Ann Miller Watch: Hit the Deck (1955) and Reveille with Beverly (1943) and The Great American Pastime (1956)

shut the hell up, Tom Ewell

Watched: 08/8 (HtD), 08/9 (RwB), 8/11 (GAP)
Format:  Ann Miller Day of TCM
Viewing:  First for all 3
Decade:  1950's, 1940's


Look, I've been clear about the whole Ann Miller thing, and I'm not going to apologize for it.

It's August, and therefore "Summer Under the Stars" time on TCM, which means 24 hours of movies from one actor each day all month.  And this last week featured Ann Miller day, and here we all are.

Three very different movies.

Hit the Deck (1955) is pretty clearly a "I like Guys and Dolls" and "wow, was On the Town a decent movie" mash-up.  I dunno.  It was fine.  Little Debbie Reynolds is cute as a button.  Ann Miller got a couple of numbers.  It's okay.  It has a lot of deeply sexist set-up that kind of unravels in a pleasant way and has a great few numbers by the women in the movie.  And it's always great to see Russ Tamblyn.  And I need to look into this Kay Armen.  She was terrific.

Reveille with Beverly (1943) is war-time spirit-boosting propaganda and was one of the movies that was essentially an excuse to do a musical variety show with everyone from Duke Ellington to Bob Crosby.  Ann Miller plays a feisty and insanely perky radio host.  The film, however, ends on a very strange pivot as they remind you, all the soldiers are going off to war - and it was this odd, incredibly sad transition, with Beverly still in her show costume watching them go.

The Great American Pastime (1956) is a post-war movie trying to recapture some of the magic of Seven-Year Itch and reminding me "I don't particularly care for Tom Ewell".   What could have been a Bad News Bears instead is kind of a sitcom dad who seems oblivious to the fact he's married to Anne Francis and that Anne Francis has decided Ann Miller is a sexual threat (she is not, which...  I mean).  Anyway - the movie felt really under-written and I kind of hated the way they wrote Tom Ewell's son.  Seemed like a dopey ingrate.


But Ann Miller looked great in all of these movies.  So.

Greatest Movie Ever Made Watch: Airplane! (1980)

Watched:  08/07/2020
Format:  Netflix
Viewing:  Man, who knows?
Decade:  1980's
Directors: 

Jim Abrahams
David Zucker
Jerry Zucker

I have never not enjoyed watching Airplane!  (1980).  Yes, it's jokes are dated, there's a flavor of what would now be considered low-key racism and punching down at some people.  But, goddammit, Airplane! is, minute by minute, *trying*.  It doesn't have some message that drives the movie off cliff as it gives us some low-rent stakes (thanks, Jud Apatow, for giving us two decades of movies about guys all learning the same lessons over and over).  The only stakes in Airplane are dumb and don't matter - the plot there so we have a reason to do the gags.

Heck, the movie doesn't really care if the leads are "likeable" - it's beside the point.  But they are, and Julie Haggerty doesn't get the credit she deserves.  A lot of the humor isn't "gentle".  Personally, I find the line-up of people waiting to calm the passenger in hysterics to be a nigh-perfect visual.

And, of course, Leslie Nielsen is at his best here.

Anyway.  Airplane! is the finest in film comedy and I won't tolerate dissent on this subject.

PodCast: 114 "The Spy Who Loved Me" (1977) - A Bond PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Watched: 07/30/2020
Format: BluRay
Viewing: Unknown
Decade: 1970's
Director: Lewis Gilbert

For more ways to listen


It's Roger Moore, and nobody does it better! One of the biggest-scale Bond movies, with some great villains, a terrific romance and cool-as-hell gadgets! What's not to like about this one? SimonUK and Ryan discuss a Bond movie that may be at sea, but is never adrift. Plus - Ryan gets to talk about Caroline Munro for a bit.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 114: " Spy Who Loved Me" (1977) - Bond Watch w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Music:

Nobody Does it Better - Carly Simon (like you didn't know)


Playlist:

The Signal Watch PodCast · Bond Watch!

Caroline Munro is here to remind you that just because you're trying to kill people doesn't mean you can't look your best

Kaiju Watch: Godzilla v King Ghidorah (1991)

Watched:  08/06/2020
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  third
Decade:  1990's
Director:  Kazuki Ōmori

I know I always say this, but this movie is straight nonsense.

In particular, the flavor of nonsense in this movie is an alarming disregard for logic tied to time travel.  Also, cuts and colors of suit.

Amazon Watch Party this Friday: Cherry 2000

betting that is not the shirt or physique we see in the film

Day:  08/07/2020
Time:  8:30 Central/ 6:30 Pacific
Amazon Watch Party Link HERE

Jamie has been on about this movie for the near-26 years I've been with her.  So we're watching it, because I did see it was a kid, believing it would have some boobs.  It doesn't.  And that's mostly all I remember:  Premium cable sadness.

Anyway, get ready for some 1980's post-apocalyptic nonsense starring Melanie Griffith, who never had those shoulders in the poster. Nor do those shoulders make any sense in relation to the hips of same Melanie Griffith in that poster.

We're blaming Jamie for this one.

Don't Judge Me Watch: Making Mr. Right (1987)

Watched:  08/02/2020

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Unknown.  At least second.

Decade:  late 80's

Director:  Susan Seidelman

I had only vague memories of Making Mr. Right (1987), a movie I watched on cable as a kid.  And this is the part where I talk about women and their appearance and probably get in trouble.  But I essentially had two memories of Making Mr. Right, aside from very, very broad strokes of the plot of a woman getting mixed up with a scientist and the robot who looks just like him and the robot/doctor is John Malkovich in a role you'll be like "what? why?"

Wilford Brimley Merges With The Infinite

Wilford Brimley, a man I think it's safe to say all of us had a multi-faceted fondness for, has passed.

From the NYT.

I can't say how I became aware of Wilford Brimley.  I knew who he was by the time I saw Cocoon in the theater.  Maybe he was doing oatmeal commercials by then.  I can't say.

He was always a lot younger than he looked - he was only 50ish when they filmed Cocoon.  He would have been about 45 when he did The Thing.  One of his craziest coups was playing the Postmaster General of the USPS for about one minute on Seinfeld and doing that thing he'd done in The Firm where Grandpa-is-low-key-threatening-me that was bizarrely terrifying.

The last few years, Brimley discovered twitter and was hilarious and a cheerful spot.

Watch Party Watch: Psychomania (1973)

Watched:  07/31/2020
Format:  Amazon Watch Party
Viewing:  Second
Decade: 1970's
Director: Don Sharp

SimonUK and I already did this one as a PodCast.  Check it out.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 023: "Psychomania" - Halloween 2018 Ep. 1 w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Friday Amazon Watch Party: PSYCHOMANIA

I've suffered through this movie, and now you should too.

It's "Psychomania" - a movie British people love and Americans will find baffling.

The leader of a biker gang in a small, British municipality makes a deal with the devil for power or immortality or both (I can't remember) and returns to life to wreak havoc.  And by havoc, I mean - kind of upsetting old ladies and people on ladders.

The final film of famed actor George Sanders, this one plays with life, death, and life again.  And frogs.  and motorcycles.  And very, very bad music.

Day:  Friday 07/31/2020
Time:  8:30 Central
Amazon Watch Party (link here)

Olivia de Havilland Merges with The Infinite

Olivia de Havilland has passed at the age of 104. 

With an astounding career that spanned the Golden Age of Hollywood into the post-studio system Hollywood, Olivia de Havilland was the last, living player from some of the great pictures of the early sound era.  She was in Gone with the Wind, but I prefer her and the movie of The Adventures of Robin Hood, in which she co-starred as Maid Marian. 

Just last week, during my lunch break, I watched her in part of Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

She had remarked in her last decades that being one of the last living actors from a bygone era of Hollywood was like being from a place no one else could remember.  That always struck me as remarkably sad.

She'd lived in France for the past six decades, returning to the US for various events and film roles. 

Here's to a grand actress.

Bruce Watch: Fist of Fury (1972)

Watched:  07/25/2020
Format:  Criterion BluRay
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1970's
Director:  Wei Lo

So, if the *last* Bruce Lee movie I watched I wondered "hey, why didn't they use more of the snow cone girl?" - friends, I have learned that is Nora Miao, and I was not the only one who thought she should get more screentime.  Here she plays the childhood sweetheart of Bruce Lee's Chen Zhen, and she appears in a few of Bruce Lee's big-name movies.

First, I loved Fist of Fury (1972).  Great story, interesting character arc, complex scenarios and amazing fight scenes.  Nothing to not like.  I don't know if the film had a much higher budget than The Big Boss, but it just *looks* better than the prior film, and the story is infinitely tighter.

The story will feel a bit familiar to those of us who've seen Fist of Legend (which you should 100% see), and I'm unclear if this movie is based on a true story of any kind.  I don't think so, but... the movie says it does?

When a Master of a martial arts school dies under mysterious circumstances, his star pupil, a passionate young Bruce Lee, returns to Shanghai to mourn - and, once he's clicked to the fact the death made no sense - seek out justice.  The story takes place in The Settlement, something I had to look up, an international portion of Shanghai that has a fascinating history.

The Japanese come to the funeral for the Master and basically bully multiple schools at once, knowing that the Chinese can't push back.  Except for Chen Zhen, who comes to the Japanese dojo and kicks the living crap out of *everyone* in a dynamic fight sequence.  However, this leads to retribution on several fronts and an impossible situation for Chen Zhen's school.

Bruce realizes this was the girl selling shave-ice in the last movie

At the heart of the film is Chen Zhen's romance with Nora Miao, and their interrupted dreams of settling down and running a martial-arts school, and the opportunity for Lee to do some dramatic acting alongside his angry-young-man work.

Anyway - shocker, this is a good Bruce Lee film.

PODCAST: 112 "True Lies" (1994) - an ArnieFest Installment w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Watched:  07/09/2020
Format:  Amazon Streaming
Viewing:  No idea
Decade:  1990's
Director:  James Cameron

More ways to listen

ArnieFest continues with a mid-90's film that dares to ask "what if James Bond were married? And Austrian? And American? And Tom Arnold was there?" It's the action comedy sensation that everyone in film school had to write a paper about and feel bad for enjoying. SimonUK and Ryan go on a less-than-secret mission to revisit this Arnie favorite.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 112: "True Lies" (1994) - ArnieFest w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Music:

Main Theme - Brad Fiedel, True Lies OST
Nuclear Kiss - Shirley Walker, True Lies OST


Playlist:

The Signal Watch PodCast · Arnie Fest

Bruce Lee Watch: The Big Boss (1971)

Watched:  07/21/2020
Format:  Criterion BluRay
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1970's
Director:  Lo Wei

I've only ever seen two Bruce Lee movies, but - like everyone - I like the *idea* of Bruce Lee.  His byzantine relationship with America and Hong Kong, his cocksure manner that he could 200% back up, his ability to synthesize the old into the new, his drive and his ability to cut to the quick of reality in a few spare words that it comes off as spiritualism.

Be water, indeed.

The Big Boss (1971) is not Lee's first movie.  He'd been a child actor before getting sent to the US (where he was born and so had citizenship - his father touring in the US as a performer at the time of his birth) for street-fighting and headng down a bad path.  Lee had starred in 20 movies or so in Hong Kong, and appeared on US television as Kato and other roles, as well as appearing in the Chandler adapted film Marlowe (he's good, but his exit is not great).

He returned to Hong Kong to find out he was a bit of a star thanks to The Green Hornet, and was hired by Golden Harvest, who put him in The Big Boss.  By American standards of 1971, it's a low-budget production.  The story is fairly straightforward.  And Lee is used very strangely.

According to an interview attached to the disc, The producers weren't sure which of the two main characters at the start of the film would be the hero of the story, so Lee's character just sort of watches from the sidelines.  Apparently the producer, Raymond Chow, liked what he saw, because he canned the director and put Lee in the rest of the film - and the rest is history.

When he's finally allowed to cut loose, Lee is like a magnesium flare suddenly bursting into the film.  His martial arts are totally different, he's the fully formed, swagger-prone Lee you know.  The beginning of the movie is a decent set-up, if a bit stiff, but once Lee enters the fray (breaking a promise to his mother not fight), the rest of the movie takes off like a shot.  Including simple, dramatic scenes.

In a way, it's like seeing a character dropped in from another movie, and I am not bagging on 1970's martial arts films, but there's a reason The Big Boss kick-started Lee's superstardom.  He's really frikkin' good and clearly an innovator of character and fighting style. 

I won't oversell the actual film.  It's creaky and clunky, and marginally more adult than I had expected (some light nudity and sexuality paired with an axe to the head or two, and piles upon piles of dead people).  And there are plot holes.  But when it takes off, you don't really care all that much. 

Mostly I want to know what happened to the girl you see selling snow cones at the beginning.  I kept thinking she'd be relevant - but not so much. 

Here's to you, snow cone lady.

Next Up - Amazon Watch Party - "Barbarella" 1968

The outerspace equivalent of Seinfeld's "Rochelle, Rochelle" - Barbarella is a young girl's strange, erotic journey from one dopey planet to another.

It's really pitched as being sexy, and maybe this does it for someone out there, but aside from giving us the name of a great 1980's band and containing a series of WTF moments and an electric organ with quite the bonus features, Barbarella is kind of like a movie that promises you the sexy and then lifts the hem of her skirt to show you some ankle whilst smiling coyly.

Anyway, it IS batshit crazy, so we're going to watch it.  It co-stars John Phillip Law, which makes me wish Danger: Diabolik were available.  But it is not.

Day:  Friday 07/24/2020
Time:  8:30 PM Central
Format:  Amazon Watch Party streaming

Watch Party Watch: The Stepford Wives (1975)

Watched:  07/17/2020

Format:  Amazon Prime Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Bryan Forbes

The Stepford Wives (1975) is a movie you will absolutely guess how it works and what it is, and how it will end, and you should absolutely still watch it.  

Starring Katharine Ross (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), it's a New York City woman with two young girls and a husband as they move into the suburban town of Stepford, CT.  Good schools, big houses and yards, it's a post WWII dream.  Immediately we learn that Joanna's (Ross) husband didn't actually consult with her about the move, which she found out was a done deal after she saw the house and agreed to it.  But she let that slide.

Noirish Melodrama Watch: The Sign of the Ram (1948)

Watched:  07/20/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1940's
Director:  John Sturges

A sort of gothic noir, The Sign of the Ram (1948) is a peculiar film.  Set in a sprawling English countryside home, a seemingly happy family welcomes a new secretary into the fold (Phyllis Thaxter).  She's to be the aid, in particular, to the beautiful, young, wheelchair bound stepmother to the family. 

The film is a showcase for actress Susan Peters who had screen success until a hunting accident left her in a wheelchair.  She's actually fantastic in the role, which is that of the antagonist.  This is, apparently, the screenplay she finally accepted after being asked to play a chipper Pollyanna overcoming adversity in offer after offer.  I'll not play armchair psychologist, but it's a hell of a heel turn for Peters to take on - but she nails it, showing tremendous range in the single role (young actors, take note: you can play all sorts of things with an angry character and none of them have to read "angry"). 

That said, there's something both entirely believable about the tension at the center of the film - a family completely dominated by the iron willed matriarch who plays everyone like puppets without them ever noticing it - and a sense of melodrama that skews a bit too much toward telegraphing where the film is headed. 

It's well shot, Peters and Thaxter are great, but I can't say it was exactly my cup of tea.  It was clearly made in the shadow of stuff like Rebecca, but never quite hits those notes.  But for a solid melodrama, you could do worse.

Musical Watch: Hamilton (2020)

Watched:  July 3, 2020
Format:  Disney+
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2020/ 2010
Director:  Thomas Kail

Certainly the most discussed musical in decades - and with far better reason than most (whether you like it or not) - Hamilton had become a cultural event well before Disney+ released a recorded version of the show on the platform on July 3rd.  This was not a film adaptation like we've seen in the last few years - like Les Miserables or even Cats.  Movie stars who can carry a tune were not swapped out for the Broadway cast, and we're not decades away from shows debuting, making a splash, touring and becoming so ubiquitous, you might as well make a movie because why not?

Instead, Hamilton (2020) as released is the version shot on stage roughly four years ago, starring mostly the original cast, which - since 2016 - has since scattered to the four winds, seeking their Hamilton-derived fortunes (I actually like Leslie Odom Jr's new record, Mr., for whatever that is worth to you).  The film existing is a wonderful change for Broadway, who has told themselves lots of stories about the need for the immediacy of theater's live experience and has usually only dropped original cast recordings as documents of how a show was conceived and presented.  Directed by the show's actual director, Thomas Kail, the "film" of Hamilton is thoughtfully, and, indeed, artfully shot.  Heck, last week "One Perfect Shot", a twitter account with the best in cinematography, included a shot from Hamilton.

Monroe Watch: "The Seven Year Itch" (1955)

Watched:  07/12/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1950's
Director:  Billy Wilder

I found this movie some hard going, but given it starred Monroe and was directed by Billy Wilder, I'm going to give it some grace.  It's not just a product of its time, it's a distilled crystallization of its time.  Add in that it's been so copied from, borrowed from, and it's novelties have been so co-opted and, in fact, are a mainstream method of visual comedy for the past 20 years, it's a bit odd to see it in its nascent form.

Based on a stage play, The Seven Year Itch (1955) is a movie about a married man who sends his wife and young son out of New York City and into the country during the hot summer months so he can get some work done, kick cigarettes and lay low.  Until he returns home the first night and finds Marilyn Monroe living upstairs, sub-letting his neighbor's apartment.

Random Watch: Palm Springs (2020)

Watched:  07/15/2020
Format:  Hulu
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2020's
Director:  Max Barbakow

To get it out of the way: this movie featured a song I used to love but had not heard it in 30 years, and it kind of freaked me out.  So here's to The Brazilian, from Invisible Touch by Genesis.*  Middle School Me was delighted to hear it again.

Also - to get it out of the way:  SPOILERS

I highly recommend watching this movie with zero spoilers, including skipping the trailer.

Amazon Watch Party: The Stepford Wives (1975)

Join us this Friday as we check out the 1975 classic, The Stepford Wives!  I've never seen it, but I bet it'll be a good model for Jamie to watch so she can be a better wife and I can be a better husband.


Day:  Friday - 07/17/2020
Time:  8:30 PM Central

Amazon Watch Party Link

We really liked Amazon Watch Party last time we gave it a go, and we think you'd like it, too!

So, join us, chatter along, and we'll talk about the movie as it unfolds!