Friday, September 16, 2022

Noir Watch: Hit and Run (1957)


Watched:  09/15/2022
Format:  TCM Noir Alley
Viewing:  First
Director:  Hugo Haas

Eddie Muller may or may not have programmed this flick for Noir Alley, but he did host it.  I don't really know how Noir Alley selections work, to be honest.

But he seemed delighted to show a poverty row-adjacent film and talk about Hugo Haas, the producer, director and star of Hit and Run (1957), a self-made man in cinema who only made a handful of films, but did it on his own terms, including casting himself alongside Cleo Moore, one of the lesser known blonde bombshells of the mid-50's.  And there's probably a fascinating movie or prestige TV show about the shadow world of these films and their distribution in an era where the studios were still running the show and for everyone else, it was the collision of art and commerce and doing what you could afford to do.

Hit and Run plays mostly like a local theater production of The Postman Always Rings Twice, but like the local community theater producer had some ideas for revisions to juice it up a bit.  But, similarly, it features Cleo Moore as the blonde girl who, down on her luck, marries the most stable and financially sound guy in her world, even if he's older and they make a weird pair.  Rather than John Garfield wandering into the gas station, Vince Edwards (whom I like a lot, generally), is already employed there, so it's Moore who's the interloper breaking up a happy home.

This version leans (a) first into the idea that the blonde is not a willing participant in her romance with Edwards or his murderous scheme to take out her husband.  And (b) there's a previously unseen twin who appears to take the husband's place and stir things up.  Y'all, this is how you just keep plussing an idea.

Weirdly, both Moore and Edwards seem like they didn't get enough takes or just weren't that into it, and the energy level in this film, aside from Haas, is weirdly flat from beginning to end.  Which, in contrast to 1946's Postman, is weirdly odd.  But part of that is the ambiguity about what is really happening with Edwards and Moore - she seems to loathe him but melt in his arms when he forces himself on her - so what is she playing?  And Edwards is laconic and then suddenly is not.  It's weird.

There's some curious touches like a society for people to make fun of superstitions and the people who believe them, which seems mostly to be about drinking and shit-talking people you don't know, which may make me an honorary member.

And Chekhov's goldfish enter in the first act but don't really achieve any significance.  

It wasn't great, but I like all of the players - Cleo Moore has really grown on me - and was so weird as a parallax version of a well known film, I couldn't really look away.  But at film's end, I was probably more interested in the movie someone should make about Hugo Haas and Cleo Moore.




Wednesday, September 14, 2022

PodCast 210: "Thor: Love And Thunder" (2022) - a Marvel Madness PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan




Watched: 09/11/2022
Format:  Disney+
Viewing: First
Decade: 2020's
Director:  Taika Waititi




Jamie and Ryan sit down with Marvel's return to Asgard that apparently people didn't like, and we're not exactly sure why it got the hate. Join us as we harness up the goats and take off on a journey through a movie that takes us all over and manages to really land their use of Guns n Roses.


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Sweet Child of Mine - Guns'n'Roses, Appetite for Destruction 
Welcome to the Jungle - Guns'n'Roses, Appetite for Destruction 


Marvel Madness

Thursday, September 8, 2022

PodCast 209: "The Sandman" - Season 1 discussion w/ MRSHL and Ryan






MRSHL and Ryan step into the dream-realm to talk Netflix's gigantic gamble - adapting a comic property that isn't based on superheroes, is written for older readers, has nuance and complexity, and doesn't talk down to the audience. It's the thing fans didn't believe could ever be adapted faithfully. Do we dare dream?


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
The Kingdom of Dreams - David Buckley
Mr. Sandman - The Chordettes 


DC Comics Playlist

Monday, September 5, 2022

PodCast 208 B: "Inhumans" (2017) - Episodes 3 & 4 - A Superheroes Every Day PodCast w/ Danny and Ryan

contrary to this image, this show is not about two women about to present at a conference




More Coverage:

Danny and Ryan discuss episodes 3 and 4 of the ongoing tale of a bunch of mutant moon men kicking around Hawaii - all part of a TV series which made Marvel decide network TV was probably a terrible idea. Let alone doing it on a budget. Join us as we recount the puzzling adventures of our "heroes".


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Paint It Black - Valerie Broussard
Don't Fear the Reaper - Denmark & Winters 


Superheroes Every Day Playlist

Cage Watch: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)




Watched:  09/04/2022
Format:  Amazon?  Jamie put it on
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2020's

I am a fan of Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal on HBOmax, a show that is absolutely about Inception levels of reality.  It's a reality show, pushing the envelope of what is real, what is fiction, what is simply dicking around with people who expect reality to conform to certain principles and people who have made up their own reality tossed into the mix and given lead roles.

I feel like that was good training for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022), a film - a bit like Being John Malkovich - that asks an actor of particular talent and quirkiness to engage with their own persona and perform as themselves as a central character in a movie in which everyone else is fictional, and the version of themselves is only loosely based on reality.  

For those of us old enough to have grown up on Vampire's Kiss, Leaving Las Vegas, Moonstruck, as well as Raising Arizona and Honeymoon in Vegas, Cage's late 90's turn to action-hero came as a bit of a surprise.  He was the hero of the indie film world who was out there walking tightropes, making films he was in memorable and better.  His Sailor in Lynch's Wild at Heart (paired with Dern's Lula) is still a favorite character of mine in anything.

The film is a fascinating fractal of a kaleidoscope of Cage - tracking his career in beats through the movie, which starts as a small, character-driven quirky indie feature and ends as a huge Hollywood-style actioner with an operatic happy ending in slow-mo, starring Cage as himself, of course.  

In the purest sense, it's absolutely a love letter to Cage, an actor whose post Leaving Las Vegas career I've not stuck with (Con-Air delivered my very first migraine, through I didn't know that's what it was at the time).  But one does not make it through a year of one's life and not see a Nic Cage movie.  

Structure aside, Cage is here to remind you - he's one of the most talented actors of his generation, and when he's not cashing a check, there's no one else like him on screen.  If you need an actor who can convey every range of human experience and emotion without a word, Cage is your guy.  

And I do wonder how he viewed the script, which couldn't have been written about anyone else and landed the same way, which includes whole scenes with Cage fighting with his younger, punk rock version of himself - something the younger kids won't get, but for those of us who recognize this version of Cage, it's a whole thing.  

Of course, the movie co-stars Pedro Pascal as an olive importer/ exporter who may actually be a criminal mastermind - but who is using his money to bring his favorite movie star, Nic Cage, to his villa in Majorca.  And, as it's turning out, Pascal's success in the US is not a fluke.  At the heart of the film is the unlikely friendship between Pascal and Cage as Pascal's Javi doesn't just understand Nic's filmography, there's a real kinship there.  

Meanwhile, Cage has to navigate his broken relationship with his teen daughter (I don't know if he even has a teen daughter) and ex-wife (he has several).  

I'm underselling how genuinely hilarious the film is, but it is genuinely the funniest movie I've seen this year.  I don't *think* you have to have been tracking Cage for decades to enjoy it - I've mostly not been.  But there's certainly layers upon layers if you know much about the guy.  And it's absolutely a treat to see Pascal and Cage making all of this look so easy.

Sunday, September 4, 2022

Watch Party Watch: They Live (1987)




Watched:  09/02/2022
Format:  Amazon Watch Party
Viewing:  Unknown
Decade:  1980's
Director:  John Carpenter

I saw They Live (1987) twice in the theater.  I still think it's a pretty keen movie, and would now make for an interesting TV series or something.  

But, yeah, when I was twelve, there was some sci-fi coming out (see: RoboCop, Running Man, arguably even Spaceballs) that was kind of tricking studios into making movies that were some curious cultural commentary dressed up in action-adventure guise.  Which, you know, is what good sci-fi should be, anyway.

They Live mostly went under the radar, and I recall straight through college being The Only Guy In The Room Who Had Seen It, but as I kidded/ not kidded - it's not like I wasn't getting what these movies were on about.  But I do think in the past 30-something years, people have eventually seen They Live, and it's not everyone's cup of tea.  I can still bathe in the nostalgia I have for the movie and remember what it was like getting served up the movie's messaging as a novelty (there's always a 12-year-old out there getting these ideas for the first time).  But, I mean, as a 47-year-old, it is, as someone at the watch party said, a bit like something written by a college freshman.

It's got some strange pacing and budgetary constraints that keep the hard sci-fi stuff crammed into just the last few minutes.  The pacing is super odd, from the kind of draggy first twenty minutes of set-up to the five and a half minute fight in the middle of the film.  We clearly needed more Meg Foster, but that's always true.  And I think it's 100% intentional that the aliens look ridiculous.  Because they're grotesque and laughable at the same time, and that's just good stuff.  Make it weird, man!

Anyway, it was a kick to watch it with people who hadn't seen it.  

Meg Foster will come with her own special FX, thank you


Friday, September 2, 2022

Friday Watch Party: They Live




In ways I cannot calculate, They Live had a tremendous impact on me.  Not like Star Wars or Star Trek or The Godfather, but it left me cackling in the theater and - as I got older - made me appreciate how you can take something like a goofy sci-fi film and put even a single idea in it, and everyone who sees that movie *gets it* and will respond to that idea forever.  For a kid verging on teendom when I saw the movie, this was a perfect packet delivery system for teaching me a way to look at the world.  Who knew?

They Live has several key things we will be looking for

  • Meg Foster and her eyes
  • Keith David
  • the world's most unnecessarily protracted fight scene
  • the greatest line ever delivered in cinema, that you know whether you've even heard of this movie or not
Join me, Jamie and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper as we take in the John Carpenter opus that just keeps being awesome 30-odd years after its release

Day:  Friday 09/02/2022
Time:  8:30 Central
Service:  Amazon
Price:  $3-4

(link live 10 minutes before showtime)


Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Myrna Watch: I Love You Again (1940)




Watched:  08/30/2022
Format:  TCM
Viewing:  First?
Director:  W.S. Van Dyke

It's possible I've seen this movie before and simply don't recall watching it.  I believe it's in a DVD set Paul found for me years ago.  I thought I'd watched the whole set, but I don't remember this one in the slightest.

William Powell and Myrna Loy made 14 films together, and the ones I've seen are all pretty terrific.  It's impossible not to dig Powell's charm and Myrna Loy is maybe one of the funniest actors with the smallest effort in all of film, and always utterly buyable.  

Here, the pair team up in a screwball set-up as Powell plays an aggressively boring manager of a plant that makes cookware like pots who is out on a sea voyage when he bonks his head and rather than losing his memory, regains his memories from nine years prior when he was a shady con-man and crook, but loses all memory of the last nine.  During which he married Myrna Loy, who is set to divorce him for being so incredibly boring.  

That, kids, is a set-up.

honestly, pretty typical mealtime here at League HQ


Powell is in almost every shot and scene, and you will find yourself wishing there were more Loy, but when isn't that true?  The pair are firing on all cylinders in Thin Man energy, which is remarkable when you realize Powell is coming off of cancer treatment and the death of his fiance, and Loy was getting divorced.  This had to have been some terrific therapy.  

The additional cast includes familiar face Frank McHugh as a fellow con assisting Powell and giving him someone to talk to, and he's hysterical.  Edmund Lowe plays a career criminal.  Nella Walker is Loy's mother.  And a cast of familiar studio players fill other roles, including a post Our Gang Alfalfa.

The movie is light fluff and maybe a few minutes longer than it needs to be, but I can't say where they should trim.  I laughed out loud a lot.  There are some great gags, terrific word play, and I'll take a Loy side-eye any day.

Monday, August 29, 2022

PodCast 208 A: "Inhumans" (2017) - Episodes 1 & 2 - A Superheroes Every Day PodCast w/ Danny and Ryan



Watched:  August 2022
Format:  Disney+
Viewing: First
Decade:  2010's




For some reason, Danny and Ryan are talking Marvel's biggest failure - the 2017 attempt at a network TV adaptation of one of Marvel's highest concepts. The show dares to ask the question "sure, that's a neat idea, but what if we eliminated everything interesting about it?" We discuss the first two episodes (of eight) of the ill-fated show, and ponder what, exactly, was going on at Marvel and ABC?


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Paint It Black - Valerie Broussard
Don't Fear the Reaper - Denmark & Winters 


Superheroes Every Day

Joan Watch: Mommie Dearest (1981)





Watched:  08/27/2022
Format:  Showtime trial on Amazon
Viewing:  First
Director:  Frank Perry

I've been avoiding Mommie Dearest (1981) for some time.  But Steven and Lauren were going to see the movie, and I figured - hey, this is a reminder or a sign it's time to catch up.

It's crucial to remember, Mommie Dearest was not intended to be a high camp classic - this was someone's idea of a warts-and-all, scathing unmasking of Joan Crawford and her hideous relationship with her children that blew the doors off the movie-star image, which... if you know how Joan's post 1950's career and life went, is almost punching down.  Not to mention her life prior to Hollywood and stardom.  And even after.

Look, Joan was very dead by the time the movie arrived and was unable to rebut the portrayal of herself in the movie, which was based on a single source, that of an extremely bitter daughter who had been cut out of her mother's will.

As I've grown older, I have become aware that smaller incidents for adults play out as grand dramas for children (just as grand dramas in the actual adult world frequently pass by unnoticed by children and people on twitter).  I know we're supposed to believe anyone who comes forward with a story, and I do - insofar as I believe Joan Crawford and her adopted children had a terrible relationship.