Friday, April 1, 2022

Friday Watch Party: Flash Gordon (savior of the universe!)



FRIDAY.  Join us as we watch himbo Sam Jones as Flash Gordon in the 1980's edition of a very 1930's idea.  

It's interstellar chaos when the Moons of Mongo rain down natural disaster on Earth, but luckily we've got a football player, a lady and the guy from Fiddler on the Roof to challenge Max Von Sydow in what is a weird space twist on "The Yellow Menace".  But Brian Blessed shows up in metal wings and a cool hat.

Also, young Timothy Dalton making knees shake.

This movie is famously bananas, and we think you'll like it.  Sets that make no sense, music by Queen.  A princess that's supposed to be kind of a bad guy, but you're like... okay, I'll join your side.  Flying blind on a rocket cycle.  There's just no end to the joys of this movie.

Day:  Friday, April 1
Time:  8:30 Central
Service:  Amazon Watch Party
Cost:  $4




Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Doc Watch: Summer of Soul (2021)




Watched:  03/30/2022
Format:  Disney+
Viewing:  First
Director:  Questlove

I started watching Summer of Soul (2021) last year on Hulu, but got in trouble with Jamie for starting it without her.  But somehow we never circled back and watched it.  

Well, I guess it won an Academy Award, so that's a feather in Questlove's cap.  And well deserved.  But it also means there's no real reason for me to further discuss or sell you on this movie.  Or even explain it.  

It's a really beautiful, amazing thing.  Watch it.


Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Doc Watch: You Don't Nomi (2019)




Watched:  03/29/2022
Format:  Amazon Streaming
Viewing:  First
Director:  Jeffrey McHale

After watching and podcasting Showgirls, I believe Justin (and then Paul) suggested I watch the documentary You Don't Nomi (2019) a sort of retrospective investigating how we can view the 1995 film, seen as a catastrophe at the time of release but which has been reconsidered as a camp classic in the intervening years.  The doc features multiple reviewers, entertainers and others engaging with the film.  No small amount of the original film is seen as the movie leverages the idea of fair-use in investigating and transforming the source material - and so too does it liberally borrow from other films by Paul Verhoeven.  

In many ways, it's like a bit of film school packed into a tidy 1:38 or whatever it was.  Opinions are applied as fact, schools of thought as dogma.  But almost no one speaking is in total agreement.  We look at what else Verhoeven has done, we look for things he returns to, what his films say on certain topics (women!  violence!  seeeeeeeexxxx!) and try to draw conclusions.  And with Verhoeven, the answer is often that, no, he's not making a mistake or doing something goofy, he meant something specific and it wasn't there to make you feel better or confirm your biases.  All of which, were I to watch Showgirls sober, would definitely make me re-evaluate the film.  

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Chill Out Watch: Napolean Dynamite (2004)




Watched:  03/25/2022
Format:  Amazon Prime
Viewing:  Unknown
Director:  Jared Hess

I am torn between writing a lengthy thing about this movie and writing nothing about this movie, and I don't think the world is better for me writing a longer thing.  We all know this movie is 1000x better than we thought it would be.  

So, I will just say that Tina Majorino is the not-at-all-secret weapon of this movie, and it's amazing.  

Also, I have that the local AC and plumbing company is doing Napolean Dynamite skits for its commercials.  They aren't good.




Happy Birthday, Sterling Hayden




Yesterday marked the 106th birthday of reluctant movie star Sterling Hayden.

I don't think it's a huge surprise that I'll pick any of a number of female stars from the mid-20th Century as a perfectly good reason to watch a film, but the number of male stars who push a movie to the top of my watch pile is smaller.  Up at the top of that list is, and always will be, Sterling Hayden.

Hayden didn't seem to think much of acting, I guess, but it was how he made his living when he wasn't running off on a boat.  He has an insane war record that includes lying about who he really was (he wasn't famous yet) and winging up in the OSS where he was basically a Howling Commando.

In films, Hayden always plays someone reflecting his presence, but it's cops, thieves, cowboys, pirates and eventually General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove.  He's better than he probably ever gave himself credit for, and while not every film he was in was a homerun, he was never the issue.

Anyway, if you haven't ever see a Sterling Hayden film (and you have, he's the policeman in The Godfather who Michael takes care of in the restaurant.  Spoilers, I guess.), I'm happy to suggest a few.


Friday, March 25, 2022

PodCast 190: "Showgirls" (1995) - A Day-Drinking Surprise Birthday Movie Exchange w/ Jamie and Ryan




Watched:  03/19/2022
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  Second
Decade:  1990's
Director:  Paul Verhoeven




NSFW!!! This year for their birthdays, Jamie and Ryan are exchanging movies, but each will surprise the other with their selection. For Jamie's birthday, Ryan rolled out the martinis and 1995's most notorious camp-tastic hit in glorious NC-17 style. It's a wild world of the American Dream if your dream is to DANCE. Mine isn't, so this mostly seemed like it was trying very hard to make a point, but forgot what that point was multiple times along the way.


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Vision Thing - Sisters of Mercy
Goddess - David A. Steward, Showgirls OST


Ryan's Random Cinema

Quarantine Watch Cont'd: Love Is Blind Season 2

about 3.5 of these people are sociopaths



I don't really watch "reality TV" anymore.  There's plenty wrong with it, and I don't think I need to get into the myriad reasons I think it's a large contributing factor as to why we're at this end-stage as a species.  I don't think Chrisley Knows Best or Season 52 of "Shirtless Morons Hooking-Up With The Prettiest Girls From The Slow Learners Class" has set our monoculture on the path to earning a place among the space-faring races.  Call me crazy.

I mean, I did watch some back around 2002-2006, but I don't know how to tell you people:  it's all the same.  Including home make-over shows.  Or people just off the road pretending to look for Bigfoot.  

But back when we were actually still scared of coronavirus enough to Lysol our produce, I remember laying on the couch sideways and letting hour after hour of Love Is Blind Season 1 slide by.  My memory of the show is minimal.  Someone named "Jessica"* was a real piece of work, and the very pretty girl married a guy who couldn't believe his luck**.  That's about it.  That's my memory of 11 hours of TV.  In fact, I suspect Nick and Vanessa Lachey hosted the series, but Jamie and I spent five minutes debating if they had been and couldn't remember.***

At the time, we had no idea what was happening in the world and whether or not we would be dead within weeks.  This was Weekend 1 of COVID showing up, and suddenly we were all stuck home with streaming services, and Netflix had this and Tiger King.   I couldn't deal with Tiger King, so we never finished it.  Or at least I didn't.  I don't know what Jamie did.

Season 2 has rolled out, and I declared "let's see what these horny morons are up to."  So we put it on.

Thursday, March 24, 2022

Madeleine Albright Merges With The Infinite


 
Madeleine Albright, a woman of legendary accomplishment, has passed.

Albright was the first female Secretary of State, and had the intelligence, personality and skill one would expect of a trailblazer at such high levels.  Her deftness in diplomacy was what you want out of a Secretary of State, and we saw her charm and conversational skills up front in an era where talk shows welcomed Secretaries of State and the population (a) could name who that person was before they took the stage, and (b) could watch them speak without shouting slurs at someone from a party to which they did not belong.  

But as a refugee first from Nazis and then the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, as someone who went for it in an era where expectations were she stay home and live a quiet, domestic life, Albright's pivot to law and public policy after becoming a wife and mother was notable, before she began her climb.  

Her tenure was perhaps one of few bright spots of the second half of the Clinton administration, though not unmarred by the challenges of the role and the expected disagreements in a political context, both from the right and left.  No one plays at that level and escapes unscathed.  

It was an amazing life and career, and I hope folks appreciate and understand what paths she created in the US and what she did for the nation as ambassador and Secretary of State.


Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Sunday, March 20, 2022

Parker Watch: Parker (2013)




Watched: 03/18/2022
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  Second
Decade:  2010's
Director:  Taylor Hackford

By now, I assume y'all know I'm a bit of a completionist, and I'm slowly buying the BluRays of all the movies based upon the Parker novels by Richard Stark.  Most famous of these movies include Point Blank with Lee Marvin and Payback starring Mel Gibson (which I don't own because Gibson, but probably will buy used to take him out of the money chain).  

If you're newer to the blog, when I traveled a lot for work, I read all 24 Parker novels and the Grofeld offshoots.  The movies never match the books - writer Richard Stark (real name: Donald Westlake) was not willing to let them use the name "Parker" as he was aware that the movies would differ too much from the books, and movie people tend to miss the point of Parker.  Which is 100% true.  So the movies are all oddball mutations of Parker as a character and the plots of the novels  - which, if done straight, would be fascinating stuff and probably spur a 1000 think pieces about following a character who is in no way a hero.  He is not a badguy, but he is a bad guy.