Gary Cahall
Trapped in a world he never made...Movies Unlimited...since 1982, Gary's knack for mocking customers' tastes in films quickly moved him from the rental counter to the catalog department, where he still serves as co-writer/editor, playing by his own rules in a deadly game of cat and mouse. A lifelong fan of Alfred Hitchcock, the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges, Universal and Hammer horror films, and all things dinosaur- and superhero-related, his 2001 bantering with Regis Philbin pops up now and again on GSN. Gary's not ashamed to admit he cried at the end of Kevin Costner's The Postman, after realizing he had just wasted three hours of his life.
Gary's Posts
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
Type the keyword "Christmas" into the Internet Movie Database, and you'll get a listing of more than 3,000 film and TV titles stretching back to 1897. Certainly no other holiday comes close to the number of times some aspect of the 25th of December has been depicted on the big screen. Sometimes it's a fleeting scene or two (The Thin Man, The Greatest Story Ever Told), sometimes it's a key part of the plot (The Man Who Came to Dinner, Die Hard), and sometimes it's a picture's entire raison d'être (Christmas in Connecticut, Scrooged).
Yes, the Yuletide season has been the driving force for movies ranging from the sublime (White Christmas) to the ridiculous (Santa Claus Conquers the Martians), but what's the one "Fa-la-la" flick that stands above all its holly-bedecked brethren as the definitive cinematic Christmas statement? Elsewhere on this site, my esteemed colleague Irv Slifkin has presented his case for director Frank Capra's 1946 paean to Americana and small-town values, It's a Wonderful Life. I would now like to offer my arguments--20 of them, in fact (I was hoping for an appropriate 34; I trust some of you readers out there will be able to help me.)--in favor of the 1947 20th Century-Fox film Miracle on 34th Street.
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
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He first appeared on newsstands in December of 1940, a full year before the country he was named for entered World War II. Leaping across the magazine cover to deliver a roundhouse right to the jaw of Adolf Hitler while deflecting Nazi bullets with his red-white-and-blue shield, Captain America--the brainchild of legendary comic book creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby--was an instant sensation. Over the next seven decades the Star-Spangled Avenger would battle the Axis Powers, Communism, terrorists, racism, White House corruption and his own disillusionment with the government, even as his name became synonymous with right-wing, law-and-order politics (a point Easy Rider co-creators Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper made by naming Fonda's scruffy anti-hero after him). Through it all, however, Cap has consistently been one of the best-known and most popular of costumed do-gooders...on the printed page, that is. When it comes to the big (and small) screen, his track record is a bit more spotty. As Paramount's Captain America: The First Avenger opens, let's look back on Ol' Winghead's movie and TV history.
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
Earlier this week, I decided to mark the 4th of July with the first part of an alphabetical cross-country chronicle, listing my picks for the best--or at least the most significant--movie set in each state of the union. The article ended, appropriately enough, in the American heartland of Missouri, so let's put on our hiking boots and make our way across the rest of the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
Happy 235th birthday (give or take a couple of days), United States of America. It may seem to that vast section of the country not bordered by an ocean that--as far as Hollywood is concerned--America consists solely of New York and Southern California, plus a few exterior shots of Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate Bridge. The star-spangled history of film, however, is one that indeed stretches across amber waves of grain and purple mountains' majesty, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, and to all those other patriotic locales. Every state in the union has had at least one moment of big-screen glory...some more than others, of course, and not always where one would think (for example, very little of Fargo takes place in North Dakota).
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
Whichever side of the evolution-versus-intelligent design debate you come down on, one thing proponents from both camps can agree on is that there are just certain animals whose look, demeanor and way of life prove that either the random forces of the universe sometimes goof, or the Creator has a sense of humor. Aardvarks, duck-billed platypuses (platypi?) and the moose all fall into this category on the mammalian side, and when it comes to birds there are the ostrich, the kiwi and the humble penguin. Like short, waddling little butlers on ice, penguins have been a steady source of amusement for humans for centuries, and--as in the new Jim Carrey film Mr. Popper's Penguins, debuting this week--Hollywood has made ample use of their inherent comical and occasional dramatic abilities over the years. Don't believe me? Just grab a tin of sardines, park yourself on a comfortable ice floe, and consider the following:
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
"God, I'm glad I'm not me." -Cate Blanchett as Jude/Bob Dylan, I'm Not There (2007)
As if Baby Boomers needed another excuse for self-reflective musings on the inevitability of old age, May 24, 2011 is Bob Dylan's 70th birthday. Little needs to be said here about the music of the Minnesota-born singer/songwriter/poet/reluctant generational touchstone and its impact on popular culture over the last half-century or so...which is good, because writing about music is not my forte. No, this is a blog about cinema, and when it comes to the silver screen, the former Robert Allen Zimmerman's work has led to some rather bizarre and idiosyncratic moviegoing memories...one or two of them actually involving Bob himself.
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
"A story must be told!' - Bela Lugosi as "The Scientist," Glen or Glenda? (1953)
Earlier this Spring, fans of Hollywood's Golden Age mourned the death of two-time Best Actress Academy Award-winner and eight-time bride Elizabeth Taylor. Aficionados of cult movies and "so-bad-it's-good" cinema were saddened last week to learn of the passing of another actress: one whose career may never have reached the level of Taylor's, but whose performances nonetheless earned her a devoted following. She also, like Liz, achieved notoriety for an off-screen romance. Dolores Fuller, best known as the angora sweater-wearing girlfriend/collaborator/leading lady of cross-dressing "worst director of all time" Ed Wood, Jr. and portrayed by Sarah Jessica Parker in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic Ed Wood, died on May 9th at age 88 from complications from a stroke.
Gary Cahall | Scene Stealers
Here at the Scene Stealers corner of Movie FanFare, we try to pay tribute to that large group of often-unsung supporting actors and actresses who rarely received star status or got their name above the title, but still achieved popularity and garnered fans through their performances. In many cases (Edna May Oliver, for example, or S.Z. Sakall), their first couple of minutes on the screen would be enough to trigger an appreciative reaction from the audience. In the case of today's subject, silver-tongued master of comic sarcasm Frank Nelson, all it took was a turn of the head and a single word..."Yeeeesssss?"
Gary Cahall | Re: Animation
In our last episode article, yours truly offered his rather subjective selections for the 25 best animated TV programs of those bygone pre-cable days of the 1950s through the early '80s. Now it's time to check out the top toons of the past quarter-century, when the proliferation of kid-oriented channels and the networks' attempts to follow up on the prime-time success of a certain dysfunctional, yellow-hued family from Springfield (see below) helped give cartoon buffs many memorable moments. As with the list's first half, there are no live-action, stop-motion or puppet series (sorry, Pee-wee's Playhouse), nor do I have any anime entries (still not my cup of tea). And if you're looking for the shows from the Seth MacFarlane universe (Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show), keep looking. The baby and the dog might occasionally be amusing, but if I wanted to see a bunch of non-sequitur, pop culture reference jokes I'd watch The Critic...and that show didn't make the final cut, either. So, starting again at the bottom and working our way up, we have:
Gary Cahall | Re: Animation
It sure is heartening to know that I'm not the only Ruff and Reddy fan out there. That's the lesson I learned from the responses to last month's article on new DVD collections of 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, where I mentioned how my own Saturday morning memories skewed a bit older. Today's younger generations--with 24-hour channels devoted to animation and other kids' programming--may not recognize how good they've got it, because up until about 25 years ago such "sugar-charged supershow" fare was relegated on the three networks to weekend mornings (and, often on local UHF stations, to weekday afternoons after school). In spite of these limited hours--and some pretty limited animation, to boot--many of the shows of that era are still fondly remembered by Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers alike.
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
This week marks the 150th anniversary of the Confederate siege against U.S. forces stationed at Fort Sumter in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor, the first military action of the Civil War. How the conflict's sesquicentennial is being marked--and, in some parts of the country, celebrated--has over the past several months led to some rather intense media discussion over the ways that American society looks at its often-troubled heritage of race relations, and how it should present that past--from slavery to the century of segregation that followed its demise--for future generations.
There's another, cinematic anniversary coming up later this year that ties into these events as well. It was 65 years ago--on November 12, 1946--that the Walt Disney studio's Song of the South, which used live actors and animation to bring the popular "Uncle Remus" stories of Georgia-born author Joel Chandler Harris to life and marked the company's first official foray into live-action filmmaking, had its premiere in Atlanta.
Gary Cahall | Staff Notes
Last week, Movie FanFare ran a poll asking readers to vote for their favorite "cult classic" film. Not surprisingly, The Rocky Horror Picture Show came out of the gate strong and has a comfortable lead on such worthies as George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, the '30s shocker Freaks, Ed Wood's magnum opus Plan 9 from Outer Space, and other fondly-recalled relics from the days of rep cinema and midnight movie shows. Dawn, made in 1978, is the newest title on the list, and while several films from the early home video era of the 1980s and '90s--The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, The Big Lebowski, Office Space, and the works of Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino, for example--have managed to achieve cult status, one has to wonder if the technology of the 21st century will be a help or a hindrance to today's movies. While the sense of shared experience that used to be found at late-night screenings of Rocky Horror, Pink Flamingos or Eraserhead may be lacking, the popularity of Internet film review and blog sites--like this one, hint hint--can help spread the word about a particular cinematic curiosity and build an online community of devotees.
So, which movies from the last decade have the best chance of standing the test of time and becoming part of the newest generation of cult classics? I'd like to suggest the following 10 candidates and take a brief look at how they stack up:
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