#swingers(1996)

[shelyue99]

Just random Ron Livingston

#ron livingston #swingers(1996) #the cooler #bob cast

[thelastsharknado]

Swingers (1996)

#swingers #movies #90s #1996

[areladurell]

Favorite Films | 1996 Primal Fear (dir. Gregory Hoblit) | The Craft (dir. Andrew Fleming) | Scream (dir. Wes Craven) | The Crucible (dir. Nicholas Hytner) | The Frighteners (dir. Peter Jackson) | Swingers (dir. Doug Lyman)

#favorite films by year #1996 films #films of 1996 #film #primal fear #the craft #scream #the crucible #the frighteners #swingers

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Had you played TV cliché bingo while watching The Couple Next Door, I do believe sparks would have been flying from your dabber. I’m almost in awe that so many were crammed in before the first ad break alone. Barely seven minutes in, Becka (Jessica De Gouw) and Danny (Sam Heughan) were pulling each other’s clothes off and having sex at their living room window, curtains open, in a way that no married couple whose small child has just left the room ever do. Except in TV La-La land.

It was a bonus, though, for Alan the Pervert (Hugh Dennis), who has a telescope trained on their house and dark circles under his eyes that suggest he does a lot of squinting while hunched over his computer (and I don’t mean at Wordle).

I suppose at least this drama owns its clichés. What am I saying? It revels in them. It opened with the classic taster of horror to come, Eleanor Tomlinson as Evie running in what we shall call TV’s “sexy terrified” way. That is, frightened but looking hot, hot, hot in a short silk nightie as she ran barefoot through a forest. We then flipped back in time to Evie and Pete (Alfred Enoch) happily arriving at their new suburban idyll to start their family, which was a sort of sunny Wisteria Lane and not at all like the Leeds I remember from when I lived there.

It told us everything was too smug to be true by having laughing children playing with water guns, lawns being mowed, cars being washed. Uh-oh. We know that can’t last. And it didn’t. Evie miscarried her baby (conceived with a donor because Pete has “puny sperm”) by minute 16. I have a terrible feeling that the koi carp in the garden are some sort of “swimmers” metaphor.

Sometimes the dialogue was so stilted, I wondered if it was a spoof. “You guys will get through this,” Danny said to Pete, who should really have responded by asking if he was a chatbot. It soon transpired that Danny and Becka were swingers (it’s based on a Dutch series called, yes, The Swingers) and they promptly had “that couple we met in Marbella” round for some wife swapping as Pete watched from his window. Has anyone in this street ever considered closing a blind? And, actually, aren’t they “the couple opposite”, not “next door”?

There’s a dull subplot about Danny being a dodgy copper, which ties in to a dull investigation that local journalist Pete wants to look into, but his editor wants him to cover the opening of a new city library. A new library? Pull the other one. The UK has closed about 800 of them in the past decade.

At least Evie cheered up when she got Danny’s powerful beast between her legs. Oh, I mean his motorbike, though it’s obvious it won’t be long before the other beast comes into play. I feared we might get to the end of the episode without it committing the top TV cliché on the bingo card, namely spontaneous sex on a kitchen worktop. But, no. Evie and Pete gave us a full house by doing exactly that — and during a storm for added cheesiness.

These couples are as wooden as Dutch clogs, but I am enjoying Dennis’s greasy performance as the disgusting stalker who pretends to like yoga so he can be near Becka. I must warn you that later in the series it’s traumatic to see the man who played the nice dad in Outnumbered masturbating. I must also warn you that episode two contains some of the worst cringey couple dancing you are likely to witness in your lifetime. I think the moral of this silly but entertainingly corny tale is going to be: “Don’t shag the neighbours.”

thetimes.co.uk

Carol Midgley joined The Times in 1996 and is a former Feature Writer of the Year winner. Find her column in Times 2 each Wednesday and her TV reviews on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

————————————————————————

Indeed I saw all the reviews after the streaming view, including all episodes. The Times’ review concretes many things about The Couple Next Door 💁‍♀️

[90sclubkid]

Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau in Swingers, 1996

#vince vaughn #jon favreau #swingers #90s #1990s

[odinsblog]

It’s 2:32am, and Mike decides to call Nikki, a girl he met just a few hours ago.

Nikki’s machine picks up: Hi, this is Nikki. Leave a message.

Mike: Hi, uh, Nikki, this is Mike. I met you at the, um, at the Dresden tonight. I just called to say that I had a great time… and you should call me tomorrow, or in two days, whatever. Anyway, my number is 213–555–467

The machine beeps. Mike calls back, the machine picks up.

Mike: Hi, Nikki, this is Mike again. I just called ‘cuz it sounded like your machine might’ve cut me off when I, before I finished leaving my number. Anyway, uh, and, y’know, and also, sorry to call so late, but you were still at the Dresden when I left so I knew I’d get your machine. Anyhow, uh, my number’s 21 -

The machine beeps Mike calls back. The machine picks up again.

Mike: 213–555–4679. That’s it. I just wanna leave my number. I didn’t want you to think I was weird or desperate, or… we should just hang out and see where it goes cuz it’s nice and, y’know, no expectations. Okay? Thanks a lot. Bye bye.

He hangs up. Mike walks away from the phone… then walks back and calls again. Once again, the machine picks up.

Mike: I just got out of a 6-year relationship, okay? That should help explain why I’m acting so weird. I just wanted you to know that. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m sorry… This is Mike.

Hangs up. Calls back, the machine picks up again.

Mike: Hi, Nikki, this is Mike. Could you just call me when you get in? I’m gonna be up for awhile and I’d just rather speak to you in person instead of trying to fit it all into -

The machine beeps.

Mike: Fuck!

Mike calls back, gets the machine again.

Mike: Uh, Nikki? Mike. It’s uh, uh, it’s just, uh, this just isn’t working out. I think you’re great, but maybe we should just take some time off from each other. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s what I’m going through, alright? It’s uh… it’s only been 6 months …

Nikki: [picks up] Mike?

Mike: [very cheerful] Nikki? Great! Did you just walk in or were you listening all along?

Nikki: Don’t ever call me again.

Hangs up.

Mike: Wow. I guess you’re home.

— Swingers (1996), written by Jon Favreau

#lol #swingers #voicemail #fave #havent seen this movie since i was a baby #life before caller id

[a-magical-evening]

Deconstructing South Park: Critical Examinations of Animated Transgression

Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Authorship in South Park and Beyond, Nick Marx

BASEketball might be seen to exhibit some of the characteristics Justin Wyatt identifies as accommodating queerness in purportedly “straight” comedies. Of Swingers (1996), Wyatt describes the film’s lack of a “strong male institutional bias” that directs the spectator to construct male bonding as straight. […] Amidst the success of films like There’s Something about Mary, critics identified a “farts and phalluses fixation” in the cycle of gross-out comedies during the summer of 1998. Parker and Stone indulge in much of the same carnivalesque humor throughout BASEketball, but ultimately use queerness as a way to undermine viewer expectations about this humor. That is to say, the film functions in a conventionally parodic way—hinting at homosexual bonds among its male characters—until its climactic scene, in which main characters Coop and Remer kiss and queerness becomes explicit. At this moment Parker and Stone connect their performances in BASEketball to publicity discourses that reinforce the duo’s oppositionality.

BASEketball also constructs queerness through the aforementioned idiosyncratic patter of Parker and Stone. In Swingers, Wyatt argues, “Queerness resides primarily in the forms of communication and interaction between the friends in the group,” noting that its protagonists speak in a highly coded conversation with repeated use of words like “baby” and “money.” A similar tendency manifests in Coop and Remer’s use of the word “dude,” a nod to the “dude-speak” carried over from their South Park authorial persona.

Another method that Wyatt identifies for reading the male bonding in Swingers as gay is that with women, “flirtation rather than seduction is most significant.” […] This dynamic plays out between Coop and Remer as well. […] Indeed, a queer reading of the relationship between Coop and Remer points to the larger, conventionally parodic project at work in BASEketball— suggesting that its professional-athlete protagonists can be read as gay, thus undermining the archetypal, hypermasculine image of athletes currently circulating in sports imagery.

But the film’s climactic scene, in which the characters share a sloppy open-mouthed kiss, subverts the queer coding that had up to that point been only connotative. In other words, if part of BASEketball’s goal is to lampoon hypermasculinity by providing gay subtexts, why make the gag explicit and take it over the top? That the moment was improvised only serves to muddle matters. […] To [Parker and Stone], the kiss seems to be no big deal, having just as much a place in mainstream comedy as the gay subtexts that have existed there for years. [X]

#oops it's almost 1am and i'm reading critical queer theory #(it's like my dissertation all over again) #this is fascinating though omfg i'm completely hooked #didn't want to lose this so it's going on my blog #sorry for the wall of text #baseketball

[gregarnott]

Swingers, 1996

[burlveneer-music]

Molly Lewis - On the Lips - don't know if I'm ready for a full-on lounge/exotica (re)revival, but it's the perfect milieu for a whistler

Consider this your invitation to Café Molly, a lounge bar like they don’t make them anymore. The lights are low, the martinis are ice cold, the banquettes are velvet, and the stage is set for the electrifying talent of whistler Molly Lewis. Molly’s soft-focus cocktail music conjures up visions of classic Hollywood jazz clubs, Italian cinema soundtracks and lingering embraces between lovers. After the exotica stylings of The Forgotten Edge EP and the tropicalia-indebted Mirage EP, Molly wanted to encapsulate the sound of Café Molly for her debut album On The Lips, a dreamy tribute to classic mood music. That spellbinding sound, which usually comes to life in Los Angeles, has also popped up in Mexico City dancehalls, graced the runways of Paris and London Fashion Weeks, and made a magical appearance at a children's fairyland. Molly Lewis’s love for this smoky corner of the world doesn’t end with her songwriting. She is a devotee and an archivist, capturing and enlivening the pieces that endure. She was a regular at the legendary shows by Marty and Elayne, the lounge duo who spent almost 40 years playing LA’s Dresden bar. The duo came to global fame after an appearance in 1996’s Swingers and kept going long after that spotlight faded, finally finishing their nightly residency after the death of Marty at the ripe age of 89 last year. “That felt like the end of an era,” says Molly. But there are still flashes of that world to be found, and she finds them. “I’ve been spending a lot of time in New York lately, where there are a lot more of those moody, classic jazz bars,” she explains. Over the past few years Molly has flexed her one-of-a-kind musical skill alongside Mark Ronson on the Barbie soundtrack, as well as with Dr Dre, Karen O, actor John C Reilly, Mac De Marco, fashion houses Chanel, Gucci and Hermes, and folk rock royalty Jackson Browne. After a performance with longtime friend Weyes Blood on Burt Bacharach’s The Look of Love during a Café Molly evening at LA’s Zebulon, Molly supported the singer on a US tour, introducing her sound to a brand new audience. “I forget sometimes that what I do has that factor of surprise and uniqueness – it is something that most people have never seen before,” says Molly. She too might never have entered the idiosyncratic world of whistling had she not as a teenager seen the 2005 documentary Pucker Up, which details the International Whistling Competition. Equally amused and bemused by the eccentric event, in 2012 she competed herself. Spending her early twenties in Berlin she then moved to LA to work in film – and returned to the contest in 2015 to take home first prize. One evening Molly did a turn at an open mic at the Kibitz Room, a tiny late-night bar inside historic LA deli Canter’s. Her display led to appearances at performance art happenings across the city, and she soon caught the ear of independent record label Jagjaguwar. On The Lips was recorded with producer Thomas Brenneck of the Menahan Street Band, Budos Band, Dap-Kings and El Michels Affair, at his newly-built Diamond West Studios in Pasadena. The pair bonded over the work of 1960s soundtrack composers Alessandro Alessandroni and Piero Piccioni, and, with something of an open door policy during the sessions, a stream of acclaimed musicians ended up across the album’s 10 tracks. With her intoxicating compositions, and wry brand of stagecraft (she might not be singing up there, but she can sure tell a joke) Molly Lewis looks set to join her heroes in the storied lore of the Los Angeles lounge scene and beyond. So pull up a chair, order your favorite drink, and prepare to fall for On The Lips.  PERFORMER LINE-UP: On The Lips Molly Lewis - Whistle, guitar, vocals Joe Harrison - Flute, bass Eric Hagstrom - Drums, clave Thomas Brenneck - Organ Written by: Molly Lewis

#Molly Lewis #puccolo #whistling #lounge #exotica #mood music #2024 #Jagjaguwar #Bandcamp

[aleynaleia]

Vince Vaughn in Swingers, 1996

#vince vaughn #swingers #movie #90’s movies #90’s aesthetic

[neilphen]

the 1996 swingers club of Wichita, Kansas 

#mine

[shelyue99]

#ron livingston #Swingers(1996) #film #the smile

[i-love-movie-posters]

Swingers

1996 directed by Doug Liman

#movie poster

[rachelspoetrycorner]

The Acrobat (1996) by Wisława Szymborska

In Episode 130, Rachel shares a poem that cannot be described better or more accurately than Griffin.

Griffin: That is a poem ass poem right there.

Rachel: [laughs] I love, though—you can just picture this trapeze swinger, swinging back and forth.

Griffin: Yeah! That‘s really cool. I've never quite heard a poem like that, I don‘t think.

Rachel: Uh-huh. I don't know. I just find it really inspiring to see somebody who is not... I mean, is obviously concerned with transmitting an image and a meaning, but also, trying to do this very clever, creative thing of making the language kind of communicate that message, as well.

If you’d like to hear more, you can do so here: Jawbreaker Julie, from 4:04 - 10:16.

If you ain't got that kinda time, there's a summary of Rachel and Griffin's convo about the poem underneath the cut.

Rachel: (...) the academy praised her poetry that "had ironic precision; that allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."

Griffin: That‘s... it‘s hard for me to follow what that meant, but I bet it‘s good.

Rachel: [laughs] She, um... said in her Nobel speech that, "In the language of poetry, where every word is weighted, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone, and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day, and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence. Not anyone‘s existence in this world."

Griffin: Do you think after she said that, she was like, ―And oh damn, hold up, I gotta go write that down, cause I think it was a poem?

Rachel: The other thing is, she joked about the lives of poets. She said great films can be made of lives of scientistsand artists, but not poets.

"Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic. Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while, that person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them fifteen minutes later. And then another hour passes, during which nothing happens." [laughs]

Griffin: Even that... does she ever say stuff like, ―I want to eat a ham sandwich for lunch today- ?

Rachel: [laughs] I mean, that‘s what they're talking about. That, um... ironic precision.

#poetry #rachel mcelroy #griffin mcelroy #poem #wisława szymborska #poet #the acrobat #wonderful! #wonderful! podcast #rachel’s poetry corner #writing #words #literature #rhyme #classical poetry #episode 130 #language #translation #the medium is the message

[evco-productions]

Caption mine. Image is from Swingers (1996).

#movie #movies #movie stills #film #cinema #swingers #90s movies #indie movies #jon favreau #vince vaughn #original caption

[typofilm]

Swingers, Doug Liman [1996]

#1990s #usa #posters #script