The Picture of Dorian Gray | Welcome To The Basement
Vložit
- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- Tonight the basement becomes an art studio of pure evil as we take in the shock and horror that is The Picture of Dorian Gray.
In Seen It we discuss more Oscar movies: Sound of Metal, Minari, Judas and the Black Messiah and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Check out our website! Donate to support the show!
welcometothebas...
Like us on facebook: / welcome-to-the-basemen...
Welcome To The Basement
PO Box 2702
Madison, WI 53701
SEASON 9
• Welcome To The Basemen...
SEASON 8
• Welcome To The Basemen...
SEASON 7
• Welcome To The Basemen...
SEASON 6
• Welcome To The Basemen...
SEASON 5
• Welcome To The Basemen...
SEASON 4:
• Welcome To The Basemen...
SEASON 3:
• Welcome To The Basemen...
SEASON 2:
• Welcome To The Basemen...
SEASON 1:
• Welcome to the Basemen...
200 Episode Supercut Retrospective:
• Welcome to the Basemen...
All film footage is used in accordance with fair use and US copyright law. All music in the show is used with full permission of the composer.
Welcome To The Basement" is a show about watching, discussing and having fun with movies. None of the discussion or riffing is planned ahead of time.
The movie announced on Facebook before every new episode. We do discuss the entire movie, including the ending, so if you want to avoid spoilers, watch the movie first.
Craig bringing big Goldblum energy today.
I was just about to comment the same thing!
Hahaha! He really was
Ha!
I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Picture of Dorian Gray, and it may be useful to know that Wilde was a big proponent of aestheticism--a 19th-Century artistic movement that was all about the idea that art needn't have a moral component to it (which, in Victorian times, is still considered the main 'job' of art). Picture of Dorian Gray is really Wilde exploring the limitations and potential horrors of his own movement--to devote yourself to beauty and pleasure without reflecting on those things complexly, what does that do to your soul? If art shows us nothing, demands nothing of us, and we simply consume beauty and pleasure without any critical thought--then how can we possibly maintain our humanity and compassion? But on the other side of the coin is Victorian morality and conventionality, which Wilde as an author strains against too; such things kill life and pleasure stone dead, and if morality dictates everything we do, how can we ever fully experience the pleasures of art and life itself? Basically: are sensuality and morality fundamentally at odds with one another, and must we choose between living fully and living morally?
Long ramble, but all of this to say, I really recommend the book! Please consider this my vote for 'book updates' if y'all ever subsequently read the books that the films you watch are adapted from. Love the show, loyal watcher here!
I'm guessing you read the Huysmans book too? I found that kind of a slog!
"and if morality dictates everything we do". it should. we have thumbs, and brains that aren't smooth. yet we have instinctual carnal natural instincts. the point is to seek nature, which is total balance. the undefended young die in nature. wer'e capable of doing better, yet for some reason ppl exist on the fringe out of sync to balance.
im no college grad but as u said "aestheticism"; to me meaning having no moral center, by which to judge the extremes.... thats nietszche. "stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back". its chaos. madness. the kind of thing being human and having a soul should exempt us from but we dwell on. in nature, just another tuesday. and 3 more b4 the day is done.
I just recently lost 2 of my beloved cats to illness and I was genuinely taken aback by how emotional I got seeing your beloved Ernesto in the closing credits! I have spent so many hours in quarantine watching your entire back catalogue multiple times while embracing & petting my girls Paisley and Cotton (mother & daughter), now both deceased way too early. I don’t even know why I am writing this other than to say hello and tell you how much the show means to me. Forgive me I am a sobbing wreck as I write this! 🥺💔
I'm sorry. I lost my cat Ichabod before quarantine. It's hard.
@@Asheru1980 Thank you! Its crazy how fast and brutal time & loss can be. My 3rd cat is the absolute oldest yet still healthy & with us. You just never can take for granted how much time you have. 🙏🏾
@@marybethlarivee6838 Thanks 🙏🏾 Its been so long since I lost a pet that I forgot just how deeply devastating it can be. They are family & losing them feels as bad as losing family. My love to you and Ichabod, RIP!❤️ Love that name btw!
Agreed 100% I just lost my best boy, Ruairidh-cat, to cancer at the tender age of 6 two months ago. Seeing Ernesto has always made me smile, but recently his presence in the closing credits is an extra comfort now.
Oh dear, I'm so sorry to hear that. Our beloved cat passed away after 17 years. Miss her very much, especially because she used to curl up with me as I'd binge-watch Welcome to the Basement and Beer and Board games. All the best to everyone going through/has gone through such loss.
I'll let the Basil/Rosemary joke slide..
.. this thyme
That's a sage decision
Chives.
Oh, that joke was really un-oregano. You can curry on without me if it's gonna be like that. You'll barely make cinnamon wage writing like that!
Craig: "I look like an 18th century dandy"
Matt: *looks at envelope and starts sweating*
“Don’t look at me like that! You have strong opinions too! 😡” sums up most of my friendships tbh.
Also with the glasses/jacket combo Craig is very Austin Powers today. (In addition to the Goldblum energy.)
"He will never see his wife Rosemary again.". Perhaps in thyme.
Sage advice, sirs.
having the painting appear in color REALLY threw me off for a bit
I suppose they had to splice that into each print by hand.
Jeez, the actor playing Dorian Gray is a dead-ringer: The Picture of H.P. Lovecraft.
Craig's opening rant about Mank and the lady with the white parasol reminded me about his problems with the Nowhere Man in Yellow Submarine, mentioning that it was his favorite Beatles' song but now whenever he hears that song he thinks of that annoying goober.
Have you seen Attack of the Mushroom People (AKA: Matango in Japan). This movie was almost banned in it's own country, because the Mushroom People almost resemble nuclear bomb victims.
5:15 "See the turtle, ain't he keen? All things serve the fucking beam!"
Love you beautiful basement dwellers!
Seen it 'Blue Thunder' 1983? With Roy Scheider, Malcolm McDowell, and crazy helicopter shenanigans! It's the new Megaforce!
Oh my goodness. Craig is starting to become quite the silver fox. I cant believe i still remember him from the chad vader days as the creepy guy in the store (A role which he played flawlessly). i remember showing those chad vader videos to my friends when i was in middle school.. i turn 30 this year. I can't believe how time has flown by, like a bird how quickly its come and gone!
Loving Craig's weird ass energy in this one. And please tell me that Matt's exclamation, "Boogedy, Boogedy!" was a nod to the Disney Sunday Movie Mr. Boogedy or its superior sequel, Bride of Boogedy.
I almost could have sworn you said “Welcome to the Abatement.”
2:47 You left out the reason why George Sanders committed suicide - which probably the most interesting part of the story. Supposedly he left a note stating that he was "bored... and leaving you to your worries in this sweet cesspool". Now THATS how you go out on your own terms, kids. With one massive middle finger!
He also went around for years raving about he'll commit suicide once he turns sixty five. Odd is putting it mildly.
"Don't look at me like that, you have strong opinions too!" Should be on a shirt.
My mother saw this in the movie theater when it first came out and she was a kid. She said the moment the picture was revealed in color with the music blast was pretty shocking and unexpected. She was scared the rest of the evening and didn’t want to do the chores that involved going outside. When I finally got to see it, having grown up on movies like Alien and Halloween, the picture reveal was definitely more “boogity boogity”, but still cool.
Please read the book and let us know what you thought.
I agree that the lines in the movie were often mumbled through. Wilde's actual verse is so well done on the page.
"That's the end of Basil. He will never see his wife Rosemary again". Yes, Matt. He simply ran out of Thyme. His killer wasn't the least bit Sorrel.
@24:24 craig is so proud of himself
Morton Lowry is fantastic in The Hound of the Baskervilles & Pursuit to Algiers. Cool to see him here as well as Angela Lansbury right after she was the maid in Gaslight in 1944.
Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is wonderfully descriptive with Wilde's flowery language. It's fun the more you read how Dorian is seen by others.
All About Dorian.
Hurd Hatfield talked about how he was told to be cold and aloof and how he kind of hated it. People in Hollywood didn't like him or think he could do anything else.
Also, he supposedly had an affair with Yul Brynner? Who knew?
It's the return of weird Jimmy
This movie stuck with me, I think about George Saunders speech about loving vs being loved often and it’s ruined every relationship I’ve been in
Yes, it didn't work out so well for Oscar Wilde.
What a day it was, over 10 years ago now, when I saw the first episode and realized that Weird Jimmy was a normal person.
Cedric Hardwicke is in “Things To Come”
So I was just watching an old video where Matt was reading a Wil Shorts puzzle and it mentioned Pinky. I dont know what it was in reference to but it jogged my memory about a movie I saw years ago (like 25-30 years), Pinky, starring Jeanne Crain and Ethel Barrymore. I remember finding it so intriguing as I don't really know about that aspect of African American history. Anyway if you haven't seen it, you should check it out!
Craig is spot-on about what happened with Hurd Hatfield. According to Hollywood Cauldon (written by Gregory Mank) director Albert Lewin insisted he play Dorian completely icy, which was difficult for Hatfield since he was a character actor (check out The Left-Handed Gun starring Paul Newman; Hatfield has a great role as a cockeyed journalist.) Audiences dug the mix of hedonism, bisexuality, and literacy and it was one of 1945's top-grossing movies.
Hurd Hatfield is really reminding me of James Haven, Angelina Jolie's brother
That looney clap face during the movie made me pause the video from the shock. That face was soo creepy and wonderful at the same time! 🤣🤣🤣
This was an interesting thing to see, as the original novel by Oscar Wilde is one of my favorite pieces of gothic fiction, and I've never watched any of the adaptations of it. It's very toned down for this film to the point of being dry, and the lead actor definitely does it no favors. One of the things about the novel that is so wonderful is that it shirks the melodrama that was so common of writing for the era yet maintains so much of the character and intensity that comes with the gothic/horror genre that was in many way still in its infancy. One of the things that Craig keyed in on is that "Dorian might be bisexual" - in the novel it's never completely explicit, but it is very heavily implied that Dorian is in fact fully gay (like Wilde himself), and his affections for female characters are either entirely for show or merely platonic and friendly. That, of course, never would have passed muster in the cinemas of 1945, but it is interesting that they don't entirely bury it.
It's a great book, and a short one too, and I highly recommend the read. Wilde's prose is incredible even today.
It was so weird seeing that painting flash up on the screen in color and realizing that I've seen it in person at a museum in Chicago.
and now I've gotten to the part of the video where they talk about that
Just for fun, with the Ma Rainey discussion, Denzel’s next August Wilson production is going to be The Piano Lesson, with John David Washington Samuel L Jackson, and Barry Jenkins directing after a Broadway run.
Looking back and forth between recent videos and those from five or six years ago... you've both actually changed quite a bit.
It's a much closer story to the Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde than you might think, because that story is not what ANY of the movies are. It's literally a story about an amoral psychopath who forgoes all accountability and becomes more self-destructive because of it.
Seen it, Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny? It’s got Jack Black and Kyle Gas of their band Tenacious D. It’s kind of they story of how they got started but really it’s just a comedy. But a really funny movie in my own opinion
My wife is hard of hearing and she said 'Sound of Metal' was absolutely accurate in it's depiction of hearing loss.
But in "Mank" aren't they showing where the idea for the unseen bit in "Kane" came from (does a Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein" tense look around the room)? Class. . .dismissed.
Love how she's singing Goodbye Little Yellow Bird and there's a dead bird on her hat.
I'm glad you played this, I started watching Penny Dreadful and had no idea who Dorian Gray was then BAM you guys tell me without having to look it up. lol
16:29 Nope, that was his real name. Full name was "William Rukard Hurd Hatfield". 'Hurd' was probably the maternal surname.
Absolutely enjoyable as always
Thank you for such a wonderful show every week
Thanks again gang. This show makes me smarter all the time.
@6:45: BOOM!, Lol!
The Picture of Dorian Gray is believed to be where the Fawltys got their name: Basil & Sybill.
Are there any other older movies that used a black and white to color transition like this, either for a jump scare or just for accent quite like this one?
The Tingler. Rumble Fish.
@@blamesocietyfilms Yes, as I look back I did see your review on Rumble Fish (though I somehow missed The Tingler, so I will watch that next). Thanks!
"would you like me to continue on with my odditites" Oh, lord. Craig gonna use them oddities. Matt, good job on the edit. I don't know what got cut, but I hope it's all involved at the end of the year. Please give us Craig being funny. You know what the people want.
Have you seen my 19th century jacket?
What if I said this out loud next to a magical egyptian cat?
I blame society. Society made me what I am.
Herd an anglo saxon name for those who were herdsmen/shepard.
There is a 2009 version of the movie on Tubi.
Great ep guys! Even in the cold open with the cough drop moment you already had me laughing. And great editing as always, Matt.
I also thought it was 'Portrait' and not 'Picture'. This is definitely a Mandala effect.
I think its a confabulation due to "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
I don’t know the year but there is a much more modern film of dorean grey that’s pretty good and goes deeper into the debatchery.
William Rukard Hurd Hatfield. He worked into the 1980s.
Have you seen Dancer in the Dark? It is oddly optimistic and full of wonder despite its darkness. You wouldn't think it is a Danish film considering how Lars von Trier basically builds a part of America to film it in so he doesn't have to fly there.
William Rukard Hurd Hatfield (December 7, 1917 - December 26, 1998).
In which film does the "faster faster faster!" catchphrase originate from? Been trying to figure this out for too long now, please help a long time fan and satiate this pondering for me 🤔🤔🤔
I never want to hear that little yellow bird song again
this is the closest this show has gotten to the eric andre show
Hey Lady your hair is close to being on fire at 6:07
Seen it - Book of Eli?
To most a middle of the road action movie, but it satisfies my "bad movie burger" craving for post apocalyptic movies and has a great cast from top to bottom
The directors insist its not in anyway a religious movie despite the main plot and arguable message of the movie.
What say you, gents?
What the hell did Craig take before filming and where can I get some?
The picture of Dorian Gray is available for free (legally) on Project Gutenberg, so read on!
Feisty Craig is the best Craig.
We need a gif of 7:26. 😂
Highly recommend watching the latest adaption. Dorian Gray (2009) Directed by Oliver Parker
I love old movies with weird bars or cafés.
When Matt said "We've been doing this for ten years." I was like holy crap has it really been that long? I would have thought they would exhibit more fanfair when hitting the goal they set for themselves a decade ago and thought I missed the celebration. But upon checking for the first episode I realized Matt was not being literal as its only been 9 years. To quote Dionysus, "Tastes like shiiiiiiiiit." JK, Can't wait to celebrate you guys reaching your stated goal in 8 months. Nanook and I are rooting for you! *thumbkiss*
I was excited about buttons, some new merch? nope, just browser buttons. XD
What are both do yours favorite gins? I'm rather new to th stuff myself by like Tanquary. My wife convinced me to try Aviation, and it's alright I guess.
Highly recommend Bainbridge Heritage Oaked Douglas Fir Gin. Absolutely my favorite!
Great episode! Hilarious intro
Starring Jared Kushner.
It's a great book. Much more humor as well.
"There's something about it, couldn't tell ya what..."
um..... Juniper berries (shrug)
please do read the book
😳 a Dark Tower nugget
I'm with you Craig, Mank STANK!
Dorian Yellow was a much nicer man and he loved aging and embraced his own mortality
Yurt!!!
I'm here for the Mank hate.
George Sanders is an anomaly for me. Every time I see him in a movie I always find him to be very stiff and one-note. Yet there is something oddly compelling about him that draws me in and commands my attention. I can't figure out him out.
For some reason id like to see Jim carrey do it.
Basil made a pesto himself.
Murder She Wrote buuuurnnnn!!!