I doubt a high school student with Eddie's many commitments could have learned much from that. Also, just because the album was released March 3, '86, Eddie might not have been able to buy a copy until weeks later. Metallica was still a pretty obscure band back then. They wouldn't have gotten the same priority a Whitney Huston or Lionel Richie would have. An album release in those days relied on physical media being shipped on trucks to record stores. The major centers would have gotten in on the day, but it might not have been available in Hawkins until weeks later. In the pre-internet days, you might not learn a new album was out until you actually saw it on the shelves. And who is this mythical unicorn man? I'm sorry, Stranger Things. The telekinetic girl, the upside down, the benevolent CIA guy; you had me. But my suspension of disbelief only goes so far. Then again, Eddie is pretty amazing so who knows?

I've only seen clips but I did get the impression that it had remarkably high production values while simlutaneously full-on embracing B-movie shlock. Much more interesting to me than the recent Jurassic films.

Am I going insane? Are they making me insane? Season 4 takes place in March of 1986, during spring break. Master of Puppets was released March 3, 1986. There is. No. Fucking. Way. Eddie could have learned the guitar parts on that album in a couple of weeks. An accurate tablature would not be published for years after; which means he'd have to learn it by ear and practice non-stop. Impossible! He'd have to do this, and go to school and fulfill his roles as trailer park Apothecary and Grand Poobah of the Hellfire Club. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast on the other hand, had been out for 4 years. 'Maiden is even teased in the prologue. Ohmygod I would have hit the ceiling and shat my bowels if they busted that one out. Eat my ass Stranger Things.

Regarding the budget, TG:M is reported to have cost $175M to produce. That places it firmly in a galaxy of $150-$200m blockbuster films. Definitely not an indie picture, but not remarkable enough to be newsworthy either. And there are definitely a few duds in its immediate orbit. The Meg cost $178 million?!? Good for them.

Cruise' MI franchise films an his recent sci fi efforts have had all of those things and, while they've mostly done well, non of them have done this well.

Is it tho? I mean, I guess it sort of does but not in the same way as something like WW84 and Stranger Things. It's also got a lot more going for it than that. I'll say it again, the last 30 minutes of TG:M is fucking intense; in a way that the final battle of most Avengers movies isn't. On top of brilliant visuals and editing, you aren't breaking the tension every 1.5 minutes to inject some meh banter or some sight gag, which seems to be par for the course for a lot of superhero stuff. The characters in this film also don't have the kind of plot armor that goes along with a shared universe franchise. I view this film a bit like The Color of Money. Technically, it's a sequel to The Hustler, but you didn't have to see the latter to enjoy the former. I never even made the connection between those two until long after I'd seen it. What's amazing is that there's less separation in time between those two films (25 years) than there is between TG and TG:M.

...and still going. This thing's got some legs. It's currently trading number one spot with Elvis day to day. I was sure Jurassic World would beat it globally by virtue of the fact that it got a China release and those films tend to do quite well overseas. Based on how it's tracking, I'm not so sure. It's domestic performance is well below JW: Fallen Kingdom and way below Jurassic World 2015. At the rate it's going, it'll top out at $360-$370 mil domestically. If TG:M does $1.1-$1.3b globally, it's pretty unlikely JW:D will do the $750+ overseas it needs to beat that. Lightyear is another one that's coming in below expectations. Everyone is keeping their piggy bank moneys for Avatar 2 I guess.