Clyde's Stuff

Clyde’s Movie Palace: The Hills Have Eyes II (2007)

2011-10-23T02:05:00.000-07:00

The Hills Have Eyes II (2007)
starring
Cécile Breccia
Michael Bailey Smith
Archie Kao
Jay Acovone
Jeff Kober
Philip Pavel
David Reynolds
Tyrell Kemlo
Lee Thompson Young
Daniella Alonso

Directed by
Martin Weisz

When I first saw the list of worst reviewed movies for the first half of the year at Rotten Tomatoes, I kind of scratched my head in puzzlement. After watching The Hills Have Eyes II, I couldn’t figure out how they missed that one especially since it turns out that it only had an 11 percent critics rating. This was a full five percentage points lower than their number ten movie, Hannibal Rising. It seems Hannibal Lector just can’t get the respect that he once had when Anthony Hopkins is no where to be found.

So I took it upon myself to find out how that could be and after revisiting the site I found out why:

The list encompasses movies from January to June with 50 reviews or more; the rankings are based on a weighted calculation that factors in the Tomato meter and the number of reviews.

Hills II had 53 reviews so it made that criteria with room to spare. So the fact that it didn’t make the list has to be because of that “weighted calculation” doo hickey. You just have to love these sites with these top secret weighted calculations and ratings formulas that even Einstein couldn’t figure out.

Have you ever tried to figure out the IMDB rating system? No, it’s not just based on how many stars people give it. There’s about fifty other factors involved before they post the ratings on a film. In other words if you write a lot of reviews and rate a lot of films I guess your vote carries more weight than just the average schmuck who happens along. Then there’s the never seen, ghostly inhabitants of IMDB known as the 1000 top users. It seems they have more clout than anybody in the world.

I used to rate a lot of movies at the IMDB at one time, until I realized two things:

1. It was taking too much of my time for little or no purpose and
2. There’s been way too many films that I haven’t seen in years so it’s difficult to say how I would view them now. Some movies improve with age, some don’t hold up well, some will always be great but some will also always be shit.

For instance, Brokeback Mountain has an overall rating of about 7.8. With a healthy 44 percent of respondents rating it a ten you would think it would be even better than that and probably in the top 250 films. But as you go down the list you’ll see a rating of only 6.1 from the top 1000 users who actually hold the ratings pie in their hands. It is by far the lowest on the scale of all others who rated it which would lead me to believe that there may be quite a few of these “top users” whose homophobia encouraged them to stick a big fat one vote on it. Especially since that list is obviously male dominated. Which also goes back to the real reason the film failed to garner the much deserved best picture award.

But that’s a discussion for another day. Getting back to The Hills Have Eyes II and Rotten Tomatoes, there’s another very important reason why Hills II may have been kept off of that ten worst list. The DVD was released this week, the very same week that this list appeared on the web site. Hills II was released by Fox Searchlight and ~~Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fox Interactive~~. Do you get the connection? (Clyde note: At the time of the original writing that was true. It was then sold by Rupert Murdoch to Flixter for a minority stake. Flixter has now sold itself to Warner Brothers who can now manipulate to their hearts content)

The point I’m trying to make is that ratings are very subjective, and more often than not pretty useless and even more so when some nameless entities begin using “weighted” and “secret formulas” to make adjustments to steer the ratings in any direction they seem fit. Yeah, yeah, I know, you thought this was a movie review so why don’t I get on with it already.

In my review of the first Hills Movie, you know it wasn’t actually the first Hills film because it was a remake. You may recall that I didn’t look too kindly upon it. My grade for it was in the D range. And of course, here we are many months later with that sequel getting a DVD release after a quick but brief run at your local multiplex.

Still, there was always the chance that Hills II could be better than the original mess of a film that spawned its creation. There have been a few times over the years when a sequel has actually been better than the first go round, although usually the original at least gives you some something to work with.

But despite the fact that Hills II only had a mound of cow droppings to create its sculpture from, maybe it could do better just starting from scratch. No, it could not. But look at the bright side of things. At least there was no way that Hills II could possibly sully the reputation of Hills I because you can’t make crap smell any worse than it already is. At least you wouldn’t have thought so until now.

When last we saw our radioactively deranged mutants in the deserts of New Mexico, they had just finished having lunch with the Carter Family, uh I mean making a lunch out of the Carter Family. Poor Mama Carter, Papa Carter, and daughter Linn didn’t quite make it through to the end credits, but two teenagers, a son-in-law, and an infant did. So in essence the Carters batted a very nifty 57 per cent against the Mutant Home Team. Now that was an average that any family could be proud of for one of these types of movies, so let’s have a round of applause for the Carter Family! Yayyyy!

Whereas Hills I opened by pretty much letting us know the whys, hows, and wherefores of mutant existence in the desert, Hill II opens by giving us a quick painful lecture in Biology, also known as Mutant Reproduction 101.

The film begins with a very bloodied woman tied to a bed, screaming her lungs out as she is about to give birth. The woman is obviously not a mutant, and has been laying around and tied up for quite a while. We know this is true because the camera makes a point of letting us see her extraordinary long toe nails and finger nails. So after a lot of blood, insides squishing, bones cracking, and more screaming, the mutant doctor in chief, Dr. McScreamy, pulls the kid out then promptly finishes off the mother. We are not told who or what is going to breast feed the mutant half breed baby, nor are we told whether or not he will be accepted by the entire mutant society since he is only a half and half kid. But that doesn’t matter because the movie isn’t out to make any relevant social commentary regarding misfit mutants even if Cher is singing in the background:

Half-breed, that's all I ever heard
Half-breed, how I learned to hate the word
Half-breed, she's no good they warned
Both sides were against me since the day I was born

Okay, I made all of that Cher stuff up but you have to find fun anyway that you can when you’re watching this stuff. After being used to shock us as much as possible in the opening scene, we never hear from semi-mutant baby again and can only surmise that its mother became the entrée at the evening dinner table.

Score: Mutants 1, Humans 0

So, who is writer Wes Craven going to send out to the desert to be the next smorgasbord? After some quick on screen text reminds us about the fate of the Carter family, we are told that upon the return of the remaining family members, the Army conducted a thorough search and destroy mission in and around Sector 16. Recently, “for undisclosed reasons” electronic monitoring was ordered installed. It was nearly installed when…whoops, beware when there are those dot dot dots at the end of the text in a movie. It means there’s trouble afoot.

We quickly meet these government installers as they do their installing but don’t get too attached. In fact, it is wise to not get too attached to any of the actors sent down from the casting call to be mutant fodder for these films. It’s a guarantee that none of them will be around long enough for you to care. Not that you would want to anyway because the only reason you’re watching a film like this in the first place is so that you can keep track of the body count as it starts to mount.

So after a quick sequence involving three government electronic whiz kids and their one guard, the Mutants quickly add to their kill making the score 5 – 0 with the mutants pitching a shutout. But then again, you also never know how long somebody is going to stay dead in these movies because when you’re on a tight budget you like to have the luxury of killing off some of the cast two or three times. So it is always possible that you may have to temporarily deduct points from the mutant’s side of the ledger so keep those pencils and erasers handy.

This brings us to the answer of our above question about tonight’s main course. Will the Gomer Pyle Army Reserve National Guard Brigade please come on down! Yes, with most of the reserves already over in Iraq shooting real bullets, the Army has no choice but to send the biggest group of incompetent misfits they can find. We know they are incompetent because when we are introduced to the Gomer Pyle Brigade (my term by the way, not theirs) they are playing war type army shoot-em up games. And when one game is finished, they have managed not only to kill seventeen civilians but managed to get themselves pretend killed by a pretend suicide bomber carrying pretend grenades as well. You can hear mutants in deserts everywhere laughing their ass off.

Here are the names of our Seven Private Pyles: Johnson (Jessica Stroup), Medina (Jacob Vargas), Napoli (Michael McMillan), Stump (Ben Crowley), Mickey (Reshad Strik), Missy (Daniella Alonzo), Delmar (Lee Thompson Young), and their own version of Sergeant Carter, Sgt. Jeffrey Millstone (Flex Alexander). I’m only telling you this so that you can start chiseling their tombstones right now and get ahead of the game. This bunch can’t even make it out to Sector 16 without getting into a fight with one another. And of course you know that once the Gomer Pyle brigade does arrive, none of their radio communicators are going to work because the Klingons have set up a radio wave dissolving shield around the earth knocking out all earthy radio transmissions for the duration of the movie. Well, at least above Sector 16 they have.

After arriving out in no man’s land, they find it deserted at first, but Pyle Platoon does see someone signaling from a cliff with a mirror at the same time that they receive a garbled but inaudible radio transmission. Sergeant Carter decides to leave behind Johnson and Napoleon while the rest of the squad goes on to check out the mysterious flashing mirror signal. At this point you know what is going to happen next.

If you were hoping as I was that Johnson would strip and sunbathe, or that her and Napoleon would find a private tent somewhere to take the edge off for a change of pace, you can forget it. Nudity and Sex just for fun have no place in this R rated bloodbath. Did you think this was Camp Crystal Lake where you get to screw before Jason comes along to chop off your wing wang?

Instead Johnson and Napoleon are given a present. No, I can’t tell you exactly what it is except to say that Napoleon finds it and mistakes it for a Flintstone Automatic Butt Wiper. But Stone Age warranties being what they are, the Flintstone Butt Wiper quickly goes on the fritz. Okay, you talked me into it. Just look at the picture and put two and two together. I’d have rather had the sex scene though.

To make matters worse, while Johnson and Napoleon are busy with the Butt Wiper, one of the mutant takes the opportunity to blow up their only means of transportation. This happens at 28 minutes 35 seconds into the film, so if you have that number in your “when will their only means of transportation be blown up” lottery pool, you are the lucky winner. Go and collect your grand prize. And if you predicted that the mutants would steal Johnson’s and Napoleon’s guns while they are busy with the truck fire and the Flintstone Butt Wiper, you can pick up your runner up prize. Just call Wes Craven at 555 – 1313.

By now you should be able to write the rest of the script. Due to the general incompetence of the Gomer Pyle Brigade, they begin getting picked off one by one. Kiss anybody goodbye who hasn’t had anymore than about three or four minutes of their own screen time. You also know that eventually they will have no choice but to get their act together and begin working as a unit if any of them are going to have a chance to party on with the Carter Family Mutant Leftovers.

At some point it is explained to us that the mutants need to use the females for breeding purposes so that they cannot only keep from dying out but also so that they will have a chance to proliferate. And where does this information come from? Just keep in mind what I told you about keeping track of the body count. Keep those erasers handy.

The reason this explanation is offered is twofold. It explains the lengthy bloody and painful childbirth scene at the beginning of the film for those of you still in kindergarten who couldn’t figure that out in the first place. And the other reason we are told this is so that you can begin looking forward to the long and excruciating rape of one of our two lady privates courtesy of one of the mutants. You had also better keep in mind that if you like doing a little tongue twisting at home with your mate; you may never be able to do so again without thinking of this film. Don’t say you weren’t warned. And to add to the misery, the mutants don’t whisper words of love, but instead it’s simply “Give Me Baby.” Yeah, I kind of knew from the start these mutants were a bunch of right wing fanatics. Don’t make love, make babies.

It also certainly doesn’t take a genius to know that the reason Martinez keeps pulling her cell phone out to watch a video of her kid is so that it will play a part one way or another later in the film. Doesn’t it always?

You can easily predict what’s going to happen in any of these films before your buttocks have a chance to warm your recliner seat. Despite that, it is always possible that the directors and writers might drum up some suspense if they can make you care about who is going to be tonight’s Mutant Dinner Special. Failing that, at least maybe they can tweak the plot somewhat to change things up a little bit making it all a tad less predictable. None of that happens here. As a matter of fact they make things so predictable that they even borrow a plot device used in the first film to help the Pyle brigade.

So unless you’re really curious about the gore effects, or you have a sick mind and really enjoy lengthy rape and painful child birth scenes, or just want to completely see how much ridicule you can heap on it with your friends, there is nothing here for you. We really care no more about the Gomer Pyle Brigade than we did about the very annoying Carter Family in round one. The only thing I could think of is if there was a whole platoon of George W. Bush’s from his National Guard Days, then the incompetent Gomer Pyle Brigade would probably be that platoon.

Let’s not forget that the Rotten Tomatoes survey actually gave Hills I a very hefty fifty percent approval rating. So maybe you did like that film and are looking for more of whatever it was that attracted you to it.

I do hope you find it. As for me, I really couldn’t find anything here to enable me to recommend the movie to anyone just as I couldn’t a year ago. At least the first film did have some intensity to help relieve the boredom and predictability. So what else can I do?

PYLE PLATOON! FALL IN AND PICK UP YOUR AWARD YOU BUNCH OF MAGGOTS!

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Clyde’s Movie Palace: The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

2011-10-22T04:20:00.001-07:00

Michael Bailey Smith
Tom Bower
Aaron Stanford
Kathleen Quinlan
Vinessa Shaw
Directed by Alexandre Aja

Back in the fifties and sixties a good percentage of the prehistoric animals, mutants, gargantuan insects, giant colossal men and zombies that inhabited the movie theaters were brought to you courtesy of some healthy doses of radiation. In those days, we were continuously setting off nuclear warheads in the Nevada Desert so that we could be absolutely positively sure that our nuclear weapons would obliterate everything in their path just like they were supposed to. Those that weren’t tested were spit polished, shine and set on top of the nearest nuclear missile, you know, just in case. I’m not sure why or when we finally decided not to test any more nuclear weapons above ground, but I think maybe President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev watched a joint screening of The Giant Gila Monster along with Beginning of the End and it scared the hell out of them. I’m not sure if it actually made the world much safer, but it did mean that the writers of horror films would have to come up with some other scientific explanation to explain away their mutant creatures out to feast on mankind.

For a while they turned to chemical waste products and that seemed to do the trick. Chemical waste in the water supply, in the sewers, being poured into the ground or leaking out of a barrel on the back of a pickup truck always seemed to do the trick. We were soon treated with mutants, walking dead, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all cause by glowing green neon chemical waste products. Every once in a while they would bring the old radiation poisoning bugaboo back to science fictions as Roland Emmerich did with Godzilla, but I’m not sure if that counts because it was a remake and you don’t mess around with the origins of a classic Japanese Lizardsaurus . So you’re probably asking by now what all of this has to do with The Hills Have Eyes. Think of it this way, you’re getting a movie review, a history lesson, and a film history lesson for the low low price of just one mouse click, so quit your damn complaining.

Leave it to Wes Craven though, to decide to improve on one of his old films by producing a remake of his 1977 film, The Hills Have Eyes. This time around he hired Alexandre Aja to not only adapt Craven’s old screenplay, but to direct it as well. All Craven had to do was sit and count the money.

While the opening credits of Hills are being splashed up on the screen, we get picture after picture after picture of nuclear explosions followed by huge mushroom clouds taking place during the age of nuclear testing in the New Mexico Desert. Along with that we get glimpses of paper clippings from the newspapers telling us about a few hundred missing tourists. I always wonder about these missing tourists. I guess the search and rescue department of New Mexico is every bit as lame as the one in West Virginia. They too had a rash of unexplained tourists that disappeared in the almost heaven state in the film Wrong Turn. I thought I had walked into a screening of that film for a moment instead of this one.

“Now wait a minute,” you’re telling yourself, “didn’t you just say a couple of paragraphs ago that the nuclear tests took place in the Nevada Desert, not New Mexico?” Yep, that’s what I said alright. In fact, there was only one nuclear test in the state of New Mexico, that being the first nuclear test ever. The rest that took place in the Continental U.S. took place in Nevada. However, filmmakers being what they are, they’ve never been known to let little things like history and geography deter them, especially when they’re making a film that nobody’s going to remember a month after having seen it until AMC or some other lame horror network drags it out for their annual Halloween crapfest.

Video Game - E3 2012 - Movies and TV

A Look at the makeup effects for The Hills Have Eyes.

Interspersed with the shots of nuclear explosions, we also get some pictures of deformed humans, just so we know for sure that radiation can still screw you up like nobody’s business. We’re also given the hint that some inhabitants of the New Mexico Desert, didn’t exactly clear out when they had the chance because becoming a mutant in the desert was more preferable than taking an extended vacation in Albuquerque. So by the time the credits have ended, you know precisely what the film is about, and that Craven and Aja come from the school of filmmakers that believe you shouldn’t be bothered with letting the screenplay fill you in on the details.

When the film finally does get underway, it opens at a dirty filthy run down gas station that appears to have been abandoned out in the middle of nowhere with gas pumps that look as if the last car that filled up was an Edsel. If you’ve been to enough of these films you already know the routine though. The gas station is actually in full working order, and the guy who runs it will be the same creepy, rotted teeth, unshaven, ghoul (Tom Bower) who hasn’t bathed since 1977. You also know that within seconds, the unsuspecting Brady Bunch Family will pull up to get gas because they decided to take a detour into the middle of no man’s land. I guess they preferred the New Mexico desert instead of a quick trip to Disneyland.

For our purposes, the Brady Bunch consists of Papa Bob Carter (Ted Levine), Mama Ethel Carter (Kathleen Quinlan), daughter Lynn (Vinessa Shaw), her husband Doug (Aaron Stanford), their infant, and the Carter’s other two teenage kids Bobby (Dan Byrd) and Brenda (Emilie de Ravin).

Papa Bob is an ex-police chief and staunch NRA carrying member of the Repugnican Party who intends to open his own detective business as soon as he’s finished collecting Gila Monsters and cactus out in the desert. As if trying to fend off radiated mutants weren’t going to be enough, son-in-law Doug just has to be a wimpy Democrat in order to make the film politically relevant, and so that Douggie can later discover his Repugnican Manhood and then join the National Rifle Association.

We also know that besides the greasy guy at the gas station there are other inhabitants lurking around while Papa Bob is filling up. We see them hiding in the shadows, taking a sweater out of the car, and running by the outhouse when Bobby Jr. is taking a leak. And to make sure we don’t miss them, Director Aja has the sound editor crank the volume up a couple of decibels just so we’re sure that they’re there.

It goes without saying that the Greasy Gas Station Owner is going to tell Repugnican Bob about a shortcut, that he is going to take it, and that they are going to break down and be stranded for the rest of the movie. Of course, just as if you were in in the mountains of West Virginia in Wrong Turn, there is no signals for your cell phone to latch onto out in the desert either.

It’s not long before Repugnican Bob decides to hike back to the creepy gas station while Democrat Doug heads in the other direction for his own date with the Dalai Llama, and son Bobby Jr. goes chasing after his pet dogs that ran off because having hung around with the Carters for a while, these canines decided that making a run for Santa Fe was preferable to being stuck in the desert with Ward and June Cleaver.

Don’t worry though, because Director Aja is not in any hurry to have his movie get from point A to point B too quickly. We get a long scene of Democrat Doug trekking through the desert where after what seems like a year and a half he comes across a passel full of vehicles from all the missing tourists we saw in the newspaper clippings during the credits. But is Democrat Doug awed by this site? Does he think it’s a little weird for all these recreational vehicles to be abandoned in a giant crater? Nope, he just grabs a fishing pole and heads back to the trailer in order that it can be used as a prop later in the film. So besides being pacifist Democrat Doug, he is now stupid pacifist Democrat Doug.

Eventually you know that all hell is going to break lose. Repugnican Bob makes a return trip to the stranded camper, but not in the way he would have liked to. Marshmallow, anyone?

The mutant ninja people begin raping, pillaging, blasting away and eating the heads off of parakeets. They also decide to kidnap Democrat Doug and his wife Lynn’s infant, forcing Doug to forget his peace loving ways in order to save his child before the baby becomes the Grand Slam Breakfast at the local Denny’s.

When the film finally does get going, it is extremely violent, vicious, savage, and unrelenting. Yes, that will unnerve you a bit, but you could add this type of brutality to any film and it would make you squirm. However, the plot holes are enormous and there is never any real suspense. How can there be when the filmmakers decide to hit you over the head with too many details before we even get to the Directed by sign, and then can’t come up with anything cleverer than the creepy guy at the gas station that seems to be airlifted from one horror film to another to open the film with. Granted this is a remake, but if you’re going to remake a film, any film, it might behoove you to try and do something original. It doesn’t help any that before the mayhem even commences, we are treated to so much obnoxious behavior by the Carter family, we almost root for the mutants to do away with them as quickly as possible.

I suppose you could say that Democrat Doug’s conversion from pacifist to someone who when pushed to the limit will take what ever violent steps are necessary to redeem himself, delude himself, stupidfy himself, and become hard core Repugnicon-man, is some kind of morality lesson. But it’s a lesson that’s been given many times and in a far more believable film than this tripe. One need look no further than Sam Peckinpaugh’s excellent Straw Dog’s for that tale, and I hope that wherever Sam is, he will forgive me for mentioning his name in a review of a clunker such as this.

Still, I’ll let the film get by with a D+ just because of its intensity at times, but unfortunately with Craven standing over his shoulder, hoping they can have a Hills Have Eyes II (would that be a remake of the original Hills Have Eyes II which was a sequel to the original Hills Have Eyes?), Aja felt it necessary to tack on the obligatory sequel setting ending in the very last two seconds of the film. So I can’t help myself but to lower your already dismal score to the precipice of total failure with a hearty D-, and only because I have to have somewhere to go with your inevitable sequel.

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Clyde’s Movie Palace: Halloween (1978)

2011-10-21T01:21:00.001-07:00

Halloween (1978)
Written
by
John Carpenter & Debra Hill
Original Music
by
John Carpenter
Directed
by
John Carpenter
Starring
Donald Pleasance     Jamie Lee Curtis
Nancy Loomis     P.J. Soles
Charles Cypers      Kyle Richards
Brian Andrews     Nancy Stephens

Nick Castle    Will Sandin Tony Moran
as
Michael Myers

It can be very difficult to review a classic film held in high esteem by just about everybody. If it’s a film you really love, you may have a tendency to go on and on like a gushing school boy declaring your love as if you’re Vili Fualaau longing for Mary Kay Letourneau.

On the other hand, maybe you don’t quite see what the big deal is and decide to offer up maybe just a teensy weensy little speck of criticism, thus handing your own ass over on a silver platter to all the fan boys out there just waiting to burn you at the stake.

What does all this have to do with John Carpenter’s Halloween? Maybe something, maybe nothing. It’s just that there are some movies where every thing that can be said about them has already been said, in a book, in a documentary, or written as commentary on every film discussion board worth its salt that proliferates the internet. The original Halloween is no exception.

The Halloween Trailer

In case you’re one of the ½ or 1 percent of the population who doesn’t know the story here’s the gist of it.

A very young boy, Michael Myers, (Will Sandin) comes home on Halloween just as his teenage sister (Sandy Johnson) is preparing to do the bump and grind with her boyfriend (David Kyle). (How young is Michael? We’ll get to that, just bear with me.) Or maybe he was always at home just hiding in the shadows until the pumpkin credits finally fade out.

In the amount of time it takes for sis and her sex starved young lover to go upstairs, hop into the bed, then hop out of the bed, and for the boyfriend to kiss and run, Young Mr. Myers takes a knife from the kitchen cabinet, heads upstairs, slips on his clown mask and lovingly greets sis by stabbing the shit out of her. (How long was it before he went upstairs and how old was he that he was able to overpower his sister so easily? We’ll get to that, just bear with me.)

He then heads back downstairs to greet Mom Myers and Pop Myers, who rip his mask off so we can see his blank cold deadly stare as the camera pulls backwards until we fade out. (What is Ma and Pa Kettle’s reaction to their son standing there with a bloody kitchen knife? We’ll get to that, just bear with me.)

Flash forward fifteen years minus one day later. Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) and Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens) are headed to the State Hospital to pick up Michael for a hearing required by law that will determine if he’s now sane enough to be set free. But Mikey, being of not so sound mind and inhabited by the spirits of Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer, knows his chances of being set free to walk the streets of Illinois are roughly equivalent to that of having angels fly out of his ass. So he decides to head out on his own in the same automobile that Loomis and the nurse had arrived in.

Having been locked up for fifteen years, how did Michael learn to drive? Well, funny you should ask because someone else asks Loomis the same question. And although he has no explanation it’s a pretty good come back just the same:

Dr. Terence Wynn: Now, for God's sake, he can't even drive a car!
Dr. Sam Loomis: He was doing very well last night! Maybe someone around here gave him lessons!

Dr. Loomis, having taken care of The Honorable Michael Myers for the past 15 years, is pretty damn sure he’s headed back to Haddonfield, the All-American City that spawned him in the first place, to practice his craft a little further. Understandable when you consider the fact that he has so little other skills beyond stealing state issued automobiles.

He commences to stalking the babysitter’s club, whose members are a Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes (Loomis), and Lynda van der Klok (P.J. Soles). Technically only two of them are doing any babysitting on this particular night, but who knows what Lynda is up to the rest of the week. What skills other skills could she possibly have besides drinking beer, making out with her boyfriend, drinking more beer, and making out with here boyfriend some more. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t hire her as a babysitter either. I guess Laurie is our go to girl.

While Mikey is stealthily sneaking around his old neighborhood haunts by driving the stolen state vehicle up and down the streets as if he’s just back from Daytona, Dr. Loomis heads to Haddonfield to track him down, hopefully before Michael has a chance to brush up on his jack-o.lantern carving skills using Laurie, Annie, and Lynda as models.

And that’s about it. If you’ve seen the film, you know the rest of the story. If you haven’t you wouldn’t want me going into the rest of the gory details. So if you haven’t watched, you may want to stop reading right now and then come back later for our group discussion, consisting of me, more me, and mostly me, when you have something not so worthwhile to add.

I was watching the film for the umpteenth time a couple of nights ago, and it was a struggle to make it through the first twenty minutes or so. Maybe I was just tired. Perhaps I had seen it so many times that the thrill was long gone. I’m not sure. So while I watched, in between dozing off, I began to become irritated with some of the havoc caused by Mr. Michael Myer’s reunion with his Hometown of Haddonfield.

For instance, my recent review of The Best Little Whorehouse came to mind and the lyrics of the Charles Durning song stuck in my head:

“Ooh I love to dance a little sidestep, now they see me now they don't-
I've come and gone and, ooh I love to sweep around the wide step,
Cut a little swathe and lead the people on”

The above verse would pop into my head every time Sir Michael Myers would step in and out of the shadows. Look! He’s outside the school window! Oh crap, no he’s not. Look! He’s behind the shrubbery! Oh damn, no he’s not. Look! He’s mingling with my bed sheets! Oh hell, no he’s not. Look! The bogeyman is standing next to the baby-sitter's house! Oh heck, no he’s not.

It would seem Myers can move pretty damn fast when he has a mind to be. He only seems to slow down when he’s getting ready to stick a butcher knife into your gut or cut an extra airway into your windpipe. In that case he comes at his victims with all the speed, subtlety, and grace of Boris Karloff running from the villagers in Frankenstein. And you know how that ended. Yep, you guessed it: endless Frankenstein sequels, remakes and rip offs, just like it did with this film. But then again, you could just blame the whole mess on Mary Shelley.

And then there’s this. At 3 minutes and 15 seconds into the movie, Judith Myers (Michael sister. She does have a name lest we forget) heads upstairs with her unnamed boyfriend (who doesn’t have a name lest we forget) to do the nasty. At 4 minutes and and 30 seconds, with no cuts and the camera never straying from young Michael’s point of view, the boyfriend is already coming down the stairs putting his shirt on. That’s what I call a quickie! Hell, why even bother with the trip upstairs to the bedroom when you’re that fast? This lad was so fast he must be an embarrassment to teenage boys all over the planet! This guy is so fast, he makes Roadrunner look like he’s standing stationary. This guy is so fast, that if he had run against Secretariat in the Belmont, Secretariat would have been looking at this boy’s ass fifty lengths from the finish line. This guy is.....oh never mind. You get my point.

Then there’s the fact that Michael is only six years old when he carves up dear old sis. We know this to be true because later in the movie Dr. Loomis talks about him having been six when he started treating him.

Now I don’t know about you but even at sixteen years old, if some six year old pint sized little shit comes at me with a knife, he may get one whack at it and then that little fucker is going to be flying across the room and out a second story window. And I don’t care if Judith is just a horny teenage girl with a fast boyfriend. Look how many stabs it took Norman Bates to put the hammer down on Marion Crane.

Yeah I know, easy for me to say. I’m not the one being hacked and maybe that first whack was right on target severing her spinal chord, thus incapacitating her. You know, the proverbial lucky shot. Anything’s possible. Frankly, I just think he was pissed because the boyfriend did some nasty things with that clown mask in the 1 minute and 15 seconds he was up in the bedroom. I’d be pissed too but I still wouldn’t hack my sister up.

And what was the deal with those parents? I mean, they see the bloody knife in his hands and the look on his face and all they can do is say, “Michael!” and then stand there like a couple of clueless dolts waiting for the scene to fade out. I mean, I half expected them to say, “What do you have to say for yourself Beaver and what did you do with Wally?”

And if you’re like me and have seen this movie endless times, don’t you get just the least bit irritated when a certain someone drops that knife towards the end of the movie? I know you do. Don’t lie.

And then the dumb ass turns around and does it again.

I originally saw Halloween at a drive-in with my girlfriend, soon to be wife, soon to be ex-wife in South Point Ohio many summers ago. And the fact that I’ve seen it so many times since and know the details as well as I do is actually a testament to it’s staying power. I’m no longer scared when I watch it, and I’m sure much of today’s audiences are so jaded by the torture porn of films like Hostel and Saw that they would hardly understand what the fuss is all about especially considering how bloodless Halloween is by comparison.

But yet, I viewed it with my youngest son last Halloween, and many of the scenes made him jump, so I guess having the bogeyman come out when you least expect it and say boo still gets the job done, and this film did it better than most films, especially when you consider it’s miniscule budget of $300,000 which even in 1978 dollars was a mere pittance. The film went on to gross over fifty million dollars upon it’s release.

Ebert and Siskel explain the difference between a good horror movie like Halloween, and the endless bad number of imitators and rip offs.

The reason the film works is not because we watch a serial killer on a prowl, it’s because director/writer John Carpenter and co-writer producer Debra Hill puts us in the house and makes us the victim as much as his cast of hapless teenagers. Is Michael in the kitchen or isn’t he? Is he behind the bushes or isn’t he? Is he mingling with the drying clothes or isn’t he? Just as Laurie is unsure of her own senses, we become doubtful of ours as well. Is what we are seeing in her imagination, or is it the Boogeyman, able to fade in and out as he pleases?

There is one scene in this film that I am in awe of to this day. At one point Laurie is standing next to a darkened room. Michael seems to appear out nothingness in the darkness and we begin to question whether or not we had seen him there all along, or even if he had been there all along. But our attention is so focused on Laurie that we can never be sure. And it happens every time I watch this movie.

Likewise, when in the living room of the house across the street, we know just as Laurie does that Michael has gotten in through an open window. We can hear him breathing, somewhere nearby, but like Laurie, we never know exactly where he is lurking. And remember, before Halloween, indestructible human killers were a rare thing unless they were man made monsters stitched together in a laboratory.

The casting of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie was either a stroke of luck or genius, depending on how you look at this. She’s young, fresh, and brings just the right feel to a character that is supposed to be naive and innocent, unlike Lynda and Annie who are as horny as Michael’s sister was years ago. Or if you insist, a goody two shoe. Come to think of it, I think Lynda’s boyfriend was almost as fast on the draw. It would have been a helluva shoot out to see how can....never mind that

.

Donald Pleasence brings a certain amount of over the top scenery chewing gravitas to the character of Dr. Loomis, making the character unforgettable in an odd sort of way. I guess. If you mention Donald Pleasence to someone they’ll always think of his role in the Halloween Movies, or in my case, I think of him as Dr. Loomis this film, as Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, or as Dr. Michaels in Fantastic Voyage where he was unceremoniously devoured by a white corpuscle.

There is another actor in this film that I haven’t mentioned. Much in the way that Jaws would have been a different film without John Williams menacing shark theme, Carpenter’s score for this film works to perfection in it’s ominous simplicity. It’s serves to enhance the relentlessness of Michael Myers, much in the same way that William’s shark score let us know someone was about to become fish bait.

John Carpenters Music adds another dimension to Halloween. This suite though, is from the sequel but uses the same cinematic themes from the first film.

Both Carpenter and Debra Hill would go on to do many more films. In Carpenter’s case, at least three of his films are on my list of favorites, those being Escape from New York, The Thing, and Starman, proving that he was more than capable of extending himself beyond one single genre.

Hill would serve as a producer and writer on many films, and work with Carpenter on several more of his. At the time of her death from cancer in 2005 she was working with Oliver Stone on the film World Trade Center. She would not live to see Halloween inducted into the National Film Registry in 2006, and that makes me sad. One of Debra’s other films that she worked on as a producer, Adventures in Babysitting is certainly a candidate for a review on this blog.

It was easy for me to have a little fun at the expense of Halloween, but there is no denying it’s impact on horror films and the craftsmanship that went into it. And sure, some of the things in the initial twenty minutes don’t stand up to scrutiny but who cares. It’s a horror film, it’s not suppose to, and when it finally gets down to business it succeeds on every level leaving me no choice but to grant it a Clyde score of an A.. This closing moment, one of the greatest and most memorable two lines ever spoken in any horror film, is worth the A by itself. Not to mention that it’s the best possible way to close out this review. Happy Halloween, y’all. Stay safe.

Technorati Tags: movie review,movie,film review,film,horror,Halloween,John Carpenter,Debra Hill,Jamie Lee Curtis,Donald Pleasence,Michael Myers,Horror,Terror,Scary

Amazon Adds More Content For Free Streaming with Amazon Prime

2011-10-20T06:57:00.001-07:00

Amazon has announced that they will be adding some more Fox and PBS shows to their free instant streaming. It appears they are the ones who may eventually be giving Netflix a run for their money. After all they are cheaper. At $79 a year, that’s less than $7 dollars a month plus you get the bonus of two day free shipping with everything you buy. In my case, I buy a lot and have had nothing but satisfaction with Amazon. In fact, everybody in this household now heads to Amazon to shop before even thinking about heading out to the department stores or malls.

I still have both streaming services, but I don’t know how long that will last. When Amazon Prime comes up for renewal, I will probably dump Netflix streaming and just do some discs with them. As it is now I have access to more movies than I could ever possibly watch. There are all kinds of devices out there that stream Amazon. I have three even without my computers: A Roku Player, A Sony Blu-ray player, and my Vizio Blu-ray which cost me only $88 dollars and I couldn’t be happier with it. And oh yeah, if you want to watch a more recent movie you can rent it from Amazon as well or buy a digital copy that you won’t have to store and will always be available to watch. You can do that without even having Prime, as long as you have an Amazon account. Anyway, here’s the Amazon announcement.

A Day in the Life: 10 months and 40 doctors later-We know what ails you.

2011-10-17T09:17:00.001-07:00

We're doing the doctor bit today--twice. First the Neurology guy, then later today the regular HCP office. They have Faux News on the TV and you know how much I hate that crap.

I didn't sleep worth a damn last night so I'm probably going to be grouchy.

Update: Made it into the examine room at 9:20 for a 9:00 appointment. Not too awful bad.

Update II: I've now been in this examining room longer than I was in the waiting room. Time 9:50 PM

Update III: The news is all bad. This may have to wait until I get home. Carnac sees surgery in my future.

Update IV: Better Late than never. There's one thing about being stuck in a doctor's office for hours. It's hell on your IPhone battery while you try to keep yourself occupied. That examining room that you see. I ended up sitting there waiting until almost noon, for some stuff they could have finished up with by no later than nine thirty.

So why write about my medical stuff? Health care in this country has reached an abysmal state, and it shows in our ranking, somewhere around 38th in the world I think. Rather piss poor, and now I know why. Funny how some politicians (and you know which ones) continue to talk about the US health care being the best in the world when it's not even close. And if you're unlucky to have insurance as tens of millions of people in this country are, you're basically just shit out of luck. I know. I've been in that situation before, for a good percentage of my life.

If you've been following this caper along in my other posts, you pretty much know how piecemeal HMO coverage is by now. You have to wait for approval on just about every little procedure. And that's about where I stand right now with the one big caveat: After six months of shuffling around from specialist to specialist, I now know what my main problems is even if I don't fully understand it.

It has to do with the vertebrate in my neck are compressing against the nerves in my spinal cord. Quite a bit actually, as the Doctor Genius showed me on my MRI pictures that I had taken about a week ago, which if they had taken them months ago it would have saved me a lot of trouble. What it amounts to is that they have to fix it, because if they don't I could end up paralyzed or worse. Or so they say.

But before any of that happens my regular HCP has to do my surgical preliminaries: blood samples and all that crap. But, because I've had a persistent case of laryngitis off and on, I have to go to another specialist for that before they can begin getting me ready for surgery. You know, just to make sure it isn't cancer causing my voice to come and go like a yo-yo. Take my word for it though, it isn't cancer. I've had this laryngitis problem before. For about two or three years as a matter of fact and it was a lot worse than it is now. But they have to do what they have to do.

The worse part of this is going to be wearing a neck brace. But even that has to be approved. Hope it takes a long time. The bad part: I have to wear even before surgery which tells me that what my doctor says is true. Even those I have spoken to have never had to wear the brace before the operation. Still, some are advising me not to have it. I wish I knew more. I was too stunned when he told me to ask about more specific details.

Anyway, I'm still going to write about this and we'll see how it develops. Hopefully I can get back to working on more pleasant blog stuff.

Sorry about the time it took me to update this post. Not like anybody's going to read it anyway. I laid down in the bed and looked for something on Netflix to watch but I fell asleep making a selection. That's how tired I was. Oh well, watching Scarecrow and Mrs. King on Amazon as I write this. Better than nothing, but kind of hokey. I didn't remember the show being this hokey. All four season are available for free with Amazon Prime though and it isn't on Netflix. I only mention that show so that I can stick an Amazon ad on here..lol. Catch you later.

Clyde’s Movie Palace: Norbit (2007)

2011-10-16T22:27:00.001-07:00

Starring
Eddie Murphy
Thandie Newton
Terry Crews
Clifton Powell
Mighty Rasta
Cuba Gooding Jr.

Directed by Brian Robbins
Makeup Effects by Rick Baker

I once posted the Ten Worst Reviewed Movies from the first half of 2007. I had just reviewed The Reaping a few days before that list appeared. The Reaping had earned a prominent spot at number 4 on the list with a 7% approval rating right ahead (or behind if you want to luck at it that way) of Norbit which was in the rarified air of 9 per cent. But as the old saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. For instance my brother can’t understand why I and so many others absolutely abhor From Justin to Kelly. A movie I once reviewed for IMDB, and having sold my only copy after writing it, I doubt I’ll be able to revisit that experience. Not that I wante to. It’s kind of like getting an Ebola virus, finding a cure, then asking for the disease again just to be sure the cure worked.

Although my final grade for The Reaping was a D+ because I had to lower the grade on a technicality, the actual review for most of the movie was a C+. But still, I believe my C+ would count as a totally negative review at RT. So in essence, a film could get an awful lot of C+’s from critics, but they would still be counted as being negative overall. So while I’m sure that there will be those who believe The Reaping was one of the worst movies of the year, I probably wouldn’t be one of them.

So when it came time for me to view Norbit, a film which I had read nothing but awful things about, there was still a chance that at the worst, it could really be an average film that I might like somewhat. It could be that Norbit no more deserved to be worst movie number five than The Reaping deserved to be number four. And after watching Norbit, I can say in all honesty that not only did it not deserve to be number five, it should be on a list by itself, in a class all by itself. In other words, Rotten Tomatoes should make a new list of those films most resembling a pile of shit and place Norbit in the number one position all by itself. Was it really that bad? No, it was worse than that but I have no other adjectives that I can use without being booted off blogger for setting a new low in obscene words and a new high in number of times used. Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a new entry on my all time worst list and thy name is Norbit.

I don’t know how or why Eddie Murphy picks his material, but maybe he knows what he’s doing and I just don’t know what I’m viewing. After all, Norbit did gross close to 35 million on its opening weekend and was just five million shy of a hundred million over all before it finally got kicked out of theaters. And there have been some awfully bad movies that have become pretty big hits. But 51 percent voted for Bush years ago so I guess you can chalk Norbit’s success up to the fact that some peoples trash is everybody else’s misery.

And the thing of it is, Norbit wastes no time in letting you know that despite its brisk hour and forty minute running time you are in for a very long night.

The film opens with Eddie Murphy as Norbit narrating the story of his early childhood. He is musing as to why his parents might have left him at an orphanage and how they might have picked the best orphanage they could possibly find. As the narration continues, we watch as a car speeds down the road, swings into the parking lot of what looks to be a Chinese restaurant, and tosses a package out the window that bounces across the pavement. The package turns out to be the infant, Norbit. I don’t know about you, but I find it very difficult see the fun in tossing a baby out of a car window, even if I had known beforehand that it’s the main character of a film that is going to cause me an evening of misery and stomach indigestion.

As it turns out, the Chinese Restaurant is a combination Restaurant/Orphanage where the kids work and the kids play. It is run by a Mr. Wong (Played by Eddie Murphy. Make-up by Rick Baker) who promptly tells the infant that he’s black and he’s ugly so that’s two strikes against him. And Mr. Wong is supposed to be one of the more lovable characters.

Seconds later with the narration continuing, the credits still going on, and Norbert telling us about their pets at the orphanage, we see him several years later petting a duck while Mr. Wong prepares a meal nearby. Mr. Wong picks up the duck, chops it’s head off and gives Norbit the head to play with. That’ll have you rolling in the aisles, won’t it?

Right after that we get another scene of the orphan kids carrying a wooden whale across the lot while Mr. Wong uses it for target practice by throwing a harpoon at it, just missing Norbit’s head. It was at this point that I came close to taking the movie out because I don’t care who you are or what the movie is about. Child abuse is not funny. But having said I would review it, I grudgingly stuck with it.

With Norbit still narrating and the credits fading in and out we finally get a few seconds of relief from the crude and the cruel as Norbit tells us about his friendship with Kate (played here by China Anderson, Played as an adult by Thandie Newton). But even this thirty seconds of story can’t escape the crude stupidity (it is not humor, and if you think it is go away) as we see the two of them at about age six sitting side by side on the toilet holding hands and Norbit tells us they even get to poopie together.

But soon, Kate is adopted and Norbit is not. When Norbit turns nine we finally meet Rasputia (played at age 9 by Lindsey Sims-Lewis, age 17 by Yves Lola St. Vill, and as an adult by Eddie Murphy, makeup by Rick Baker). She saves Norbit from being pounded by a couple of schoolyard bullies but afterwards proceeds to make Norbit her bitch. So for the next hour and thirty five minutes we are subjected to witnessing how many different ways Rasputia and her brothers can abuse Norbit and everybody else in the movie as well, and those in the audience unfortunate enough to bare witness to this crap.

Norbit and Rasputia grow up, and as they head to the altar the opening credits have finally run their course. Yep, you read that right so you know it is going to be a long long way to the finish line.

Laugh as you watch Rasputia’ s brothers shake down everybody in town for some money including picking one old guy up and dumping his head in spaghetti sauce.

Go into hysterics not once but four different times as you watch Rasputia smash Norbit into the bed.

You’ll shed tears of laughter as you watch Rasputia run down an old lady’s puppy with her car! Get a belly laugh as Rasputia smashes into the mail man! Feel the mirth as Rasputia fights with kids in a giant air mattress ride! Your sides will be splitting as you watch scene after scene of Rasputia hogging the queen size bed from Norbit! By now you should have the idea and if you really want to punish someone that you hate, than I suggest you rent the film tie them to a chair and make them watch it. In between the abuse, you will get more fat jokes and more fat stunts and more ridicule of overweight people than you ever thought possible to squeeze into one single movie.

I’m sure you are thinking that there has to be a plot in here of some kind. In a movie like this that isn’t necessarily so but we do get one even if it isn’t much. Kate, she being the long lost love of Norbit’s potty training, returns to town just as she is about to be married to Deion Hughes (Cuba Gooding Jr.). Her idea is to take over the Chinese Restaurant/Orphanage from Mr. Wong and make it a better place for the kids. At the same time, Rasputia’s Brothers want to get their hands on the orphanage so that they can turn it into a strip joint called the Nipplopolous. (Yes, it means exactly what it looks like it means.) And of course Norbit is still in love with Kate, and although she won’t admit it Kate is still in love with him even though they were about five or six when they parted. I guess that’s the effect having to poopie together will have on your love life. So can Norbit escape the clutches of Rasputia, win Kate over, and save the orphanage before you grab the movie out of the DVD player smash it into pieces and mail it back to Netflix so that no other customers will become a victim of senseless torture? Only you can answer that.

It’s hard to believe that years ago Eddie Murphy once starred in films that I liked. As a matter of fact, Trading Places is one of my favorite comedies of all times even if I still don’t know exactly what was happening on the trading floor. I actually liked the first Beverly Hills Cop movie, although the same certainly can’t be said for any of the sequels. And I liked the turn he did with Nick Nolte in 48 Hours. When Eddie plays an animated donkey or a dragon, he’s off the charts. But other than that there is nothing else that he has done recently other than his co-starring role in Dream Girls that has entertained me. At least most of the family films such as Daddy Day Care and Haunted Mansion can be tolerated somewhat if your kids like them. But as far as I’m concerned, there is not one second of redeeming value in Norbit for your Grandparents, you, your kids, or even your pet rat if you have one. You would have thought Murphy would have gotten over any hang-ups he has about overweight people after the two Nutty Professor Movies, but I guess not since he has broadened his psychosis and horizons by ridiculing overweight females as well. He’s an equal opportunity offender.

Maybe he thought Rick Baker’s makeup effects would hide him from this disaster. They did not.

There was a lot of talk going around that the previews for Norbit may have cost Murphy the Oscar for Dream Girls. I couldn’t understand why anybody would not vote for someone just because they made a bad movie. It didn’t seem fair somehow. Now having watched it, I can understand why.

Somebody had to be punished for this mess and since Murphy was Producer, writer, and played three roles in it, he was as good of a candidate as any and paybacks are hell. Murphy should have taken a tip from Cuba Gooding. First you win the Oscar and then you start making the crappy and worthless movies like this one. As Roger Ebert might say, “I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated every single crappy frame of this movie one hundred times over.” So how do you rate a movie like this? My lowest grade has always been an F, but even that is too good for this. So since I can’t give you an F, I have no choice but to institute an entirely new award just for movies like this one. Congratulations for being the first recipient of the Poo Poo On You - Movie Award. It is well deserved. (Clyde note: This was in fact the first film I gave this award to. Although I have been moving the films from the old blog in the order listed, they are not in the order originally posted due to the fact that during a change in the template the format went haywire and each article had to be fixed and reposted at that time in the order of repair.)

A Day in the Life: Random Thoughts

2011-10-16T00:01:00.001-07:00

When I was writing political crap, I used to write some quick thoughts about recent political happenings from the four corners of the earth. I think I called it Around the World with Clyde or some idiotic sounding name. So after having spent the week writing movie reviews and having polished up some of the old ones while hauling them over from the my soon to be deleted other blog, I thought I would take it easy for a moment and just write some of my thoughts on anything that comes to mind. Let’s get busy.

The Let’s Get busy bit that I used here and on my Netflix reviews comes to you courtesy of the old Arsenio Hall show. I began wondering whatever happened to him because at one time he was such a hot commodity.

He showed up on George Lopez’s show as a guest, before it was canceled.

He was once in consideration to host the crap game show Deal or no Deal, but lost out to Howie Mandel for that privilege. Lost out? He should consider himself lucky to have missed that gig.

He has hosted a show called The World’s Funniest Moments on myNetworkTV. I’ve never seen the show, I’m not even sure I get that network on our Craphouse Cable. But for my money, video clip shows cloned from World’s Funniest Home Videos wore out their welcome with me a long time ago. So has the original.

He’s been a guest on Jay Leno as well, which is funny considering he once proclaimed he was going to “kick Jay Leno’s ass.” So it’s nice to see he’s not impoverished and living on some street corner.

I seldom watch talk shows anymore. The guests are usually nothing more than celebrities trying to sell their next movie, book, or television show. But now you know what happened to Arsenio and so do I.

My latest DVD/Purchase is a show from the seventies called Medical Center. It starred Chad Everett and Tyne Daly’s dad James Daly. As a matter of fact, I made the purchase just a few moments ago when Amazon so generously dropped the price down about ten dollars. The thing to remember about Amazon is that some prices go up and down like schizophrenic yoyo. Don’t blink or you may miss it. I’ve put stuff in my shopping cart to mull over whether I really want to make the purchase, then come back a short time later to find the price all jacked up.

I almost bought Medical Center from the Warner’s Archive Store for a couple of dollars less but by the time shipping, handling, and tax was added, then the price was jacked up quite a bit easily making Amazon the better value.

Bricks and Mortar stores claim Amazon has a huge advantage because they don’t charge tax. That may be true, but if they think that Amazon charging tax is going to make customers suddenly ditch Amazon and head out to the shopping center, they are badly mistaken. Here’s my opinion as to why that would be even when they do start charging taxes after having shopped there for about the past four years:

1. Amazon prices are often cheaper, regardless of tax.
2. If you buy a lot and have Amazon prime, you pay no shipping and handling and get two day delivery on most items. Without Amazon prime, if you buy more than $25, there is still no shipping and handling fees but you get it regular ground shipping.
3. If you have Amazon Prime, you can get an item over night for $3.99. For two day air, the Warner Archive wanted $10.00 which is just idiotic.
4. As far as I’m concerned, Amazon customer service has been exemplary. I’ve had no problem with item returns at all. You simply print up a return label, and ship the article back. It costs you nothing. I’ve had to do that twice in two years, and once for something that was my own fault.

So I paid $41.79 at Amazon, I’ll get the item on Wednesday. I would have paid $45.54 at the Warner store, and would have received it whenever via ground.

I’ll be honest enough to say that last year I did drop Amazon Prime because I figured I could wait out the extra shipping time. But I reinstated it when they added the free streaming movies, which made it a better value than Netflix, especially after Netflix jacked up their prices.

And yeah, they need work with their streaming interface, and the selection isn’t as large, but it is growing steadily and actually growing at a pace faster than Netflix streaming did in it’s early days. And besides, I found I really missed the free shipping and two day delivery when the order doesn’t total twenty five dollars. Just a few days ago I bought a DVD for about $2.98. And it cost me no more than that. That’s better than the bargain bin at Wal-mart.

I’m sure you’ll say this post has something to do with the Amazon ads posted all over the blog. No, it doesn’t. I’ve had those ads previously on Clyde’s Movie Palace, the blog I’m in the process of integrating into this one. I had those posted for three years. Recently, Amazon closed all the California accounts and settled up all outstanding balances. My settlement was just over $7 dollars for those three years, which almost paid for my Top Gun on blu-ray, but not quite. When they sent me an email saying I was getting it, I’d just about forgotten I even had those ads. So why am I bothering with the ads again?

Well, $7 dollars is still better than no dollars. And once you put them up, they really don’t require much maintenance. As for the wish list near the bottom of the right hand column, that’s there for family members to find easily. I became tired of them asking me to send it to them last Christmas, especially since it was always changing depending on what I bought or finding something I wanted more and what I thought were real possibilities. And besides, how the hell else am I going to get them to read this blog, something they seem to regard as pure poison. So Merry Christmas to you all.

About a week and a half ago I pre-ordered The Donna Reed Show, The Complete Fourth Season. These are the Lost Episodes, that weren’t seen when the series ran on Nick at Nite. When I ordered, the price was $39 dollars and has dropped down to under $30 as of this writing. (Which is another thing about Amazon. When you pre-order you always get the lowest price from the time you order until the item ships. But this little article isn’t about Amazon.)

I already own seasons one, two, and three, and for a long time it looked as if we were not going to get season four. So this made me extremely happy.

I’m sure the biggest percentage of those who read this will shrug their shoulders when I mention The Donna Reed Show and this DVD release. But it is important, and it’s important in a lot of ways.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m also big on Classic Television. I hope to write a lot of articles regarding that hobby but they will have to wait until I get the other blog articles transferred over here. By then I should have more time.

What I’m afraid of is that we are going to lose our television heritage. Even more than films, I believe that most television programs are a microcosm of the world in which we lived at a certain point in time. They are a part of our history, and in a way are a recorded time capsule. Yet, while much is being done to preserve our motion picture history, the majority of our television history is being ignored, except by those of us who are old enough to appreciate it for what it was.

Think about it. If someone hadn’t been willing to put together these episodes of this show, they would have probably been lost forever. And if there are to be more released, it will probably be dependent on how well these sell. We hear about one society after another working for film preservation, yet I know of no effort to preserve our television heritage unless more than a few pennies in profit can be squeezed out of bringing these shows back to life. But this is just the tip of an iceberg, and part of a longer article I really have to be writing. Maybe a series of articles.

If you visited this blog before I began re-working it, you probably saw a long list of feeds in the margins. Most had to do with entertainment sites, some with political sites, and others concerning consumer affairs. I debated a long time before taking them down, but after studying the situation, I found out that most of them had the same exact stories and it was all very repetitious, not to mention how much they slowed the page down when it was trying to load. I had all of these same sites in my Google reader and when I would go to read the articles, there was seldom very little difference between most of them or the headlined stories.

So I decided it was all pretty useless information, just as posting the same news bits on here would be. I made up my mind there would be no copying and pasting news articles unless I knew for sure it was very fresh information, (the Netflix/Qwikster story broke and I was on top of it by accident which is why I posted it), or if I had something to say about the story other than one or two sentences. So my advice is if you want to read all that stuff, use an RSS reader. Most of it is boring useless crap anyway.

But on the other hand, I’m still pasting links on my Clyde Stuff Facebook page in the hopes that someone will respond and there will be a half way decent follow up or discussion of whatever it is I posted about. And if by chance you go there, try hitting the like button for me. There is no prize, this is not Digital Bits, and it is not DVD verdict. This is just me writing my fool ass off. But maybe someday. But feel free to post and comment as long as you keep it in bounds.

I’m a skeptic sometimes when it comes to new gadgets. I for one thought that blu-ray players were not that big of a deal and repeatedly said I wouldn’t buy one. But when the prices came way down they made them so that you could stream Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon I caved and bought one. Yeah, I know I could have bought a Roku but for a top of the line Roku Player, the price difference just wasn’t that prohibitive. I did eventually buy a Roku for one of the other rooms.

But having experienced the format, I can now say that for many movies, the difference is remarkable, especially when a studio ends up cleaning up older films so that the picture is like it’s brand new. My son bought me Casablanca on Blu-ray, and it was as if they had developed the movie off of a fresh negative. Likewise, some others have just blown me away like Gone With The Wind, How The West Was Won, Ben-Hur, Quo-Vadis, and most of all The Sound of Music.

One problem though is that for some damn reason, my laptop that has a blu-ray play player in it won’t play them. Even after installing software to enable you to do so. It just won’t recognize the discs, so it would be impossible for me to do a few screen captures for a review unless I use my web cam as I did on this article for The Big Bird Cage. Come to think of it, I should do another one of those. I had a lot of fun writing that.

I hope to get back to doing a lot of reading sometime before I’m placed in the furnace and my ashes dumped into some pretty urn. Between work, this blog, and dealing with pain on a day to day basis, I haven’t had the time. I do have one large book back in the bedroom I intend to read soon, just before I review the movie version of that same book. And no, I won’t say what it is but it’s an older book and movie. I can tell you for sure it isn’t Harry Potter though.

And so I was also a skeptic about the Kindle, until I my son bought one. Now, I want one. Sure you can read books on your laptop, desktop, or your I-pad, but it’s not even close to the same experience as reading the printed page. The Kindle comes as close to that as you possibly can get electronically. I can’t compare it to the Nook, because I haven’t seen one of those, but if you want to send me one, I’ll check it out and let you know.

And finally, if you look in the right hand margin you’ll see a list of my most popular posts. Of course, a bunch of dirty old bastards searching endlessly for Jenni and Dex porn have made the Jennifer Ringsley article number one. Right beneath it however is my review of the 1973 version of Walking Tall. I was kind of perplexed about that at first but not any more. People aren’t looking to read my review about Walking Tall, they want to buy it. Some of them may be vendors hoping to pick up a cheap copy for resale at an exorbitant price.

The problem is that for whatever reason, the movie is out of print again, and the prices on Amazon have skyrocketed and are climbing on a daily basis. The lowest price for a used disc is $40 but a new unopened copy will put you back $60 dollars or more. Why is it out of print? I don’t know. Ask Paramount. I think they have the rights. I don’t know how well the movie sold, or what their plans are. Maybe they will sell the rights to Amazon or Netflix for streaming, which might put a dent in the DVD price, but not much of one because streaming is still not the same as owning it.

I have three copies of this film. The first time I bought it was part of a three disc set that included all three original movies. And the quality was abysmal to say the least. I think it was issued by Rhino. Yet, this crappy quality three disc box set is selling for $85 dollars right now at Amazon by outside sellers. But I won’t be selling mine. Not because I cherish it that much, but it is the only copies of the other two films that I have should I decide to revisit that franchise, something that is a distinct possibility.

When Paramount finally reissued the film in widescreen with good picture quality, I for one was eternally grateful. But somehow my disc came up missing here in the house and I had to repurchase it. Eventually the other disc showed up which is how I ended up with two of them. The original one I bought was only played once I think, so I guess I could list it as like new and sell it.

But I won’t. Posting ads for Amazon all over the place is one thing, getting into actually having to sell them is another story altogether. Maybe if I were healthy and retired and had hours to kill, I could manage it. What I can’t figure out is why any one would pay these prices? Well, hell yes I can.

Way back when, Disney had issued a copy of The Little Mermaid on DVD for a limited time. This was a bare bones edition released when DVD’s were in their infancy. By the time I bought a DVD player, it had been out of print for a quite a while. So I got caught up in an auction for one on Ebay. I really wanted the disc, and ended up paying fifty dollars for a brand new unopened copy. Afterwards I kind of regretted it and later Disney reissued the movie as a special edition just like they always do, which meant that the value of the copy I had went into the dumpster. So even to this day I kind of regret having bought it.

Still, I don’t know what the odds are of Walking Talk getting another reprieve on disc. It would be cool to see a blu-ray issue of the set with some special features and commentary by some of the cast, even if I didn’t particularly care for the sequels. I would say that’s a long shot though. I don’t know if the film has a large enough following for penny pinching Paramount to believe it merits that.

But that’s the gamble you take if you buy it. If it is reissued, than you lose. If it never sees the light of day again, then you win. So if you want to spend that kind of money, be my guest. Since you’ll be buying from an outside seller, it doesn’t affect me one way or the other in regards to Amazon. Catch you later!

Clyde’s Movie Palace: RV (2006)

2011-10-15T13:48:00.001-07:00

starring
Robin Williams
Cheryl Hines
Joanna 'JoJo' Levesque
Josh Hutcherson
Jeff Daniels
Kristin Chenoweth
Hunter Parrish
Chloe Sonnenfeld
Alex Ferris

Written by
Geoff Rodkey
Directed by
Barry Sonnenfeld

Once upon a time there was a nice average All-American type family. The father was a working stiff who just wanted to have a family vacation where they would spend all their time together before the kids grew up and went off to college. He decided the best way to do this was to take the family on a cross country trip together. The rest of the family objected at first but the father's mind was made up. As they traveled out west the family had one misadventure after another. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong so that near the end of our little fairy tale everybody was ready to wring dear old dad’s neck. But as fairy tales go, the family eventually found togetherness and despite all the mishaps and hardships, they found that being a family is truly the greatest thing on earth.

Sounds like it would make a great movie with endless possibilities doesn't it? Well, it did back in 1983 when Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo and Randy Quaid got together for the first time to make National Lampoon’s Vacation. As for the Robin Williams version of goofball family takes a vacation, it’s not so hot and instead of endless possibilities we end up on a dead end street. In fact, if you make it to the end of RV, give yourself a courage medal for having made the trip.

Plot wise, there isn’t too much to tell except that unlike Clark Griswold who wanted to take his family on a cross country tour to Disneyland facsimile Wally World, Bob Munro (Robin Williams) eschews the planned trip to Hawaii out of necessity because his boss wants him to deliver a sales pitch in Colorado. Bob then rents an RV and convinces his wife Jamie (Cheryl Hines) that it’s best to take the two kids, Cassie and Carl ('JoJo' Levesque and Josh Hutcherson) and hit the road in an RV. Of course Bob knows nothing about going across country in such a vehicle, and the possibilities of ensuing hilarity are endless. What you’ll find out is that although the movie runs a quick 98 minutes you’ll be worn out from pacing the floor hoping the film will end for about 97 1/2 of those minute. There were more laughs watching the airbag open in the Griswold’s Wagon Queen Family Truckster than in the entire running time of RV.

This is an example of what director Barry Sonnenfeld and writer Geoff Rodkey see as being uproariously comedic. Not far into the journey the crapper in the RV gets backed up. Of course Bob has to figure out how to empty it and yes you can pencil in, “this is the part where Bob gets gross waste products sprayed on him.”

Although we can easily predict this occurrence, there was still a chance for the sequence to tickle are funny bone if done with some imagination. Instead we get stuck with Bob and Carl aided endlessly by some other hapless bumpkins who don’t know much more about it than they do. What we get is a crash course in RV plumbing as they change one hose and one connection after another and each time a little more shit sprays on Bob. By the time the sequence is over, I guarantee you’ll be looking at your watch. I looked at the timer on the DVD player and it told me I still had more than an hour of suffering yet to go. By the time the film was over, I was ready to apply for Sainthood. This is however, what one should expect when you have the director of The Wild Wild West team up with the writer of Daddy Day Care and Daddy Day Camp. That alone should have been an ominous omen.

Just as the Griswold’s had Cousin Eddie and his weird and hilariously obnoxious family to help out, the Munro’s meet up with Gornicke Family. Unlike Cousin Eddie and family, the Gornicke’s (Jeff Daniels, Kristin Chenoweth, Hunter Parrish, Chloe Sonnenfeld, Alex Ferris) aren’t very weird or all that strange, so of course they are seldom if ever funny. They are simply here to help Bob and the rest of us learn a lesson.

The lesson we learn is that if you see a PG rating next to a film that’s supposed to be outrageously over the top funny, chances are that it’s not going to be. Yes, you read that right. It is rated PG for crude humor, innuendo and language. In other words, take the doo-doo scene out and you probably get a G rating.

This could almost be any Disney film made in the seventies with Kurt Russell being strong, invisible, or a computer wearing tennis shoes. No, I take that back. Those films were much better and funnier than than this film was, and take my word for it. They weren't that funny.

Perhaps it might have helped if Bob Monroe was a more likable guy at the outset but he is not. Instead of Robin Williams making Bob a funny man, he makes Bob the most obnoxious person you were ever forced to meet. The best way to explain it is that Bob is obnoxious in the way that a Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity would be if they were in this film, not a lovable type of obnoxious the way a Ted Baxter was.

Somebody on YouTube likes Jo Jo.

Cheryl Hines as his wife Jamie doesn’t fare much better. She isn’t obnoxious, but she isn’t funny either. She’s simply there. And why do teenagers in movies these days have to be so obnoxious from beginning to end? One would think that all teenagers totally hate their parents, never do anything they’re told, and their first brain cell is still under development. Is this the same Josh Hutcherson that was so great in Bridge to Terabithia?

If you have never seen this film, then good for you. Avoid it under any and all circumstances. Even if it would somehow save you from death, take your chances with death. If you see it on a video store shelf run away as fast as you can. Don't go near it, and for God's sake don't let your kids or teens bring it home either. If they do take it out in the yard and bury it, quickly. And if the dog digs it up and starts chewing on it, shoot the dog.

Having instituted a special certificate of merit award, I now have another film to lovingly bestow it on. Better second than never. Yes, my friends, RV becomes the second winner of the Poo Poo on you award.

Clyde’s Movie Palace: The Sure Thing (1985)

2011-10-13T02:20:00.001-07:00

starring
John Cusack
Daphne Zuniga
Anthony Edwards
Tim Robbins
Lisa Jane Persky
Nicollette Sheridan
Viveca Lindfors
Boyd Gaines

Directed by
Rob Reiner

“It could be tonight,' he thought as he stood in the corner, pretending to have a good time. He would meet her tonight. All his young life, he had dreamed of a girl like this. 5'6, silky hair, trim, nubile body that really knew how to move. And soft, deeply tanned skin. Now as for personality traits, she needed only one. She had to love sex and all the time. To arrive at this moment, he had traveled vast distances enduring many hardships. Abject poverty, starvation, show tunes, you name it. From across the room, he saw her. She was perfect. He knew almost nothing about her and she didn't know much more about him. It was exactly how it was supposed to be. He brought her to his room. The lights were soft, the moment was right.”

Okay guys, you can put your tongue back in your mouth and quit drooling. Gals, don’t judge this book by it’s cover. The above passage takes place near the end of Rob Reiner’s The Sure Thing but it perfectly encapsulates what this film is about. Still it’s like putting the cart before the horse.

John Cusack has been one of the most under appreciated actors in American Cinema. Ask any person to make a list of the best actors in the past twenty or so years, and his name is seldom if ever mentioned. I have yet to see him give a really bad performance in any film he has starred in, no matter how dull, lame, or stupefying the material may have been. That being said, The Sure Thing is neither dull or lame, and certainly not stupefying. As romantic comedies go, it’s a pure delight.

Like many American males in high school, Walter "Gib" Gibson (John Cusack) rates his success not by how he does on the honor roll but by how many girls he's had sex with. Alas, after a productive sophomore and junior year, his senior year in High School has been a vast and barren wasteland. He does have a pick up line that he uses on occasion:

“Consider outer space. You know, from the time of the first NASA mission, it became evident that being in space has a profound effect on the human psyche. You know, during the first Gemini mission, some thought was actually given to the notion of sending up a man and a woman... together. A cosmic 'Adam and Eve,' if you will. Bound together in a highly sophisticated nerve center, at the head of the largest, most powerful rocket, yet known, it's giant thrusters blasting them into the dark void, as they hurtle towards their final destination: the gushing wellspring of life itself. How would you like to have a sexual encounter so intense it could conceivably change your political views?”

You can almost hear the retort from coast to coast: How would you like to get slapped in the mouth? It’s like the old joke where the first guy walks up to these girls and asks, “you wanna screw?” The second guy tells him, “I bet you get slapped a lot.” And the first guy replies, “yes I do, but I get screwed a lot as well.” Gib would probably have better luck by just going ahead anddispensing with the Star Trek prologue. But his best friend Lance (Anthony Edwards) is sympathetic towards his plight.

Lance: Hey what is this, Lonely Man Sitting on a Hill, huh?
Gib: It’s over, Lance. It’s gone, I’ve lost it. High School. I started off so hot. Sophomore year: 2 Times. Junior year was excellent: 4 times. And not all with the same girl. Senior year looked like the best. The first day of classes, then nothing.
Lance: What do you mean nothing your Senior year? What about that time with Barbara Devillebis in the high-jump pit. Huh?
Gib: That was you.
Lance: Oh yeah.
Gib: I just can’t motivate myself the way I used to. Maybe I’m past my prime.
Lance: Hey, it’s not you! It’s these high school girls here. They’re simple. They’re never gonna stimulate a complex guy like you.
Gib: Maybe you’re right.
Lance: Of course I’m right. Anyways, after tonight you’ll never have to deal with these simple high school girls again.
Gib: But won’t these same girls be in college?
Lance: Yeah. But it’ll be different.
Gib: Why?
Lance: Because they’ll be college girls.

Lance is headed out to the sun, surf, and excitement of Southern California while Gib is headed to an unnamed Ivy League School in New England to get what he calls a real education.

Gib: I’m gonna miss you Lance.
Lance: It’s your own fault you know, you could be coming out to California with me.
Gib: Yeah, right. Get a totally bitchin education out there dude. California! You could be coming to New England with me, you know.
Lance: Are you crazy? The Ivy League stinks man. All they got there are those ugly intellectual girls, with band-aids on their knees from playing the cello. No, thank you!
Gib: I’m really gonna miss you, Lance.

In his freshman year of college, things are downright bleak. He is unable to connect with the life style of the East Coast College Girls.

As Gib explains it, “All they want to do is stay indoors, smoke cigarettes and relate. I don’t like them.”

It seems as if everybody except Gib, including Gib's chunky roommate Jimbo (Joshua Cadman), is having sex with someone, leaving Gib out in the cold. Still, Gib writes old pal Lance a letter, initially painting a rosy picture of his life in the East, then finishing it off with a flourish:

P.S. All of the above is bullshit. I’m floundering in a sea of confusion, and total despair. But knock on wood, I still have my health.

There is hope for Gib, but not much. Sitting next to him in English class is attractive clean cut, girl next door type, Alison Bradbury (Daphne Zuniga). It’s obvious he’s attracted to her, although we’re never really sure why because clearly Alison is certainly not Gib’s type. Well, she is female and she does talk in complete sentences so that much at least fits Gib’s low standards. But Gib’s foot in mouth disease continues unabated.

“You sure do take a lot of notes,” he tells her in one class. To which she promptly gives him the old “Go fornicate yourself” look. A girl like Alison would never ever use the word fuck. They just think it. You kind of have to imagine your own thought bubble.

Alison is everything that Gib is not. She’s an uptight ultra conservative straight A student, who does nothing without first jotting down a notation in her schedule book. Her clothes are always neat, pressed, and matched perfectly. There is nary a hair out of place. Alison’s most memorable life experience is the fact that she passed out in Elvis’s bedroom while touring Graceland and once gave her brother a bloody nose.

The chasm separating Gib and Alison is never more obvious then when Professor Taub (Viveca Lindfors) comments on their essays.

Professor Taub (to Gib while holding his essay): I wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed your paper.
Gib: You did?
Taub: Yeah. I don’t remember the last time that I have seen this much detail expressed on “How to Eat Pizza Without Burning the Roof of Your Mouth.” Unfortunately, whatever whimsical qualities that your paper evokes are obscured in a morass of marginal grammar, creative spelling, and..uh..as I believe sausage stain.
Gib: Pepperoni
Taub: Clean it up Gibson.

On the other hand, Alison’s paper is clean, neat, clear, succinct and to the point. But it has its own problems as well.

Taub: Miss Bradbury, you on the other hand, you express your ideas very clearly.
Alison: Thank you.
Taub: Except that your paper is, well, it’s dry. There’s not enough of you coming through. Loosen up, Alison. Have some fun! Yes, sleep when you feel like it, not when you think you should, eat food that is bad for you at least once in a while. Uh.. have conversations with people whose cloths are not color coordinated. Make love in a hammock! Life is the ultimate experience. Now you have to experience it, in order to write about it. (Alison raises her hand) Yes, Alison?
Alison (still taking notes): What did you say after hammock?

If I would have had a few more teachers like Ms. Taub when I was in school, I’d be breezing through these reviews instead of squeezing every little syllable out of my meat grinder of a brain. I mean, how could you dare to disappoint a teacher that tells you to make love in a hammock?

Anyway, Gib is not easily deterred. Hoping Alison will take pity on him, he uses his English struggles to prey on her good nature while she is taking a swim:

“I’m flunking English. I was wondering if maybe you could help me out. If I flunk English, I’m out of here. Kiss College Goodbye. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll probably go home. Gee Dad will be pissed off, mom will be heartbroken. If I play my cards right, I get maybe a six-months grace period and then I got to get a job, and you know what that means. That’s right, they start me off at the drive-up window and I gradually work may way up from shakes to burgers and then, one day my lucky break comes. The French Fry guy dies and they offer me the job. But the day I have to start some men come by in a black Lincoln Continental and tell me I can make a quick $300 just for driving a van back from Mexico. When I get out of jail I’m 36 years old, living in a flophouse, no job, no home, no upward mobility, very few teeth. Then one day they find me face down talking to the gutter, clutching a bottle of paint thinner. And why? Because you wouldn’t help me in English! No! You were too busy to help me! Too busy to help a drowning man!”

A speech that is punctuated with Gib stumbling backwards into the pool and Alison showing how much she really cares by swimming around him. It is only when a waterlogged Gib camps out on the steps that she finally relents and offers to tutor him, scheduling Gib for 8:00 and writing it in her daily planner.

And although an unsuspecting Alison sees her appointment with Gib as a tutoring session, Gib has other ideas, and picks up a few pointers from his more sexually active roommate:

Jimbo: It’s not what you say that counts but how you say it. Use sincerity. It’s the best technique.
Gib: What?
Jimbo: Come here. (Grabs Gib and pulls him over to the bed, sitting him on it. Then gazes into his eyes) You know, I’ve never met anyone like you before. Usually when I meet someone knew I feel awkward and shy. But with you it’s different. I can talk to you. You know what I’m thinking without my having to explain it to you in fancy terms. We speak each other’s unspoken language fluently. I love you.
Gib: Oh Jimbo, that is the most enormous pile of horseshit I’ve ever heard in my life.

And if Gib’s quest to conquer Alison wasn’t difficult enough, there is one more impediment. Alison has a fiancé that is going to school at UCLA. But if it’s an obstacle the one track mind Gib chooses to ignore it. And having had enough of English Literature for one day, Gib manages to get a reluctant Alison to follow him to the roof of the library.

Once on the roof, Gib begins pointing out the constellations to Alison and for the first time she really seems interested. But whereas his interest is in astronomy, her’s is in mythology. So I suppose you would call that finding uncommon common ground, but isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?

Now, I’m not sure how Gib got into an Ivy league school, but when things are going well between you and your date, one doesn’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to know that one thing you don’t do is use a bullshit line on her, especially a bullshit line that you yourself described as being the “most enormous pile of horsehsit you’ve ever heard in your life” less than a couple of hours earlier.

But Gib’s problem is not obstinate ignorance. It’s painfully obvious that he doesn’t know how to express his real feelings about anything or anyone, unless he’s putting it on an English Literature assignment. And Alison lets him know what she thinks of his pick up line by shoving him to the ground and giving Gib a swift kick to finish him off and be rid of him permanently.

Later, on the way to Ms. Taub’s English class, Gib apologizes profusely, and this time, since he really is being sincere, Alison forgives him. Unfortunately, the fates are out to do Gib in again, and Ms. Taub picks up Gib’s paper to read. That would be fine except the paper is actually one that belongs to his roommate Jimbo, and is a letter to Penthouse magazine bragging about his sexual exploits.

Needless to say, writing an essay about your “ten inches of man meat” after having just convinced Alison that the guy on the roof wasn’t the real you, does not go over too well, and in real life, that would be that. But in romantic comedy movie life things are just getting started.

Having given up on Alison, Gib’s best friend Lance comes to his rescue. He has already sent Gib a picture of a beautiful young girl in a skimpy bikini, and calls Gib on the phone on the phone to fill in the details:

Lance: There’s a certain someone I want you to meet.
Gib: Forget it.
Lance: She’s a very special person.
Gib: I can’t deal with striking out on both coasts.
Lance: You’re not gonna strike out. She was just released from parochial school. She’s in her experimental phase.
Gib: Will you forget it Lance.
Lance: She loves sex.
Gib: What does she look like?
Lance: You remember that last snapshot I sent you? The blonde in the string bikini? Get it.
Gib: I can’t right now.
Lance: That’s an order Private Gibson. (Gib runs into his room, past Jimbo and his girlfriend who in the throes of passion are oblivious to him, and retrieves the photograph we saw earlier)
Gib (looking at the photograph): Yeah.
Lance: You got it? Good, now look at it. Fixate on it. Are you fixating on it?
Gib: I’m fixating.
Lance: Are you sitting down?
Gib: Yes.
Lance: She’s a sure thing, Gib. A sure thing. Now I don’t need to explain the deep significance of those words. I told her all about you and she’s dying to meet you. But you gotta drag your ass out here by the 22nd, because she’s leaving the next day for a semester at sea. So you think you can make it?

I’ll answer Lance’s question for him. Is the Pope Catholic and does a bear....never mind. But you get the point.

Not one to be deterred, Gib catches a shared ride with another couple Mary Ann Webster (Lisa Jane Persky) and Gary (but not the Gary Cooper that’s dead) Cooper (Tim Robbins), who have advertised for companions to help defray the costs of a trip to the west coast for Christmas.

And once in the car, Gib finds that there is one other passenger who has taken them up on their offer. If you guessed Alison, you win the prize. So while Gib is headed out to L.A. to get laid, Alison is as well, in a manner of speaking. She’s going to meet her fiancé Jason (Boyd Gaines) at UCLA. And when Gib gets in the car she’s not a happy camper.

I don’t know if you’ve ever made a long long trip across country by automobile or of any other long distance for that matter. I’ve taken a few long trips, and at least one of them turned out to be the trip from hell. And I’ll put my trip from hell up against anybody’s. So I can sympathize, even with the Gary Cooper that’s not dead. There are far far worse things that can happen to you other than having to sing a few stanzas of 76 Trombones. Me? I’m partial to hits from the sixties myself, seeing as how when I was growing up I was constantly serenaded by my five sisters every time we got into a car together for a family outing.

It goes without saying that this excursion to the Pacific Ocean will not go well. Gibb and Alison spend most of their time nitpicking, criticizing, and just flat out hating one another. Gary (but not the Gary Cooper that’s dead) Cooper and Mary Ann just want everybody to get along and sing their show tunes. There’s nothing like a rousing rendition of “Aquarius” in the confines of an automobile. It isn’t long before Gib and Alison’s bickering ends up getting under the skin of Gary (but not the Gary Cooper that’s dead) Cooper and Mary Ann, especially when our quarrelsome duet of Gib and Alison are directly responsible for the Gary Cooper that’s not dead getting pulled over and ticketed by the cops.

But as good as The Sure Thing is before it even hits the road, that’s how much better it is once those wheels start rolling towards Malibu. In fact, before that point the film has just started which is why I’m leaving it up to you to see how this baby drives down that long lonesome highway.

You don’t have to have a Masters Degree in Romantic Comedies 101 to know where this is all going to end up. But with these kinds of films, getting there is often 90 percent or more of the fun. And The Sure Thing is a blast.

Director Rob Reiner and writers Steve Bloom and Jonathan Roberts take their film where other directors might be tempted to end theirs. Just when we think Gib and Alison are on the road to romantic bliss, they throw another obstacle in their path, pushing them even further apart than they were before. It is only when fate and circumstances intervene they have no choice but to try and get along, that they begin to see each other for who they really are.

What I particularly liked about The Sure Thing is that on this trip we see what Alison and Gib can’t see. It is that he begins to become just a little more like her, and she in turns begins to loosen up and enjoy life, thus taking on some of Gib’s traits. We notice it long before Gib and Alison do. In fact, we actually see it even earlier when Gib apologizes for the incident on the library rooftop. And the screenwriters and Reiner were smart enough to introduce these changes subtly instead of hitting you over the head with them suddenly and having your characters do a 180 degree about face for no particular reason except that it’s time for the movie to end.

When The Sure Thing was released, John Cusack did not have a huge list of movie credits. He had been in Sixteen Candles, and although his turn there as Bryce was hilarious, it was not one where you would say, “Who was that fine actor that played Farmer Ted’s friend?” The Sure Thing was the first time he had to carry a film, and was one that made many such as myself take notice that there was more to this guy then we had seen previously. He would follow The Sure Thing up with Better Off Dead, a film that has been widely panned by most critics, but is one that I could make a good case for being at least worth watching. Yeah, a review of that film is somewhere in the back of my mind gestating. A couple of years later, when he played Harry in The Journey of Natty Gann, Cusack showed that he wasn’t limited to doing comedic roles. And since then, he may very well have been the busiest actor in Hollywood.

Daphne Zuniga’s next big role would be in Mel Brook’s Spaceballs as Princess Vespa, a hilarious satirical slant on Princess Leia of Star Wars. And although I really liked her in Gross Anatomy, she would go on to mostly make her mark in televison starring in shows such as Melrose Place and One Tree Hill.

What really makes this film work is the final twenty minutes or so. You can have the best journey possible but if it all flat lines at the end it was a wasted trip. And I have to say, it’s the best ending possible for a film like this, meaning you may think you know how it’s all going to end, but you don’t really. It’s where smart writing revisits earlier scenes for the big payoff, thus giving more relevance to the fact that what goes around comes around and sometimes it’s not so bad after all. And that alone would be enough for me to praise any film, but there very are few romantic comedies that gets everything exactly right. The Sure Thing is about as sure a thing as one can get in this genre, and for that reason alone I have no choice but to render my grade of an A. And if they were all as good as this, I’d never complain.

Poor quality on this trailer of The Sure Thing. But it’s all I could find.

You can view more of The Sure Thing by using the clips at the bottom of the video screen once you watch the trailer.

Clyde’s Movie Palace: True Grit (1969)

2011-10-12T19:47:00.001-07:00

Written by Marguerite Roberts
Based on a novel by Charles Portis
Original Music by Elmer Bernstien
Cinematography by Lucien Ballard
Directed by Henry Hathaway

Starring
John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn
Kim Darby as Mattie Ross
Glen Campbell as La Boeuf
Robert Duvall as Ned Pepper
Dennis Hopper as Moon
Jeremy Slate as Emmett Quincy
Strother Martin as Colonel G. Stonehill
Jeff Corey as Tom Chaney

Imagine you’re a fourteen year old girl living in the old west. Imagine that you’ve just fallen down a cavernous pit, and the only thing keeping you from descending into what seems to be an endless abyss is that you have temporarily lodged into a smaller opening that may give way at any moment. Imagine that in the darkened cave beneath you there are bats flying around your legs and feet. Imagine there’s a skeleton lying nearby which doesn’t exactly do wonders for your chances of having an extended life. Imagine that the fall has broken one of your arms, leaving you only one arm to work with. Imagine that you grab a branch to try to pull yourself upward, the branch breaks, and there is one pissed off rattlesnake lurking underneath it. Imagine at the top of the pit looking downward and pointing a gun at you is the man who had just recently murdered your father in cold blood. It is also the very same man you yourself had managed to put a slug into seriously wounding him. There is no doubt that he’s not going to hesitate one second to return that particular favor.

And that was my introduction to True Grit. No, I’m not talking about the movie, but the novel by Charles Portis that would be the basis for this film. The blurb I had read on the back of the book was somewhat similar to my opening paragraph. Of course, so many years later I don’t exactly remember the exact text and not having a copy of the book handy nor a Kindle, although you can buy me one if you choose to do so, I have to do the best that I can from memory. But in things pertaining to True Grit, my memory usually serves me pretty well and you can certainly see where reading about such goings on might just grab your attention.

In the novel, the story is narrated by the elderly Mattie Ross, and tells the story of how at the age of 14, she set out to avenge her father’s death after he had been murdered by a ranch hand named Tom Chaney. Unable to get the law to track down Chaney, Mattie takes it upon herself to find a man with “True Grit” to escort her on a manhunt to find Chaney and bring him to justice. That man turns out to be Rooster Cogburn described by one Marshall as a “pitiless man, double tough and fear don't enter into his thinking”. Mrs. Floyd (Edith Atwater) described him as a “greasy vagabond” and a man who “likes to pull a cork.” Later, he is described by Colonel Stonehill (Strother Martin) as “a greasy vagabond, a notorious thumper, and not a man he would care to share a bed with.”

True Grit Theme song sung over the opening credits by Glen Campbell.

But instead of seeing Cogburn’s love affair with a whiskey bottle as a vice, Mattie uses that to her advantage to get him to let her tag along.

Before Rooster and Mattie can get under way, a Texas Ranger that goes by the name of La Boeuf rides into town looking for her. He has been tracking Chaney for some time because “there’s a woman in Texas who would look favorably on him if he managed to capture or kill Chaney” not to mention the hefty financial rewards. The things you had to do to please a woman in the old west. Nowadays you just have to give them a ride in your pickup truck and buy them a six pack of beer. Oh never mind.

For Mattie though, two’s company and three’s a crowd, especially when it’s an inept Texas Ranger who wants to join the posse.

“If in four months I could not find Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey) with a mark on his face like banished Cain I would not advise others on how to do so.”

Needless to say, the three of them reluctantly end up on the trail together chasing after Chaney and the outlaw he has hooked up with, Lucky Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall).

Portis certainly knows his stuff. The novel was filled with dialogue and dialect which sounded as if it came directly from the era in which the novel took place. Since I wasn’t there at the time I can’t verify it but others have although I’m not sure they were there either.

If Mattie needed to explain her reasoning, or to explain the rationale for her actions, she simply offered up a quote from the bible. It in fact, becomes a bit funny after a while as Mattie struggles to defend and explain certain events by using biblical passages. Still it was the witty, sharp, biting, and often extremely funny dialogue that helped make the book what it was. The question still remained as to whether or not all of this could be transferred to the big screen in a way that would capture the essence and flavor of Portis’s novel, and still remain exciting, suspenseful, and funny as well

When Portis wrote the novel, he had supposedly pictured John Wayne in the role of Rooster Cogburn. Wayne very much wanted the role but Cogburn was unlike any character Wayne had played before. He was the antithesis to the heroic leaders Wayne had played time after time to such great effect. Beyond that, Cogburn was an alcoholic, at times incompetent, and didn’t always play by the rules such as when he talks about “shooting a man without a call to let them know our intentions is serious.”

La Boeuf and Cogburn set up a trap for Mattie, but Rooster puts a stop to her punishment.

Then there were the roles of Mattie and La Boeuf. Having met singer Karen Carpenter at a college concert, Wayne wanted her for the role of Mattie. Others such as Tuesday Weld and Mia Farrow were approached to play the role but Farrow would turn it down, later calling it the biggest mistake of her life. But Producer Hal Wallace wanted Kim Darby whom he had seen in an episode of the TV series Run for Your Life with Ben Gazzara. Having just given birth, and going through a divorce from actor James Stacy at the time, Darby turned Wallace down:

"I turned the part down about 10 times, but he wouldn't stop asking,” Darby said. "I had just had my baby, and I didn't think I was ready, so I just kept turning it down. Hal Wallis finally came out to my home to convince me. He said the only time he had ever gone to an actor's home like that was for Richard Burton."

Kim Darby and Ben Gazzara in a scene from Run For Your Life, the episode that convinced Hall Wallace she was the perfect Mattie.

So Darby accepted the role. The biggest drawback some may have had with her participation was the fact that Mattie Ross was supposed to be a girl of fourteen. Darby was already 21 years of age. But that is not an insurmountable obstacle because such things have been done in Hollywood before and since and done quite well.

For La Boeuf, the producers chose country singer/songwriter/TV star Glen Campbell; perhaps hoping he would attract a younger audience into the theaters since he was such a popular performer at the time. Still, he had never acted in a film before, so only the final product would tell us if he could do as others have done and overcome inexperience with natural ability.

To direct the film, Wallis and Wayne chose Henry Hathaway who had worked with Wayne in other westerns such as The Sons of Katie Elder, North to Alaska, and the Western/Circus combo film of Circus World.

Although the novel takes place in the area of Arkansas and Oklahoma, True Grit was filmed in Colorado at locations such as Gunnison, Hot Creek, Montrose and Ouray. Again, it was taking liberties because there are more than obvious differences in the topography of Colorado and Arkansas. The question remained if this goulash of acting talent and other ingredients could blend itself into a cohesive and entertaining film experience. The answer is: Yes, it does. It not only meets every expectation that one might have had, it even surpasses it.

Many of the locations for True Grit are just as they were back in 1969 as you can see from these comparisons.

John Wayne was born to play Rooster Cogburn. In many films which Wayne headlined, his overpowering presence and star power would sometimes carry a film out of mediocrity. It was often said by some that for the most part, Wayne was always playing himself. But that’s a copout, and a line often used to explain stars whose screen presence comes naturally and look almost as if they are portraying their screen characters effortlessly.

Because Wayne, with some notable exceptions, often locked himself into the same type of role in so many films, his achievements are often overlooked or derided just because he chose the types of characters he is most comfortable with. All of this is so much b.s. because if Wayne had not become such an accomplished actor, there is no way he could have pulled off what he does in True Grit. In fact, he does it so well that when he makes his first appearance on the screen herding a load of prisoners from the Indian Territory into the jail; it is completely unnerving if you’ve seen many Wayne films at all. And I had.

This was obviously not what one expected a John Wayne character to look like or act like. One eyed U.S. Marshall Reuben J. Cogburn was a mean, cantankerous, grizzled, ornery, stubborn, overweight alcoholic. But he was exactly what the doctor ordered for Mattie’s quest: he was just as fearless as the man said. Yes he had moments of alcoholic incompetence, but pulling a cork tends to have that effect. There was no man who could stand toe to toe with this guy and come out the better for it. However, there was a fourteen year old girl that he couldn’t faze on his best day or worst day if you want to put it that way.

And if anybody was worried about the 21 year old Darby portraying the fourteen year old Mattie they shouldn’t have. I was certainly convinced at the time that she was in her mid teens, perhaps even younger. I actually didn’t find out until much later how old she had actually been.

And just as Wayne IS Rooster, Kim Darby lives, breathes, eats, sleeps, walks, talks and probably farts like Mattie Ross as far as I’m concerned. She was exactly as I had pictured her in the Portis novel although there were two big changes.

Marguerite Robert’s screenplay drops nearly all of the biblical references except for a few scenes where they are slid smoothly into the screenplay, more for comedic effect than anything else. And second, the film is told in real time whereas in the book it is told as events that occurred once in an old woman’s life, an old woman who is reminiscing and waxing poetic.

Obviously, while having the elderly Mattie narrate the story in the novel worked, it is easy to see where it may have had its shortcomings on film, as it would have been necessary to take us out of the action to constantly return to Mattie’s narration. For film, the device was unnecessary. One reviewer said that this was in order to make sure that Wayne remained the star of the film. That's pretty much bologna.

Wayne doesn't even make his first appearance until about twenty minutes in and it’s a brief one at that. Certainly in many scenes the Cogburn character dominates, but there are equally as many where Darby's Mattie manages to go toe to toe and have the last word. And while Mattie's character is in practically every scene once she arrives in Fort Smith, Wayne's character is not.

When Mattie is separated from Rooster and La Boeuf, it is her character that the film stays with. The film doesn't leave Mattie's viewpoint at all until near the very end when Lawyer Daggett finally puts in an appearance-representing Mattie of course.

Much of the same can be said of the biblical quotes which Ross often used to emphasize certain events that were occurring at the time. On film, this would have quickly become redundant, and possibly have made Mattie quite more annoying than she was supposed to be. And while we are supposed to be irritated at Mattie’s ways on occasion, that irritation is brought on more by her naiveté and her childishness. We sometimes overlook the fact that she is still just a kid. I mean who doesn’t cringe when she tries to get Rooster and La Beouf to let her tell the story of the Midnight Caller in exchange for them to quit their drinking. “Let it go. That baby sister, is no trade,” Rooster tells her.

At which point Mattie stomps off into the shadows to sulk. And when she comes up with a silly plan to capture Chaney, we can’t help but laugh as La Boeuf tells her she doesn’t want to know what he thinks about her plan and Cogburn tells her just to get on her horse. It’s not often that Rooster comes out ahead in these little showdowns with Mattie. But he does have his moments.

Another reason why both the novel and film work so well is because Rooster and Mattie are as different as two people can be in just about every way possible. Yet, they are the same in one very important aspect. When it comes to avenging her father’s death and how to go about it, Mattie can be just as tough, just as stubborn, and just as willful as Rooster Cogburn ever thought of being. She will have her way even if she has to get Lawyer Daggett (John Fiedler) in on the act to do so.

“If you think you can cheat me, you're mistaken. You've not heard the last of Mattie Ross. You may well hear from my lawyer, Daggett,” she tells Rooster when it becomes apparent that he is going to throw in with La Boeuf.

So when Cogburn tells us that “she reminds me of me” when Mattie chases him and La Boeuf across a river, it isn’t just another line in a movie. We know exactly where he is coming from because we see it too. “Then we may not get along,” La Boeuf tells him.

And there are the little subtle things Kim Darby does which once again are the small things often overlooked. During the shootout at the dugout, watch her body language and expression as each shot is fired from Rooster's gun. Later, when she confronts Tom Chaney at the stream, her body is literally shaking with both fear and anger.

This of course brings us to Glen Campbell’s big screen debut as La Boeuf. Over the years there have been many who have derided Campbell’s portrayal of La Boeuf, often describing it as awful and mediocre. In the process, they seem to forget that acting was something completely new to him at the time. And frankly, I think much of their derision of Campbell has more to do with the fact that people need some kind of whipping boy no matter what the circumstances may be as much as what is really on the screen.

While it certainly will never be mistaken for any kind of a legendary performance or even a particularly good one, it is not nearly as bad as one would suspect if you believed everything you read on message boards. Some things get passed down and repeated so often that it eventually is ingrained in viewers minds as fact, and even if they are watching the film for the first time you may be judging as much on what you have heard as to what is actually on the screen.

Yes, the awkwardness of a novice actor does stand out in his confrontation with Mattie at the Mornock Boarding House and it is painful to watch. “You’ll push that saucy line, toooooooo fAAr!”

But other than that he acquits himself adequately the rest of the way. For a more honest comparison, watch him in the Monarch scene and then watch the scene in which Mattie comes upon La Boeuf and Rooster sitting at Chin Lee’s making plans and they have a much similar confrontation. There’s quite a bit of improvement. Granted, there was a lot of room to do so but that’s beside the point. Okay, so maybe I’m grabbing at straws here.

Appearance wise, he is just as someone with a name like La Boeuf who hails from Texas would look like. He is supposed to be nothing more than the pretty boy on the block. When Campbell tells Mattie of his lady in waiting in Texas, Mattie replies, “Well you certainly have the hair combed for it.”

As for Henry Hathaway’s direction, when we finally get our “strangest trio ever to track a killer” underway, the result is breathtaking. Hathaway’s use of Colorado backgrounds in this film is an often overlooked and stunning achievement. With Lucien Ballard’s cinematography bringing the landscape to life, and the scenes blocked and framed in such a way that it makes you want to become a part of the film. Stir in Elmer Bernstein’s sometimes melodic and even more often rousing score as Mattie, Rooster, and La Boeuf cross the Colorado landscape having one confrontation after another, and you may wish for a couple of days in the old west yourself.

But even after all of that, there is so much more to love about this film. There are some moments that I had never seen in a western yet seem incredibly real.

When Mattie comes into Fort Smith with a black man she calls “a worker on our place, Yarnell Poindexter,” they find that the town is full of people and that the shops are closed as everybody has headed down to the park to watch a triple hanging. Even the funeral parlor is closed.

“Man out rustling up some business for himself, looks like” Yarnell (Ken Renard) says after seeing the closed sign on the door. “Seems like we have a lot of time to waste before we see anybody much”

Mattie can tell right away that he is almost salivating at the thought of being able to go to the hanging. In the park we watch as the gallows are prepared. Kids swing nonchalantly on the swing sets facing the gallows. People unfold table cloths and open picnic baskets for lunch. A boy walks through the crowd selling tamales and peanuts just as if it were one of today's modern sporting events. From across the way, Judge Parker watches from the court balcony while an unidentified woman (Connie Sawyer) gives Mattie, Yarnell, and the rest of us all the details on who’s who, what’s what, and what to expect as if she’s the nineteenth century version of Vin Scully.

“They say the hangman is a Yankee. They say he won’t spring the trap on a boy that wore the blue.”

The only thing missing is the super slo-mo instant replay. And when the hanging is over, watch the woman's reaction. She seems quite pleased with it all.

Let’s all go to the park for an old fashioned hanging. I love the atmosphere in this scene.

After having watched the men hang, we know positively that Mattie’s mind is made up as far as Chaney is concerned.

“That’s not a fainthearted judge. Tom Chaney would get his due before such a judge,” she tells Yarnell.

And there are many other scenes just like this. One suspects that the boarding houses were pretty much like the Mornock Boarding house where you check in for a couple of quick meals, a warm bed, and the latest gossip going around while the owner might just skimp a bit on the chicken in her chicken and dumplings.

Mrs. Floyd: I was hoping you’d like my chicken and dumplings.
Mattie: They’re alright. I can’t see twenty five cents in nothing more than a little flour and some grease.

And no matter where this film takes us, it not only looks, feels, and sounds real; it seems as fresh as if it could have just taken place yesterday or the day before yesterday. And most importantly, even most of the dialogue from Portis’s book was left intact by Robert’s screenplay enabling us to hear phrases and words that we may be unfamiliar with, but we quickly become acquainted with their meaning. When a film can draw you out of your world and into its own sense of time and place, then it has succeeded on every level.

True Grit is remembered by some as simply being the film for which Wayne had won his Oscar. It has been derided as that; even to the point of saying that the acting award was as much for Wayne’s entire career as it was for his portrayal of Cogburn. I have no way of knowing why people voted for Wayne in 1969 and frankly, I don’t care. There is no doubt in my mind that his performance as Rooster Cogburn stands alone as a stunning achievement, and to say it in of itself was not worthy is pure hogwash.

I find it quite irritating that the great many things that both the novel and the film offers are often derided and overlooked or considered average simply because people want to remember the film for one thing and one thing only, thus trying to relegate it to some undeserving second class citizenship in the annals of Western films. Portis’s novel, Hathaway’s film, and Wayne himself deserve better than that. Portis’s novel is seldom mentioned these days, which may be even a bigger crime since it too is a true Western Classic. (Clyde note: With the release of the Coen Brothers remake, I’m sure the book has had a revival as well. When I wrote this review, the newest version wasn’t even in the planning stages.) Both are achievements that deserve an A in my opinion. There are no substitutes.

Sometimes when reviewing a film, I’ll often go back and read up on it looking for little tidbits of trivia to throw in. I ran across a four star review that Roger Ebert gave True Grit back during its original release. He ended his review with what pretty much sums up John Wayne, True Grit and my own opinion:

Wayne, in fact, towers over this special movie. He is not playing the same Western role he always plays. Instead, he can play Rooster because of all the Western roles he has played. He brings an ease and authority to the character. He never reaches. He never falters. It's all there, a quiet confidence that grows out of 40 years of acting. God loves the old pros.

Well said.

Clyde’s Movie Palace: The Last Mimzy (2007)

2011-10-12T09:53:00.001-07:00

starromg
Chris O’Neil
Rhiannon Leigh Wryn
Joely Richardson
Timothy Hutton
Rainn Wilson
Kathryn Hahn
Michael Clarke Duncan

Directed by
Robert Shaye

“A long time ago the soul of our planet was sick. People had become isolated and warlike. Our world was frightened. It was dying. But a great scientist was trying to save us. He had tried many times and could only try once more. This was The Last Mimzy.” - Opening Scene from The Last Mimzy.

And thus begins a film that when I first heard the title, it seemed to be a movie that would hold little if any appeal for me. I mean, what the hell is a Mimzy anyway? The title certainly wasn’t one that would entice anybody to rush down to the multiplex to catch it on the big screen and I only put it in my Netflix queue as sort of an afterthought. I generally will put all the major films that are released into my Netflix queue automatically. Eventually when I get around to shuffling the films around some of them will stay and some of them won’t. As a matter of fact, The Last Mimzy was one of those that went, and went fast.

(Clyde note: These days I very seldom get new releases from Netflix. That’s why God made the Redbox. New releases at Netflix end up sitting in your queue for about six weeks)

And then one day I read the following review: 3 out of 5, it was cute & fun.

Yeah, I know, not exactly a rave recommendation but you have to know that this particular person is a real hard ass in giving out movie praise. Believe me, that’s almost a rave review coming from her. So I quickly shoved it back into my queue and transported it up to the top right behind Bobby and American Pastime which have been on very long wait for me since forever. Do you hear that Netflix? But the question still remained, what in the hell is a Mimzy?

I was soon to find out. We are quickly introduced to the Cleaver family. For our review purposes this edition of the Cleaver family is called The Wilders. First, there’s June…er I mean Jo Wilder (Joely Richardson), there’s papa bear David (Timothy Hutton), and then the two kids Wally and the Beav otherwise known as Noah (Chris O’Neil) and Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn). Obviously going in we know that the film is going to center around the two kids. What can often make or break a film like this is whether or not the youngsters are portrayed as overly precocious annoying brats and know it all's, or if they are portrayed as kids you wouldn’t hesitate to run out and want to adopt as soon as the credits are rolling. So what is the verdict on Noah and Emma? I signed the adoption papers last night.

It’s not that this family isn’t without their problems. David is always tied up with his job, and is constantly having to cut out of family commitments. Obviously there’s the usual message here about family being more important in our lives than anything else but thankfully you aren’t hammered over the head with it in every frame. As a matter of fact, despite the dad’s work problems, the family for the most part has their act together.

That is they do until one day on the beach the two kids find a mysterious shaped case with cryptic symbols that produces all kinds of goodies such as….well there’s….there’s some kind of a thingamabob and a few thingamajigs. And that evening, when Emma awakens from her sleep, she gets out the mysterious case which instantly produces a stuffed rabbit. And although the rabbits name isn’t Bugs or Harvey, it talks quite clearly to Emma.

Noah and his parents can’t hear it and all we hear is a cooing type sound when it speaks. But the strange thing is, it is almost as if we understand that cooing sound as well as Emma does although it is hinted that the rabbit may be communicating with her through telepathy. And it is at this point that the rabbit tells Emma that her name is Mimzy. And so now you know what a Mimzy is. But why is this Mimzy thingamdoohichie here and what does it want? Uh...that's why you are suppose to watch the movie.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it all sounds way too cute, syrupy and silly and strictly for kids between the ages of four and six. But you would be wrong on that score. We soon find out that the other things that were in the case have their own kind of magic. There are some rocks that Emma can spin like a top and when she does they create one heckuva cool light and laser show. A glowing flat monolith also begins to have it’s affect on Noah making him smarter and faster without ever having one single bionic implant put in him.

It would have been very easy at this point for director Robert Shay to give into temptation and either turn Mimzy into a big special effects extravaganza to razzle dazzle some more buttocks into the theater seats, or he could have the kids doing the usual goofy stuff we’ve seen a million times over such as getting revenge on the school bully, becoming the star athlete at school, or using the powers to win over the head of the cheerleading squad. But Shay and writers Bruce Joel Rubin and Toby Emmerich never fall into that trap, unwilling to let The Last Mimzy become the 21st Century version of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or The World’s Greatest Athlete. We are on a journey of discovery along with Noah and Emma, and it is to everybody’s credit that this film never talks down to the audience regardless of what age you may be. The opening scene of Mimzy lifts our curiosity up, and it never lets go until the last few touching moments when we find out exactly what The Last Mimzy really was and why he/she/it paid Noah and Emma a visit.

When the kids do show the powers they have achieved, it is almost incidental. For Emma, spinning rocks that make lights is nothing more than a magic show by her way of thinking, so much so that she even shows the babysitter her "trick". When Noah begins to suddenly overachieve at school, he does it not to show off or to get one up on the teacher. He does it because he can and he doesn’t really seem to realize that he has suddenly been given an extraordinary gift.

Another thing I really liked about Mimzy was the fact that the parents aren’t here as either a punch line for the kids, nor are they here as fodder for the kids to keep putting something over on them. It is obvious that despite the father’s absences, this is a very close knit and loving family. It’s something you don’t see too often in films these days.

All is not totally peaches and cream with the film. Rainn Wilson is on hand as Noah’s science teacher Larry White as is Kathryn Hahn who plays his fiancé Naomi. While they are somewhat necessary to the story line, they have one or two too many unnecessary and odd scenes together that go on way too long and for a few moments slow the pacing of the film down. In fact, it would probably had been better if they had just kept Wilson as Noah’s teacher and axed out the Naomi character altogether. When Wilson is kept busy just being the Science teacher, he does quite well. It’s a minor flaw but it’s one that doesn’t take much away from the overall experience.

Michael Clarke Duncan also shows up later in the film as a homeland security agent. He may seem to be just another character necessary for the plot to move along and may very well be just that. But after watching the film, I think there is another point that Shay was trying to make beyond Duncan just being the usual stereotypical government agent bad guy. In him we see the beginnings of what our society has become and will become in the days ahead if we don’t turn the tide and that at some point we may all be in danger of losing our very soul. What does that have to do with Mimsy? Once you see the film you’ll understand.

I really liked this film. It is a film that was overlooked at the theaters but one might be able to chalk that up to the odd title. I would hope that it would find it’s audience on DVD, especially if you have kids. It’s a film that the whole family can enjoy together and may even want to own. Heck, it’s a film with science, magic, mystery, warmth and love that you can enjoy even if there isn’t a kid within fifty miles of you. I certainly did, and after it was over I felt kind of good inside. And when any film can make me feel like that I have no choice but to give it my grade which for The Last Mimzy is a warm and fuzzy B+.

American Dreamz (2006)

2011-10-09T16:47:00.001-07:00

Clyde’s Stuff is not the first blog I’ve written and it may not be the last. The first one was something called American Crossroads. It was nothing but politics from cover to cover and was started during the 2004 Presidential race on the old AOL community pages.

After that went belly up and AOL deleted their community web pages, I worked on some fictional stories. In the middle of one of these stories it became necessary for me to write in depth about the discrimination faced by gay teens, and the fear they had to live with because of hate crimes. This was almost seven years ago, and the story is still around but you can find it. You just have to look for it, as I have buried it in obscurity…at least for now. It was in fact a sequel to something else I had written. The original was titled The Kid and Me, the sequel I’m speaking of was Laurie and Dag.

Shortly after finishing that story I got an email from a reader who complained that she and her husband both worked, they had kids to raise, and the last thing she wanted to be bothered with after a long day was the realities of what was happening in the real world. She insisted she only wanted to be entertained. And she was not alone. I’ve heard this same retort on many occasions, and it’s one of the reasons I finally threw in the towel on the political front recently. If most of the populace wants to sit around and watch The X Factor, while trying to stifle a yawn when it comes to how the good old USA is being managed by our corporate owned politicians, legislatures both state and federal, and supreme court justices, who am I to argue?

In previous off and on years (sometimes it’s the best of times with me, more often the worst of times with me) when I wrote on Clyde's Stuff, the response I received regarding everything I have written about American Idol completely dwarfs the total response I’ve had of all my political articles put together. That includes a few hundred political essays in my general original American Crossroads blog. (I had the name before Karl Rove stole it. If I had known, I would have kept it. So what does the past history of my blogging endeavors have to do with American Dreamz? Practically everything.

In American Dreamz, writer and director Paul Weitz unabashedly skewers Bush, Cheney, politics, American Idol, and the public that watches it and other shows like Idol such as The Bachelor, The X Factor, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, America’s Got Talent, and The Voice all in the same breath. That’s quite a bit of satire to cram into a one hour and forty-seven minute movie, but somehow Weitz manages to pull it all together.

In the parallel world of American Dreamz President Staton (Dennis Quaid) has just been re-elected in a hard fought campaign. Left to his own devices Staton is non functional. In fact, he’s never read a newspaper. It is his Chief of Staff (Willem Dafoe) who controls his every movement right down to telling Staton what to say through a hidden receiver placed in his ear canal.

One morning President Staton decides to take it easy and do something he has never done before. He is going to read a newspaper.

“We do have one of those around, don’t we,” he asks his assistance. “I’m sure we do, but if we don’t we can get you one.”

Having read his first newspaper, it is an eye opener. Staton becomes addicted and begins reading anything and everything as if he were discovering his first Harry Potter story. And Staton learns from what he reads:

President Staton: Did you know there are two kinds of Iraqistanis? [the First Lady (Marcia Gay Harden) holds up three fingers]
President Staton: I mean, actually, three?
Chief of Staff: You mean Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds?
President Staton: You knew about this?

Simon Cowell clone Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant) produces, hosts, and judges contestants on his version of American Idol called American Dreamz. He’s shallow, manipulative, and thinks way too highly of himself. His show is the highest rated program on television. When we first meet him he has a girlfriend.

She loves him. She does everything for him:

Jessica: (who comes into the room just as Martin is getting the latest ratings numbers from his fax): How are the numbers?
Martin: Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
Jessica: Did you hear what I said? I’m leaving you.
Martin (back still turned): Yeah, I heard. Yeah.
Jessica: I’m not kidding.
Martin (turning around smiling): I know. Look, I think it’s an excellent decision on your part.
Jessica: (looking incredulous): You do?

Martin: You’re a fantastic person and the last year’s been great, really. You’re beautiful, the sex has been wonderful, you’re kind and supportive. You wait for me with dinner when I work late, you’re amazing. And it’s driving me out of my fucking mind! You know with numbers like this, this should be the happiest day of my life. And instead I have to worry about whether I make you happy all the time. Jessica, sweetheart, you make me feel like being a better person. And I’m not a better person. I’m Me.
Jessica: I feel sorry for you.
Martin: Don’t. I certainly don’t. In fact, I envy myself deeply.

Girlfriend or not, Martin will never be completely happy because of one minor irritant. He has to host American Dreamz, something he absolutely abhors.

Each season becomes more of a challenge to find the right contestants to drive his ratings higher because being number one in all demographics just isn’t enough for Tweed. “One can go up, but they must never go down,” he tells his assistants.

To do this he has to choose the right contestants that Americans can love, identify with, and sympathize with, or hate, despise, and loathe if they so desire. Bad contestants are just as important as good contestants. Or as Martin tells his young staff of talent scouts:

Let’s go out there and get some great contestants. And I don’t just mean talented. I mean human and by human I mean flawed and by flawed I mean freaks. Bring me some freaks. Let’s make this a show that even I can watch.

Their singing prowess has little or nothing to do with whether they will win or not. Case in point, Sally Kendoo.

Sally Kendoo’s (Mandy Moore) one big dream is not only to appear on American Dreamz but to win it all. Anything less would be considered a major fail. She wants a career, and wants out of the crummy mom, apple pie, baseball, hotdog, boring backwoods town she resides in that even has a shit sounding name: Padookie, Ohio.

Sally’s Boyfriend Willie (Chris Klein): Sally, this is your dream, you’ve always wanted to be on TV.
Sally: No, I’ve always wanted to be a star.
Willie: Isn’t that the same thing?
Sally: No Willie it’s not the same thing. Any idiot can be on TV nowadays. All you have to do is swap your wife or eat a sheep’s anus or something.
Willie: Yes, yes. But you are going to sing.
Sally: Yeah, I’m gonna sing. I’m gonna sing and I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough! (At which point Sally throws her mirror across the room breaking it.)
Willie: (pointing at the broken mirror) Seven years!
Sally: No, you know what I am? I am the best karaoke singer in this county of Ohio. I am going to go all the way out there, right? And I’m gonna come right back home and lose in the first round because I’m Just….I’m not good enough!
Willie: No way!

Sally: Yes.

Willie: No Way!
Sally: Yes!
Willie: No way! No way! No way! You’re cute. You’ve got a great voice, you got personality. And you got a great voice. And I think you’re going to win the whole damn thing! And for some reason those folks have their head up their stinkholes, and you don’t win for whatever reason, I’m not gonna love you any less. I’m gonna love more because I see your real beauty and I don’t need no TV show to show it to me. Honey, I got some big news today too. I’m being made assistant manager, plumbing fixtures. Assistant manager. And you know what happens next? Manager, plumbing fixtures.

Since Willie laid bared his heart and soul while relating to Sally his deepest innermost feelings, showing her how much he cared, giving her all of his love he could possibly give, Sally wraps her arms around, kisses him passionately, and they begin to make screw each others brains out. Well, not exactly. Maybe in some romantic comedy on Lifetime. But baby, this isn’t Reality Television, this is reality life.

Sally: Willie, I think it’s time we broke up.
Willie: What?
Sally: It’s just…I don’t think it’s working anymore.
Willie: Sure, it is. It’s going great.
Sally: Not really. No, your life is here. And my life is….swooooosh…(points her hand upwards.) Or maybe it’s……(imitiates plane crashing). But either way see, I can’t take you with me.
Willie: But I love you. I love you damn it; you can’t do this to me. No listen; you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I can’t take it.
Sally: You stay up here and cry. I’m going to go down and greet my fans.

It is no coincidence that this scene is eerily similar to the one earlier between Martin and Jessica. Willie decides to join the Army, to find and give new meaning to his life now that Sally has dumped him. So he stops to tell her goodbye for the last time:

Mrs. Kendoo (Jennifer Coolidge): Hello William
Willie: Hi, Mrs. Kendoo. I just came by to say good-bye to Sally.
Mrs. Kendoo: Well, have you up and joined the Army?
Willie: I have, Mrs. Kendoo. I just feel like since Sally dumped me, my life has been meaningless. So, I’m trying to find meaning by defending my country. And I just wanted to tell Sally that.
Mrs. Kendoo: Well, William. That’s very sincere of you. But Sally isn’t here. She’s in New York meeting with agents.
Willie: Agents?
Mrs. Kendoo: They’re folks that uh…They act greedy and mean for you so that you can seem like a nice person.
Willie: But Sally is a nice person. So I’m not going to get to see her then, am I?
Mrs. Kendoo: I’m afraid not, William.
Willie: Well, you just tell her that wherever I am I will be thinking of her. And I got her face tattooed on my arm. It’s from our prom photo.
Mrs. Kendoo: Well, it’s beautiful work.

Willie is sent to Iraq two weeks after a quick cram course in basic training to become cannon fodder. He promptly gets shot and returns home as a wounded vet just in time for Sally to reunite with him because according to her new agent it will make a better back story for her to win the title with.

Omer Obeidi (Sam Golzari) is a terrorist in Afghanistan, training with his cousin in a Taliban camp while at the same time making a training video for other terrorists. But Omer is not very good at terrorizing. He’s mostly a screw up and continually messes up the video shoot much to the chagrin of the director.

His main thrill in life is listening to American show tunes on old records left to him by his mother who was allegedly killed by an American bomb. Later, when Omer is caught listening and dancing to his sound track records by his cousin, is sent to the United States to live with relatives in Orange County, California until he will be needed.

Omer’s Cousin: Look, I’ve got some news for you. Your papers came through. You are leaving next week for Frankfort and from there to Orange, County. You’ll be staying at our mutual cousins. They know nothing of your purpose there. You are to just wait until your sleeper cell contacts you.

Omer: When will that be?

Omer’s Cousin: (exiting the tent): Never.

While staying in California with his wealth relatives, Omer is mistaken for his cousin Igbal (Tony Yalda) while performing a musical number and given the chance to appear on American Dreamz because Martin Tweed has decided that besides the masturbation inspiring girl from Ohio, he wants an Arab and a Jew.

Later, President Staton decides to appear at the finals of American Dreamz as a judge after being in hiding for several weeks. Omer is recruited to blow Staton and sacrifice himself by wearing a bomb on stage. That is if he even makes it to the final.

Grant is great as Tweed. In fact, one almost wishes he hosted the real show. His criticisms of the contestants are biting as he sits in judgment in a chair from the audience as if he is a god telling America who gets to enter the pearly gates and who gets a quick drop down the chute to hell, all the while looking bored with the whole process.

Tweed: It’s up to you America, only you have the awesome power to lift someone up into the heavens and create a new star.

As Grant plays Tweed, he would be the kind of self-centered ego maniac you would hate living next to you or to be associated with, unless you’re Sally Kendoo, but in the confines of the TV screen he somehow manages to be almost likable.

Mandy Moore has played the bad girl before in a wonderful film called Saved! As Sally Kendoo she’s just as bad, uncaring, self centered and as cold as Boss Tweed. It’s a match made in heaven. As Gump might say, they go together like peas and carrots.

She wants to win at all costs but is as calculating as Tweed is about how that goal is achieved. In fact Tweed and Kendoo are mirror images of each other as attested to by their similar earlier break up scenes. Moore does a good job here of reflecting that. When Tweed makes a rare trip to visit her in Padookie, she’s smart enough to know that he isn’t there for her to suck up to him. He has in fact learned that her reunion with Willie isn’t exactly on the up and up, and that she is using Willie to advance her own platform on American Dreamz. But Martin is far from angry about it.

Martin: I heard Padookie was an exciting town, I thought I would check it out. (Sally stares at Martin blankly) That was a joke.
Sally: I’m aware.
Martin: You didn’t laugh
Sally: It wasn’t funny.
Martin: No. But why didn’t you laugh just to kiss my ass?
Sally: I figured you didn’t need me to kiss your ass. I mean, I’m sure you have people kissing your ass 24 hours a day. And I guess like not kissing your ass is like kissing your ass for most people.
Martin: Absolutely right. That's weird; one can become quite detached from reality when one's famous.
Sally Kendoo: Really? That sounds so cool.
Martin: Yeah, it can be.

Quaid somehow manages to turn Staton's lack of intellectual prowess into a child-like innocence. He is likable, because he doesn’t bathe in his ignorance like it’s a badge of honor.

Unlike his counterpart in the real world, Staton's stupidity does not come from arrogance and having everything handed to him on a silver platter. He's gone through life unchallenged because there's always been someone telling him how great he is and who is willing to do everything for him. There's just been no need for him to wise up. And when he does began to read and see things as they really are, it has a profound effect on him. He wears an ear piece, and Sutter tells him what to say, but he finds it frustrating and phony. Staton compares himself to being a placebo, once he finds out what a placebo is.

The real surprise here is Sam Golzari as Omer the Terrorist who thinks he should avenge his mother’s death but knows he isn’t quite cut out for the job. He just not ready to meet Allah, especially when the guy that gives him the mission tells him he’ll meet him in the afterlife also…..in a number of years that is. The biggest problem for Omer to overcome is that he begins to like it here along with most of the people. The question Omer asks himself is whether or not you can hold the citizens of a country responsible for the decisions made by those in power?

Weitz leaves no stone unturned in his skewering of our infatuation with pop culture and celebrity icons, so much so that we will vote for the manufactured image of our president rather than be bothered with the annoying details of how he might actually run the country, or what corporation or special interests groups are pulling the strings of our government leaders. He understands that many in the audience view reality shows as if somehow they are a reflection of real life.

In the wrong hands all of this could have been too heavy handed and dreary, but Weitz keeps things light enough so that we can laugh at ourselves while still giving us some things to think about. But the problem as I have found, and perhaps one Weitz fully didn’t comprehend when he made this film is that way too many Americans are more than willing to laugh at some over exposed nitwit on a reality show, but they aren’t willing to laugh at the biggest joke of all: They’re own over infatuation with those very nitwits balanced by their lackadaisical lip service approach to the who what when where and how they are being governed.

There are a lot of laughs and memorable moments in American Dreamz and you’ll be thoroughly entertained, as long as you have no problem laughing at not only the situation of the world around you but by laughing at yourself also. No doubt there will be many who won’t get the joke. They will no doubt be offended by the over the top satirical portrait Weitz has concocted.

They are the ones who still believe that everything they see on not just American Idol but all reality shows is the real, uncensored and unedited truth to the point that they actually believe they are voting for the best singer/dance/performer in the country. The others who may be offended, and probably very much so, will be the those who still believe we are operating under a government by the people, for the people, and of the people instead of facing the fact that we are all nothing more than pawns in a government of the corporations, by the power, and for the very rich. And still there will be most of the audience, who will fail to see any correlation between Weitz's film and the real world at all.

It doesn't matter though. I had a good time watching it and I saw enough to realize that for all of its satirical slant, Weitz strikes pretty close to home. So that leaves me no choice but to give American Dreamz my grade and I have decided that American Dreamz is a saucy little minx that deserves a well earned B+. You’ve now been Omerized!

A Day in the Life: Truckstop Radiation & Wal-mart

2011-10-06T17:30:00.001-07:00

Not the real name of course, but that's what I call it.

The good: I got off work early.
The bad: It's so I can come here to Truckstop Radiation to get another MRI. This time on my neck.
The ugly: I'm really beginning to hate this place. I should own shares by now. I'll update later.
Another reason to hate it: I’ve been here a half dozen times over the past few months. Still, they want me to fill out the same idiotic form with the same questions and the same answers every damn time. I even asked the guy why couldn’t they just Xerox it.

“We just want to know if there are any changes,” he said.

“No, there aren’t. Now here’s your paper back,” I said. In my mind that is. I filled the damn thing out.

Update: 5:30 and I'm done. Didn't take as long as others I've had. This new blogger app is better than what we had but it still needs work. For instance, any time I do an update, if I add a picture it should beneath or above your text . Instead it just shoves them all to the bottom of your page. There’s no way to actually place them unless you’re an HTML whiz kid. I am not. I also wish there was a way to auto watermark your pics, but there isn't as far as I can tell. (Note: these were watermarked and placed properly after I returned home)

Update: Traffic isn't as bad as usual. At the Rosedale Wal Mart to pick up some Allegra my HCP wants me to take. I was in Rite Aid yesterday and the price was outrageous. Even for the store brand. I would have bought it anyway because you don't save any money driving all the way into Bakersfield, but I knew I had to come into town anyway for the MRI so I just waited since Wal-mart was in the vicinity. Hell, there’s always a Wally World in the vicinity.

The 15 tablet pack of Allegra was almost 18 bucks at Rite Aid yesterday. It was about $5 less here. The generic store brand was less then ten dollars at Wal-mart. That's what I bought. Here’s some comparison price shopping for you though.

There were only a couple of packages of the Wal-mart brand left and they were kind of beat up. But I didn’t really want to spring for the 30 pack since these are one a day tablets and I have to go back to the HCP in two weeks so she can see how I’m doing. And I will be doing just fine, because the last thing I want is another specialist hitting me up for my 15 dollar co-pay.

I hate shopping here at the Wal-mart in Rosedale though. The place is a Zoo. There’s always a bunch of little monsters running amok and the aisles are way too narrow. I had to wait forever to get to the aisle with the Allegra in it. After I got the stuff, I headed to the back of the store for some DVD and electronics browsing. But first I had to stop off for some needed supplies.

Usually I would buy the Gain and use it to pollute our environment with. I’ve found that the really generic cheap shit doesn’t clean your clothes very well. But with the six dollar price different and the inviting aroma of lavender, how could I resist the Great Value? And dig that colorful packaging! Or am I just becoming a cheap skate. I would prefer to buy Tide but with Guiding Light off the air, why should I support Proctor and Gamble? Oh hell, they probably made all of these brands.

If I buy microwave popcorn at the local Save-Mart, the best I can do is get the generic Sunny Select brand for $4.49. For that price you get ten bags. Here, for $3.68 you get twelve bags. So since I eat a lot of this stuff (it’s my one major indulgence), I stocked up. The best low fat microwave popcorn I’ve tasted is Jolly Time, above and beyond the taste of any others. Since I don’t eat regular fatty popcorn, I can’t attest to the taste of those. The problem with Jolly Time is that it’s so darn expensive. At Save Mart, it only comes in three packs, for about $2.69. So that’s almost 90 cents a bag which means ten bags is about $9.00. I did get some at Rite Aid not too long ago because they had single bags for 69 Cents. Still, that’s seven dollars for ten bags. But this stuff is okay for the price.

You’ll recognize the above picture. It is the $5 DVD bin where all DVD’s go to die. I used to get some goodies out of here but lately the pickings have been slim. Such was the case this time. The rule of thumb is if I don’t already have them, chances are that I don’t want them. That is not always the case though because I did find one DVD that I decided to get. Believe it or not I’ve never seen it, although I did see it’s unrelated predecessor. Maybe I’ll end up writing a review on it. How this did not end up in my collection I don’t know, and I’m a Julia Roberts booster.

I see I screwed up the watermark on it though. I don’t know how the date and time got turned on for this picture and none of the others. Freaking IPhone! Anyway, I’ll put this on the shelf and get around to it. I haven’t seen Erin Brockovich either, something I really need to do. It’s here at the house somewhere. I mean after all, she did win an Academy Award for that one. The next thing I came across was the following worthless piece of shit.

Wasn’t this out at theaters less than a month ago? I notice theater owners aren’t bitching about this movie’s quick release to DVD. Although this shelf is full, I bet there’s plenty of wing nuts out there to spend their $13.00. Idiots. Damn, I just now noticed that. At that price for a new release, they really are desperate to get rid of these drink coasters. However, if somebody wants to send me a copy, feel free to do so and I promise to be fair and watch the thing before I write a review ripping it to shreds. (I sure as hell am not wasting a spot in my Netflix Queue or a dollar at Redbox on it) The next time I watch The Undefeated, it’ll have John Wayne and Rock Hudson in it. And Missy, if you’re reading this, will you please return my gawddamn DVD’s?

Speaking of bad movies, whatever you do, don’t ever ask me to review these next three films. There is no way I’ll ever sit through them again. Once was one time too many and it’s taken me all of these years to cleanse them from my memory. I don’t care if they are just $13.00.

I own seasons one through eight of Hawaii Five-O, then I had to quit on it. The darn things were just costing me too much money at $35 or more a season. And besides, you can now stream the show on Netflix so what’s the point? Still, I might finish off my collection when the price comes down. The consensus of opinion is that the series was on a steady decline after the seventh season anyway. Being honest, I would love to own the whole series, but time and money are not on my side. It was a great series though and maybe some time in the future I’ll write about it.

I love Chucky. He’s a class act. Too bad a few of his movies stank up the joint though. Still I came close to buying this. I didn’t for two reasons. One was that the first film, the most important one, was not a part of this pack. So it wasn’t the complete series. Two, I already own one of these (Seed of Chucky) so I wouldn’t have been getting as great of a deal as I would have otherwise. But I still yet may buy this. I did find the original Child’s Play film in the following set.

Yeah, you can buy this if you want the original movie. I wasn’t tempted. I already own a special edition of Carrie (and have reviewed it and will soon move it over to this blog), and the original Amityville Horror is a really lousy movie. Or at least the way I remember it when I originally saw it at the drive in years ago. I know I wasn’t scared at all and was pretty much bored. So I would in a sense, have been paying $13 for Child’s Play, and that crap just ain’t happening.

I did give a quick look to the blu-rays before moving on. But I usually get those on line because they are cheaper. Wal-mart does have one blu-ray I want but you have to order it from their internet site because it’s an exclusive. Why they don’t just put it in the damn store is beyond me. That would be the blu-ray of Legally Blonde for $10. So there was nothing else in this department that said “buy me.” Besides, I just got Scream 4 and Fast Five this week, and a spanking new Ben-Hur last week.

And then there’s this. This is the same blu ray player I bought some months back for the TV in the bedroom. Once they added Amazon to it the way it was supposed to have been, the thing has worked like a charm and certainly at $88 I probably got my money’s worth.

Last stop, The Sims. Boy how I used to love this game until EA ruined the fun with it’s endless marketing shenanigans and it’s Crappy Sims 3 Store they invented to take advantage of the mindless guppies that buy that crap. Buying the games is one thing, but giving in to the greedy corporate mindset and to continue buying way overpriced pieces of digital dung, is just silly. I know the guppy and the sheep will argue that it’s okay to be guppy and sheep, but I can’t deal with that. I read what these zombified goof balls have to say on The Sims 3 site, and it really makes me want to puke. I haven’t bothered loading the game up in months, and if I do, it’ll be so I can rewrite my Sims story. I really need to write an article to vent about this crap. And how many go rounds is this for the digital dogs anyway?

By the time I checked out of the store I had spent about $83 bucks, I had one of my bad dizzy spells, my back was hurting and my leg was on fire. So I decided just to stop at the local Long John Silvers/A & W Root Beer place to get something to take home. I love the atmosphere here, the 50’s styling and the juke box. Food is just so-so cakes, but I get tired of burgers. I had the chicken and fish mix (1 piece and 2 pieces)

And finally, I read somewhere that Microsoft is going to discontinue the Zune. It’s too bad. I own one, and it is a superior dedicated digital music player when compared head to head to the iPod. (We’re not talking Ipod touch here. Get real.) As a matter of fact, I prefer using it for music before using my IPhone. I was going to get a new Zune HD but guess I won’t now. The Zune connects to my car radio, and you can actually get more music on it’s 8 GBS than you can an IPod's 8 GBS. How is that? It has to do with reducing the bit rate. You can go lower on the Zune and not have it affect the music. You only have two choices on the Ipod. Take me home, Nat.

May I Have The Netflix/Qwikster (or whatever the hell it is) Envelope Please?---Uptown Saturday Night, Let’s Do It Again, A Piece of the Action

2011-10-06T02:48:00.001-07:00

Back in the seventies, Sidney Poitier decided he wanted to stretch his directing wings a little further, called up his good friend Bill Cosby on the phone and said, “Let’s make a movie together. We’ll both star and I’ll direct as well”

And Cos replied, “Nope, let’s make three of them.” And that’s how we ended up with this Cosby/Poitier trilogy from the seventies. Good story, right? I thought so too when I made it all up. You can actually find the true story regarding how these films came to be on the special features of two of them, that being Uptown Saturday Night and a retrospective on A Piece of the Action.

After having been on a Doris Day binge, and having danced with Schwarzenegger as Conan, I decided to have a fling with Sidney Poitier. Why these three, when there are so many great Poitier films to choose from? Because I already own many of Poitier’s films, he’s always been Grade A in my book, and one of his films would be in my top ten of all time list. So I decided to start with these because my recollection of them was mostly vague.

I did remember quite a bit of Let’s Do It Again which was a good sign. I couldn’t remember if I had seen Uptown Saturday Night or A Piece of the Action for sure, although I was pretty sure I had seen them both somewhere in time. So I thought it was high time I gave these films another viewing to see how they stack up. One thing though, while they are considered a trilogy, these films are not related in any other way except that they starred Cosby and Poitier and that Mr. Poitier directed all three. So in fact, they live or die on their own. Let’s get busy.

If there’s one thing about Netflix/Qwikster envelopes that’s outstanding, it’s their fine use of adjectives to make you want to see a film. Right there on line two it says, “hilarious misadventure.” And oh, how I wish it had been so. But Uptown Saturday Night wasn’t very hilarious. If you’re lucky, you may get a few seconds of laughs but not from anyone mentioned on this particular envelope.

At least the plot is pretty much on the money, minus a few details. Steve Jackson (Sidney Poitier) is on vacation from his blue collar job when his best friend Wardell Franklin (Bill Cosby) talks him into sneaking out late one night while the wives are sleeping to visit the legendary Madame Zenobia’s after hours joint. Besides good hard liquor, there’s rumors of fancy women and illegal gambling which all turn out to be true.

Once inside, Wardell ends up at the craps table where he hits a winning streak by playing along with a patron by the name of Leggy Peggy (Paula Kelly). Right in the middle of this streak, the place is robbed by masked gun men. Wardell is forced to turn over his winnings, Steve is forced to turn over his wallet.

The next day while reading his newspaper, Steve realizes that his ship has come in. The lottery numbers he plays on a regular basis hit. Steve and wife Sarah (Rosalind Cash) begin celebrating until Steve realizes that the winning ticket was in his wallet that was stolen in the robbery at Madame Zenobia’s.

He enlists the help of Wardell to find out who robbed the joint so that they can retrieve the winning lottery ticket. Their first attempts don’t go so well. They try just hanging out in seedy neighborhoods to get some information, but all it does is get Wardell arrested. They then try to hire a private detective, Sharp Eye Washington (Richard Pryor), but as it turns out Washington is simply a con artist on the lam.

Their detective prowess next lands them in the office of Congressman Lincoln (Roscoe Lee Browne), supposedly a man of the people, but he keeps a portrait of Richard Nixon on his wall when nobody’s looking. He’s not much help to the guys until his wife shows up, who happens to be the one and only Leggy Peggy that had launched Wardell on his winning streak.

She tells them to track down a hood by the name of Geechie Dan Buford (Harry Belafonte) and to locate another hood who goes by the name of Little Seymour (Harold Nicholas). Later, they discover that Geechie Dan is at war with a mob boss called Silky Slim (Calvin Lockhart) who is trying to take over Dan’s territory, which in turn lands our two heroes in the middle of their dispute. So who has the lottery ticket and how will the guys recover it?

To be honest, by the time you reach that point you probably aren’t really going to give a damn, because except for two or three scenes, the film is just not funny. There’s a lot of talent involved, but most of it is wasted.

Richard Pryor’s appearance is short lived, so don’t blink. But this could be a good thing considering he’s ill used. Strangely, he would practically reinvent the same type of character two years later for Silver Streak. The difference being that Grover is a million times funnier than Sharp Eye Washington. Granted, his screen time is about five minutes total here, but Poitier just as well had left it on the cutting room floor for what it’s worth.

Harry Belafonte’s thing is to do a Marlon Brando Godfather impression, which would be okay if you have your audience rolling in the aisles with laughter. Instead the whole Brando Impersonation shtick just become tiresome after a few minutes. It might have been a better idea to have Belafonte develop a unique character instead of a pale carbon copy of someone else that wouldn’t even make the grade in a Saturday Night Live skit. At least not for as long as it goes on here.

What’s amazing to me is that Bill Cosby just seems totally uncomfortable as if he’s unsure of himself. For the most part, Director Poitier let’s Wardell carry the film and do his thing while Steve simply reacts. And whether it’s the script or the direction, it’s hard to say. But neither of them elicited so much as a faint chuckle from me.

At one point, when Steve and Wardell confront Little Seymour in a bar, Wardell does a long monologue, which Steve then lamely tries to imitate. The problem is that the monologue wasn’t that good to begin with let alone have it repeated with Wardell coaching Steve on his delivery. This is all followed by a big fight which involves some slapstick not worthy of the prowess of Larry, Curley and Moe.

Poitier’s direction does nothing to lend a spark to the film either. It’s pretty straight forward and workmanlike in a film that requires something more considering the weak premise it is based on. It simply lacks imagination much in the way that the script lacks hilarity.

On the get it where ever you can bright side, Uptown is not exactly a total loss. Paula Kelly and Roscoe Lee Browne are in fact outrageously funny and made me laugh out loud. So if the Netflix envelope was talking about those particular actors, then yeah, I could go along with that. But since they aren’t even mentioned in the description, you know this pair is not whom they were referring to. When Leggy Peggy and Congressman Lincoln are around, the film comes to life for a few quick shining moments before the patient is then pronounced dead and unable to be resuscitated.

If Uptown Saturday Night shows up on Netflix Instant Watch, then I would recommend fast forwarding to the Paula and Roscoe scenes and skipping everything else. It’s a shame they weren’t in a better film then this, or hell they should have just made a movie with these two characters. I would have watched.

I can’t really recommend Uptown on it’s entertainment value, but if you want to watch from a historical perspective regarding black cinema from the seventies than maybe that would be a reason to put it in your queue, or maybe if you want to watch the trilogy you’ll feel incomplete without it. But as it is, I have no choice but to give this film a D, saved from total failure by the Congressman and Ms. Peggy.

A year later, Poitier and Cosby would team up again in this film which has a very clever title for the follow up. Sort of like if at first you don’t succeed, try try again. Sort of like practice makes perfect. Sort of like once bitten twice shy. Wait, that last one doesn’t work does it? For the most part, Let’s Do It Again succeeds where Uptown failed.

The envelope only gives you basic details, hardly enough to make you want to put this in your Netflix/Qwikster/Whatever queue. On top of that, the description gets it wrong. That’s really a pet peeve of mine with Netflix/Qwikster/what was that stupid name again? This happens way too often. Granted, I’m not the world’s greatest movie expert, but if I were running a company I would make sure I would at least get the envelope right instead of having someone like me embarrass you with your inaccuracies.

First off, Clyde (Poitier) and Billy (Cosby) do not host the boxing match. The boxing match takes place in New Orleans, and they have nothing to do with “hosting” it. It is in fact already a scheduled match between Bootney Farnsworth (Jimmie Walker) and 40th Street Black (Rodolphus Lee Hayden) . And second, they don’t recruit the hapless boxer, in the sense that he’s in on the plot. Throughout the movie he’s never aware of his manipulation. The envelope gives no details about how this boxer is to be manipulated which may seem like small potatoes to some, but it’s a very crucial plot point. Never fear though, I’m here for you. Because I care. It’s all about you and your needs. Are you buying that? I didn’t think so.

Clyde and Billy head down to New Orleans with their wives Dee Dee ( Lee Chamberlin) and Beth (Denise Nicholas) in order to find a boxing match they can fix, in addition to meeting the other criteria needed for the wacky plan to work. They first must find a heavy underdog (Bootney) going up against an opponent (40th Street Black) with very long odds.

Clyde, who learned how to hypnotize people in the army, must then put Bootney into a trance and convince him he’s the greatest fighter in the world. Both Clyde and Billy, using funds they “borrowed” from the lodge then place huge bets on the underdog with the two main mob leaders in town, Kansas City Mack (John Amos) and Biggie Smalls (Calvin Lockhart). Biggie and K.C. also happen to be bitter rivals much in the same way that Geechy Dan and Silky Slim (also played by Lockhart) were in Uptown Saturday Night. But in this film, it plays out a lot better aided by the fact that we don’t have to put up with Harry Belafonte’s Don Corleone impersonation.

Having a good idea is one thing. Trying to implement it is another. For one thing Bootney is well guarded in his hotel room. Don’t know why that is since he’s such a crappy boxer and apparently in no danger from anybody unless it’s someone who got fed up with hearing him shout “Kid Dyn-O-Mite”. But let’s not quibble over details.

So getting to him and putting him under Clyde’s Evil Eye is rather tricky business that leads to more complications. Other than that, it’s best for me not to give too much away. Keep in mind though, just when you think the movie is about over it isn’t, because it’s never over until it’s over. There’s a nice well played twist at the end that is sort of like putting the whipped cream and cherry on top of the ice cream sundae.

In Uptown, both Steve and Wardell had wives, but they were more or less window dressing. In this film, they are actually an important part of the story and both of them have distinctly different personalities. Clyde’s wife Dee Dee is your down home strait laced strait arrow gal. Billy’s wife Beth is her opposite: free wheeling and no holds barred. In one scene in a fancy New Orleans restaurant, Beth and Clyde talk openly about their sex life much to Steve’s delight and Dee Dee’s chagrin. This one moment in it self is worth the rental, and more fun than the entire hour and forty minutes spent on USN. This 15 second clip will give you some idea as to what I’m talking about.

No doubt that some of you won’t even know who Jimmy Walker is unless you caught his act on TV Land or Nick at Nite reruns. In the seventies, he starred as J.J. in a family comedy called Good Times and stole the show out from underneath the two stars John Amos (who is also in this film) and Esther Rolle. But too much of Walker’s J.J. shenanigans can get on your last nerve. And the earlier “Kid Dyn-o-mite” reference? Witness it for yourselves.

Here he plays basically the same character, but not exactly the same. J.J. was always brash and outgoing. Bootney is shy and retiring, not good qualities when you’re a boxer trying to make it big. After being hypnotized, he slips more into his J.J. persona and by golly it works. Director Poitier obviously knew this as well and keeps Walker in check by trotting him out as Bootney just when the plot needs it and nothing more. I’m grateful for that, but probably not as much as John Amos was.

Speaking of TV characters, Denise Nicholas is as far removed from the do gooder teacher Liz McIntyre that she played in the show Room 222 as she could be. Cosby and Nicholas are a perfect match . There’s a reason Nicholas won three Golden Globe awards and she shows why here. Unfortunately it always seemed as if the good stories were always going to student teacher Alice Johnson played by Karen Valentine. And having seemingly stifled himself in the first film, Poitier loosens up this time around.

He’s still the straight man for Cosby most of the time, but instead of just reacting to Cosby’s lines, this time he helps sets those lines up. For his part, Cosby seems to have overcome whatever was holding him back as well and seems a lot more comfortable. I really like this film. In a way it reminds me of a film like The Sting. It’s not always roll in the aisle type of hilarity although there are a few of those moments, but it stays amusing and unpredictable throughout. Easily it is the best of this trilogy so I have no choice but to give a grade of B+.

A Piece of the Action is the third and final film in the Poitier/Cosby trilogy from the seventies, released two years after Let’s Do It Again. But by my way of thinking, they should have done at least one more film. I’ll explain why momentarily.

This film is quite a bit different from the initial two offerings. For one thing, it would be difficult to label it as a comedy, or even a dramedy for that matter. There’s very little humor on hand but before you go getting all pissy about it, I’m 75 per cent sure that there was never any intent to make this a laugh riot. It starts out as more of an action/caper film than anything else, and in fact the two main characters, Manny Durrell (Poitier) ad Anderson (Cosby) don’t even know each other exist.

They are in fact thieves. Dave is an accomplished cat burglar, and Manny is a con man. Dave steals from the very rich, and gives unto himself. Manny makes a big score conning mob boss Bruno (Titos Vandis) with help from some associates in particular one Bea Quitman (Frances Foster), important because she figures greatly in later developments.

The opening sequences with Dave and Manny pulling off their cons and heists are particularly well done. Unfortunately for them and for us, police detective ~~Darth Vader~~ Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones) has gathered enough evidence to put them both behind bars for about 30 years. What exactly is this evidence and how did he get it? I can’t answer that. Not because it’ll give away part of the plot, but it’s because we’re never really told what it is that leads him to surmise who the two are.

Maybe it’s not a big necessary detail that we need to know, but a rather obvious plot hole that will bug the piss out of you especially in regards to Manny. It would have been almost impossible for Burke or anybody else to know Manny was the one who pulled off the con since the police were never involved in any investigation or any funds reported stolen. In other words, Burke would have had to have been part of the Psychic Friends Network or maybe an associate of Syliva Browne.

Yes friends, the Psychic Network does live on and on and on via the internet, and you can track them down yourself if you are that gullible. Minus Dionne Warwick of course, who quit the psychic business when the checks stopped rolling in. Yes, you and I know PFN wasn’t around in the seventies and Ms. Browne didn’t make her big splash on TV until the nineties either. But Burke didn’t know that and he could have communicated with them mentally over the space time continuum couldn’t he? He seems to know everything else. But hey, there was always The Not So Amazing Kreskin back then for him to buddy up with. Oh horse poop, there I go getting way off track again. Let’s see…..hmmmm….where was I? Dave…Manning….con….heists…Burke…Okay, back on track.

Having retired from the police force, Detective Extraordinaire ~~Vader~~ Burke decides to use his information to blackmail both Manny and Dave. Does he attempt to get the two crooks to pay him off in mucho dinero? Nope. Does he try to get Manny and Dave to work to together to pull off more heists and cons together, using their prowess to take out one underworld criminal after another as sort of their own Mission Impossible duo? Nope, not that either. Instead he forces them to give back to the community by working as volunteers for Lila French (Denise Nicholas) helping and aiding inner city kids to find jobs thus making the world a better place for them, and us, God, apple pie, and the United States of America. Unfortunately though, it doesn’t necessarily make for a better movie.

Burke does all this in such a way that our two heroes don’t know who it is doing the blackmailing. But from the information that is provided to them, it is obvious that he has both Manny and Dave right where he wants them. I think it’s called having them by the balls.

At the school, they decide to split up. Manny will stick around with the delightful young ones who have been assigned to the center by the juvenile courts as a last resort, and Dave will hit the streets trying to round up some employers ~~stupid enough~~ willing to take a chance on them. And while doing these jobs, both will look for clues as to the identity of their blackmailing benefactor so they can get him off their case and go back to doing what they do best.

There’s probably another reason why Poitier gets the thrill of working with the troubled teens. He’s been down this road before. First, as one of them in The Blackboard Jungle, and after having been straightened out by Glenn Ford, hw went on to teach their British counterparts in To Sir With Love. But the kids in those films seem like the Vienna Boys Choir when compared to the nasty bunch he gets saddled with here.

And while all of this is going on, Dave who is supposed to be using Lila to get information develops a crush on her. Manny already has a girlfriend that he lives with, Nikki McLean (Tracy Reed). But she’s here for two reasons. The first reason is so that we can have a strange scene where her doting parents come to visit their daughter who is living in sin. I think this is supposed to be the comedic portion of the movie for all those who entered the theater thinking they were going to get another film like Let’s Do It Again. And the second reason is to be there when the plot calls for it late in the film.

To add to Dave and Manny’s misery, especially Manny’s, Bruno has not given up on finding the person who conned him and took his money, and eventually he gets a lead which helps him close in on the culprit, that being Manny. And Bruno is no fun loving Mob Boss like the ones in the previous movies. This guy means business, and no Cosby monologue is going to discourage him in the least.

To say this film is schizophrenic is an understatement. What we have are two entirely different films trying to mesh together, but it’s the old oil and water story. You just can’t get those suckers to mix no matter what you do.

We have the film where Manny and Dave are thieves and con-artists being chased down by the mob, while trying to locate the man who is blackmailing them. And then we have the story of Manny and Dave trying to turn the young and the restless into Citizens of the Year.

In fact the troubled youth story is a real downer most of the time. There is one particularly cruel scene between a student, Barbara Hanley (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and the instructor Sarah Thomas (Hope Clarke) that is so intense in it’s cruelty that the film never really recovers from it. It makes one dislike these students to the point where we begin to not really care what the hell happens to them, and the only thing we really want from this point on is the Manny/Dave/Bruno/Blackmail plot. As for the scene I’m talking about, you’re in luck. Or maybe not, it depends on your feelings about it. But someone did upload it to YouTube so decide for yourselves.

Sheryl Lee Ralph gets mean and nasty in A Piece of the Action

Remember when I said they should have made a fourth film? This is what I meant by that. If they wanted to make another film dealing with these kids, then they should have done that. They had a good film going in the beginning, then did a 180 degree turn and tried to make it about something else while still keeping elements of the original idea going on the side. Thus one story is nothing but a distraction from the other. You can do things like this in a film, but when you make that spin, then your film has to go totally in that direction. You can’t have it both ways.

Case in point, would be Hitchcock’s Psycho. For the early part of the film we believe we are watching a film about embezzling. Then, in one scene Hitchcock changes the game and makes the film about something else altogether, and that is what the film is about and it stays there for the rest of the movie.

In this film, they try to have their cake and eat it too. Once the work at the center becomes part of the film, they should have either focused on that or not gone that route in the first place. Blackboard Jungle is a good film because it has focus. The same can be said of To Sir With Love. Could you imagine Poitier’s Mr. Thackery taking a sabbatical in the middle of that film to go pull a heist? Neither could I. To make matters worse, after this scene and another one like it, they try to bring in Nikki’s parents for the previously mentioned comedy relief, and it just ends up being idiotic, stupid, as if they had spliced it in from some other film. I’m not denying the well meaning intentions involved, or that the acting in the above scene is anything but excellent. But like I said, maybe they should have done one more film instead of cramming all of their ideas into this one.

I can’t really fault any of the actors here. They all do well, so I suppose I could fault Poitier, who as a director should have recognized the problems with the script. Or I can just blame the writers who weren’t sure what kind of a movie they wanted to make so we get this instead. The film is certainly worth a rental. You won’t hate it. But you may start wishing for Manny and Dave to pull off another con or some big heist. I never thought I would see the day that I wished for J.J. to make an appearance, and if you make me wish for that I have no choice but to give you my grade of a C. It’s a nice effort that ultimately fails.

But I’ll leave you with something that doesn’t fail and is pretty cool to boot. The Staple Singers and their rendition of Let’s Do It Again.

A Day in the Life: Hanging Out

2011-10-04T15:43:00.001-07:00

I'm hanging out at Blockbuster, killing some time after having dropped some papers off at my neurologist. The more things change at Blockbuster, the more they stay the same (as you can see). One worker, lots of people.

Outside the weather is cloudy but nice. At home, I'm working on a post I hope to finish tonight. Debating with myself about dinner which will be after the Doc. Have a good day, catch you later.

Update: Made it to the doctor's office. I'm not sure why I am here except to have my kidney cyst explained more thoroughly. I have to have another MRI on Thursday, this time on my neck.

What I need is some pain meds but there's a problem I'll explain later. And no, I'm not addicted, just hurting. All the time.

Update:

Okay here's the explanation. About five months ago I was sent to a pain specialist because one doctor wasn't sure what was causing the pain. The pain doctor put me on Neurontin and vicatin, both of which I used sparingly to make them last. Since then, the cause of the pain has been diagnosed by my neurologist who should be prescribing the meds. But he can't because technically I'm still under the care of Dr. Feelgood, whom I haven't even seen in three months. So, in order for the neurology guy to prescribe my meds, I have to get a release from Dr. Feelgood. Easier said then done.

I call his office, the receptionist was clueless, but said she would call me back. Since I had to go burning up fossil fuels in Bakersfield today I had hope to resolve this idiots situation. But no dice.

Anyway I just had my vitals taken so stay tuned.

Final update: Got the pain meds straightened out. The magazine cover?
It's a July issue. Typical for a doctors office. Just wanted to offer up some doctor type atmosphere. I also got some medication for my chronic laryngitis. As for my tendency to write too much, sorry, but my doctor says it’s incurable.

Final final update: I’m back home. Let me offer up an explanation to those of you who are new to this blog. If you go back a couple of months, I made it clear this blog was going to have a personal touch. It would be not just about things I was interested in, but about me as well as much as possible. Therefore, you get this health stuff. And as I go through this, I’m a perfect example of why health care is in such a sorry shape in this country. It’s so piecemeal, and everybody wants to put their hand in the cookie jar instead of finding out what the problem is and doing something about it. Since I have to go have an MRI on Thursday (yes another one), I’ll explain then. Hopefully back later tonight, but have to rest now.

Clyde’s Movie Palace: Elizabethtown (2005)

2011-10-03T03:28:00.000-07:00

Directed by Cameron Crowe

starring

Orlando Bloom

Kirsten Dunst

Susan Sarandon
Judy Greer

(CLYDE NOTE: This a reboot of the first review I ever wrote for my old blog. When I finally made the decision to move all my writing to Clyde’s stuff, it was the first review hat made the trip. When I transferred it, there wasn’t much to it. Just a handful of pictures and one video. The marquee was lousy as well, seeing as how it was a first effort. But reading the text I discovered something important. How can I describe it? I’ll describe it the same way Donald Sutherland’s professor in Animal House described the novel he was working on: It was a piece of shit. But I was in a hurry to start the transfer and decided to get back to Elizabethtown another day. That day was kind of forced on me last night when I accidentally deleted some of the pictures form my web albums that went with the review. I decided that since I had to redo the photo’s I might as well redo the whole damn thing. And I actually watched this thing again on Netflix instant watch to see if my opinion would change now that I’m older and wiser. But no, just like the original review I wrote, the movie is mostly crap as well. But here is my own rebooted movie review.)

Having taken a four year coffee break since having brought Vanilla Sky to the big screen, Cameron Crowe awakened from his slumber to bring us Elizabethtown. It took him five years to bring Jerry Maguire to the screen, so the fact that his work output is increasing is an encouraging sign. If he ever gets to a level where his output is once every three years, I’m sure he’ll collapse from exhaustion. (As it turned out, I was overly optimistic. Crowe’s next feature will be We Bought A Zoo scheduled for release in December. It’s been six years since Elizabethtown – Clyde)

As I always say though, if you’re going to make something you ought to be sure you’re making it right, and if it takes you four or five years to get from initial concept to perfection, then so be it. However, if it takes you that long to make a film and it turns out to be crap, don’t let it eat at you too much that you spent so much time creating a pile of donkey doo-doo. But take heart. Elizabethtown isn’t a total waste, but the product that Crowe ended up with is a long way from perfection.

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) designs what is suppose to be the world’s first perfect tennis shoe for his company. He has spent the past seven or eight years of his life designing the shoe that’s like “walking on a cloud”. The shoe flops big time causing the company he works for to lose almost a billion dollars ($972 million to be exact).

As Drew walks through corporate headquarters to receive his walking papers, the former Golden Boy is treated as if everyone just found out that he has melanoma. In fact, death seems to be preferable than losing his status as a big shot revolutionary shoe designer and being fired by head honcho Phil DeVoss (Alec Baldwin) who is “ill equipped in the philosphy of failure.” And to emphasize this point, DeVoss walks Drew through corporate headquarters making damn sure he understands that he alone will take the fall for what his failure will cost DeVoss, the company, and some of the employees.

Drew decides to commit suicide, and rigs up his exercise bike as some sort of half assed harakiri machine that would have made Jack Kevorkian pea green with envy. He is about to embark on his journey into darkness, when the phone rings, thus enabling his life and Crowe’s movie to continue a while longer. Correction, make that a whole lot longer.

On the phone is his sister Heather (Judy Greer) calling to let him know that his crappy day has really gone to shit because their father, Mitch, has died in Elizabethtown, Kentucky and it is up to Drew to fly there and take care of funeral arrangements. Drew temporarily postpones his suicide attempt, although it’s too late to retrieve his belongs which he had unceremoniously dumped on the sidewalk to the delight of lucky scavengers below.

He is accompanied to the airport by his mother, Hollie Baylor (Susan Sarandon) and his sis. He promises them that he will bring dear old dad’s body back in two days and that Daddy Mitch will be dressed in the “blue suit”. And having completed his mission, he’ll then be able to finish his own suicide and join Daddy in the great hereafter for Elizabethtown Part II.

He hops on a plane to Louisville, where he meets stewardess Claire Coburn (Kirsten Dunst). Somehow, Drew ends up as the only passenger in coach, and she requests that he move to first class. Drew is unwilling to go until she tells him in a very polite way to move his ass to the front because her own tired ass doesn’t want to have to keep walking to the back of the plane all night long. Of course, the fact that the only other passengers on this plane are in first class, and just a handful of them at that, tells us one of three things:

1. This is actually a new Twilight Zone movie that we’ve begun watching.

2. The Only people who fly to Kentucky must be filthy rich

3. Nobody in their right mind goes to Louisville unless they play basketball or eat a lot of oats.

I think the correct answer here is number 3. I’ve been to Kentucky, I was in fact born there. But except when the horsies come out to play every May, who in their right mind would want to go there on purpose? And that’s in the big city of Louisville.

Compared to Harlan though, Elizabethtown probably seems like an exotic resort, just by way of comparison. On my list, Kentucky falls somewhere in between Alabama and Mississippi as a vacation getaway state. No offense to my relatives past present and future that still reside there, but it is what it is and I’m sworn to truthiness.

Once Drew gets comfortable in his new seating arrangement, Claire attempts to strike up a conversation with Drew but he is insistent on wallowing in his misfortune, something he’ll have in common with about 40 percent of the users of Facebook some four or five years later. But Claire is persistent, no matter how much Drew tries to shun her. Reluctantly, he succumbs to Claire’s charms and from that point on were not sure if we’re watching a quirky romantic comedy, the tragic story of one’s life, or as you’ll soon see when Drew hits the big town, an extended version of the long ago almost forgotten television show Evening Shade. Sorry Burt.

In Elizabethtown, Drew meets up with cousin Jesse (Paul Schneider) who travels with him to the funeral home where Mitch is laid out in his blue suit. Mitch examines his father up close and personal, doesn’t seem to be too overcome with grief, but is inspired to think of one word: whimsical. Why? As far as I can tell the word hasn’t one single thing to do with anything that happens in this film except that in one really weird moment, Drew actually believes his father is smiling back at him. All of this happens to the tune of Elton John wailing away in the background on My Father’s Gun. What is the significance? I don’t know, maybe Cameron Crowe promised Elton some residuals or something.

Afterwards, Drew heads to the big family and friend get together where they celebrate the deceased person’s life while eating like a bunch of pigs. Or is that eating a bunch of pigs? There’s way too many of them to be named here and most of them have little consequence as to later film events. Some of them don’t even have real identitites and are referred to in the IMDB credits with names like Another Cousin. However, I do think I recognized two of my own cousins and relatives, and an old grade school buddy in the crowd.

We get to meet each and every one of them just as Jack does. It is all very sentimental, heartwarming, and as in the case of Samson the kid from hell, mildly amusing at times. But in the end, it is no different than being asked by your girlfriend’s mother to have a look at the family photograph album. There is no real connection.

And that’s exactly what Aunt Dora does. She takes Drew to see the pictures of all the cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, and friends. But just like Drew, you still really don’t know the first thing about any of them. Worse yet, they don’t tell us enough about Drew’s father so that by the end of the film, we’re still kind of in the dark and clueless about him too.

But maybe all of that is a side journey for what the film is really about. Drew hooks back up with Claire and an unconventional non-romance begins between the two of them. They start their non-relationship by spending a whole evening talking to each other on the phone, shortly after Drew’s girlfriend Ellen breaks up with him.

Claire suggests that Drew needs to take a road trip of discovery. For the most part though, the conversation is a wasted opportunity. Much of the conversation is done in silence as the song Come Pick Me Up by Ryan Adams plays in the background for no particular reason except Crowe seems to love his soundtracks. Clever choice of songs, but it simply detracts from the business at hand and drags the scene out endlessly. There is a funny bit in the hotel hall with a guy from a wedding party but by the time Claire and Drew hang up and meet again, you’ll feel like three days have passed instead of one night. Crap, I kept trying to figure out what they powered their cell phones with to enable them to talk that long without a recharge.

But have no fear. The loving couple spend real time together that very same day where we travel along as they buy an urn, visit a monument to Colonel Sanders, and horse around in a cemetery. Claire and Drew finish the night with the big…..well, no they don’t. They don’t even kiss because Claire says that enables them to be friends for the rest of their lives. So the whole purpose of the past half hour of this film was what exactly?

The long debate continues. Will Mitch be buried, cremated or half buried and half cremated? The townsfolk want a burial. Hollie wants a cremation. Sis just wants Drew to get his ass back to Oregon. Clyde just wanted them to drop the body off of the Brent-Spence Bridge and for the movie to get on with whatever it was Crowe was trying to do.

If Crowe had made a nice hour and forty minute film concentrating on the relationship between Claire and Drew, it may have been a good film. But there are so many needless side trips that don’t amount to anything, and most of these scenes are nothing more than setups for the "big funeral scene".

For instance, Drew spends a lot of time with his cousin Jessie (Paul Schneider), and there is a lot of talk about how Jessie’s band once played on the same bill as Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I guess we’re supposed to see him as sad and pathetic. As it turns out though, it is nothing more than a set up for later events at the Mitch’;s funeral.

Much of the same can be said for Drew’s mother Hollie (Susan Sarandon.) We see her in bits and pieces until she too lands in Elizabethtown for her husband’s farewell and to give us the reason why she actually is in the film at all. And although it’s a funny bit, it’s not much of a payoff for such a long never ending preliminary round.

Then there’s Bill Banyon (Bruce McGill). He supposedly caused Mitch and Hollie to lose some money years ago or something like that. It’s never made clear exactly what happened or how it happened. It doesn’t matter, because it’s here only for Bill to make some kind of a very brief very weak confession at Mitch’s funeral. To put it another way, it’s just a side story that leads to another dead end, or should I say dead Mitch?

I liked Orlando Bloom in this film, and the film’s failure can’t really be attributed to him. If his character Drew seems a bit too morose and depressed at times, you would be too because you have a tendency to be kind of on the down side yourself if you were no longer a big wheel who designed the Späsmodica shoe, and your old man decided to keel over in Kentucky.

In pirates, Bloom was Abbot to Johnny Depp’s Costello and it worked well. He runs into the same problem here. The only time the film comes alive at all is when Claire shows up. His scenes with Claire are fun to watch for the most part, but again it’s Kirsten Dunst who carries them and makes most of the film worth watching. It just seems to me that Bloom does better in films when he has a strong character to play off of. Whether or not he will ever be able to truly carry a film on his own, still remains unanswered to this day. But he does have the Hobbit thingamajiggy in his future where he’ll reprise his role of Legolas Greenleaf, and a Three Musketeers film that will be out here in the states in a couple of weeks after having already debuted overseas. He plays the Duke of Buckingham in that one.

But the biggest problem with this film is that it could use one helluva lot of tightening. It goes on way too long with so many scenes that lead to dead ends, which may be fitting considering the subject matter but hardly entertaining. Trim about twenty minutes, and Cameron Crowe might have had something. But even at that, he would have had to dream up some kind of a plot which amounted to more than what we got for wading through this puddle of sludge. The only person on the planet that this film means anything to must be Crowe. Elizabethtown did manage to make it’s budget back in worldwide gross, or maybe a bit more or a bit less depending on which figures you use, but a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that both Dunst and Bloom were riding high on star power at the time. She because of the Spiderman films, he because of the Lord of the Rings and the three Pirates of the Caribbean Films.

But please, don’t let me go without mentioning the fine outstanding performance of Tim Devitt as Mitch’s dad. A corpse hasn’t been played this believably since Fred Gwynne played Herman Munster. So my hat’s off to him. He deserved better than this movie as a Eulogy.

During the last twenty minutes or so, after being urged on by Claire who has given him full instructions on how to enjoy himself, Drew goes on a road trip. Unfortunately, you will be awfully tempted to hit the road yourself and return the DVD to the video store long before Drew ever makes it to wherever Claire is sending him. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry….no you won’t. You’ll see Drew do that stuff but at that point you won’t give a rat’s ass.

I was tempted to but somehow managed to stick it out to the bitter end. But the fact that I was tempted not to means I have no choice but to give you a grade of C-, a grade which can be directly attributed to some of the actors. By that I mean if it weren’t for a few winning performances, by Dunst, Sarandon, Schneider, Greer, and Baldwin, the grade would have been much worse.

And if you want, you can watch the film on Netflix instant watch, at least as I write this. (10/3/2011). But you know Netflix: Here today, gone tomorrow. Or is that Qwikster? No, Qwikster is the DVD branch. I think. Maybe. Possibly. Who gives a damn. Here’s the trailer. I’m going to watch some Buffy and cleanse myself.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

2011-10-02T04:27:00.001-07:00

Directed by Robert Wise
Original Score by Bernard Hermann

starring

Aliens have been visiting the Earth in one form or another by way of Hollywood almost nonstop for decades. Sometimes they are cute, cuddly, friendly little creatures like E.T. that only want to go home, while at other times they have been evil hideous creatures who descend upon Earth to conquer us with their technical superiority and so that directors like Roland Emmerich can try to wow us with a special effects extravaganza as he did in Independence Day and bore us with a predictable story line all at the same time.

Then there are aliens like Klaatu, who walk like us, talk like us, have bodies likes us, and visit us in the form of Michael Rennie with the sole purpose of letting us know that if mankind doesn't get its act together soon, we may be in for a world of hurt. And though the special effects may be meager, the film entertains us substantially more than any film dependent on smashing aliens into a million CGI particles.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is unlike any other science fiction film made in the fifties. But it is one of a few science fiction films from the decade that was more than just your run of the mill Saturday matinee B movie (or as in most cases, D movie). It was a movie that didn't rely on flesh eating creatures or huge alien monsters unless you count a single giant robot. Yet manages to captivate us every step of the way even some 60 years later..

Directed by Robert Wise, the film wastes no time in getting to the point with an intense opening sequence. There's an unidentified flying object circling the globe at a mere 4,000 miles an hour. Yes, I know that’s not Star Trek type speed but it would be hell on wheels at NASCAR. As one famous announcer after another from all over the globe hits the airwaves with the news and the UFO is being tracked by radar, we finally see the flying saucer as it glides over Washington D.C. and lands gently in a baseball field just in time for the seventh inning stretch.

The inhabitant of the spaceship doesn't emerge immediately, as Wise chooses to build our suspense and apprehension just as the spectators and soldiers surrounding the craft must feel. In one of the great science fiction sequences ever devised with nothing more than a couple of balls of silly putty, the seamless spacecraft opens, and down the walkway emerges Klaatu (Michael Rennie), hidden by a silver space suit so that we are as unaware as everyone else is of his true physical nature. Klaatu pulls a strange looking device from inside his suit. A soldier, thinking that the object is some sort of alien weapon, fires at Klaatu wounding him. But not mortally. Because that would mean the movie was over already.

It is only then that we learn that Klaatu, poor fellow, walks talks and breathes just like us, and it is also when the robot Gort emerges from the spaceship, immediately firing a laser beam destroying the weapons and artillery surrounding the craft. Klaatu utters a few mumble jumble alien type phrases which causes Gort to lower his visor down over his laser beam, and then Klaatu is taken away by the military.

Once in custody, Klaatu lets it be known that he has something important to say and that just saying it to the President won’t suffice. He must have met a few of our Commanders-in-chief over the years so that’s understandable. He wants to talk to all the leaders of the world, all at the same time and in the same place. Of course, you know and I know that getting all the leaders of the world together to have a Boy Scout powwow at Camp Klaatu is never going to happen, even if you offer up free wienies and marshmallows while singing Way Up Here on the Triple R. Once Klaatu finds out what we already know, he decides to mingle with us meager earthlings to see what makes us tick. Uh-oh, you know we’re in trouble now.

Klaatu assumes the identity of Mr. Carpenter, and finds his way out into the general population landing at a local boarding house where he rents a room and meets up with Helen Benson (Patricia Neal), a widower, and her son Bobby (Billy Gray) whom Carpenter quickly befriends.

The next day Bobby shows Klaatu around D.C., including visits to The Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery where we find out that Bobby’s father was killed during the war. Eventually they land at the home of renown scientist (or as Bobby calls him, the smartest man in the world) Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), whom Klaatu hopes can arrange a worldwide meeting of the minds, right after he helps Barnhardt with his math.

Michael Rennie is the perfect Klaatu. He always seems subtly bemused by us earthlings and our many theories as to what his appearance really is and why he has paid us a visit including such odd ideas as that he has taken a short trip over from the Soviet Union. Come to think of it, he does look as if he may be a distant ancestor of Alexander Putin. Who knew?

Although he tries his best to understand man's penchant for war, death, and destruction, it is a concept that Klaatu sees as having no basis in any kind of rationality. One can't help but compare him in some ways to Mr. Spock of Star Trek. Trying to dissect the causes and effects of human emotions is a never ending fruitless endeavor. I know. I’ve tried many times.

Unlike Spock however, Klaatu is not beyond showing impatience and frustration with us. While he tries to find a way to deliver his message to not one country, but all countries, the single minded purpose of the U.S. military is to capture or kill him or ship him down to Mexico. This used to be a movie cliché, but current events have now proven otherwise. I mean, just because the guy didn’t bring his passport or green card do we have to go getting all pissy on him?

So in all likelihood that is how it would play out if such an event were to occur today, except for the fact that he’d be surrounded by teabaggers carrying signs with misspelled words and poor phrasing while Michelle Bachman cheers them on with her anti-Klaatu chants. Either that or the congress would institute a couple of space visitor commissions to study the situation, and report the result of their findings based upon Klaatu's political persuasion, and how many banks and corporations he owned. Oh well, wtf, I’m getting way off topic. I do that sometimes. Haven’t entirely ridded myself of the political steroids inhabiting my body, but after having written about that crap for seven years, it’ll take time to cleanse myself. If ever.

It would have been easy for the film to bog down during Klaatu's wanderings around D.C., but Wise keeps things on a steady course by making such things as a visit to Arlington Cemetery touching and moving, and the visit to the Professor's home intriguing and humorous at the same time.

One can thank whoever decided to cast Billy Gray as Bobby, who does such a first-class job as Klaatu's tour guide that it not only adds immeasurably to the film, it would make one look Bobby up to be their own guide should they feel the need to tour the capital even if the capitol is nothing more than filmed backdrops as is the case here. Gray went on to play Bud in the long running sit com, Father Knows Best which was the real TV series on which the fictional TV series in the movie Pleasantville may have been based.

Patricia Neal gives a stellar but measured performance as Bobby's mother. She is drawn to Mr. Carpenter but yet is wary of his strange ways to the point where she begins to question Bobby's friendship with him. As for Sam Jaffe, they could have called him Dr. Zorba and it wouldn’t have mattered. But it’s the kind of role he was born to play. And who is Dr. Zorba? That’s why I include links, dummies. The rest is up to you.

This version of Hermann’s score was played by the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was conducted by Hermann in 1973.

Her complete opposite is her boyfriend, Tom (Hugh Marlowe) who sees his relationship with Helen as more of an opportunity to cash in more than anything remotely having to do with hearts and flowers. It doesn't take us long to figure out that Helen is drawn to Tom because of his ability to provide a home for her and Bobby rather than any real deep everlasting emotional involvement. This romantic conflict plays itself out at what couldn’t be a more crucially inopportune moment. But what the heck, at least she finds out what an asshole the guy is. But poor Hugh Marlowe! How many times during his career did he get saddled playing these slick creepy back stabbing underhanded jerks? Then again, he’d get his own personal brand of revenge on the aliens about five years later.

For The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bernard Herrmann wrote another one of his perfect scores. By that I mean it is written in such a way as to not only increase your involvement in the proceedings, it perfectly complements every aspect of the film from the opening credits to the end. In fact, it is a score that would influence many a science fiction film for years to come. It was the first time we would hear the Theremin, but it would not be the last as it would influence soundtracks in Science Fiction films for years to come. Yet, his score for the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery sequences discard the sci-fi notes altogether, bringing respect, sadness and solace to Klaatu and Bobby’s tour.

Keeping in mind that this was made over fifty years ago, the special effects acquit themselves quite well. Yes, Gort looks a bit stiff, and yes thanks to a new digital transfer you can see some wires used to hold Neal up at one point along with the seam in the suit (all in the same scene), but the seamless spaceship, Gort’s Killer Ray, and the landing in DC more than make up for it. Besides, this is a story driven science fiction film, not a special effects extravaganza. It is what it is and a product of it’s time so whatever you do, don’t let George Lucas get ahold of it.

So, what about the all important message that Klaatu traveled those 250 million miles to deliver to mankind? It has been the subject of much debate over the years, and will probably continue to be so for many years to come as long as there are message boards smothering the internet to throw your two cents into. I have my own thoughts about it, but can only say that agree or disagree, it is more or less the same message that many nations have given to one country after another on our own planet. So does this make Klaatu and his kind as bad as us or is their method entirely different with an insistence on a peaceful existence? Whichever side you fall on, the debate will continue through the ages and when any film accomplishes something of that nature I have no choice but to give it my grade which for The Day the Earth Stood Still is an A and is an undeniable classic.

As for the recent remake with Keanu Reeves, I’ll reserve judgment for another day, because as of now (September 2011) I have yet to see it in its entirety, although I have a blu-ray copy in the cabinet. I watched the first twenty minutes once, was interrupted, and have yet to return. I suppose that would be a certain indication that I may not found the first twenty minutes very compelling.

Special effects have come a long way but sometimes they just foul up the plumbing. Part of the charm of watching the original is in its simplicity. I have nothing against remakes as long as they are a worthwhile effort to either update or bring us something new, but cramming the screen with another CGI extravaganza at the expense of a good story won’t quite cut it with me.But maybe you’ll find this trailer of the original to your liking.

I have just one question: Are there any Republicans or teabaggers on Klaatu’s home planet? If not, I’m so there! For now: Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!

You Are What You Eat: $5 Subs

2011-10-01T16:39:00.001-07:00

October is a happy month at Subway. ALL subs are $5. If you pick your sub and toppings with care, you can lose weight. Today's happy sub is the combo. More filling, but still low in fat. Calories are a bit much but they are good calories.

Clyde’s Movie Palace: Caged (1950)

2011-09-29T23:20:00.001-07:00

Directed by
John Cromwell

Written by
Virginia Kellogg

Starring
Eleanor Parker
Agnes Morehead
Ellen Corby
Hope Emerson|
Betty Garde

Emma (Ellen Corby) is what you would call prison savvy. A little nutty perhaps, but prison savvy just the same. Most of the females incarcerated in this particular prison have been there before. For some it’s their second time around and for others it is their third or fourth go round inside the state penitentiary. And then there are the lifers, the women who will never again know a world without concrete blocks and iron bars.

Most of these women incarcerated in Caged had a man on the outside. And none of them were upright outstanding citizens. As you listen to their stories about how they came to be incarcerated, the one constant thread running through all of them is that it was as much some man’s fault for their downfall as it is their own. Men are such cruel dastardly evil bastards.

Such is the case with Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker), a naïve nineteen year old girl who is serving her first term after being sentenced to one to ten years for being an accessory in an armed robbery. Her husband, unbeknownst to Marie, decided to hold up a gas station while Marie was waiting for him in the car. The husband got himself killed and Marie was sent to the state pen. By the end of Caged, you’ll swear the husband probably got the better end of the deal. And just to complicate things even more, Marie’s husband left her a little present. She’s two months pregnant.

The Prison is run by Ruth Benton (Agnes Morehead). She’s a reformer. She believes prisoners should be rehabilitated, not just punished. “Just being in here IS the punishment,” is her philosophy. But a very low budget and overcrowding limits what she can do, which just goes to show you that in 60 years, things have pretty much remained unchanged. She hopes that Marie will be able to do her time without incident and start a new life when she is paroled, although the odds are not in Marie’s favor. So Warden Ruth, with all her infinite wisdom, decides to put Marie in the worst cellblock in the prison to lead her on the road to rehabilitation.

The block that Marie is assigned to is looked after and ruled by prison employee Matron Evelyn Harper (Hope Emerson). Those who can find a way to pay off Evelyn with money and bribes will do easy time. Those who can’t or won’t are in for some rough weather ahead. Marie’s husband is dead and her mother is married to a guy who wants nothing to do with Marie so you can pretty much figure out which side of the coin Marie falls on. As one inmate says early in the movie, “Heads you lose, tails you lose.” And when it comes to losing, to be on the wrong side of Evelyn Harper is not something anyone would look forward to whether they are a woman, man, or beast.

Kitty Stark (Betty Garde) is another inmate who does what it takes to get by. She recruits first timers to become “boosters” for the syndicate. A booster is a shoplifter and if the inmate agrees to work for the syndicate (run by men of course, just like 90 per cent of everything else in the US) then they can help her get an early parole. In the meantime, they’ll also see that she gets money to keep Evelyn Harper paid off. Likewise, the more girls Kitty can recruit, the more the syndicate is willing to help her keep Harper paid off and out of her hair.

It goes without saying that Kitty will be doing her best to recruit Marie. Making matters worse, parole is hard to come by in this prison. It is up to the parole officer to get the girl a job before she leaves prison so even if parole is approved, the inmate is left pulling what is called dead time until a job becomes available if one ever does. One inmate has been pulling dead time for over a year. And of course a job can become available more quickly if the inmate is willing to work for one crime syndicate or another. The corruption in this prison does not stop at the prison gates. It runs deep throughout the state from parole boards to the parole officers and possibly even further than that. So if you are wondering how someone like Evelyn Harper can even exist, the reasons why become readily apparent.

Caged is a nitty gritty down and dirty grungy expose of prison corruption. Author Virginia Kellogg had herself committed to a woman’s prison for several weeks before writing the screen treatment and the authenticity shows up in every line and in every uncompromising syllable. The film is filled with authentic slang which runs rampant through the script with words like “dead time”, “stir-bugs” “stir simple” and the aforementioned “boosters”. Freedom is known as “Free Side.” She pushes the envelope as much as one could in those days, and at times you have to really pay attention to understand what is lying beneath the surface. It is unflinching and uncompromising in many respects. For instance, there are several scenes hinting at prison lesbianism such as one in which Kitty tells Marie, “If you stay in here too long, you don’t think about guys at all.”

Later, when Elvira Powell (Lee Patrick) arrives at the prison, she immediately replaces Kitty as the Queen Bee of the cell block and tries to recruit Marie for her own business. Although it is never directly mentioned, a newspaper headline about vice and the fact that Elvira has a lot of cash stashed somewhere, informs us that she is a Madam and that to work for her means becoming a prostitute. And with Elvira paying Evelyn off, Kitty no longer gets the same degree of protection from Harper that she once did.

I really like this movie. If you’ve read any reviews of it elsewhere one of the things they will tell you that this movie was mislabeled as a Camp Cult Classic by Warner Brothers to fit it into a three disc package. Cult Classic? You bet. Campy? There’s nothing campy or even remotely fun about this film although a couple of the lines in it will make you chuckle. Director John Cromwell is at his best when portraying his vision of endless, monotonous days and nights behind bars,

Early in the film, Cromwell shows us a close up of a bell ringing and afterwards we watch as Harper walks slowly between the girls for roll call. It is a scene that is repeated several times all throughout the movie, so not only that we know there is a passage of time, but that the time is filled day after day with the same routines, the same tedious existence hour after hour, day after day, month after month and so on. By the time you have heard that bell ring three or four times, you'll be wanting to tear it out of the wall yourself and slam it against a concrete block.

Cromwell’s direction is uncompromising. There is nothing here that gives us a sense of any kind of hope for any of these women. It often seems as if he is shooting Evelyn Harper from the ground up, as her presence towers over the other women, so that we not only can see her domination but can feel it as well.

It doesn’t hurt that the actress who plays Harper, Hope Emerson, clocks in at 6’2” and 235 pounds but it's more than just physical attributes that enable her to dominate every scene she is in. What makes her character so frightening is that she doesn’t overplay the role as many actresses would have been tempted to do. Emerson actually takes it in the opposite direction. She oozes cold calculating bitchy evil from every pore in her huge frame. Emerson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for the role but lost to Josephine Hull who won for being the ditzy sister in Harvey. I’ve seen both films, and while Hull is certainly enjoyable as Veta, it doesn’t even come close to comparing to what Emerson achieves in this film.

If that weren’t enough, Eleanor Parker as Marie Allen is every bit her equal and then some. She is required to begin the film as a naïve, shy and frightened girl who is unjustly sent to prison. (I’m assuming that Marie didn’t know her husband was going to rob the gas station. It's never made 100 percent clear) Then she has to subtly change throughout the film as she becomes more and more like the other female inmates who surround her. Parker also was nominated for an Academy award, but she lost to Judy Holiday for Born Yesterday. And frankly, I love Judy Holiday but Judy Holiday played basically the same character in film after film. Parker was always underrated as an actress and in Caged she gives the performance of a lifetime. After you watch the film, go back and replay the first ten minutes and then rewatch the final ten minutes. You’ll never see a starker contrast.

Agnes Morehead is fine as the Prison Superintendent Benton who tries to implement her methods of reforms against all odds. But as I said before, no matter how crowded the prison is one would have thought at some point she would have moved Marie to a different cell block. But that’s a very minor quibble and of course if she had done that, there really wouldn’t have been a movie and there would have been no point to make. Benton more than makes up for this gaffe though when she stands her ground after the prison commissioners ask for her resignation. She shows (if you’ll pardon the expression) that she has some real balls.

And let’s not forget Ellen Corby as Emma who offers us the small amount of comedy relief that we get. She’s quite the goof ball and besides, I bet you didn’t know that Grandma Walton once did time in a state institution did you? And here, she’s more colorful then she ever was in any of the over one hundred Walton episodes in which she appeared.

Betty Garde plays Kitty Starke. She does what she has to do for survival and nothing more or less. Without being able to pay off Harper, there is no way she would have survived the days in prison. Let’s face it, there is not a bad performance to be found among any of these ladies.

So if you’re into older films, you certainly could do a lot lot worse than Caged. Even if for some odd reason you don’t like visiting the classics, try giving the DVD a spin anyway. I think you’ll be surprised at what a really terrific film it is. And at a quick running time of 96 minutes, you won’t have a whole lot of time invested in it. As for me, it is my favorite prison movie. And when you are my favorite film in that genre, I have no choice but to give you my grade which is an A.

Clyde’s Movie Palace: Bridge to Terabithia (2007)

2011-09-29T03:39:00.001-07:00

Josh Hutcherson
AnnaSophia Robb
Zooey Deschenal
Robert Patrick
Bailee Madison
Lauren Clinton

Directed by Gabor Csupo

There are some films that my The Girlfriend just doesn’t have any interest in seeing. The list isn’t very long, but it is concrete. First and foremost on the list would be anything that she considers to be a “cartoon.” This list can include anything from Pinocchio to Shrek the Third. Occasionally she will break down and watch something like Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid if I happen to be watching it, but she won’t go out of her way to do so. Any film that depends on a lot of CGI rendered special effects have also been dropped into this limbo like category.

For instance, because The Last Mimzy utilized these effects, she had no interest in viewing it. She watched the first Harry Potter film, and now he too has fallen into the “cartoon” cracks of The Girlfriend’s brain. It’s not like I’m the biggest Harry Potter fan on the planet but at least I have seen the movies.

When Bridge to Terabithia arrived from Netflix about a week ago, she turned her nose up at it and shoved it aside. It seemed she had seen the preview of the film and that was enough to convince her. And the fact is, I too had seen that preview and originally had no intention of watching it either because if one decides to watch it based solely on that, you are given the impression that you are going to be watching a Narnia clone. It was a last minute addition to the top of my queue based on two things. The first was that after watching The Last Mimzy, a film I hadn’t expected to like but did, I decided to give this one a chance. The second thing that helped convince me is a comment I read on Flickr regarding this film. It was succinct and to the point.

“Holy Crap!” the comment began. Unfortunately that’s all I can tell you because the rest of the comment might be a major spoiler although there is a possibility that you may have read the book and already know what I’m talking about. If you want to know what the rest of the comment was, send me an email AFTER you have seen the movie. Suffice it to say though, it was not the kind of comment that one would associate with a fantasy film. And as it turned out, Bridge to Terabithia is about as far removed as one can get from being a fantasy film while keeping perhaps one foot in the baseball park, with on toe just barely crossing the foul line.

Eighth grader Jesse Arons (Josh Hutcherson) is having a rough time. His dad, Jesse Arons Sr. (Robert Patrick), ignores him completely unless he needs for Jess to do chores. On the other hand, between Jesse’s four sisters (that Jesse would just as soon trade in for a good dog), taking care of the house and the baby, Jesse’s mom is more than a little bit preoccupied. She is totally clueless to the needs of a boy entering his teen years, and at the very beginning of the film she gives Jesse a pair of hand me down pink tennis shoes that belonged to his older sister and sees nothing at all wrong with it. This being on the day of a race that Jesse has been training for in the hopes of out running one of the school bullies.

Then there is Jesse’s younger sister May Belle (Bailee Madison), who worships the ground her older brother walks on. Unfortunately Jesse doesn’t grasp her hero worship choosing instead to show as little regard for May Belle as the rest of the family seems to have for him. It’s not that the family is totally dysfunctional, but they are presented in a realistic fashion in which just about anybody and everybody will be able to relate to. And if all of these problems weren’t enough for Jesse, he constantly has to deal with the school bullies, male and female alike. But in spite of all of this there is one good thing in Jesse’s life. He wants to be an artist someday and often immerses himself in the fantasy drawings he sketches in those few moments in his room that he has to himself.

On the same day that Jesse is to run his big race, a new girl comes to school. If Jesse is the odd boy out, we immediately peg Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb) as the odd girl out. She not only wears the highest high top tennis shoes one could wear and still be able to run or walk in them, but they are adorned on the sides with the fanciest of fancy artwork. The rest of her outfit would make one believe that Leslie had just dropped in from a 1960’s commune, and the fact that her parents don’t believe in television or religion only serves to reinforce that notion.

Although Leslie at first tries her best to present an air of optimism, it is apparent from her demeanor that being the oddball is beginning to take its toll on her. She desperately needs a friend. Sensing that Jesse is in need of a friend as well, Leslie does her best to win him over. At first Jesse sees her only as another problem in his life and someone to be avoided especially when he finishes second to her in the big race that he had trained for all summer.

Eventually Leslie begins to win Jesse over when she tells him that he is the best artist she has ever seen after she accidentally see’s his art work. Likewise, when Leslie stands in front of the classroom reading an essay on scuba diving, Jesse finds himself being drawn into her optimistic world of fantasy and adventure. Later, when Jesse saves Leslie from a thumping by an eighth grade girl bully, Janice Avery (Lauren Clinton), it is then that they start to develop a real camaraderie.

So it is that after school and whenever possible they spend their time together out in the woods that border their property. It is here where Leslie and Jesse come across an old rope hanging from a tree above a creek. It is their passport to the other side of the forest. When they cross the creek, they enter a land that is all their own. It is a land without parents whom ignore you, it is a land without school bullies, it is a land without taunting teenage sisters, it is a land of adventure, a land of fun, and a land where your mind can come alive and you can make it whatever your imagination desires it to be. It is Terabithia. And as Jesse’s friendship with Leslie grows, and as both his heart and his mind begins to open we sense something else in their eyes. We see respect, devotion, and an unspoken bond of love between them that can never be broken.

Despite what you may have seen in the trailers, the few minutes of CGI special effects used are just about all you are going to get in Bridge to Terabithia. When Jesse and Leslie swing across the creek to their special place, they do not enter some magically CGI rendered kingdom. When the special effects are used, they are used solely to show us how everything in their minds and in their special make believe world would appear to them if it were real. And only when Leslie convinces Jesse to open his mind to all possibilities does it come alive for both him and us.

The fact that Disney decided to promote this film as some sort of special effects extravaganza to capitalize on the success of Narnia, and (with the release of the DVD is still doing it) is what I consider not only one of the biggest marketing blunders in movie history because what you get from Bridge to Terabithia is a truly wonderful film about growing up, about relationships, about young kids coping with a difficult family life, and it’s about kids who appear to be as different as night and day becoming the best of friends and finding out they are not so different after all. It’s about not judging those around you too quickly because sometimes there are reasons for a person being the way they are.

After watching AnnaSophia Robb walk Zombiefied through The Reaping, I was totally knocked out by her wonderful and extraordinary performance in this film as Leslie. She has an uncanny ability to show us Leslie’s optimism, and yet we can see and feel the pain that she constantly tries to hide as she struggles to be accepted. It is for me, one of the best acting jobs by any young actress that I have seen of not only this year, but of many other years.

Likewise, Josh Hutcherson as Jesse, could easily have overplayed his character but he does not. Jesse only wants his father to show him that he cares about him, and at the very least for the rest of his family besides May Belle to acknowledge his existence. When Jesse treats Maybelle as the rest of his family treats him, he doesn’t try to sugar coat it and we cringe just as much because we hate what he does even while understanding why he does it.

Bailee Madison as May Belle is a revelation, and one pint size scene stealer. We can see the hurt in her when the brother she looks up to continually gives her the brush off. She can’t understand why Jesse can’t beat up the eighth grade girl who stole her twinkies.

Zoey Deschanel is the beautiful wide eyed school teacher that Jesse develops a crush on. It is only in her music class where the students actually seem to come alive and show some interest in their education. Lauren Clinton does a great job as the eighth grade bully Janice, who seems to be a composite of every bully you’ve ever met in life. Besides tormenting Jesse and Leslie, she stands outside the outdoor restroom during break forcing kids who want to use it to pay her a dollar. And yet, there is a lot more to Janice than meets the eye as you will soon discover.

Robert Patrick as Jesse’s father sometimes makes us want to reach through the screen and knock some sense into him. There are moments when we feel like he wants to reach out to Jesse, but openly showing affection is something totally foreign to him.

And my hat also has to go off to Director Gabor Csupo who brings it all together and never let’s the fantasy elements overwhelm what is essentially a very simple story. And as if that isn’t enough, kudos also to Aaron Zigmon’s beautiful score that enhances the story but never overwhelms it. And Michael Chapman’s first rate cinematography does more to bring Terabithia to life than any special effects ever could.

Then there is the totally unexpected denouement of the film. I have to tell you that unless you have read the book or read other reviews of this film, there is a twist towards the end that will make your jaw drop. And that’s the only way I can put it without giving too much of it away. I can only say one thing, if you are not moved by this film, then there may not be too many movies out there that will move you at all.

So the only thing left to do is give a big thumbs down…..to Disney for the crappy and stupid way they marketed this excellent film. I loved this film and it will easily make my list of top ten favorite films this year. And if I know a movie is going to be on that list I have no choice but to give you my grade, and it is a very highly recommended A. Now close your eyes, then open your mind and your heart so that you too can visit The Bridge to Terabithia.