Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Signal Watch Tweet Alive! ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK! FRIDAY at 9:00 Central!


We had a request from our Kansas City branch to get back into the Live-Tweet Business.

It's been a long time, and Stuart pitched one of one of the best movies ever produced by humankind.

The Movie:  Escape From New York
Available streaming at:  Netflix or for $2.99 at Amazon
Day:  5/12/2017
Time:  9:00 PM Central
Location:  Twitter
My handle:  @melbotis
Our hashtag:  #snakescape


If you've not seen this movie - it's directed by John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing, They Live), in his 80's heyday, telling a tale of the dark future of 1997 (the movie was released in '81).

It stars Kurt Russell!  Lee Van Cleef!  Ernest "I'll be in anything" Borgnine!  Donald Pleasence as the POTUS!  Isaac Hayes as Post-Apocalyptic Isaac Hayes!  Harry Dean Stanton!  and Adrienne Barbeau (and all that that entails)!  Tom Atkins (you'll totally recognize him from the 1980's)!  And Frank Doubleday in my favorite performance of it's type, anywhere!!!!!

It's 1997, and the world is not going so well.  The President's plane is infiltrated by terrorists, and POTUS must make good his escape en route to a peace conference and prevent the escalation of an international conflict.  Unfortunately, POTUS' escape capsule lands him in the middle of New York City, which - in the context of the last 1970's was kind of a hellhole, and so by '81 it made some sorta-logical sense it would be walled off and turned into a maximum security penal colony.

Luckily for the US Government, they recently captured super-criminal Snake Plissken (who is NOT dead, thank you), so they send him in to retrieve our two-legged MacGuffin.

It.  Is.  Amazing.

Friday night!  9:00 Central!  Be there!


Monday, April 10, 2017

That "Thor: Ragnarok" trailer is pretty cool



Look, I go and see every single Marvel Studios movie in the theater.  I just dig what they're up to, in general.  Point being - there was never any question whether or not they were getting my $12 for a ticket.

Things I knew before the trailer came out:

  • Thor would get a haircut
  • Jeff Goldblum would play a major part
  • the movie would have the Hulk in it somewhere

That's about it.  Nobody told me it ALSO had Cate Blanchett.

I don't know how many of you saw Ghostbusters (2016), but one thing that was absolutely true was that Chris Hemsworth absolutely held his own with four of the funniest people working in TV and film, and, in fact, got the biggest laugh of the film from me.  So letting him do more of that here - that's welcome.

Thor was never my favorite comics character - and I've tried.  But I have enjoyed the Marvel Studios version a great deal and pretty much everything about the movies, even though they're generally considered less than the best in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Sure, the second one is most forgettable, but it does have some good stuff in it, but I couldn't tell you the plot now if I tried.

Anyway, this looks fun, right?  High stakes.  Big, big story.  Guest stars.  Cate Blanchett.

This could be more than okay.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Arnie Watch: We went COMMANDO! (1985)



Thursday night we had nothing queued on the DVR, the Cubs weren't playing and I was pondering what we might put on the tube when Jamie said "Why don't we watch Commando?"

I immediately ran over and began trying to remove the Jamie-disguise from whomever was pretending to be my wife, but eventually it was revealed that, no, it was her, and she didn't care what we watched.  She had seen my recently purchased Commando BluRay collecting dust on the shelf for months, earnestly waiting a viewing, and - as she loves me, some times she takes pity on me.

Now, if you know me, you know of my ironic/ totally not-at-all ironic love for Commando (1985), an early-ish Arnie picture that was part of what catapulted him to superstar status that would reach peak popularity around 1992.

In the harsh light of reviewing this movie in 2017, the movie probably seems positively camp.  While it certainly has some gags and Arnie-isms, it was never intended as a yuck fest - but Arnie was part of a wave of a certain kind of action movie that wasn't afraid of a sense of humor.  And I can easily watch it as a straight action movie of workmanlike success, just as I can enjoy the movie for the truly bizarre specimen and reflection of a certain mentality in mid-80's actioners that it is.  OR I can enjoy it as the Platonic Ideal of 80's Action Movies/ Movies in General.

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Noir Watch: The Blue Gardenia (1953)



I'm not entirely certain what to make of The Blue Gardenia (1953), and possibly talking about it right after watching it is a mistake.  It was this week's pick on TCM's "Noir Alley", introduced by the great Eddie Muller.

My current take on the film is that I like a huge amount of the pieces that made up the movie, but wasn't a raging fan of the movie itself.  I mean, it stars Richard Conte, Raymond Burr and Anne Baxter (who does some kind of edgy stuff for 1953 - but that's noir all over).  It's got a scenario as treacherous as many or most in noir, pulling the world down a normal person's ears because she made a bad decision or two.  And it's one of the more straightforward "no means no" messages you're going to see in a movie, but baked into the social standards of the era - which makes it all the more challenging.

And did I mention Fritz Lang is the director?  And Nicholas Musuraca (Out of the Past) was DP?

AND it had George Reeves in a supporting role as a wiseguy of a cop?

Yeah, I don't quite get why the movie felt a little flat.

Monday, April 3, 2017

Ghost Watch: Ghostbusters (2016)



So, I re-watched the 2016 Ghostbusters because Jamie said "I really want to rewatch the new Ghostbusters".  So, we did.

I still liked it okay.  It's not the original, and struggles when they have to stop goofing around and get through the actual plot.

Some of the issues on a rewatch and having had seen the original approximately 13,000 times is the mental mapping you start doing to the original as the movie is a "remake" of sorts, with tons of nods to the original in both plotting and in Easter Eggs.  But this time I really felt the lack of a Dana and Louis - we never really have any point of reference characters to pull back and remind you this is happening in a mundane world.

Luckily, the cast is really funny, and likable, when they aren't cracking jokes, exactly.  Even the villainous Rowan is so goofy and almost plausible (we all knew that guy at the coffee shop), he's kind of likable.

This is going to sound weird, but I think the movie should have been about 20-30 minutes longer to let it breathe.  It is a fast-paced movie, and maybe too fast paced.  On this viewing I caught a lot of dialog and ideas about who the characters were that I didn't quite get the first go-round (but knew from stuff I'd read online before seeing the movie).  Like, this time Patty's local-history-buff part made way, way more sense.

Anyway - it's imperfect but still fun.


Sunday, April 2, 2017

MST3K Watch: The Final Sacrifice (1990)


For whatever reason, this has long been one of my top 5 MST3K episodes.  Well, that reason is primarily Zap Rowsdower, the burly, mustachioed, Canadian-tuxedo'ed co-star of the movie.  Paired with the weiniest kid to ever star in a movie, it's a match made in cinema glory.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Ape Watch: King Kong (1976)



With Kong: Skull Island checked off my "must see" list, I noted King Kong starring Jessica Lange was on Amazon Prime.

If ever a movie was a mixed bag, it's the 1976 version of King Kong.  It's a movie only the 1970's could have produced, still in the echoes of the pessimistic Planet of the Apes saga but brimming with the romanticism we'd see in Superman: The Movie and Star Wars.  It features two/ three stars busting out - nobody aware they'd become Hollywood icons - in Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin, who would go on to be Charles Grodin (and that is not a complaint).

But it's also a movie with a very good mask/ make-up on a guy in an ape suit, big animatronic hands, arms and legs for Lange to cling to, and a re-writing of the premise as an Energy-Crisis-conscious abandoning of the showbiz angle of the original for something about oil exploration.  And it really whittles down the wonder of Skull Island - dumping the dinosaurs in exchange for more dialog and human moments, severely diminishing the idea that this is an adventure film.

Friday, March 31, 2017

Noir Watch: Tension (1949)



This is likely the fourth time I've watched Tension, the 1949 pulp-tastic noir I was first introduced to by JSwift during a trip to SF a few years back.  It aired this last Sunday during Turner Classic Movies' new segment, Noir Alley, hosted by Eddie Muller.*

Muller does what he does so well - introduce the movie, give some history and context and talk about the players in unpolished terms.  This screening included an appreciation of co-star Audrey Totter, whom we at The Signal Watch think is absolutely tops, and a closer discussing the complicated life of director John Berry.

In addition to Totter, the movie also stars Richard Basehart, William Conrad, Lloyd Gough, Barry Sullivan - and, oddly, Cyd Charisse in a role where there is not a single step of dance.  I mean, she's terrific - she's got some straight acting ability, but it's an odd fit for someone who appeared in roles with not a single line but a lot of dancing.  That's sort of her deal.

It's a bit of a small-scale production, a tight cast working with a rat-a-tat script by Alan Rivkin, and good, twisty fun with some severely dated bits that don't seem aware they've inverted the Superman paradigm.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Cartoon Short as Promo for Pixar/Disney's upcoming "Coco"



Love the combo of classic Disney character animation with 3D.  Could have been a "Pluto" back in the day.

Hope this one is as good as the last few Disney features.


Friday, March 24, 2017

Lynch Watch: Mulholland Drive (2002)


Despite all the Twin Peaks love you've seen here lately, I'm not someone who actively sought out much in the way of the movies of David Lynch.  It's always been a guilty spot for me, but I have so many hang-ups, who can keep track?

So I'm finally watching some of his movies and rewatching others, mostly because Dune is the only one I've watched over and over the past 15 years or so, and I still haven't seen about half of his feature film output.  Maybe more.

I missed Mulholland Drive when it came it, and despite the year 2002 adorning the movie here and there, it was released in 2001.  Early October 2001.  And for you kids who don't recall that particular window in history - we were a little preoccupied with planes crashing into towers and what would come next.  So I'm not entirely surprised I missed this one, given how I remember my schedule at the time.

And that's too bad.  It's a hell of a movie.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Happy B-Day to Joan Crawford


Today marks the something-or-other birthday of Joan Crawford.  Maybe 112th.  As many actresses have done over the years, she lied about her age a few times, so it's hard to know exactly what year she was born.

I saw my first Crawford picture when they showed us Mildred Pierce in film school, and I've been a fan ever since.

I'm thrilled that it seems both the kids who are into TCM are placing Crawford in context - even my generation is lukewarm on the whole Mommie Dearest business - and now it seems FX's Feud: Bette and Joan is telling an audience about the person that was Joan Crawford (née Lucille LeSeur), and using the amazing What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? to do so ain't all bad.

She was born in San Antonio and lived in Lawton, Oklahoma - both places our own Jamie lived.  In fact, I believe Crawford's childhood home was only about two blocks from Jamie's childhood home.

If you've never seen What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, do so, and then watch Feud: Bette and Joan.  And then watch Mildred Pierce.  And then Grand Hotel.  She's got dozens of movies in her history.  Not all of them are terrific or hold up, but it'd be nice to rehabilitate Joan Crawford's memory a bit and for her to be more than Faye Dunaway overacting.



Monday, March 20, 2017

Noir Watch: They Live By Night (1948)



I remember trying to watch They Live By Night (1948) a decade or more ago when I was still narrowly defining "noir" as folks in hats in urban settings with tough-talking dames.  Truthfully, I didn't get it.  I made it about 40 minutes in and then threw in the towel.

But along the way, I've heard They Live By Night referred to so often, I began to feel downright guilty I'd never finished the movie.  Maybe it's been in context of the career of Nicholas Ray, or a post WWII film that was reflective of the Depression-era storytelling that was still happening in the first years after the war.   It's never given a top-billing-of-noir placement, but when writers who know noir start talking, eventually this movie gets a mention.  And, as it turns out, deservedly so.

Three convicts escape from prison and hole up with the brother of one of the convicts.  The youngest convict, Bowie - in for killing a man - seems to just want to get away, even as his colleagues want him as the third man necessary for committing bank heists.  Bowie meets Keetchie, the daughter of the guy they're hiding out with, and they begin to fall for one another.

After the three convicts pull another heist, Bowie and Keetchie go on the lam together, splitting off for the other two.  And, of course, things get complicated as the two bounce across the middle of America trying to keep ahead of both criminals and the law.

In many ways, They Live By Night is ground zero for the films that would come after it.  Bonnie and Clyde.  Badlands.   Hell, even Gun Crazy is a funhouse mirror version of this movie in which morals are turned upside down.   

Farley Granger who plays Bowie would also appear most famously in Hitchcock's Rope and Strangers on a Train.  And you can see why Ray wanted him in the film.  He's got a certain innocence and you can believe he really does want to do what's right if he had the slightest clue what that looked like.  And, just as much, you can believe that Keetchie is the best thing that ever happened to him - maybe the only good thing.  Keetchie is played by Cathy O'Donnell, who had previously appeared in The Best Years of Our Lives (an amazing post-war film), and would later appear in Ben-Hur.

Because the story has been copied over and over in many forms since, there's something weirdly modern but all-too-familiar about the movie.  It's noir, so one can expect that things won't end well for the players involved, who can't make the right moves at the right times as forces bigger than them work against them.

Even the roadside wedding chapel bit reappears in a number of noir films - a sign of hope and purity made a little cheap and tawdry, something compromised about what's supposed to be a grand occasion.

Visually, the film has a few components that make it stand out, not the least of which is helicopter-mounted camera shots already in 1948, following cars blasting through prairies and dirt roads of rural America.

They Live By Night is a movie well worth checking out and I much more get how it fits in with the genre, especially in the non-urban branch of the genre, the hidden back alleys just off Main Street USA.

Under the Sycamore Trees: End of Twin Peaks (1991) and Fire Walk With Me (1992)



As I mentioned previously, as a TV series, Twin Peaks managed to limp along for most of the second half of the second season.  You could feel the writers realizing they'd taken a bad turn and trying to right the ship in the final few episodes, but the good continues to be outweighed by the bad.

The drippy plotline of the Miss Twin Peaks pageant, and Robyn (Teen Witch) Lively doing her best with a dog of a plotline for her wildly inconsistent character, Lara Flynn Boyle being reduced to a background character, Audrey and Billy Zane going full in flagrante in a private jet right in front of Pete...  and the tired plotline of Lucy choosing the father of her kid - something so worn out even the show winked at how nobody cared anymore by the time she made a decision...

Lost in all this was Harry and his plotline with Josie.  And from what I can find online, Michael Ontkean who played Sheriff Harry Truman walked away from the show fairly bitter about the whole experience.  And I can hardly blame him.

That said - the final episode of the show, directed by David Lynch with writing by Mark Frost, Robert Engels and Harley Peyton, returns the show to form.  Doing such a good job and creating some of the most memorable moments of the entire series that it's easy to forget the meandering path we took to get there.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Regret Watch: Thrashin' (1986)



Last weekend Turner Classic Movies' Saturday night programming block "TCM Underground" showed Thrashin', a 1986 movie about skate boarding.  So, of course I set the 'ol DVR.

No, this is not Gleaming the Cube - which I've never seen, and came along 3 years later.

Most of the marketing for Thrashin' I was aware of came in the form of an ad or two appearing in my comics at the time.  So, check the backs of your 1986-era comics to see if you, too, have a back-cover ad for this opus.

Friday, March 17, 2017

X-Watch: Logan (2017)



I'm late to the game on Logan (2017), the third stand-alone movie for Hugh Jackman's portrayal of the X-Men's conflicted brawler, Wolverine.  Most of you who wanted to see it have seen it, so you won't need me pushing you toward the theater.

While the series began strong and is one of the films responsible for the past twenty years' worth of exploding growth in superhero films, more recent entries have been less than required viewing and - to this viewer - disappointing.  Enough so that I never bothered to watch the second Logan/ Wolverine/ James Howlett movie, The Wolverine, and only caught the most recent X-Men movie via a borrowed BluRay.

It's an interesting movie to see on the heels of Kong: Skull Island, both fantasy actioners intended for an audience with pre-awareness of existing tropes.  Both borrowed and nodded to existing media outside their genre.

But Logan remembered that a story is about character first, plot second, and - arguably - you can care about everything going on in this movie whether or not you've seen any X-Men movies before.  And, really, that's not something just superhero movies struggle with, it's something comics struggle with year in and year out.*  And while I'll argue that the Marvel movies, both stand-alone and Avengers group efforts are heavier on character than plot, in exiting the safe confines of a PG-13 rating, Logan is free to explore much about the character that's hinted at but always seems frustratingly, perhaps hypocritically, absent in most portrayals of a man who has lost track of his kill count and whose own body is the weapon which has taken so many lives.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Noir/ Crawford Watch: Sudden Fear (1952)



We're watching the new FX series, Feud: Bette and Joan (highly recommended), and it reminded me I'd been meaning to watch Sudden Fear (1952), a noirish potboiler starring Ms. Crawford, Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame.

Just the casting alone was enough to raise an eyebrow.  Of course I've seen a number of Grahame's pictures, a handful of Crawford's, but when it comes to Jack Palance, I've seen Batman, Shane and, sigh, his pair of 80's City Slickers comedies.*  And to see him in a movie where he has to act like a basically normal, functioning human was almost bizarre.  Because by the time I was a kid, even in real life Jack Palance was acting like a cartoon weirdo.

It's a strong, taught thriller with some great cinematography, tremendous use of sound and Crawford putting it all out there as she does a large amount of her acting completely alone.

Monday, March 13, 2017

Ape Watch: Kong - Skull Island (2017)




Box office numbers will give me the answer to the question "was anyone really wanting a new King Kong movie, let alone a re-imagined one?"  Because I really don't know.  Our theater was near sold out, but I had the distinct impression it was full of the kinds of movie goers who think picking what movie they'll see ahead of time is a waste of time - you just buy tickets for whatever is starting next.

King Kong, like Frankenstein, is one of those movie concepts that bled out into the pop culture to such a degree - it's just part of the cultural lexicon.  This in spite of the fact very few folks you talk to have actually sat through the original films.  But the imagery of both has become so iconic, the concepts both bizarre and yet easy to grasp and the metaphor so accessible... we all get it.  Giant apes and flesh golems tend to stick in the mind.

Weirdly, Kong: Skull Island (2017) arguably throws away all of that metaphor, telling a different story.  No more Ann Darrow, no John Driscoll, no showboating Carl Denham.  No more "'twas Beauty who killed The Beast."  This is a 1970's-era landing on Skull Island by a mix of government scientists and soon-to-be-done Army soldiers, rotating out of Vietnam and a whole lotta explosions.

The end result is also something altogether different, and that alone can take some getting used to.  You're in for two hours of fast-moving excitement, a razor thin script, name actors without much to do, and a Vietnam known only via high-profile filmic depictions.  All in all, Kong: Skull Island (2017) is maybe not what I was expecting, but it is visually stunning, entertaining, contains some pretty amazing FX and action sequences, and if you don't have a bunch of people talking behind you, is going to keep you glued to the screen for the run-time of the movie.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Robert Osborne Goes to that Movie House in the Great Beyond



Dang.

Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne has merged with The Infinite.

I was pretty much convinced that Robert Osborne was a robot.  It didn't matter what time of day or night I switched on Turner Classic Movies, if a movie wasn't playing, he was providing an intro or outro in a smooth, polished, knowledgeable manner, like the best film prof you never had.  In theory he was the prime-time host, but for several years in there, I literally remember no one else.

I mean, sure, it was just a few minutes per movie, but those need to be written, shot, etc... and it was clear he was pretty hands-on with all aspects.  Including the phenomenal interviews he wrangled with innumerable Hollywood icons, and later as he'd co-host series with  modern luminaries reflecting back on whatever run of movies they were about to show.  And he always got to the nut of what made the film special both writ large and what made fans (these modern film stars) so passionate about the movie.