09.16.09 Steven Seagal Alert!
Takeaway quote: "This is not a joke."
Hat tip to Hollywood Nostradamus, who sent word of this trailer shedding yet more inspirational light on the world of Steven Seagal.
1 Comment »September, 2009 Archive
1 Comment »09.15.09 The Plankton Is Dying
You’re sitting in the theater or at home watching a movie when out of nowhere somebody speaks a line of dialogue you can’t help laughing at. But the line is not meant to be comical. Nevertheless, you can’t believe what you just heard! The following are prime examples of unintentionally funny/camp lines.
The dingo’s got my baby!
OK. I’ll admit that perhaps at first take it wasn’t that funny, but as time passed it eventually grew into legendary status—with great help from the cast of Seinfeld having fun with the phrase. Now most folks have to bite their cheeks to suppress giggles when hearing this infamous line from A Cry in the Dark.
09.14.09 Nic Cage, Why Not Get Wild At Heart Again With The Perfect Big-Screen Biopic?
George D. Allen | Dream Casts, Staff Notes
He’s an Oscar winner with a new film directed by Werner Herzog coming out (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans), so it’s not really like Nicolas Cage needs any career advice from a blog. Let’s have some fun anyway: Isn't it high time Cage went the biopic route in a bid for another Academy Award? Yes, yes, he’s played real people before in World Trade Center and Adaptation, but I’m convinced this pitch represents his golden ticket back to the winner’s circle of the Kodak Theatre--or wherever that year’s awards are held. Now, let’s take a closer look at that picture from up top:
09.13.09 New Releases on DVD and Blu-ray: Week of 9/14/09
Jerry Frebowitz | New Releases This Week
New DVD Releases for this week include Wolverine and other theatrical newcomers, along with TV series and vintage favorites from the horror vaults of Universal Studio.
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09.11.09 R.J. Cutler & The September Issue
Irv Slifkin | In the Director's Chair, Movie Buzz
R.J. Cutler has based his career on observing the real and turning it into the reel.
The Yale-educated former theater director has made a name for himself in the worlds of both non-fictional film and television. He was the producer of the acclaimed 1993 documentary The War Room, an Oscar-nominated peek inside Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, and co-director and producer 1995’s A Perfect Candidate, a study of Iran-Contra figure Oliver North’s run for a Virginia senate seat in 1994. He’s also been involved as a producer in such “good” reality TV shows as Morgan Spurlock’s job-swapping TV series 30 Days, the high school verite show American High and the popular Discovery Channel series Flip This House.
09.10.09 Anybody Remember Sabu, The Elephant Boy?
Guest contributor Richard Williams writes:
If you were a “kid” growing up in the United States or Canada in the nineteen-forties, you probably spent many a Saturday afternoon at your local movie house. For twenty-five cents you got admission to the theater, a box of popcorn with enough left over for carfare home. Once in your seat you were ready to spend the next four hours watching a double feature, usually consisting of a western, a cartoon, a chapter of an ongoing serial, a newsreel and a second feature. And on the occasion that one of those features starred a diminutive Indian actor with a broad smile by the name of Sabu the Elephant Boy, then you knew you were in for a rousing adventure, usually in Technicolor.
09.10.09 Your Valley Of The Dolls Personality Test…
Valley Of The Dolls was first a best-selling novel, then it became a box office smash, but the film version of Jacqueline Susann’s show-biz saga might be most famous for its dialogue being delivered with such unknowing campiness. Not since The Oscar with Stephen Boyd had so much emoting gone into something so deliciously bad. Barbara Parkins got top billing in the film after becoming famous on the nighttime soap Peyton Place. She wanted the meaty part of the doomed megastar Neely O'Hara (the role went to Patty Duke) and Parkins ended up as Anne Welles, the “good” girl from New England. Check out the extras on the DVD and you can see her Neely screen test. It’s god-awful and so much fun to watch! Dolls also starred the beautiful Sharon Tate as Jennifer, the girl with no talent, “just a body”. Susan Hayward replaced Judy Garland as Helen Lawson, a grande dame of the theater. Garland was supposedly fired for missing rehearsals and maybe this was one time the old adage "better late than never" does not apply. Parkins reveals on the DVD extras that she felt Garland was scared the Lawson role (fading star, growing older) was going to somehow mirror her own career. It was rumored that Susann based the Neely O'Hara character on Garland.
09.09.09 Coming-Of-Age Films
There’s something about great coming-of-age movies that connect to filmgoers. It could be that movie fans connect with their own lives vicariously through the characters on-screen. There could be a certain wish fulfillment going on, too. If only I had acted on that crush I had on that beautiful girl. Or, if only that guy asked me out. Or why didn’t I follow my friends on that adventurous weekend?
Whatever the situation, the coming-of-age subject has given us some memorable screen moments. Adventureland, a recent coming-of-ager, is in the best tradition of such efforts. The movie is set in 1987 and centers on James Brennan (played by Michael Cera soundalike Jesse Eisenberg), a teenager about to head to the Big Apple and Columbia University at summer’s end. James takes a minimum wage job at a Pittsburgh area amusement park (actually shot at the region’s Kennywood) when his family experiences financial problems. There James meets a crew of eclectic characters, and, of course, gets a lesson in love and romance.
09.08.09 The Best Sports Movies Ever Made? Glen Macnow Has The Answers
Glen Macnow--host of Philadelphia-based WIP Radio’s “Movie Club for Men”--and Ray Didinger--football analyst for Comcast Sports Network--have just written “The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies: Featuring the 100 Greatest Sports Films of All Time.” The book is currently available at Amazon.com (you can find it at http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Book-Sports-Movies-Featuring/dp/0762435488 ). In the following interview, Macnow answers some of the most frequently asked questions about this encycolpedic salute to sports cinema.
09.07.09 The Devil’s Rain: Showers With A 100% Chance Of Overacting
Younger horror fans may not know it, but for a brief period in fright film history--between the '30s and '40s heyday of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man and the '80s "splatter" era of Michael, Jason and Freddy--literature's original "bad boy," the fallen angel known as Satan, was the big screen's number-one scare attraction. After decades of mostly pitchfork-wielding comedic appearances and the occasional Faust adaptation, Lucifer struck cinematic gold in 1968 as the proud papa of Rosemary's Baby, and Ol' Scratch solidified his box-office power as the behind-the-scenes instigator of the mayhem in such hits as 1973's The Exorcist and The Omen in 1976. By the time Ronald Reagan took office, it was back to being portrayed by the likes of Bill Cosby and George Burns, but there's no doubt that in '70s pop culture Mephistopheles was a force to reckoned with...which, of course, would also explain the rise of leisure suits, pet rocks, and The Captain and Tennille.
09.06.09 New Releases on DVD and Blu-ray: Week of 9/07/09
Jerry Frebowitz | New Releases This Week
New Releases on DVD and Blu-ray for this week include theatrical newcomers, some TV series and vintage favorites from the 1970s including Summertree, an early role for Michael Douglas.
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09.04.09 Bobcat Goldthwait & World’s Greatest Dad
Irv Slifkin | In the Director's Chair, Movie Buzz
You’d never know that the guy sitting a few feet away was one of the “screaming comics of the 1980s.”
It couldn’t be Sam Kinison. He’s gone, died in a car accident in Needles, California in 1992. Andrew Dice Clay? Relegated to reality TV contestant. Acerbic cult favorite Bill Hicks? Passed away, too: 1994. Cancer.
In fact, it’s Bobcat Goldthwait, but you’d never recognize him. Gone is the long hair, the scruffy clothes, the stuttering, the gravelly voice, the seemingly schizophrenic persona. Here, sitting in front of me, is a relatively mild-mannered middle-aged man with short hair, dressed with a flannel shirt and clashing flannel Jeff cap. He doesn’t fit the “screaming comic” mold at all, and looks out of place in a European-styled hotel in downtown Philadelphia.