Not movies about airplanes (Airport, Airplane, Starfighters, etc), but movies you see on airplanes. I'm traveling, and have a wide choice of movies to watch. But the airplane movie experience isn't a good one for me. Watching a movie on a plane moves it down about 2 stars for me. So I don't want to watch a movie on a plane that I want to watch - I'm afraid it will spoil the experience.
On the other hand, I don't want to watch a movie I expect to hate. So I look for movies that aren't really my thing, but I'm kind of interested in. Sometimes I wind up finding an unexpected gem. I really enjoyed Hitch, for example. This trip didn't work out that well.
Spider-man 3 was no better than I expected. I never really liked Spidey - he's such a whiner. Girlfriend MJ is kind of high maintenance. The villains aren't much. The action sequences are sharp, fast and exciting, but they don't seem to add up to much. For instance, several times Spidey tosses the goblin grenades back at the Green Goblin. But this doesn't seem to mean that the Goblin is defeated by his own powers or anything like that. It was just a cool twist.
Really, who am I to judge? I liked the Fantastic Four movie. But I'm glad I didn't watch this by choice.
Guess how much I liked Ocean's 13? OK, more than Spider-man 3. It was kind of fun, with nice sets, twisty plot, and fun hammy acting by Clooney, Pacino, Gould, and, well, everyone. But here's the problem.
No, it is not the plot holes you could drive a Chunnel excavator through. Although - how did they get that thing under the hotel without anyone noticing? I'll bet the $35 million it cost could have financed a much simpler heist. The double cross and triple with the diamonds almost made sense, or maybe not. I don't care enough to try to figure it out. And that's fair enough.
The problem is that this is a film about hotel management. That just isn't interesting enough. Now, I know a lot of people who are fascinated by big Vegas hotels - how to get upgraded, what pools you can sneak into, threadcount of the sheets in different rooms. But I think Danny Ocean and friends should stick to heists, and leave hotels to Leona Helmsley.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Delightfully Young
Delightfully Dangerous stars Jane Powell as a teenage music student. She is an orphan who idolizes her older sister, whom she believes is a Broadway star. When she pays a surprise visit, she discovers her sister, Constance Moore, is a star, but a star on the burlesque stage. She is scandalized, and the comedy (such as it is) revolves around her schemes to get her sister to go legit, and her coming to understand that burlesque has its own charm. Ralph Bellamy is the legit impresario who gets messed up in the scheme, and Morton Gould plays himself in the Jose Iturbi role.
You may not recognize the Jane Powell. She belongs to a peculiar sub-genre along with Gloria Jean and Deanna Durbin: Post-pubescent sopranos. They sing classical or lite-classic pop, and their movies often exploit their innocent, youthful beauty and approaching womanhood. "Exploit" may be too strong a word, depending on how sensitive you are to skeeve. I really like these movies - the girls are sweet and charming, their singing voices beautiful (song choices are generally horrid), and the underage romance themes just kinky enough to appeal to my mild sense of the perverse.
Jane Powell's most famous film was Royal Wedding, but I really liked her first movie Song of the Open Road (not available on DVD/VHS, but sometimes seen on AMC). She played herself, a child singing sensation who runs away to a US Crop Corps work camp. The movie is really a propaganda film for the Crop Corps, a strange WWII sort of communist enterprise, where teenagers volunteer to pick fruit to replace the cheap labor that has gone to fight the war (or the Japanese labor that has been interned). They sing solidarity songs and engage in self-criticism and discussions of dialectal materialism. Clearly the work of communists in the State Dept.
As the movie progresses, Jane stops being a stuck-up capitalist and joins the people in their victorious struggle to pick the fruit that feeds the anti-Fascist army. She ropes some Hollywood liberals to promote the camps in a radio propaganda scheme: W.C Fields and Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy. So Jane Powell stars as Jane Powell in a propaganda film about a radio propaganda broadcast, all revolving around ... volunteer youth fruit picking. Delicious.
I could go on to discuss my favorite Deanna Durbin movies (One Hundred Men and a Girl? or the later Lady on a Train?), but you're probably getting the wrong idea about me. I'm really not obsessed by these child-women with angel voices. But I do find myself strangely interested...
You may not recognize the Jane Powell. She belongs to a peculiar sub-genre along with Gloria Jean and Deanna Durbin: Post-pubescent sopranos. They sing classical or lite-classic pop, and their movies often exploit their innocent, youthful beauty and approaching womanhood. "Exploit" may be too strong a word, depending on how sensitive you are to skeeve. I really like these movies - the girls are sweet and charming, their singing voices beautiful (song choices are generally horrid), and the underage romance themes just kinky enough to appeal to my mild sense of the perverse.
Jane Powell's most famous film was Royal Wedding, but I really liked her first movie Song of the Open Road (not available on DVD/VHS, but sometimes seen on AMC). She played herself, a child singing sensation who runs away to a US Crop Corps work camp. The movie is really a propaganda film for the Crop Corps, a strange WWII sort of communist enterprise, where teenagers volunteer to pick fruit to replace the cheap labor that has gone to fight the war (or the Japanese labor that has been interned). They sing solidarity songs and engage in self-criticism and discussions of dialectal materialism. Clearly the work of communists in the State Dept.
As the movie progresses, Jane stops being a stuck-up capitalist and joins the people in their victorious struggle to pick the fruit that feeds the anti-Fascist army. She ropes some Hollywood liberals to promote the camps in a radio propaganda scheme: W.C Fields and Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy. So Jane Powell stars as Jane Powell in a propaganda film about a radio propaganda broadcast, all revolving around ... volunteer youth fruit picking. Delicious.
I could go on to discuss my favorite Deanna Durbin movies (One Hundred Men and a Girl? or the later Lady on a Train?), but you're probably getting the wrong idea about me. I'm really not obsessed by these child-women with angel voices. But I do find myself strangely interested...
Bullet Ballet
Annie Get Your Gun
Although I've watched a lot of musicals, I've never seen Annie Get Your Gun. Frilly MGM productions aren't really my thing, and Howard Keel definitely isn't. What a weasel. In fact, there weren't many likable characters in this film.
Keenan Wynn gets a sympathetic role - he's been a favorite of ours since Without Love, where he played the drunk brother. His variations on "Let's not be stupid, shall we?" from that movie have become family favories.
I love Bouncing Betty Hutton, for her boundless energy. She plays comedy with no stops, and is still totally believable when her heart breaks. When she looks at Howard Keel, she stares at him round eyed and slack jawed like a pole-axed mule - a total cartoon, but to me, completely real.
She had a similar role in The Perils of Pauline, where she loved but out-competed another man, John Lund (another heel), in show business, this time stunt-acting.
Of course, the film had originally been planned for Judy Garland, with Frank Morgan as Buffalo Bill. Once you know that, you keep seeing how that would have worked. And of course, Ethel Mermen created the role, and you have probably seen it in community theater, so there are a lot of ghosts on stage.
It got me thinking about a new, more modern production. Watching Annie, I was frequently jolted by the amount of gunplay (duh!) and the total lack of concern over safety. Not just shooting cigarettes out of mouths, but just plain shooting a lot in crowded places. I'm surprised the film isn't banned in schools under a zero-tolerance policy.
So why shouldn't it be remade with the violence inherent in the gunplay put in? Show the occasional death or wounding, people ducking for cover, blindings from ricochet, that kind of thing? John Woo directing, perhaps. I can think of plenty of blowhards and pretty boys to play the roles of Buffalo Bill and Frank, but who could replace Betty Hutton?
Although I've watched a lot of musicals, I've never seen Annie Get Your Gun. Frilly MGM productions aren't really my thing, and Howard Keel definitely isn't. What a weasel. In fact, there weren't many likable characters in this film.
Keenan Wynn gets a sympathetic role - he's been a favorite of ours since Without Love, where he played the drunk brother. His variations on "Let's not be stupid, shall we?" from that movie have become family favories.
I love Bouncing Betty Hutton, for her boundless energy. She plays comedy with no stops, and is still totally believable when her heart breaks. When she looks at Howard Keel, she stares at him round eyed and slack jawed like a pole-axed mule - a total cartoon, but to me, completely real.
She had a similar role in The Perils of Pauline, where she loved but out-competed another man, John Lund (another heel), in show business, this time stunt-acting.
Of course, the film had originally been planned for Judy Garland, with Frank Morgan as Buffalo Bill. Once you know that, you keep seeing how that would have worked. And of course, Ethel Mermen created the role, and you have probably seen it in community theater, so there are a lot of ghosts on stage.
It got me thinking about a new, more modern production. Watching Annie, I was frequently jolted by the amount of gunplay (duh!) and the total lack of concern over safety. Not just shooting cigarettes out of mouths, but just plain shooting a lot in crowded places. I'm surprised the film isn't banned in schools under a zero-tolerance policy.
So why shouldn't it be remade with the violence inherent in the gunplay put in? Show the occasional death or wounding, people ducking for cover, blindings from ricochet, that kind of thing? John Woo directing, perhaps. I can think of plenty of blowhards and pretty boys to play the roles of Buffalo Bill and Frank, but who could replace Betty Hutton?
Monday, September 3, 2007
Desert Passion
I promised cocktails, and I will deliver. Both classics, like the margarita, and the newly imagined, like my latest creation: the Desert Passion:
Fill a pint glass with ice. Add:
1 shot tequila
Juice of 1/2 lime
Half the rest with passion fruit nectar (Looza brand preferred)
Other half with champagne
Stir and garnish with lime slice.
Fill a pint glass with ice. Add:
1 shot tequila
Juice of 1/2 lime
Half the rest with passion fruit nectar (Looza brand preferred)
Other half with champagne
Stir and garnish with lime slice.
Rock climbing!
Last week's Man Who Never Was got me in the mood for more WWII Mediterranean invasion action, so I ordered up Guns of Navarrone. All I remembered from the last time I saw it was miles and miles of late-night rock climbing. That scene turns out to be only a few minutes long, not the whole 2-1/2 hours.
I don't have much to say about this fine movie - if you like this kind of thing, you'll find it to be the kind of thing you like. I did want to point out that Allan Cutherbertson, the twitchy Colonel Hall from Gourmet Night in Fawlty Towers, is in both Man Who Never Was and Guns of Navarrone. Since he was a Lt. in the RAF, I suppose he has every right to these roles, and he fits them to a T.
And big ups to Dmitri Tiompkin for providing the catchy Guns of Navaronne theme, and managing to make it sound so dull. Here how it is done, Dmitri: The Skatalites!
Seeing this movie made me want to start a whole film festival of WWII movies with lots of rock climbing. Like - Where Eagles Dare! And ... That's all I can think of. And it's another Alistair MacLean. Any other suggestions? Might just go for WWII movies - Kelley's Heroes, Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, etc.
I don't have much to say about this fine movie - if you like this kind of thing, you'll find it to be the kind of thing you like. I did want to point out that Allan Cutherbertson, the twitchy Colonel Hall from Gourmet Night in Fawlty Towers, is in both Man Who Never Was and Guns of Navarrone. Since he was a Lt. in the RAF, I suppose he has every right to these roles, and he fits them to a T.
And big ups to Dmitri Tiompkin for providing the catchy Guns of Navaronne theme, and managing to make it sound so dull. Here how it is done, Dmitri: The Skatalites!
Seeing this movie made me want to start a whole film festival of WWII movies with lots of rock climbing. Like - Where Eagles Dare! And ... That's all I can think of. And it's another Alistair MacLean. Any other suggestions? Might just go for WWII movies - Kelley's Heroes, Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, etc.
They Live!
They Live must be John Carpenter's masterpiece. It isn't the most polished movie, with limited special effects and acting straight from the pro-wrestling circuit, and locations that may be LA, but look more like generic Canadian city. But 1) Pro-wrestler/actor Rowdy Roddy Piper has come to kick butt and chew gun, and he's all out of gum, and 2) the butts that he kicks are the most vicious incarnations of evil: republicans from space.
The plot is simple. Drifter-construction worker Piper finds a pair of sunglasses that reveal the truth: Magazines and billboards just say "Obey", "Consume" and "Stay Asleep". Money is just white paper with the words "Your God" printed on them. And some people, the rich and powerful, are not human. Roddy's response is cool and measured. He starts blowing them away.
Best scene, other than the kicking butt and chewing gum line above (a Roddy Piper ad-lib), has Piper trying to convince Keith David to try on the magic sunglasses by whooping him. David whoops him back. They exchange whoopings for a long time, some of them pretty realistic, some of them right out of the pro-wres ring. All enough fun so that you hardly wonder why he doesn't just look through the damn things and save everybody some pain.
The plot is simple. Drifter-construction worker Piper finds a pair of sunglasses that reveal the truth: Magazines and billboards just say "Obey", "Consume" and "Stay Asleep". Money is just white paper with the words "Your God" printed on them. And some people, the rich and powerful, are not human. Roddy's response is cool and measured. He starts blowing them away.
Best scene, other than the kicking butt and chewing gum line above (a Roddy Piper ad-lib), has Piper trying to convince Keith David to try on the magic sunglasses by whooping him. David whoops him back. They exchange whoopings for a long time, some of them pretty realistic, some of them right out of the pro-wres ring. All enough fun so that you hardly wonder why he doesn't just look through the damn things and save everybody some pain.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Bug-Eyed Cinema
The Film Crew: Killers from Space: Another masterpiece of DVD commentary from the Film Crew: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy from MST3K. If you are familiar with MST3K, you know what to expect. The guys are not robots and a human in space, but just working guys, supplying commentary for DVDs for Honcho Industries. There are no longer any silhouettes on the screen, but when the commentary starts, it sounds just like Mike, Tom and Crow.
The movie they are commenting, Killers from Space, stars Peter Graves and ... Do I need to go on? There are guys from space with 1/2 ping-pong balls over their eyes. There is stock footage. There is mind control, if that's what you call controlling Peter Graves. There is commentary from the Film Crew, although sometimes no more than a derisive snort.
Some people thought MST3K ran out of steam after the fourth season, or after Joel, or TV's Frank, or when Pearl replaced Dr. F. Personally, I have seasons and episodes I like better than others, but they are all great, including the Film Crew. If you loved MST3K, you'll like this (at least).
If you don't know MST3K, you probably don't know what the heck I'm going on about. Try The Beginning of the End, another Peter Graves cheese-fest. Worthwhile for the giant grasshoppers attacking the skyscraper special effects (grasshoppers crawling on a postcard).
The movie they are commenting, Killers from Space, stars Peter Graves and ... Do I need to go on? There are guys from space with 1/2 ping-pong balls over their eyes. There is stock footage. There is mind control, if that's what you call controlling Peter Graves. There is commentary from the Film Crew, although sometimes no more than a derisive snort.
Some people thought MST3K ran out of steam after the fourth season, or after Joel, or TV's Frank, or when Pearl replaced Dr. F. Personally, I have seasons and episodes I like better than others, but they are all great, including the Film Crew. If you loved MST3K, you'll like this (at least).
If you don't know MST3K, you probably don't know what the heck I'm going on about. Try The Beginning of the End, another Peter Graves cheese-fest. Worthwhile for the giant grasshoppers attacking the skyscraper special effects (grasshoppers crawling on a postcard).
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