60th Anniversary Watch: West Side Story (1961)

Watched:  07/10/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1960's

Director:  Robert Wise/ Jerome Robbins

So...  it'd been a while since I'd seen West Side Story (1961).  No real new insight here, but... the re-make (by Spielberg, coming soon) is going to drive all sorts of discussions when The Kids figure out people have been aware of many of today's social issues for... ever.  And it's not comforting that we're not many steps forward from where we were in the 1950's when the play was written.

Also - expect people to freak out that the last 1/3rd of the musical, just as you may remember Romeo and Juliet, is just super depressing.  Like, no one is a hero in this thing.  Maybe Maria.  And even Anita's attempts to warn Tony almost lead to outright rape at the hands of the very guys she's momentarily holding blameless for her love's death.  

PODCAST: "Theatre of Blood" (1973) - A Signal Watch Horror Canon PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Watched:  07/07/2021

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Douglas Hickox

For more ways to listen

SimonUK and Ryan take the stage to talk a 1970's Brit-horror favorite! Join us as we soliloquize on a film that goes deep on The Bard, delivers Vincent Price in fine form, gives us Diana Rigg in a look I doubt she sported much in public, and plenty of chills, thrills and camp gallows humor! It's a big cast having a grand time at the grand guignol!

The Signal Watch PodCast · "Theatre of Blood" (1973) - a Signal Watch Horror Canon PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Music

Theatre of Blood Main Theme - Michael J Lewis

Theatre of Blood, Edwina's Theme - Michael J Lewis

 

Canon Playlist

The Signal Watch PodCast · The Signal Watch Canon

Hitch Watch: Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Watched:  07/09/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Fourth

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Hitchcock

There's no reason in the world for me to write anything about Shadow of a Doubt (1943), if you're assuming I'd have anything new to say on one of the most discussed and analyzed films of the past century.  

I saw it the first time in film school, and, man, was I sold.  Re-watching it now, I'm no less - if even more - sold.  

So, go out and watch it, even if you've seen it before.

And, man, I love the one classmate of Theresa Wright's who is working in the bar and has the best "well, my life turned out shitty" attitude of anyone put to film.

Neo-Noir Heist Gangster Watch: No Sudden Move (2021)

Watched:  07/08/2021

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

Director:  Soderbergh

I'm not going to bother with a plot summary for this one.  It's too twisty-turny, and anything I'd say would spoil the damn thing.  Plus, I want to watch it again almost immediately.

What is weird is that I've never not thoroughly enjoyed a movie by director Steven Soderbergh, but I also don't seek them out.  I've maybe seen 1/3rd or less of his output in film, and pretty much zero of his television (I did watch the first season of The Knick), but - I'll rewatch the movies when they're on and basically acknowledge I like his stuff.  

And this movie is no exception.  

Released directly to HBOmax in this year of 2021 as WB wades through the echoes of the HBOmax launch, COVID and whatever the AT&T execs thought were swell ideas before realizing "oh, damn, we don't know what we're doing and we keep setting the place on fire" with WB and dumping it... this one is easy to access if you've already got your HBOmax subscription - so go watch it.  No, seriously.

No Sudden Move (2021) stars a dozen people you know and like, and you'll grow to know and like a few more along the ways (this film was a reminder to go back and watch Uncut Gems to see Julia Fox in another project).  

Don Cheadle, Del Toro, David Harbour, Jon Hamm, Brenda Fraser, Kieran Culkin, Ray Liotta and Signal Watch fave Bill Duke.  And dozens and dozens more.  Standouts in an amazing cast include Amy Seimetz as Harbour's wife and young Noah Jupe as his teen son.  

What starts as a gangland picture becomes a heist picture, and all with a twinge of noirishness to it, more for some characters than others.  There's no small amount of commentary baked into the movie, so be ready for that - including the conflicts between ethnicities and races in 1950's Detroit - echoing through clearly to 2021.  It moves at a hell of a clip for a 2 hour film, and it's hard to know at the outset what's important and what's not - but assume it's all important.  Like most Soderbergh movies, it's satisfying because it uses all the parts of the animal in the stew.  

In an era where actors bemoan somehow having two Marvel movies per year means they can't get work or there's nothing else happening - it is a welcome change to see Soderbergh show up with his stock players and put on another show, even if it's not on the big screen.  

There's some technical choices made I have questions about, and I'm curious about, and we can discuss at some future date, but it was enough to make me wonder if I screwed up the settings on my TV.  

Anyhoo.  No Sudden Move is excellent.  I have no notes for the cast and crew.

And I have a question for anyone who wants to take the discussion offline.

Richard Donner Merges With the Infinite

 

Director Richard Donner has passed at the age of 91.

Donner has directed and produced a tremendous number of films that impacted my generation, from The Omen to Lethal Weapon to Scrooged to Goonies to, of course, Superman: The Movie.  

Of course, closest to our hearts here is and will be Superman: The Movie, one of my first movie memories, and - curiously - the movie that has perhaps had the most impact on my life of any film.  And I can name a handful of people who can say the same.  While film is a massively collaborative medium, and here at the Signal Watch we only pay attention to auteur theory in certain cases, it was Donner who shepherded that movie and vision of Superman as a friend, a pal, a genuinely good person here to assist us, to the big screen - and in the period of cinema that was perhaps more genuinely and honestly cynical than the market-driven edginess of today.  The Salkinds bank-rolled the thing and Reeve and Kidder were themselves, but Donner's the guy who brought it together and put it on the screen.

Wardrobe may become outdated, a few cultural touchstones no longer work, but I can tell you... I've sat in more than a half-dozen theaters as an adult watching Superman unspool before always very mixed audiences (the matinees are always best attended and most fun), and this film still works, full stop.  People laugh, they cheer, they ooh and aah at this movie.  And they absolutely, totally buy into the idea of Superman, himself.  

Donner gets left out of the USC-explosion conversation and the new wave of Hollywood blockbusters.  He's older than Spielberg and Lucas, maybe didn't get the press and adulation they did, but he kept a hand in film and television straight through today, moving on from direction when so many of his contemporaries faded.  He hadn't directed in some time, working as a producer, but he had a head for story and character and how they intermingled that's undeniable, and necessary to make a film that has a chance of working.  I mean - go look at what Donner did with Scrooged some time.  That's a remarkable movie and lives on in the cinema landscape in a way dozens of other 80's comedies and endless Christmas Carol adaptations haven't managed to accomplish.  

And, of course, he was great in interviews - a sort of chummy, baritone-voiced fellow who made it sound like work he was delighted to do.  Maybe not delving into a lot of discussion of art and artistry, but what would make a film actually work.  

I will surely miss knowing he's out there, but he left a terrific legacy.  Here's to one of the greats.  Godspeed.

PODCAST: "Midsommar" (2019) - a Signal Watch Canon Episode w/ AmyC and Ryan

Watched:  07/03/2021

Format:  Amazon Prime Streaming

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2010's

Director:  Ari Aster

For more ways to listen

AmyC and Ryan delve into the 2019 horror film that really gets into the end-result of people dressing too matchy-matchy and insisting on group activities. It's a slow burn of a film with a lot worth talking about, from amazing visuals to the unique presentation of horror elements to why it fits in our Co-Contributor Canon. Let's all take a break and not push hard enough to find out what folks are putting in the meat pies.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 151: "Midsommar" (2019) - a Signal Watch Canon Episode w/ AmyC and Ryan

Music:

Prophesy - Bobby Krlic, Midsommar OST

The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore) - Frankie Valli

Canon Playlist:

The Signal Watch PodCast · The Signal Watch Canon

Food Watch: Chef (2014)

Watched:  07/03/2021

Format:  Amazon Prime (I think.  Jamie dialed it up.)

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2010's

Director:  Jon Favreau

Chef (2014) is a terrific little film, not too hung up on being more than light entertainment with a bit of grounding in mid-life crisis and family issues.   And, of course, the whole thing is kind of meta.  

Starting as a kind of wunderkind responsible for writing and starring in Swingers back in '96, Favreau had been working on bigger and bigger films, not least kickstarting the Marvel Universe by directing, starring in and otherwise producing the Iron Man films (at pre and post-Disney Marvel).  But if the movie is about a guy who works at a well-respected LA bistro, losing touch with his son and after the divorce from his wife (a very good+funny Sofia Vergara), and certainly in a rut professionally - one can see how Favreau might have come to a story about a guy who felt like he needed to get back to the basics of what he loved in the first place.  

In the film, he accidentally starts a twitter-war with a famed food reviewer that... escalates.  Favreau has to do what Rocky's of all types have always done - go back to where it started and find the passion again.  Unfortunately for me, that starting over looked awesome, and I was starving while watching the movie.

Fourth of July

July 4, 1776 is the date that the Second Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence.  A vote had been held on July 2, 1776 to agree to seek independence from Britain in the form of the Lee Resolution.  However, a formal Declaration of Independence did not appear until July 4th.

Perhaps the date we observe has as much to do with the stirring text of the Declaration as anything - and it is the formal document eventually signed by most of the delegates to the Congress. 

While not a document which laid down the manner in which the government would be run, which would not arrive for over a decade in the form of the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence does lay down the moral reasoning for our separation from England.  The Preamble, often memorized by school children over the years, and familiar to most Americans, formed the ethos of America as a state which required the consent of the governed, and that the government would serve the needs of the people.  But also that government not be changed on a whim - but when the government no longer responded to the needs of the governed.  

Neo-Noir Watch: Night Moves (1975)

Watched:  07/03/2021

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Arthur Penn

46 years on, it's curious to watch a movie that was doing 1970's meta-commentary on hard-boiled detective stories of the 20's - 1950's in books and movies (and radio and early TV),  and know that we're about as far from 1975 as Night Moves was from the earliest Black Mask detective stories.  We've also processed and analyzed the 1970's movie era as much as any as directors leveraged the 1960's collapse of the studio system to tell stories TV could not, carrying with them the cynicism of the era.  

The obvious comparison is to The Long Goodbye, based on one of the final Chandler-penned Philip Marlowe novels.  But while that book was a metacommentary on... any number of things even in its 1950's release window and lended itself naturally to a 1970's adaptation, Night Moves exists in our world, in which everyone knows who Sam Spade is from the books and whatnot, and makes jokes about detectives thinking they're heroes of those books.*

Anderson Watch: Bottle Rocket (1996)

Watched:  06/30/2021

Format:  DVD (I own this DVD and totally forgot)

Viewing:  third

Decade:  1990's

Director:  Wes Anderson

Long before Wes Anderson became someone 32 year olds had strong opinions about on twitter, he released a small-budget picture through Columbia Pictures, which is likely a story unto itself.  I note big names like Polly Platt and James L. Brooks showed up in producer credits - and.. y'all, this is Anderson's first feature credit and his second credit at all on IMDB.  It's... weird.  

But the good news is that this small film is still remarkably watchable, and free of many of the gimmicks and Anderson-isms that would make those 32 year olds have strong opinions on twitter, while clearly and obviously being part of the Anderson oeuvre.